Now it was time to go. There was no use waiting longer. It had been a
fool’s errand in the first place; he had been wrong to let himself think
something might be hidden in the cave.
He turned back to the rope and the rope was gone.
For a moment he stared stupidly at the point along the cliff face where
the rope had hung, swaying in the breeze. Then he searched for some sign of
it, although there was little area to search. The rope could have slid,
perhaps, for a short distance along the edge of the overhanging mass of rock
but it seemed incredible that it could have slid far enough to have vanished
from his sight.
The rope was new, strong, and he had tied it securely to the oak tree on
the bluff above the cliff, snugging it tightly around the trunk and testing
the knot to make certain that it would not slip.
And now the rope was gone. There had to be a human hand in this. Someone
had come along, seen the rope and quietly drawn it up and now was crouched
on the bluff above him, waiting for his frightened outburst when he found
himself stranded. It was the sort of crude practical joke than any number of
people in the community might believe to be the height of humor. The thing
to do, of course, was to pay no attention, to remain quiet and wait until
the joke would pall upon the jokester.
So he hunkered down upon the ledge and waited. Ten minutes, he told
himself, or at least fifteen, would wear out the patience of the jokester.
Then the rope would come down and he could climb up and go back to the
house. Depending upon who the joker might turn out to be, he’d take him home
and pour a drink for him and the two of them, sitting in the kitchen, would
have a laugh together.
He found that he was hunching his shoulders against the wind, which
seemed to have a sharper bite than when he first had noticed it. It was
shifting from the west to north and that was no good.
Squatting on the ledge, he noticed that beads of moisture had gathered
upon his jacket sleeve — not a result of rain, exactly, but of driven mist.
If the temperature should drop a bit the weather might turn nasty.
He waited, huddled, listening for a sound — a scuffling of feet through
leaves, the snap of broken brush — that would betray the presence of
someone on the clifftop. But there was no sound at all. The day was muffled.
Even the branches of the trees beneath his perch, swaying in the wind,
swayed without their usual creaks and groans.
Fifteen minutes must have passed and there had been no sound from atop
the cliff. The wind had increased somewhat and when he twisted his head to
one side to try to look up he could feel the soft slash of the driving mist
against his cheek.
He could keep silent no longer in hope of waiting out the jokester. He
sensed, in a sudden surge of panic, that time was running out on him.
‘Hey, up there — ‘ he shouted.
He waited and there was no response.
He shouted again, more loudly this time.
Ordinarily the cliff across the hollow should have bounced back echoes.
But now there were no echoes and his shout seemed dampened, as if this wild
place had erected some sort of fence to hem him in.
He shouted again and the misty world took his voice and swallowed it.
A hissing sound started. Daniels saw it was caused by tiny pellets of
ice streaming through the branches of the trees. From one breath to another
the driven mist had turned to ice.
He walked back and forth on the ledge in front of the cave, twenty feet
at most, looking for some way of escape. The ledge went out into space and
then sheered off. The slanting projection of rock came down from above. He
was neatly trapped.
He moved back into the cave and hunkered down. Here he was protected
from the wind and he felt, even through his rising panic, a certain sense of
snugness. The cave was not yet cold. But the temperature must be dropping
and dropping rather swiftly or the mist would not have turned to ice. He
wore a light jacket and could not make a fire. He did not smoke and never
carried matches.
For the first time he faced the real seriousness of his position. It
might be days before anyone noticed he was missing. He had few visitors and
no one ever paid too much attention to him. Even if someone should find that
he was missing and a hunt for him was launched, what were the chances that
he would be found? Who would think to look in this hidden cave? How long, he
wondered, could a man survive in cold and hunger?
If he could not get out of here, and soon, what about his livestock? The
cows would be heading home from pasture, seeking shelter from the storm, and
there would be no one there to let them into the barn. If they were not
milked for a day or two they would be tormented by swollen udders. The hogs
and chickens would go unfed. A man, he thought, had no right to take the
kind of chance he had taken when so many living creatures were dependent on
him.
He crawled farther back into the cave and stretched himself out on his
belly, wedging himself into its deepest recess, an ear laid against the
stone.
The creature still was there — of course it still was there. It was
trapped even more securely than himself, held down by, perhaps, several
hundred feet of solid rock, which had been built up most deliberately
through many millions of years.
It was remembering again. In its mind was another place and, while part
of that flow of memory was blurred and wavy, the rest was starkly clear. A
great dark plain of rock, one great slab of rock, ran to a far horizon and
above that far horizon a reddish sun came up and limned against the great
red ball of rising sun was a hinted structure — an irregularity of the
horizon that suggested a place. A castle, perhaps, or a city or a great
cliff dwelling — it was hard to make out what it was or to be absolutely
sure that it was anything at all.
Home? Was that black expanse of rock the spaceport of the old home
planet? Or might it be only a place the creature had visited before it had
come to Earth? A place so fantastic, perhaps, that it lingered in the mind.
Other things mixed into the memory, sensory symbols that might have
applied to personalities, life forms, smells, tastes.
Although he could be wrong, Daniels knew, in supplying this entrapped
creature with human sensory perceptions, these human sensory perceptions
were the only ones he knew about.
And now, listening in on the memory of that flat black expanse of rock
and imagining the rising sun which outlined the structure of the far
horizon, Daniels did something he had never tried to do before. He tried to
talk back to the buried creature, tried to let it know that someone was
listening and had heard, that it was not as lonely and as isolated as it
might have thought it was.
He did not talk with his tongue — that would have been a senseless
thing to do. Sound could never carry through those many feet of stone. He
talked with his mind instead.
_Hello, down there_, he said. _This is a friend of yours. I’ve been
listening to you for a long, long time and I hope that you can hear me. If
you can, let us talk together. Let me try to make you understand about
myself and the world I live in and you tell me about yourself and the kind
of world you lived in and how you came to be where you are and if there is
anything I can do for you, any help that I can give._
He said that much and no more. Having spoken, he continued lying with
his ear against the hard cave floor, listening to find out if the creature
might have heard him. But the creature apparently had not heard or, having
heard, ignored him as something not worth its attention. It went on thinking
about the place where the dull red sun was rising above the horizon.
It had been foolish, and perhaps presumptuous, he knew, for him to have
tried to speak to it. He had never tried before; he had simply listened. And
he had never tried, either, to speak to those others who talked among the