Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

One-Eye led the way down the steep, slippery mouth of the cave and into a dimly lit cavern, filled with a sort of half-light that filtered in from the mouth of the cave on the ground above.

Cabot switched on a flashlight and cried out excitedly.

In cascading piles upon the floor of the cavern, stacked high against its rocky sides, were piles of jewels that flashed and glittered, scintillating in the beams of the torch.

“This is it!” yelled Cameron.

Pascal, down on his knees in front of a pile of jewels, dipped his hands into them, lifted a fistful and let them trickle back. They filled the cavern with little murmurings as they fell.

Cabot swept the cave with the light. They saw piles of jewels; neat stacks of gold ingots, apparently freshly smelted; bars of silver-white iridium; of argent platinum; chests of hammered bronze and copper; buckskin bags spilling native golden nuggets.

Yancey reached out a hand and leaned weakly against the wall.

“My God,” he stammered. “The price of empires!”

“But,” said Pascal, slowly, calmly, although his face, as Cabot’s torch suddenly lighted it, was twisted in an agony of disbelief, “how did this all come here? This is a primitive world. The art of the goldsmith and the jewel-cutter is unknown here.”

Cameron’s voice cut coolly out of the darkness.

“There must be an explanation. Some reason. Some previous civilization. A treasure cache of that civilization.”

“No,” Pascal told him, “not that. Look at those gold bars. New. Freshly smelted. No sign of age. And platinum—that’s a comparatively recent discovery. Iridium even more recent.”

Cabot’s voice held an edge of steel command.

“We can argue about how it got here after we have it stowed away,” he said. “Pascal, you and Hugh go down and bring up the tractor. Yancey and I will start carrying this stuff up to the surface right away.”

Yancey toiled up the throat of the cave. Reaching the surface he slid the sack of jewels from his shoulder and wiped his brow.

“Tough work,” he told Cameron.

Cameron nodded.

“But it’s almost over now,” he comforted. “Just a few more hours and we’ll have the last of the stuff in the tractor. Then we can get out of here.”

Yancey nodded.

“I don’t feel too safe,” he admitted. “Somebody hid all this junk in the cave. How they did it, I don’t have the faintest idea. But I have a queer feeling it wouldn’t go easy with us if they caught us.”

Pascal stagger out of the cave and slid a gold bar from his shoulder.

He mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve.

“I’m going down to the tractor and get a drink of water before I pack that a foot farther,” he announced.

Yancey stooped to pick up his gunny sack. Pascal’s scream echoed.

The hillside below the tractor before had been empty of everything except a few scattered boulders and trees. Now a machine rested there, a grotesque machine of black metal, streamlined, with stubby wings, suggestive of a plane. As Yancey caught his first sight of it, it was indistinct, blurred, as if he saw it through a shimmering haze. Then it became clear, sharp-cut.

Like a slap in the face came the knowledge that here was the answer to those vague fears he had felt. Here must be the owners of the treasure cache.

His hand slapped down to his thigh and his gun whispered out of its holster.

A door in the strange machine snapped open and out of it stepped a man—but hardly a man. The creature sported a long tail, and it was covered with scales. Twin horns, three inches or so in height, sprouted from its forehead.

The newcomer carried something that looked like a gun in his hand, but no gun such as Yancey had ever seen. He saw the weapon tilt up toward him and his .45 exploded in his fist. Even as flame blossomed from his gun, he saw a .45 come up in Cameron’s hand, in the second after the blast of his own gun, then heard the deadly click of a cocking hammer.

The first of the scaly men was down. But others were tumbling out of the strange mechanism.

Cameron’s gun barked and once again Yancey felt the comforting kick of the .45 against the heel of his palm, hardly knowing he had squeezed the trigger.

From one of the guns carried by the scaly men whipped out a pencil of purple flame. Yancey felt its hot breath clip past his cheek.

Before the time-tractor lay Pascal, stretched out, inert, like an empty sack. Over him stood Cabot, gun flaming. Another one of those purple flames reached out, hit a boulder beside Yancey. The boulder glowed with sudden heat, started to chip and crack.

With mighty leaps, Yancey skidded down the slope, landing in a crouch beside Pascal. He grasped the old scientist by the shoulder and lifted him. As he straightened, he glanced at the strange machine in which the scaly men had come. Through the open door he could see a mass of machinery, with banks of glowing tubes.

Then the machinery erupted in a thunderous explosion. The roar seemed to blot out the world. For one split second he glanced up and saw on Cabot’s face a baleful grin of triumph, knew that he had fired a shot which had wrecked the scaly men’s machine.

The ground seemed to be weaving under Yancey’s feet. With superhuman effort he plodded toward the door of the time-tractor, dragging Pascal. Hands reached out to help him, hauling him inside.

Slowly his brain cleared. He was sitting on the floor of the tractor. Beside him lay Pascal and he saw now that the scientist was dead. His chest had been burned away by one of the pencils of purple flame.

Cabot swung down on the door-locking mechanism and stepped back into the room.

“What are they, Jack?” Yancey asked, his mind still fuzzy.

Cabot shook his head wearily.

“Don’t you recognize them?” asked Cameron. “Horns, hoofs, tails. Today we’ve seen the devil in person. Those are the people who gave rise to the ancient legend of the devil.”

Yancey got to his feet and looked down at Pascal.

“Feel bad about that,” he whispered. “He was a regular guy.”

Cameron nodded, stiff-lipped.

From a port Cabot spoke.

“Those devil-men are up to something,” he announced. “They’ll probably make it hot for us now.”

He wheeled on Cameron.

“Can you get us out of here, Hugh?”

Cameron considered the question.

“Probably could,” he said, “but I would rather not try it right now. I think we’re safe here for a little while. That time brain is a tricky outfit. I know its principle and given time I could figure it out so I could take a try at it. If worse comes to worse, I’ll do it. Take a chance.”

He walked to the time-brain apparatus and snapped the switch. The brain glowed with a weird green light.

“That must be a time-machine out there,” said Yancey. “Another machine would explain the treasure cache. I’ll bet those birds are robbing stuff through time and bringing it back here to cache it. Damn clever.”

“And they landed up ahead to cache some stuff and found some of it missing. Then they came back through time to find out what was wrong,” supplied Cabot.

Cameron smote his thigh.

“Listen,” he said. “It that’s right it means time-travel is well established up ahead in the future. We might be able to reach help there. Those fellows out there must be outlaws. If so, we’d rate some help.”

“But how will we reach the future?” demanded Cabot. “How will they know we need help?”

“It’s just a chance,” said Cameron. “A bare chance. If it doesn’t work I can always try to get us back to the twentieth century, although the chances are nine out of ten I’ll kill all of us trying it.”

“But how?” persisted Cabot.

“Pascal said the ‘time force’ or whatever the brain generates, is similar to electricity. But with differences. It is important just what those differences are. I don’t know, not enough, anyhow. The time mechanism is run by the force generated by the brain, but we have regular electricity for the tractor operation.”