“How long will this last?” Ross growled.
Ashe returned without much hope, “Anywhere from an hour to a couple of days. Let’s hope we’re lucky.”
They squatted, drawing their hide robes about them, pressing together for the warmth of body contact in the midst of that damp cold. Perhaps they dozed, for Travis became aware of his surroundings with a jerk of his head which hurt neck and shoulder. He knew that the rain had stopped, though there was night outside their inadequate shelter. He asked:
“Do we move on?”’
But the reply to that came from the world outside their hiding place, with a roar loud enough to split eardrums. Travis, his nails digging into the wooden shaft of his spear, could not control the shudder which shook him at that menacing blast.
“We do if we want to provide a midnight snack for our friend out there,” Ashe commented. “The rain probably spoiled hunting for somebody. Hereabouts we have sabertooth, the Alaskan lion, the cave bear, and a few other assorted carnivores I don’t want to meet without, say, a tank in reserve support.”
“Cheery spot,” Ross remarked. “I’d say our playmate up-ridge hasn’t had much luck tonight. Any chance of his coming down to scoop us out—or try for taste?”
“If he, she or it does, he’ll get a pawful of spear points.” Ashe replied. “One advantage of this hole, nothing can get in if we’re firm in saying No!”
There was a second roar, from farther away, Travis noted with relief. Whatever meat hunter on the hoof prowled the hills, it would not have followed their trail. The rain must have cleansed their scent from grass and earth. But they continued to huddle there, stiff and cold, endeavoring now and then to change position of arms or legs so that morning would not find them too cramped to move. They remained until the sky did lighten with the first sign of dawn.
Travis crawled out, straightened up painfully, and bit back a stinging word or two, as a morning breeze with the crisp-ness of about three below zero cut in under the flap of his cloak blanket. He decided that to be properly prepared to roam the Pleistocene world in the garb of its rightful inhabitants, one should practice beforehand by spending a month or so in a deep freeze stripped to one’s shorts. And he was pleased to see that neither Ashe nor Ross was any more agile when he emerged from the hole of refuge.
They mouthed food-concentrate tablets from their storage bags. Travis, though knowing the energy-building uses of those small pellets, longed for real meat, hot, yet still juicy, taken straight from the searing of the fire. There was no taste to these pill things.
“Up we go.” Ashe wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and slung his bag over his shoulder. He studied the way before them to pick out the best ascent. But Travis had already started, winding in and out between boulders which marked the debris of a landslide.
When the scouts at last reached the summit, they turned to look back into the valley of the lake. That smooth sheet of water occupied perhaps half of the basin. And it seemed to Travis that the mirror surface reached closer to the wrecked ship today than it had when they passed it the afternoon before. He said as much, and Ashe agreed.
“Water has to go somewhere and these rains feed all the streams heading down there. Another reason why we must make this a fast job. So—let’s get moving.”
But when they turned again to follow the line of the heights,
Travis halted. A very thin and watery sunlight broke through the clouds, carrying with it little or no warmth as yet, but providing more light. And— he peered intently westward and downslope on the other side of the hills. . . . No, he had not been mistaken! That sunlight, feeble as it was, reflected from some point in the second valley. From water? He doubted that, the answering spark was too brilliant.
Ashe and Ross, following his direction, saw it too. “Second ship?” Ross suggested.
“If so, it is not marked on our charts. But we’ll take a look. I agree that’s too bright to be sun on water.”
Had there been survivors from the other crash? Travis wondered. If so, had they established a camp down there? He had heard enough during the past few days to judge that any contact with the original owners of the galactic ships could be highly dangerous. Ross had been pursued by one of their patrols across miles of wilderness, and had escaped from a form of mind compulsion they exerted only by deliberately burning his hand in a fire and using pain to counter their mental demand for surrender. They were not human, those ship people, and what powers or weapons they did possess were so alien as to defy Terran understanding so far.
So the three took to cover, making expert use of every bit of brush, every boulder, as they advanced to locate that source of reflection. Again Travis was amazed by the skill of his companions. He had hunted lion, and lion in the beast’s native mountains is very wary game. And he could read trail with all the skill imparted to him by Chato who knew the ways of the old raiding warriors. But these two were equal to him at what he always considered a red man’s rather than a white man’s game.
They came at last to lie in a fringe of trees, parting the grass cautiously to look out on an expanse of open land. In the middle of it rested another globe ship, but this one was entirely above ground and it was small, a pygmy com- pared to the giant in the other valley. At first superficial examination it looked to have been landed normally, not crashed. Halfway up, the curve facing them showed the dark hole of an open entrance port, and from it dangled a ladder. Someone had survived this landing, come to earth here!
“Lifeboat?” Ashe’s voice was the slightest of whispers.
“It is not shaped like the one I saw before,” Ross hissed. “That was like a rocket.”
Wind sang across the clearing. Under its push the ladder clanged against the side of the globe. And from the foot of the strange ship some birds tried to rise. But they moved sluggishly, flopping their wings with an awkward heaviness. And the wind brought to the three in hiding that sweetish, stomach-turning odor which could never be mistaken by those who had ever smelled it. Something lay dead there, very dead.
Ashe stood up, watching those birds narrowly. Then he walked forward. A snarl came from close to ground level. Travis’ spear came up. It sang through the air and a brown-coated, four-footed beast yelped, leaped pawing in the air, to crash back into the grass. More of the gorged carrion birds fluttered and hopped away from their feast.
What lay about the foot of that ladder was not a pretty sight. Nor could the scouts tell at first glance how many bodies there had been. Ashe attempted to make a closer examination and came away, white-faced and gagging. Ross picked up a tatter of blue-green material.
“Baldies” uniforms, all right,” he identified it. “This is one thing I’ll never forget. What happened here? A fight?”
“What ever it was, it happened some time ago,” Ashe, livid under tan and skin stain, got out the words carefully. “Since there was no burial, I’d say the crew must all have been finished.”
“Do we go in?” Travis laid a hand on the ladder.
“Yes. But don’t touch anything. Especially any of the instruments or installations.”
Ross laughed on a slightly hysterical high note. “That you do not need to underline for me, chief. After you, sir, after you.”
Thus, Ashe leading the way, they climbed- the ladder, entered the gaping hole of the port. There was a second door a short distance inside, doubly thick and with heavy braces, but it, too, was ajar. Ashe pushed it back and then they •were in a well from which another ladder-like stair arose.
Somehow Travis had expected darkness, since there were no windows or wall outlets in the outer skin of the globe. But a blue light seeped from the walls about them, and not only light, but a warmth which was comforting.
“The ship’s still alive,” Ross commented. “And if she is intact—“
“Then,” Ashe finished softly for him, “we’ve made the big find, boys. We never hoped for luck like this.” He started to climb the inner ladder.
They came to a landing, or rather a platform from which opened three oval doors, all closed. Ross pushed against each, but they all held.
“Locked?” Travis asked.
“Might be-or else we don’t know how to turn the right buttons. Going on up, chief? If this follows the pattern of that other one. the control cabin is on top.”