“Hands and feet of the Mother, she who sows what may be reaped—”
“Outland stranger who is under the Wrath of Lurgha,” the other mocked him in the voice of Cassca. “What do you want, outlander, that you dare to come here where no man may enter?”
“That which you know. For on the night when Lurgha came you also saw—”
Ross heard the hiss of a sharply drawn breath. “How knew you that, outlander?”
“Because you serve the Mother and you are jealous for her and her service. If Lurgha is a mighty god, you wanted to see his acts with your own eyes.”
When she finally answered, there was anger as well as frustration in her voice. “And you know of my shame then, Assha. For Lurgha came—on a bird he came, and he did even as he said he would. So now the village will make offerings to Lurgha and beg his favor, and the Mother will no more have those to harken to her words and offer her the first fruits of—”
“But from whence came this bird which was Lurgha, can you tell me that, she who waits upon the Mother?”
“What difference does it make from what direction Lurgha came? That does not add nor take from his power.” Cassca moved beneath the arch. “Or does it in some strange way, Assha?”
“Perhaps it does. Only tell me.”
She turned slowly and pointed over her right shoulder. “From that way he came, Assha. Well did I watch, knowing that I was the Mother’s and that even Lurgha’s thunderbolts could not eat me up. Does knowing that make Lurgha smaller in your eyes, Assha? When he has eaten up all that is yours and your kin with it?”
“Perhaps,” Assha repeated. “I do not think Lurgha will come so again.”
She shrugged, and the heavy cloak flapped. “That shall be as it shall be, Assha. Now go, for it is not good that any man come hither.”
Cassca paced back into the heart of the green tunnel, and Ross and McNeil came out of concealment. McNeil faced in the direction she had pointed. “Northeast—” he commented thoughtfully, “the Baltic lies in that quarter.”
8
“. . . And that is about all.” Ten days later Ashe, a dressing on his leg and a few of the pain lines smoothed from his face, sat on a bunk in the arctic time post nursing a mug of coffee in his hands and smiling, a little crookedly, at Nelson Millaird.
Millaird, Kelgarries, Dr. Webb, all the top brass of the project had not only come through the transfer point to meet the three from Britain but were now crammed into the room, nearly pushing Ross and McNeil through the wall. Because this was it! What they had hunted for months—years—now lay almost within their grasp.
Only Millaird, the director, did not seem so confident. A big man with a bushy thatch of coarse graying hair and a heavy, fleshy face, he did not look like a brain. Yet Ross had been on the roster long enough to know that it was Millaird’s thick and hairy hands that gathered all the loose threads of Operation Retrograde and deftly wove them into a workable pattern. Now the director leaned back in a chair which was too small for his bulk, chewing thoughtfully on a toothpick.
“So we have the first whiff of a trail,” he commented without elation.
“A pretty strong lead!” Kelgarries broke in. Too excited to sit still, the major stood with his back against the door, as alert as if he were about to turn and face the enemy. “The Russians wouldn’t have moved against Gog if they did not consider it a menace to them. Their big base must be in this time sector!”
“A big base,” Millaird corrected. “The one we are after, no. And right now they may be switching times. Do you think they will sit here and wait for us to show up in force?” But Millaird’s tone, intended to deflate, had no effect on the major.
“And just how long would it take them to dismantle a big base?” that officer countered. “At least a month. If we shoot a team in there in a hurry—”
Millaird folded his huge hands over his barrel-shaped body and laughed, without a trace of humor. “Just where do we send that team, Kelgarries? Northeast of a coastal point in Britain is a rather vague direction, to say the least. Not,” he spoke to Ashe now, “that you didn’t do all you could, Ashe. And you, McNeil, nothing to add?”
“No, sir. They jumped us out of the blue when Sandy thought he had every possible line tapped, every safeguard working. I don’t know how they caught on to us, unless they located our beam to this post. If so, they must have been deliberately hunting us for some time, because we only used the beam as scheduled—”
“The Russians have patience and brains and probably some more of their surprise gadgets to help them. We have the patience and the brains, but not the gadgets. And time is against us. Get anything out of this, Webb?” Millaird asked the hitherto silent third member of his ruling committee.
The quiet man adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, a flattish nose which did not support them very well. “Just another point to add to our surmises. I would say that they are located somewhere near the Baltic Sea. There are old trade routes there, and in our own time it is a territory closed to us. Their installation may be close to the Finnish border. They could disguise their modern station under half a dozen covers; that is a strange country.”
Millaird’s hands unfolded and he produced a notebook and pen from a shirt pocket. “Won’t hurt to stir up some of our present-day intelligence agents. They might just come up with a useful hint. So you’d say the Baltic. But that’s a big slice of country.”
Webb nodded. “We have one advantage—the old trade routes. In the Beaker period they are pretty well marked. The major one into that section was established for the amber trade. The country is forested, but not so heavily as it was in an earlier period. The native tribes are mostly roving hunters, and fishermen along the coast. But they have had contact with traders.” He shoved his glasses back into place with a nervous gesture. “The Russians may run into trouble themselves there at this time—”
“How?” Kelgarries demanded.
“Invasion of the ax people. If they have not yet arrived, they are due very soon. They formed one of the big waves of migratory people, who flooded the country, settled there. Eventually they became the Norse or Celtic stock. We don’t know whether they stamped out the natives tribes they found there or assimilated them.”
“That might be a nice point to have settled more definitely,” McNeil commented. “It could mean the difference between getting your skull split and continuing to breathe.”
“I don’t think they would tangle with the traders. Evidence found today suggests that the Beaker folk simply went on about their business in spite of a change in customers,” Webb returned.
“Unless they were pushed into violence.” Ashe handed his empty mug to Ross. “Don’t forget Lurgha’s Wrath. From now on our enemies might take a very dim view of any Beaker trade posts near their property.”
Webb shook his head slowly. “A wholesale attack on Beaker establishments would constitute a shift in history. The Russians won’t dare that, not just on general suspicion. Remember, they are not any more eager to tinker with history than we are. No, they will watch for us. We will have to stop communication by radio—”
“We can’t!” snapped Millaird vehemently. “We can cut it down, but I won’t send the boys out without some means of quick communication. You lab boys see what you can turn out in the way of talk boxes that they can’t snoop. Time!” He drummed on his knee with his thick fingers. “It all comes back to a question of time.”
“Which we do not have,” Ashe observed in his usual quiet voice. “If the Russians are afraid they have been spotted, they must be dismantling their post right now, working around the clock. We’ll never again have such a good chance to nail them. We must move now.”
Millaird’s lids drooped almost shut; he might have been napping. Kelgarries stirred restlessly by the door, and Webb’s round face had settled into what looked like permanent lines of disapproval.
“Doc,” Millaird spoke over his shoulder to the fourth man of his following, “what is your report?”
“Ashe must be under treatment for at least five days. McNeil’s burns aren’t too bad, and Murdock’s slash is almost healed.”
“Five days—” Millaird droned, and then flashed a glance at the major. “Personnel. We’re tied down without any useful personnel. Who in processing could be switched without tangling them up entirely?”