Andre Norton - Time Traders

Fearing to linger lest his appetite overpower his caution, he flitted back to Ross and reported that there were no sentries out to spoil their simple plan. So they hauled their charge to the edge of the firelight, removed his bonds and gag, and gave him a light push. Then they quickly raced out of range.

If any natives did follow, they did not find the right trail, and the two made the ridge without further bad luck.

“We’re the stupid ones,” Ross observed as they drew up the last incline and found a reasonably sheltered spot under an overhang. It was not quite a cave, but had only one open side to defend. “Nobody in his right senses is going to gallop around in the dark.”

“Dark?” protested Travis, clasping his arms about the knees pulled tightly to his chest, and staring northward. His suspicion about the volcanic activity there was borne out now by the redness of the sky and the presence of fumes in the wind. It was a spectacular display, but not one to instill confidence. His only satisfaction lay in the miles which must stretch between that angry mountain and the ridge on which he was now stationed.

Ross made no answer. Since Travis had the first watch, his companion had rolled in his hide cloak and was already asleep.

It was a night of broken sleep. When Travis rose in the dawn he discovered a thin skim of gray dust on his skin and the surrounding rocks. At the same time a sulphuric blast made him cough raggedly.

“Anything doing?” he croaked.

Ross shook his head and offered the gourd water bottle. The small spaceship rested peacefully below. The only change in the picture from the previous day was that there was less activity among the scavengers below the open port.

“What are they like—those men from space?” Travis asked suddenly.

To his surprise Ross, whom he had come to regard as close to nerveless, shivered.

“Pure poison, fella, and don’t you ever forget it! I saw two kinds—the baldies who wear the blue suits, and a furry-faced one with pointed ears. They may look like men—but they aren’t. And believe me, anyone who tangles with those boys in blue is asking to be chopped up like hamburger!”

“I wonder where they came from.” Travis raised his head. The few stars were dim pinpoints of light in the dawn sky. To think of those as suns nourishing other worlds such as the solid earth now under him—where men, or at least thinking creatures, carried on lives of their own—was a huge leap of imagination.

Ross waved a hand skyward. “Take your pick, Fox. The big brains running this show of ours believe there was a whole confederation of different worlds tied together in a United Something-or-other then—” He blinked and laughed. “Me—saying ‘then’ when I mean ‘now!’ This jumping back and forth in time mixes a guy’s thinking.”

“And if someone were to take off in that ship down there, he’d run into them outside?”

“If he did, he’d regret it!”

“But if he took off in our time—would he still find them waiting?”

Ross played with the thongs fastening the supply bag. “That’s one of the big questions. And nobody’ll have the right answer until we do go and see. Twelve-fifteen thousand years is a long time. Do you know any civilization here that’s lasted even a fraction of that? From painted hunters to the atom here. Out there it could be the atom back to painted hunters—or to nothing—by now.”

“Would you like to go and see?”

Ross smiled. “I’ve had one brush with the blue boys. If I could be sure they weren’t still on some star map, I might say yes. I wouldn’t care to meet them on their home ground—and I’m no trained space man. But the idea does eat into a fella . . . Ha—company!”

There was movement down in the valley—to the north. But what were issuing from the woods at a leisurely and ponderous pace were not Folsom hunters. Ross whistled very softly between his teeth, watching that advance eagerly, and Travis shared his excitement.

The bison herd, the striped horses, the frustrated sabertooth confronting the giant ground sloths, none had been as thrilling a sight as this. Even the elephant of their own time could generate a measure of awe in the human onlooker by the sheer majesty of its movement. And these larger and earlier members of the same tribe produced an almost paralyzing sense of wonder in the two scouts. “Mammoths!”

Tall, thick-haired giants, their backbones sloping from the huge dome of the skull to the shorter hindquarters, dwarfed tree and landscape as they moved. Three of them towered close to fourteen feet at the shoulder. They bore the weight of the tremendous curled tusks proudly, their trunks swaying in time to their unhurried steps. They were the most formidable living things Travis had ever seen. And, watching them, he could not believe that the hunters he had spied upon in the other valley had ever brought down such game with spears. Yet the evidence that they had, had been discovered over and over again—scattered bones with a flint point between the giant ribs or splitting a massive spine.

“One—two—three—” Ross was counting, half under his breath. “And a small one—”

“Calf,” Travis identified. But even that baby was nothing to face without a modern weapon to hand.

“Four—five—Family party?” Ross speculated.

“Maybe. Or do they travel in herds?”

“Ask the big brains. Ohhh—look at that tree go!”

The leader in the dignified parade set its massive head against a tree bole, gave a small push, and the tree crashed. With a squeal audible to the scouts, the mammoth calf hustled forward and began busily harvesting the leaves, while its elders appeared to watch it with adult indulgence.

Ross pushed the wind-blown tails of wig hair out of his eyes. “We may have a problem here. What if they don’t move on? I can’t see a crew working down there with those tons of tusks skipping about in the background.”

“If you want to haze ’em on,” Travis observed, “don’t let me stop you. I’ve drag-herded stubborn cows—but I’m not going down there and swing a rope at any of those rumps!”

“They might take a fancy to bump over the ship.”

“So they might,” agreed Travis. “And what could we do to stop ’em?”

But for the moment the mammoth family seemed content at their own end of the valley, which was at least a quarter of a mile from the ship. After an hour’s watch Ross tightened the thongs of his sandals and gathered up his spears.

“I’ll report in. Maybe those walking mountains will keep hunters away—”

“Or draw them here,” corrected Travis pessimistically. “Think you can find your way back?”

Ross grinned. “The trail is getting to be a regular freeway. All we need is a traffic cop or two. Be seeing you . . .” He disappeared from their perch with that uncanny ability to vanish silently into the surrounding landscape that Travis still found unusual in a white man.

As Travis continued to lie there, chin supported on forearm, idly watching the mammoths, he tried again to figure out what made Ashe and Ross Murdock so different from the other members of their race that he knew. Of course he had in a measure felt the same lack of self-consciousness with Dr. Morgan. To Prentiss Morgan a man’s race and the color of his skin were nothing—a shared enthusiasm was all that really mattered. Morgan had cracked Travis Fox’s shell and let him into a larger world. And then—like all soft creatures—he had been the more deeply hurt when that new world had turned hostile. He had then fled back into the old, leaving everything—even friendship behind.

Now he waited for that smoldering flame of past anger to bite. It was there, but dulled, just as the night fire of the volcano was now only a lazy smoke plume under the rising sun. The desert over which he had ridden to find water a week ago was indeed buried in time. What—?