“More likely thousands,” Ross commented. “Where will you start, Gordon?”
Ashe brushed sand from the page of the notebook he had steadied against one bent knee and gazed out at the reef where they had set the probe.
“Ten thousand years—”
“Why?” Karara wanted to know. “Why that exact figure?”
“We know that galactic ships crashed on Earth then. So their commerce and empire—if it was an empire—was far-flung at that time. Perhaps they were at the zenith of their civilization; perhaps they were already on the down slope. I do not think they were near the beginning. So that date is as good a starting place as any. If we don’t hit what we’re after, then we can move forward until we do.”
“Do you think that there ever was a native population here?”
“Might have been.”
“But without any large land animals, no modern traces of any,” she protested.
“Of people?” Ashe shrugged. “Good answers for both. Suppose there was a world-wide epidemic of proportions to wipe out a species. Or a war in which they used forces beyond our comprehension to alter the whole face of this planet, which did happen—the alteration, I mean. Several things could have removed intelligent life. Then such species as the burrowers could have developed or evolved from smaller, more primitive types.”
“Those ape-things we found on the desert planet.” Ross thought back to their first voyage on the homing derelict. “Maybe they had once been men and were degenerating. And the winged people, they could have been less than men on their way up—”
“Ape-things . . . winged people?” Karara interrupted. “Tell me!”
There was something imperious in her demand, but Ross found himself describing in detail their past adventures, first on the world of sand and sealed structures where the derelict had rested for a purpose its involuntary passengers had never understood, and then of the humans’ limited exploration of that other planet which might have been the capital world of a far-flung stellar empire. There they had made a pact with a winged people living in the huge buildings of a jungle-choked city.
“But you see”—the Polynesian girl turned to Ashe when Ross had finished—”you did find them—these ape-things and the winged people. But here there are only the dragons and the burrowers. Are they the start or the finish? I want to know—”
“Why?” Ashe asked.
“Not just because I am curious, though I am that also, but because we, too, must have a beginning and an end. Did we come up from the seas, rise to know and feel and think, just to return to such beginning at our end? If your winged people were climbing and your ape-things descending”—she shook her head—”it would be frightening to hold a cord of life, both ends in your hands. Is it good for us to see such things, Gordon?”
“Men have asked that question all their thinking lives, Karara. There have been those who have said no, who have turned aside and tried to halt the growth of knowledge here or there, attempted to make men stand still on one tread of a stairway. Only there is that in us which will not stop, ill-fitted as we may be for the climbing. Perhaps we shall be safe and untroubled here on Hawaika if I do not go out to that reef tonight. By that action I may bring real danger down on all of us. Yet I can not hold back for that. Could you?”
“No, I do not believe that I could,” she agreed.
“We are here because we are of those who must know—volunteers. And being of that temperament, it is in us always to take the next step.”
“Even if it leads to a fall,” she added in a low tone.
Ashe gazed at her, though her own eyes were on the sea where a lace of waves marked the reef. Her words were ordinary enough, but Ross straightened to match Ashe’s stare. Why had he felt that odd instant of uneasiness as if his heart had fluttered instead of beating true?
“I know of you Time Agents,” Karara continued. “There were plenty of stories about you told while we were in training.”
“Tall tales, I can imagine, most of them.” Ashe laughed, but his amusement sounded forced to Ross.
“Perhaps. Though I do not believe that many could be any taller than the truth. And so also I have heard of that strict rule you follow, that you must do nothing which might alter the course of history. But suppose, suppose here that the course of history could be altered, that whatever catastrophe occurred might be averted? If that was done, what would happen to our settlement in the here and now?”
“I don’t know. That is an experiment which we have never dared to try, which we won’t try—”
“Not even if it would mean a chance of life for a whole native race?” she persisted.
“Alternate worlds then, maybe.” Ross’s imagination caught up that idea. “Two worlds from a change point in history,” he elaborated, noting her look of puzzlement. “One stemming from one decision, another from the alternate.”
“I’ve heard of that! But, Gordon, if you could return to the time of decision here and you had it in your power to say, `Yes—live!’ or `No—die!’ to the alien natives, what would you do?”
“I don’t know. But neither do I think I shall ever be placed in that position. Why do you ask?”
She was twisting her still damp hair into a pony tail and tying it so with a cord. “Because . . . because I feel . . . No, I can not really put it into words, Gordon. It is that feeling one has on the eve of some important event—anticipation, fear, excitement. You’ll let me go with you tonight, please! I want to see it—not the Hawaika that is, but that other world with another name, the one they saw and knew!”
An instant protest was hot in Ross’s throat, but he had no time to voice it. For Ashe was already nodding.
“All right. But we may have no luck at all. Fishing in time is a chancy thing, so don’t be disappointed if we don’t turn you up that other world. Now, I’m going to pamper these old bones for an hour or two. Amuse yourselves, children.” He lay back and closed his eyes.
The past two days had wiped half the shadows from his lean, tanned face. He had dropped two years, three, Ross thought thankfully. Let them be lucky tonight, and Ashe’s cure could be nearly complete.
“What do you think happened here?” Karara had moved so that her back was now to the wash of waves, her face more in the shadow.
“How do I know? Could be any of ten different things.”
“And will I please shut up and leave you alone?” she countered swiftly. “Do you wish to savor the excitement then, explore a world upon world, or am I saying it right? We have Hawaika One which is a new world for us; now there is Hawaika Two which is removed in time, not distance. And to explore that—”
“We won’t be exploring it really,” Ross protested.
“Why? Did your agents not spend days, weeks, even months of time in the past on Earth? What is to prevent your doing the same here?”
“Training. We have no way of learning the drill.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it wasn’t as easy as you seem to think it was back on Earth,” he began scornfully. “We didn’t just stroll through one of those gates and set up business, say, in Nero’s Rome or Montezuma’s Mexico. An Agent was physically and psychologically fitted to the era he was to explore. Then he trained, and how he trained!” Ross remembered the weary hours spent learning how to use a bronze sword, the technique of Beaker trading, the hypnotic instruction in a language which was already dead centuries before his own country existed. “You learned the language, the customs, everything you could about your time and your cover. You were letter perfect before you took even a trial run!”
“And here you would have no guides,” Karara said, nodding. “Yes, I can see the difficulty. Then you will just use the peep-probe?”
“Probably. Oh, maybe later on we can scout through a gate. We have the material to set one up. But it would be a strictly limited project, allowing no chance of being caught. Maybe the big brains back home can take peep-data and work out some basis of infiltration for us from it.”
“But that would take years!”
“I suppose so. Only you begin to swim in the shallows, don’t you—not by jumping off a cliff!”
She laughed. “True enough! However, even a look into the past might solve part of the big mystery.”
Ross grunted and stretched out to follow Ashe’s example. But behind his closed eyes his brain was busy, and he did not cultivate the patience he needed. Peep-probes were all right, but Karara had a point. You wanted more than a small window into a mystery, you wanted a part in solving it.