Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

He leaned closer to the desk. A hand flashed out of the cape, was visible for only an instant and then disappeared inside the cape again. But the hand had tossed several small round objects on the desk-top, objects that seemed to spin in a blaze of color under the lamp-light.

“Bongo stones,” said the white teeth. “Not the ones stolen this afternoon. No way to identify them. But bongo stones. Worth a fortune.”

Steve Clark stared at the stones, his mind spinning.

Bongo stones! He counted them. Ten of them! In a flash he knew who this visitor was, knew that the myth of the Centaurians was true. For he had glimpsed that hand during the swift instant it had tossed the stones on the desk-top. A scaly hand, like the paw of a reptile. And the clicking of the thing’s feet when it walked was like the sound of cloven hoofs.

Through his buzzing mind came the voice.

“And now suppose I take a condensor under my arm and walk out. Leaving the stones behind.”

Smith hesitated.

The muzzle of the weapon gestured imperiously, impatiently.

“Otherwise,” said the cold voice, “I shall kill you and take the condensor in any event.”

Smith rose and walked mechanically to a locker. Steve Clark heard the rasp of a key as his friend opened the door to take out a condensor.

But he still stared at the bongo stones.

Now he knew why the police had never found the Centaurians’ hiding place. They had no hiding place! They were bandits in time! The whole scope of space and time for their operations! They could sack the Queen of Sheba’s mines one day and the next day move on to snatch treasures out of the remote future, treasures yet undreamed of!

“Clever,” he said. “Damn clever.”

Andy Smith was standing beside him, looking at the stones. They were alone in the room.

“You gave them the condensor?” Clark asked.

Smith nodded, dry-lipped.

“There wasn’t anything else I could do, Steve.”

Clark motioned toward the stones.

“What about these, Andy?”

“I was thinking,” Smith said. “We couldn’t sell them here—or anywhere else. They’d ask us how we got them. They’d lock us up. Probably before they got through with it, they’d prove we stole them and send us to the Moon-mines.”

“There’s a way,” Clark suggested. He nodded toward the hangar where the time-machines were ranged.

Smith wet his lips.

“I thought of that,” he said. “After all, those fellows stole a time-machine from the company once. Probably the company never reported the loss. Afraid of what the government might do.”

Silence hung like a breathing menace over the room.

“Those were the Centaurians, weren’t they?” Andy Smith asked.

Clark nodded. Then waited.

“The company will throw me out for this,” said Smith bitterly. “After ten years of working with them.”

Pounding feet sounded in the corridor outside.

Clark’s hand shot out and scooped up the stones.

“Can’t let anyone find us with these on us,” he whispered huskily. “Let’s duck into the hangar.”

Swiftly the two leaped through the doorway into the darkened room. Crouched under the wing of one of the time-fliers, they saw figures come into the room they had just quitted. Figures in police uniforms.

The police stood stock-still in the center of the room, staring.

“What’s going on here?” shouted one of them.

Silence fell more heavily.

“What do you think that fellow meant, telling us he saw some funny looking birds coming out of here?” one of them asked the other two.

“Let’s look in the hangar,” one of the policemen said. He leveled a flash and a spear of light cut the deep gloom, just missing the two men crouched under the wing of the time-flier.

Clark felt Smith tugging at him.

“We got to get out of here,” Smith hissed in his ear.

Clark nodded in the darkness. And he knew there was only one way to get out of there.

Together they tumbled through the door of the time-flier.

“Here we go,” said Smith. “We’re criminals now, Steve.”

The machine lurched out through the suddenly opened lock.

The time mechanism hummed and two men, one with ten bongo stones in his pocket, fled through time.

Old One-Eye was fighting his last battle. His great stone-ax lay out of reach, its handle broken, swept from his hand by a blow aimed at him by the mighty cat. His body was mauled and across one shoulder was a deep wound from which a stream of crimson trickled down his hairy chest.

To flee was useless. One-Eye knew that he could not out-distance Saber-Tooth. There was only one thing to do—stand and fight. So with shoulders hunched, with his hands poised and ready for action, with his one eye gleaming balefully, the Neanderthal man faced the cat.

The animal snarled and spat, its tail twitching, crouched for a leap. Its long, curved fangs slashed angrily at the air.

One-Eye had no delusions about what was going to happen. He had killed many saber-tooths in his life. In company with others of his kind, he had faced the charge of the great cave-bear. He had trailed and brought down the mighty mammoth. In his day One-Eye had been a great hunter, an invincible warrior. But now he had reached the end of life. A man’s two hands were no weapon against the tooth and claw of a saber-toothed tiger. One-Eye knew he was going to be killed.

Dry brush crackled back of the cat and the saber-tooth pivoted swiftly at this threat of new danger from the rear. One-Eye straightened and froze in his tracks.

Conrad Yancey, standing at the edge of the brush, slowly raised his rifle.

“I reckon this has gone about far enough,” he said. “A man’s got to stick by his own kind.”

Startled, the great cat’s snarls rose into a siren of hate and fear.

Yancey lined the sights on the ugly head and squeezed the trigger. The saber-tooth leaped into the air, screaming in rage and terror. Again the rifle blazed and the cat straightened, reared on its hind legs, fell backward to the ground, coughing great streams of blood.

Across the body of the beast One-Eye and Yancey exchanged glances.

“You put up a swell battle,” Yancey told the Neanderthaler. “I watched you for quite a spell. Glad I was around to help.”

Petrified by terror, One-Eye stood stock-still, staring. His nostrils twitched as he sniffed the strange smells which had come with the stranger and his shining spear. The spear, when it spoke in a voice of thunder, had a smell all its own, a smell that stung One-Eye’s sensitive nostrils and his throat and made him want to cough.

Yancey took a slow, tentative step toward the Neanderthaler. But when the sub-man stirred as if to flee, he stopped short and stood almost breathless.

Yancey saw that the Neanderthaler’s left eye at some time had been scooped out of his head by the vicious blow of a cruelly taloned paw. Deep scratches and a tortuous malformation of the region above the cheek-bone told a story of some terrible battle of the wilderness.

Short of stature and slightly stooping of posture, the Neanderthaler was a model of awkward power. His head was thrust forward at an angle between his shoulders. His neck was thick as a tree boll. The long arms hung almost to the knees of the bowed legs and the body was completely covered with hair. The heavy bristle of hair on his enormously projecting eyebrows was snowy white and throughout the heavy coat of hair which covered the man were other streaks and sprinklings of gray and white.

“An old buck,” said Yancey, half to himself. “Slowing down. Someday he won’t move quite fast enough and a cat will have him.”

Conrad Yancey took another slow step forward and this time the Neanderthaler, bristling with terror, wheeled about with a strange, strangled cry of fear and ran, shuffling awkwardly, down the hill to plunge straight into a dense thicket.