Andre Norton - Time Traders

“There’s one which I discovered this morning—of more interest to us personally.” Ashe sorted through the plate-shaped containers of record wire. “Take a look at this now.” He drew out the coil of the jungle battle and inserted the new spool.

Then they saw a sky, gray, lowering with thick clouds. Below it stretched a waste of what could only be snow such as they knew on their own world. A small party moved into the range of the picture, and the familiar blue suits of those in it were easy to distinguish against the gray-white of the monotonous background.

“Suggest anything to you?” Ashe asked of Ross.

Murdock was leaning forward, studying the picture with a new intentness that argued an unusual interest in so simple a scene.

There were four blue-suited, bald-headed humanoids. They wore no outer clothing and Travis remembered Ross’s remarks concerning the insulating qualities of the strange material. Over their heads they did have the bubble helmets, and they were traveling at a slow pace which suggested treacherous footing.

The tape blinked in one of those quick changes to which the viewers had become accustomed. Now they must be surveying the same country from the viewpoint of one of the four blue-clad travelers. There was a sudden, breath-taking drop; the camera must have skimmed at top speed down into a valley. Before them lay a second descent—and the perspectives were out of proportion.

They were not distorted enough, however, to hide what the photographer wanted to record. The viewers were gazing down onto a wide, level space and in that, half buried in banks of drifted snow, was one of the large alien freighters.

“It can’t be!” Ross’s expression was one of startled surprise.

“Keep watching,” Ashe bade.

At a distance, around the stranded half globe, black dots moved. They trailed off on a line marked clearly in the beaten snow. The path had been worn by a good amount of traffic. There was another disconcerting click and again they saw ice—a huge, murky wall of it, rearing into the gray sky. And directly to that wall of ice led the beaten path.

“The Russian time post! It must be! And this ship”—Ross was almost sputtering—“this ship must have been mixed up in that raid on the Russians!”

There was a last click and the screen went blank.

“Where’s the rest?” Ross demanded.

“You’ve seen all there is. If they recorded any more, it’s not on this spool.” Ashe fingered the colored tag fastened to the container from which he had taken the coil. “Nothing else with a label matching this, either.”

“I wonder if the Russians got back at them some way. If that was what killed off the crew later. Bio warfare . . .” Ross jiggled the switch of the projector back and forth. “I suppose we’ll never know.”

Then, over their heads, blasting the usual quiet of the ship, came the warning from the control cabin where Renfry kept his self-imposed watch.

“She’s triggering for another break-through, fellas. Strap down! I’d say we’re due for the big snap very soon!”

They hurried to the bunks. Travis pulled at his protecting webbing. What would they find this time? Another robot-inhabited way stop—or the home port they were longing to reach? He set himself to endure the wrench of the break-through from hyperspace to normal time, hoping that familiarity would render the ordeal easier.

Once more the ship and the men in it were wracked by that turnover which defied natural sensations.

“Sun ahead.” Travis, opening his eyes, heard Renfry’s voice, a little sharpened, through the ship-wide com. “One—two—four planets. We seem to be bound for the second.”

More waiting time. Then once more descent into atmosphere, the return of weight, the vibration singing through walls and floors about them. Then the set-down, this time with a slight grating bump, as if the landing had not been so well controlled as it had at the fueling port.

“This is different . . .” Renfry’s report trailed into silence, as if what he saw in the screen had shocked him into speechlessness.

They climbed to the control cabin and crowded below that window on the new world. It must be night—but a night which was alive with reddish light, as if some giant fire filled the sky with the reflection of its fury. And that light rippled even as flames would ripple in their leaping.

“Home?” This time Ross asked the question.

Renfry, entranced as he still watched that display of fiery light, made a usual cautious answer.

“I don’t know—I just don’t know.”

“We’ll try a look-see from the port.” Ashe took up his planet-side command.

“Might be a volcano,” Travis hazarded from his experience in the prehistoric world.

“No, I don’t think so. I’ve only seen one thing like that—”

“I know what you mean.” Ross was already on the ladder. “The Northern Lights!”

The checkerboard spread of the fueling port, different as its architecture had been, was yet not too far removed from their own experience. But this—Travis gazed at the wild display beyond the outer door—this was the most fantastic dream made real.

That flickering red played in tongues along the horizon, filling about a quarter of the sky, ascending in licks up into the heavens. It paled stars and battled the moon which hung there—a moon three times the size of the one which accompanied his home planet.

Rippling out from about the ship was a stretch of cracked, buckled field that had once been smoothly surfaced. There was a faint crackling in the air which did not come from any wind but from static electricity. And the lurid light with its weaving alternately illuminated and reduced to shadow the whole countryside.

“Air’s all right.” Renfry had cautiously slipped off his helmet. At his report the others freed their own heads. The air was dry, as arid as desert wind.

“Buildings of some sort—in that direction.” They turned heads to follow Ross’s gesture.

Whereas the towers of the fueling field, ruined as they were, had fingered straightly into the sky, these structures, or structure, hugged the earth, the tallest portion not topping the globe. And nowhere in the red light could Travis sight anything suggesting vegetation. The desolation of the fuel port had been apparent, but here the barrenness was menacing.

None of them was inclined to go exploring under that fiery sky, and nothing moved in turn toward the ship. If this was another break in their journey, intended for the purpose of servicing their transport, the mechanics had broken down. At last the humans withdrew into the ship and closed the port, waiting for day.

“Desert . . .” Travis said that half to himself but Ashe glanced at him inquiringly.

“You mean—out there?”

“There’s a feel in the air,” Travis explained. “You learn to recognize it when you’ve lived most of your life with it.”

“Is this the end of the trip?” Ross asked Renfry again.

“I don’t know.” They had climbed back to the control cabin. Now the technician was standing in front of the main control panel. He was frowning at it. Then he turned suddenly to Travis.

“You feel desert out there. Well, I feel machines—I’ve lived with them for most of my life. We’ve set down here, there’s no indication that we’re going to take off again. Nothing but a sense that I have—that we’re not finished yet.” He laughed, a little self-consciously. “All right, now tell me that I’m seeing ghosts and I’ll have to agree.”

“On the contrary, I agree with you so thoroughly that I’m not going too far from the ship.” Ashe smiled in return. “Do you suppose this is another fuel stop?”