Echoes In Time # with Sherwood Smith Read online

  Not long after, they saw Yilayil—a big blue-green crescent, not unlike Earth at this distance—rapidly growing dead center on the screen.

  It swelled, until they could make out the islands thickly straddling the equator, and the white, sere land masses at the poles, all hazed by the atmosphere and obscure under swirling weather systems.

  "Back to the bunks," Zina commanded. "We are shortly to planet—our work is to begin."

  No one had anything to say to that—even Misha seemed subdued.

  In silence the two women retreated to their cabin, and prepared for landing.

  CHAPTER 11

  ROSS FELT GRAVITY close its fist on his vitals, and he concentrated on his breathing. The ship was now under flight; the globe creaked and vibrated as it arrowed down toward Yilayil.

  Ross tried to picture the planet, a series of island clusters belting the brilliant blue ocean that girdled the entire world. The spaceport was not located on the largest island—just the flattest. Most of the rest had active volcanoes on them: not good choices for any kind of city. Ross wondered if they'd be there long enough for the science team to actually explore some of those islands; there had to be tens of thousands of them, if not more.

  He hoped not.

  It seemed the landing was faster this time than the last, but maybe that was because he knew what to expect. At any rate, they finally set down with a gentle bump, and Ross bounced and swayed in his bunk webbing, stretching his limbs experimentally.

  Sounds came from the other cabins. The others emerged, one by one. Some of them had wasted no time in getting their equipment ready for deployment. Gordon was already out of his bunk, overseeing things; Ross listened to the quick American voices as he and Renfry spoke.

  "Damn," Renfry was saying. "This stuff is heavy. I sure wish we knew we could safely run power off the ship."

  Ross thought about the mysterious fuel, and wondered how they'd power the globe if they suddenly ran empty. They couldn't do it—of course. The idea of floating through space forever, maybe caught in the weird transdimensional plane, gave him the willies.

  It was enough to get him to unstrap and swing out of the bunk. He slipped his shoes on and left the cabin.

  "Ah. Ross." Renfry hailed him with obvious relief. "Gotta get this generator stuff out first thing, and get us a power supply set up."

  Ross nodded, feeling his muscles protest as he lifted a heavy box. After the weeks of weightlessness—despite the workouts—everything seemed to weigh about a ton.

  "Misha and Viktor gone out scouting?" Ross asked.

  "Soon's Boris lowered the ramp," Renfry said. "That guy Misha acts like he's been in two gees for a month. He was out there with enough bounce to make a Marine drill sergeant happy."

  Ross snorted—and then grunted with effort as he started down the ladder after Renfry. He was just as happy not to see Misha lounging around and grinning at his laboring movements under all that weight.

  They made it to the outer port, and Ross glanced out. Like before, the rich, scent-laden air hit him at once, and he nearly dropped his burden as a violent sneeze took him.

  Renfry sneezed right after, and then sneezed again. He rather hastily set his own box down and sneezed a third time, then sheepishly wiped his nose.

  Ross sniffed, trying to get his sinuses acclimated; he looked around as he waited. They'd landed at dawn. Gaudy pink and orange and yellow light filtered through the lush growth at the cracks in the old spaceport paving.

  "Phew!" Eveleen appeared next to him, her arms piled with several flat boxes. "Smells like an explosion in a perfume factory!"

  "It is just as well we brought a large supply of anti-allergens," Valentin said soberly, appearing behind Eveleen.

  "We didn't get sick on our run," Renfry said, "but maybe that was luck. I'm just glad we're immune—at least we can hope we're immune," he amended, squinting around at the unfamiliar varieties of trees and bushes.

  "Let's get unloaded, then we can explore a little." That was Zina, behind them on the ramp.

  Ross realized he had stopped at the base of the ramp, and was holding up the line. He quickly bent and picked up his box, and the line proceeded with the unloading.

  They kept moving until the base camp items were all stacked up and waiting against Misha and Viktor finding a good location. Then they retreated back to the ship, with Gregori and Vera standing guard against the little blue flyers showing up and pilfering souvenirs.

  Ross was glad to get back to the sterile ship's air. His sinuses cleared almost immediately—making his nose run. He noticed the others having the same problem.

  Gordon was ahead of him in line for the midday meal. "Remember getting the sniffles last time?" Ross asked.

  Gordon gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Nope. Maybe it's old age setting in."

  Ross laughed, but he wondered if their anti-allergen medication was maybe a tad too vigorous. Last flight—when they'd had, perforce, no protection beyond the alien suits—had produced no such problems.

  They each got some food, and Ross hunkered down with his back to a wall, glad to get his weight off his feet.

  Zina waited until everyone had food, then she nodded to Gordon, who said, "Listen up, people. We've got to start wearing our communications gear right now. If we set foot off the ship, even for ten feet, we wear it." He gave them an ironic grin. "I don't know about the First Team's visit, but when Ross and Renfry and I were here last, it was me who found himself making an unexpected trip to the local flyers. No problem—that time—but we need to be prepared until we know if there have been any changes."

  Ross nodded, and the others made various signs of agreement. It was clear that Gordon and Zina had been talking about general strategy.

  Ross was nearly done with his meal when Viktor and Misha appeared in the doorway. "We found a good one," Misha began.

  Zina addressed him in rapid-fire Russian, and Misha's mouth tightened. He nodded his head, and spread his hands.

  Ross looked at Misha's belt, which was bare, and knew that the maverick agent had left his own com gear behind. Why? Showing off, Ross thought sourly.

  Ross also noticed that though the silent Viktor came in for a share of the lecture, it was Misha who caught the full load. Of course it had been his idea to skip off the ship the second the ramp was down, and go out ranging around before the com gear had even been broken out.

  Misha kept his head bowed, his lips curved in the merest ghost of a smile, and when Zina finished he said something short and mild in Russian. Then he looked up. "We must get moving now if we wish to get a camp set up before dark," he stated in English.

  Ross shoveled his last bite of food into his mouth and stood up. At once his shoulders and arms protested, but he ignored it. "So let's move," he said.

  Everyone helped. They formed a long pack train, leaving only Boris and Renfry behind to guard the ship. Each person carried as much as he or she could handle.

  Misha and Viktor had done an excellent job of trailblazing, Ross noted as he trudged along behind. Of course.

  But—despite his distrust of the blond agent—he was just as glad that Misha and Viktor were as good as reputed. He hadn't really thought about laying camp until he stepped out and looked at this wild land once again. But this was no easy matter. They had to position themselves not just within range of both ship and library tower, but well away from any known weasel or wild-humanoid dens. But that wasn't all. They also had to be in a good position for the transfer equipment— because the time agents would be appearing in the same spot many years earlier. So they didn't want to be where spaceport (if it was being used at all) or city action might be congested, for example.

  He knew that Viktor, in particular, had spent a great deal of time with the meticulous recordings of measurement and location reported on the incomplete tape made by the First Team. It was he who had mapped out the probable location of buildings and pathways they might find in the earlier time, and he had to overlay it with the present
.

  The camp turned out to be in a protected grotto next to a waterfall, with a natural spy-spot on the hillocks above the falls.

  Misha stepped into the little clearing first, waving a hand about with the air of a prince offering his palace.

  Zina looked around, nodded slowly, glanced at Elizaveta and Gordon, who both made approving sounds.

  "We shall set up camp here," Zina pronounced.

  And then it was time to really get to work.

  "Biomass converters here—" The most bulky machinery they'd brought, squatty olive-green cylinders, took two people to wrestle out of the ship.

  "Want the transfer equipment there, or what?"

  "Water samples are ready, Zina…"

  "No, the housing must be here—"

  Everyone talked at once. As he worked under Valentin's direction, stacking supplies and equipment whose purpose he could only guess at, Ross listened to the melange of voices. It sounded like some kind of surreal dream—the bits of English and Russian, many of them interspersed with whistles and drones of the Yilayil language. These latter referred to local sights and conditions—it was actually quicker now to think of the world in native terms.

  The science team would sleep aboard the ship, but they set up a defensible hut, just in case. Once he'd finished his grunt work, Ross was ordered by a distracted Zina to aid Misha, Viktor, Gordon, Irina, and Gregori in camouflaging the hut.

  By the time they'd finished, Ross's body felt like one big ache. His muscles burned, and his lungs labored for breath. Gravity seemed to have converted his body to the weight of granite.

  But when he looked around wearily, expecting further orders, it was to see Renfry and Zina—both looking pale and sweaty—standing in the middle of the camp. Renfry finished explaining something, and Zina gave a nod of satisfaction.

  "Good," she said. "It is done."

  Ross followed her gaze. Now the clearing looked much like it did before. Nothing was immediately obvious unless you stepped close. And the sonic barriers that the science team would set up would discourage roaming predators.

  "Were we spotted?" Ross asked.

  Vera, atop the hill with her field glasses, nodded. "Six or seven of the little blue flyers."

  "Can't be helped," Renfry said, working his neck from side to side. "We'll be contacting the flying people anyway—and they seem to be the only ones the blues communicate with."

  Ross dropped onto the ground, wiping his brow. The humid air made him feel hotter and sweatier than a heat wave in the Midwest.

  The Midwest. He closed his eyes, all of a sudden feeling a familiar sickening knot in the pit of his stomach. He realized, just as he had on the last journey, how very far they were from home.

  A movement beside him caused him to look up, and Eveleen smiled at him as she wiped back a strand of damp hair from her clear brow. "Homesick?" she asked softly.

  "Mind reader." He tried a laugh. It was almost convincing.

  "Ah, we'll be in action soon, and no time for homesickness," she said with a chuckle.

  "At least these guys are all excited." He nodded at Renfy and Valentin. The entire science team seemed to have been infused with some kind of mysterious energy. While all the time agents sat around, either waving broad leaves like fans or just sitting still, the scientists were busy wiring their equipment together, and getting their various systems online, while chattering at high speed.

  "Excited—and worried," Eveleen murmured softly.

  "Worried?" Ross frowned. "What's this? Something new come up?"

  "Nothing new," Eveleen said. "Something I guess the big brains all thought of, but no one has said out loud. You know, those feral human creatures…"

  Ross remembered the desperate fight during his first visit here. He frowned as an idea occurred. "I didn't think of that. You mean, they're afraid that those things might be descendants of the Russian First Team, somehow mutated?"

  Eveleen's eyes were sad. "Exactly."

  Ross shuddered. "Hell. Hadn't thought of that, but even if it's been centuries—hell." It seemed inadequate, but at the same time appropriate. No one wanted to think their descendants—or their friends' descendants—would be savage monsters. "Let's hope not."

  Elizaveta worked at the generator, making sure the bio-mass converters were functioning smoothly. Ross sniffed; a faint whiff of alcohol seemed to tickle his nose, but maybe that was his imagination. He knew in general how the converters worked—converting organic matter into alcohol, which then burned pure, to power the generator.

  As he watched, Elizaveta adjusted something, and that faint whiff was gone, buried in the astonishing variety of scents carried on the heavy air.

  "Well, we'll start finding out tomorrow," Eveleen whispered, staring through the open door of the hut, where Gregori worked with steady care on the time-transfer apparatus.

  "Maybe we'd better head back and start preparing," Ross said.

  He looked up. It seemed the others had had the same idea.

  In silence they returned to the ship, a good meal, and a night's sleep.

  * * *

  EARLY THE NEXT morning, when it was Ross's turn to step into the strange sonic shower, he shut his eyes and let the frothy bubbles work deeply into his skin. Who knew how long it would be until he stood here again? At the back of his mind a voice whispered, "If you come back—" but that only succeeded in making him angry, and he closed off the shower controls and got into his transfer clothing.

  Eveleen was waiting in the galley, along with the rest of the team. He went to her side. Next to her was his pack of equipment.

  The others chattered quietly; when Zina appeared in the hatchway and looked around, they all fell silent.

  "The time-transfer apparatus is set up, and runs successfully, Gregori reports," she said. "I suggest we waste no further time."

  The others responded with gestures or murmurs of agreement.

  Zina added, "I wish that I could be with you on this mission. But my place is here, in the present. And I know that Professor Ashe will carry out command as I would have done." She nodded at Gordon.

  The sudden formality underscored the tension in them all—all except, perhaps, Misha. He only grinned. Ross wondered if that mention of command was a reminder to the Russian time agents, Misha especially.

  Misha's grin widened slightly, but all he said was, "Let us go. We want to be there at dawn, do we not?"

  As they stepped down the ramp into the soft predawn air, Renfry and Boris appeared behind them. "Good luck," Renfry called in a low voice. "See you soon."

  Boris added something in Russian, and Vera turned and gave him a cheery wave. Both Boris and Renry stood on the ramp; their job right now was to guard the ship.

  There was little talk as the rest of the team marched through the dark forest to the campsite. The faint light of dawn painted the wild growth around them with splendorous color; the sun was just rising.

  When they reached the campsite, Elizaveta, Gregori, and Valentin were waiting.

  Zina turned to face the time agents. "I have said what is needful." Her eyes were steady in the pale light. "We will await your signal. Good hunting."

  The rest of the science team stepped forward to say quick, subdued good-byes, and then Gordon and Saba walked into the hut.

  Moments later the ground seemed to shake slightly: an illusion, Ross knew, a response of the mind to the distorted probability waves sweeping out from the apparatus as it catapulted the two agents into the distant past. Other than the slightly acrid scent of ozone, there was no other indication of the time machine's operation.

  Misha and Viktor went next.

  Then it was his and Eveleen's turn.

  She said nothing, only picked up her pack. Ross did as well. They stepped inside the hut. There were the bars, the familiar but weird opaque material for them to step on. He looked down at his feet, thinking about the many jaunts to the past he'd made. Last time, on Dominium, he and Eveleen had come back as heroes. He hoped
this time would be as successful but less traumatic.

  The platform suddenly seemed to drop out from under him as a million voices shouted inside his head. White light filled him, squeezing out his identity for a moment that seemed endless…

  Then reality collapsed back around him, a cocoon of certainty, and he opened his eyes. Next to him, Eveleen's breathing was harsh but controlled. She looked at him, her own eyes dark, her lips pressed together.

  "We're here," he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her.

  For a moment their lips met. Hers were dry, but warm and sweet.

  "One more. For the road."

  "For the century," she retorted, and gave him a smacking kiss. Then she said, "They're waiting for us." And she opened the swinging metal door of the shed.

  They stepped out.

  The grotto was surprisingly like the one in the present, but the smells were different. Ross sniffed, finding the air cleaner somehow. He kept sniffing as they rounded a huge shrub, to find Misha and Viktor gazing silently upward, one face puzzled, the other grim.

  The Russians turned to face the new arrivals.

  "The First Team had reported no flyers," Misha said without preamble, his gray eyes sardonic.

  Why state the obvious? Eveleen looked aside, rolling her eyes. They'd known that since the first briefing.

  "Right." Ross decided to humor him. "So your job is to search for them as well as for remains. So?"

  "So look, American." He raised his hand skyward.

  They were looking east at the rising sun. Against the reddish ball, a flight of huge winged shapes flapped with grace— humanoid shapes.

  Flyers.

  CHAPTER 12

  ROSS SAID, "WHERE'S Gordon? Saba?"

  Misha pointed up the hill, which was considerably higher than the one up the timeline. Eveleen couldn't see either time agent, but then she knew she wouldn't. They'd be scanning the area under as much cover as possible.

  She turned her eyes eastward, and watched the flyers disappear on the horizon. No one spoke. No one moved until the soundless shock repeated, and Vera and Irina stepped out of the shed containing the time machine. Eveleen's mind shied away reflexively from the knowledge of how fragile their link to their own time was: the shed and the machinery it contained were but projections of the apparatus in their own time.