Andre Norton - Time Traders

Having a greasy feel, it clung to Travis’ fingers. He did not really need the evidence of his nose to tell him that it was rankly odorous. He brought it back to Ashe, his distaste in handling it growing steadily. The latter put the trophy away in one of his belt pockets.

“Any chance of opening that?” Ashe indicated the hidden door in the wall.

“Not that I can see,” Travis returned. “It is probably secured on the inside.”

They studied the building dubiously. Behind its length, as far as they could judge, there was only a waste of sand dunes reaching out and out to the sky rim where the fire had played the night before. If there was any riddle to be solved, its answer lay inside this locked box and not in the desert countryside.

“Ross, you stay here. Travis, move on to the end of the wing. Stay there where you can see Ross—and me, as I go along the back.”

Ashe used the same care as the Apache had done, running his hands along the eroded surface, seeking any indication of another door which might possibly be forced. He went the entire length of the building and came back—with nothing to report.

“There were windows once and a door. But they were all walled up a long time ago, sealed tight now. We might pick out the sealing, given time and the right tools.”

Ross’s voice came through the helmet coms. “Any chance of getting in through the roof, chief?”

“If you’re game to try—up with you!”

Travis stood against the wall which refused to give up its secrets and Ross used him as a ladder, mounting to the roof. He moved inward and the two left on the ground lost sight of him. But on Ashe’s orders he made a running commentary of what he saw through the com.

“Not much sand—you’d think there would be more . . . Hulloo!” There was an eagerness in that sudden exclamation. “This is something! Round plates set in circles all over—about the size of quarters. They are solid and you can’t move them.”

“Metal?”

“Nooo . . .” The reply was hesitant. “Seem more like some kind of glass, opaque rather than transparent.”

“Windows?” suggested Travis.

“Too small,” Ross protested. “But there are a lot of them—all over. Wait!” The urgency in that last cry alerted both the men on the ground. “Red—they’re turning red!”

“Get out of there! Jump!” Ashe’s order barked loudly in all their helmets.

Ross obeyed without question, landing with a paratrooper’s practiced roll on one of the dune crests. The others scrambled to join him, all their attention focused on the roof of the sealed building. Perhaps something in the sun-repelling qualities of their helmets enabled them to see those rays as faint reddish lines cutting up from the roof far into the sky.

The skin on Travis’ bare hands tingled with a pins-and-needles sensation as if the circulation in it had been arrested and was not coming back to duty. Ross scrambled up out of the sand and shook himself vigorously.

“What in the world is going on?” There was an unusual note of awe in his tone.

“I think—some fireworks to discourage you. I believe that we may assume whoever lives in there is definitely not at home to curious callers. Not only that, but the householder has some mighty unpleasant gadgets to back up his desire for privacy. Probably just as well we didn’t find his, her, or its front door unlocked.”

Travis could no longer see those thin fiery lines. Either the power had been shut off, or the rays were now past the point of detection by human eyes, even with the aid of the helmet. That coarse hair, the repulsive odor—and now this. Somehow the few facts did not add properly. The hair, of course, could have been left by a watchdog, or the equivalent on this particular planet of a watchdog. That supposition would also fit with the low entrance into the building. But a watchdog that kept to carefully chosen cover, the best in the whole landscape, and stayed to spy, maybe for hours, on the ship—? Those facts did not fit with the nature of any animal he had ever known. Rather, that action matched with intelligence, and intelligence meant man.

“I believe they are nocturnal,” Ashe said suddenly. “That fits with all we’ve seen so far. This sun glare may be as painful for them as it is for us without helmets. But at night—”

“Going to sit up and watch what happens?” Ross asked.

“Not out in the open. Not until we know more.”

Silently Travis agreed to that. There was a furtiveness about the last night’s spying which made him wary. And to his mind this world was far more frightening and sinister than the fueling port. Its very arid barrenness held a nebulous threat he had never sensed in the desert lands of his own planet.

They walked back to the ship, climbed the ladder, and were glad to close the port upon the dead white glare, to unhelm in the blue glow of the interior.

“What did you see?” Ashe asked Renfry.

“Murdock taking a high dive from the roof and then some red lines, very faint, shooting up from all over its surface. What did you do, push the wrong doorbell?”

“Probably waked somebody up. I don’t think that’s a very healthy place to go visiting. Lord—what a stink!” Ross ended, sniffing.

Ashe held on his palm the tuft of hair. The odor rising from it was not only noticeable in the usual scentless atmosphere of the ship, but penetrating in its foulness.

They carried the lock into the small cubbyhole which might once have been the quarters of the commander and where Ashe had assembled his materials for study. In spite of the noisome effluvia of their trophy, they gathered around as he pulled the tuft apart hair by hair and spread it flat.

“Those hairs—so thick!” Renfry marveled.

“If they are hairs. What I wouldn’t give for a lab!” Ashe folded a clear sheet of the aliens’ writing materials to imprison the lock.

“That smell—” Travis, remembering how he had handled the noisome find, rubbed his hand back and forth across his thigh.

“Yes?” Ashe prompted.

“Well—I think that comes from just plain filthiness, sir. Or, part might be because the hairs are from a creature we don’t know.”

“Alien metabolism.” Ashe nodded. “Each human group has a distinctive body odor far more apparent to others than to one of his own breed. But what are you getting at, Travis?”

“Well, if that does come from some—some man,” he used the term because he had no other—“and not from an animal, then I’d say he was living in a regular sty. And that means either a pretty low type of primitive, or a degenerate.”

“Not necessarily,” Ashe pointed out. “Bathing entails water, and we haven’t seen any store of water here.”

“Sure, there’s no water we can see. But they must have some. And I think—” Only there were few proofs he could offer to bolster his argument.

“Might be. Anyway, tonight we’ll watch and see what does come out of the booby-trapped box over there.”

They napped during the day, Renfry in the control cabin as usual. None of them could see any reason why the ship had earthed on this sand pile, and the very barrenness of the place reinforced Renfry’s belief that this could not be their ultimate goal. It was only logic that the ship must have originally voyaged from some center of civilization—and this was not that.

The glare of the sun was gone and dusk clothed the mounds of creeping sand when they gathered again at the door in the outer skin to watch the building and the stretch of ground lying between them and that enigmatic block.

“How long do you suppose we’ll have to wait?” Ross shifted position.

“No time at all,” Ashe answered softly. “Look!”