THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY Read online

  “One!” he said with deep satisfaction, and they moved out across the ground.

  Whispered directions from the door of the ship were essential to their success, for the Croceraunians had taken cover from aerial observation as well as surface spotters. They moved cautiously round the perimeter of the defences, knocking men out one by one.

  Fortunately, the Russian attackers, slow to realise that the barbarians were in fact gone, not lying quiet in ambush, did not close in at once. Scientifically, enjoying the effort of pitting themselves against the Croceraunians whose military expertise would more than have matched the advantage conferred by invisibility if they had caught on, Red and Chantal carried on.

  But it was getting dusk when there was nothing left except the little group of three at the very centre of the ring who would be the captain of the war party and his second and third in command.

  “Red!” Magwareet whispered urgently. “We’ve spotted big aircraft heading this way! You’ll have to clean up the rest quickly—I suspect they’re going to bomb.”

  Chantal drew in a quick breath.

  “Okay,” nodded Red. He felt very tired, but oddly exhilarated. “I reckon we can run most of the way. Look, Chantal—see that knob of ground? Keep behind it, and drop when you get there.”

  On the last word he started forward, keeping low. The ship sidled tidily after them.

  It was getting dark, but the three remaining Croceraunians were keeping a stern look-out. The noise of Red’s awkward arrival brought one of them sharply to his feet, and after he had looked round and seen nothing, he ordered one of his companions to scout the sound.

  Nothing could have been more convenient. Red’s club rose and fell on the back of the man’s neck the moment he was hidden from the others.

  And a howl filled the air. A jet aircraft diving…!

  There was the sound of rapid explosions, and the ship over them staggered, exactly like a man who has had a blow. Red’s goggles had slipped a little, and he was amazed to look up and find that he could see the retreating plane quite clearly through the ship without them. The magnitude of the technical achievement shook him.

  Another plane dived, and another, and the two surviving Croceraunians raised small weapons and fired on it with no effect, of course, for they were hitting the screens of the hovering ship. Red found a stone and threw it to one side, distracting their attention; with a gesture to Chantal, he rose and ran down the slope.

  But tiredness slowed them both, and at the sound of their feet the barbarians swung round. It was very nearly dark now, and they obviously felt prepared to take on opponents they couldn’t see. He thought for a horrible instant that Chantal had been hit, but she had only stumbled, and then he was on his own man in a tangle of arms and legs.

  The man was strong, and an able fighter, but the moment he realised he could not see his antagonist he faltered long enough to let Red club him.

  Rising, Red looked round for Chantal. She had been less lucky; her man, who had an air of authority, had set his jaw grimly and was throwing punches by guesswork—she had knocked his weapon flying with her club. One of them connected just as a further blast of cannon shells hammered on the ship above, and Chantal staggered back. At the same moment a Russian sniper found that the Croceraunian, who was of course not screened, was visible to him, and a bullet whined off a rock into the air.

  Still backing, Chantal’s foot found the outstretched leg of a man who had been lying on the ground since before the struggle started. She fell to the earth.

  The Croceraunian’s next blow found only air; off balance, he too lost his footing, and Red was on top of him. In a moment, he was ready to be hauled aboard the ship with the rest of his war party, leaving only corpses marked with Russian bullets behind. An explanation would be found for them—somehow.

  Red picked up one of the clumsy packs holding the Breath of Terror—it would not do to let that fall into twentieth century hands!—and prepared to start back into the ship. He looked round for Chantal, and saw her kneeling by the man she had fallen over.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded anxiously, and she nodded.

  “Red, I thought this man was dead. He’s breathing! And look—he’s no more than a boy! He’s pretty badly hurt, but I think we can fix him up. Help me get him aboard.”

  As they had moved Burma, they lifted him together. The memory of that first meeting made him wonder if it could really have been so recently, as he counted time. He felt as if he had been a different person then, and that it was ages ago.

  Finally they scrambled through the airlock into the ship, and Magwareet was smiling at them.

  “That was great work and quicker than I expected,” he said warmly. “Do you know it’s only been two and a half hours?”

  “I feel tired enough to have been working for a week,” said Red, wiping his forehead.

  “I’ll have that put right,” said Magwareet. “We’re already moving away from that place, you know,” he added as an afterthought. “Now we’ve straightened out that mess, we can get on with our real job. Through there you’ll find a washplace. Clean up, and when you’re through come to the control cabin—I’ll fix your tiredness for you.”

  He went out, and Red and Chantal followed his directions into the washroom. It was small, but there were two basins and two of the quick, efficient hot-air driers that had supplanted towels—there was always air available, but cloth was precious.

  The water—re-cycled, absolutely pure, and just the right temperature—soaked the weariness out of their pores. Turning away after drying his face and hands, Red found himself looking straight at Chantal.

  “You’re—you’re quite a person, aren’t you?” he said awkwardly. “You seemed to take better to that job than I did, for a start.”

  “I suppose my job makes me ready for anything,” she answered with a faint smile. “And I had done almost the same sort of thing before—I was in the French Resistance when I was twelve! But you did better than I did, really.”

  There was a pause. Red went on, “I’m surprised I believe in what’s happening, you know. Thrown into a completely strange world—”

  The words touched something deep in Chantal’s mind. Her face twitched, and she was suddenly clinging to him, seeking support and comfort. “It’s terrifying!” she whispered. “Red, I’m so glad you’re here too—on my own, I’d go mad!”

  He stroked her hair as she pressed her face against his shoulder. “I know what you mean,” he said with deep sincerity. “And I’m glad not only because I’ve got someone else from my own world for company—but because the someone is someone like you.”

  She raised her head and looked at him, and at that it seemed quite natural for him to kiss her.

  “Do you know something?” he said tenderly when they drew apart again. “I’ve always been afraid to do even that! I was so scared that a woman might pity me and pretend not to, I didn’t dare do that!”

  “They’ve given you a lot, haven’t they—Magwareet and Burma and their people?”

  “So much,” said Red steadily, “that I’ll do anything and everything I can to recompense them.”

  XII

  Anchor team, Burma speaking, emergency: Any team engaged in investigation of possible communication with the Being—any team having data on patterns of response of the Being—any team having any relevant information notify at once!

  Defence fleet (co-ordinates 902634111) speaking: Suggest investigation of possibility that Enemy found in city from 129 Lyrae and captured entered Solar System owing to writhing of Being. Artesha’s opinion, please.

  Centre, Artesha speaking: We cannot rule out the possibility that the Being itself is being used as a weapon by the Enemy—nor, in fact, that it is an artificially created weapon. Probability low, but existent.

  “So that definitely removes all signs of temporal displacement from this period?” Magwareet said disappointedly. The technicians nodded. “All right, where are the secondary peaks
of this surge?”

  “We’ve come so far in time that our instruments are too fogged with surplus energy,” the girl with dark hair standing by the time map told him. “There’s a chance we could pick up a single individual if we matched times with the secondary peak which came up about three hundred years ago. We can’t do it directly from here. The only other important peak of this surge is the one which broke up the anchor team we were chasing—remember? I don’t think Wymarin would have stood a chance if he’d been caught in that.”

  “All right,” said Magwareet firmly. “Let’s go see. And if we can’t pick him out, then we’ll just have to land and build ourselves new equipment out of matter that isn’t overloaded with temporal interference!”

  “Meantime,” said the girl calmly, “how about this cargo of barbarians we’ve just acquired?”

  “Could I do anything about them?” asked Chantal, entering with Red just in time to catch the remark. “I was a nurse back where—back when I came from. Maybe I could help fix them up?”

  “Fine,” agreed Magwareet, after a slight hesitation. “Tesper! If you’d just give Chantal a brief run-down on the medical equipment aboard…?”

  “Surely,” nodded a small man with his hands full of scribbled notes. “In just a moment.”

  Arafan’s voice came down to them from the communicator. “We’re just going into the surge again, trying for the secondary peak! I’ll call you as soon as we emerge.”

  “Thank you,” acknowledged Magwareet. “Now I’ll see to you, Red and Chantal—might as well grab the chance of a meal while we’re going through the surge, at that.”

  Fed, and remarkably refreshed after a quick course of the hypnotic and anti-fatigant treatment which had added the sleeping time to the thinking time of the human race, Chantal accompanied Tesper through the ship to the place where forty Croceraunian barbarians lay almost literally heaped up. The ship was large, but the crew’s quarters were cramped, and Tesper insisted that the medical equipment was hopelessly inadequate. To Chantal, it was a dream.

  It took her barely ten minutes to learn the use of the regenerant and healing devices, how to administer the universal antibiotics they had met before, and how to dress wounds with the soothing plastoskin that did the job of a bandage and a skin graft in one. She would dearly have liked to learn how the devices worked, but that was for later.

  Oddly, her ‘barbarian’ methods—though they startled Tesper—came in extremely useful. The equipment was not in fact up to dealing with forty injured men, some badly hurt, but there was plenty of clean water—limited only by the speed with which it could be re-cycled and purified—and with splints and clean rags supplementing more modern techniques, she went steadily ahead.

  The Croceraunians were all finely muscled young men in their thirties, she guessed, except the captain, who was older, and the young man whose legs she had fallen over at the very end of their cleaning-up operation. He—as she had remarked—was no more than a boy, perhaps eighteen.

  She lingered longest over him, wondering who he was. His hands and arms were heavily tattooed with complex designs, and she puzzled over their possible meaning. At length, however, giving a final glance round to see all her charges were as comfortable as possible, she returned to the main technical room.

  They had emerged from the temporal surge while she was below, and she discovered Magwareet consulting worriedly with his assistants.

  “What is it?” she inquired, and Red, who was standing beside Magwareet, broke away and came over to her.

  “We’ve reached the limit our equipment can stand,” he said. “Even if Wymarin is down there, we can’t detect him because the screens are fogged. There’s only one thing for it—we’ve got to figure out a way of building new machinery. How?” he added, turning to Magwareet.

  The co-ordinator frowned. “You told me a moment or two back you were no expert in history. The fact remains, you certainly know more about this period than I do, and I can’t compute with data I don’t possess. What’s our best chance of making use of such scientific knowledge as there is?”

  Red whistled. “Chemistry was the only science that had begun about this time! This is the mid-seventeenth century, isn’t it?” The idea brought a chill of awe. “Even that was strictly trial-and-error. They’re refining metals—some metals—down there. Is that any help?”

  “A bit. I had the computers run off the specifications for a thoroughly jury-rigged detector that will serve our purpose. All right, we’ll have to try it. Where do you suggest? England was fairly advanced, I believe. Is—?”

  “England’s out. I speak twentieth-century English, and they’d suspect something funny. No, it’d better be somewhere where I can pass as a foreigner and still get away with speaking only English. And we’ll have to go very carefully—I don’t know to how great an extent a chemist or alchemist is regarded as a witch in these days. On the whole, I’d make a guess and say that a fair-sized town in Holland would be a reasonable bet.”

  “Settled,” said Magwareet. “Arafan!” He gave directions to the pilot.

  “Clothing—money—an interpreter—ouf, this will be a long job!” Red said ruefully. “Still, I suppose it’s quicker than starting from scratch.”

  Chantal came up to him as he watched the European coast swell in the viewports. “Red—you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” he said sincerely, and clasped her hand.

  But it was with trepidation that she watched him and Magwareet, carefully screened, drop from the ship and wave goodbye before setting out along a poor-surfaced road towards the flourishing township of The Hague.

  “Now we have nothing to do but wait,” said Tesper. “I have the oddest feeling, you know, that if only our screens were clear we’d have no trouble. I’m certain Wymarin is actually here! I can’t see there’s anywhere else for him to be.”

  “Except several trillion cubic miles of empty space,” put in the dark-haired girl by the time map, and Tesper was forced to nod agreement. But he shuddered as he did so.

  “How are the barbarians?” he asked, turning to Chantal.

  “As well as can be expected.” She pushed out the cliche with no apologies. “There’s one of them that interests me, though.”

  “They’re all interesting,” Tesper answered dryly. “The Croceraunian Empire is one of the most enigmatic phenomena of history! But which, in particular?”

  “The very young one. He has tattoo marks all over—”

  Tesper looked startled. “Can you describe them?” he said urgently, and Chantal blinked.

  “Well, it’d be easier if you came down and looked,” she began, but Tesper was already on his way.

  She caught up with him as he was looking round and attempting to spot the tattooed boy. “Over there,” she indicated, and Tesper hurried across the room. After a quick survey, he breathed a delighted sigh.

  “What fantastic luck! Chantal, there’s always been one outstanding puzzle about the Croceraunians—what their ‘magic’ was besides bastard atomic science. Right here we have a chance to find out. This boy was the war party’s magician!”

  Chantal digested that in silence for a moment. Tesper went on enthusiastically, “Back before the war I’d have given my arm for a chance like this. Now I can only make the most of it. I was a social historian, you see, before I was put on to the temporal survey side. Can you wake the boy up?”

  Chantal nodded, and reached for a percutaneous syringe charged with a stimulant. Meantime, Tesper fetched a chair and sat down comfortably alongside the boy’s bunk.

  After a pause the eyelids fluttered, and then he looked straight into Tesper’s face. There was no sign of fear or astonishment in his reaction, and he asked a question.

  There was something very attractive about his complete self-possession, and Chantal, though she could not understand what he said, felt herself warm to him at once. Tesper glanced up.

  “This is remarkable! He wants to know if he’s in a me
tal bird—he must mean an aircraft! How could he tell?” Stumblingly, he phrased a sentence in the strange tongue, and the boy answered.

  “His name’s Vyko, and he’s the magician of the war party, as I guessed. It’s his first time out. He says he told the captain that a powerful magic had sent them elsewhere in time—to the Old Days. But how can he tell?”

  Fascinated, Chantal watched silently, occasionally venturing to interrupt and ask what was being said. She could gather only that Vyko remembered being shot, and accepted their healing him as a matter of course. But he had assumed they were powerful magicians themselves, and his terms for understanding the universe were so alien that even Tesper, who had studied the history of his time, had trouble with them.

  And then he said something which made Tesper sit up and exclaim, “What is it?” demanded Chantal.

  “He’s talking about looking into time! He claims he can see the future. This is wonderful… Chantal, I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but we of my time have a wider perception of now than your people had. I can shift my attention within a single instant of now—backwards and forwards. We often tried to find where that came from. Obviously, it was a mutation from the atomic war. That accounts for the fantastic rise of the Croceraunian Empire! With extra temporal perceptors, perhaps specially bred, they could overcome any opposition.”

  This was too much for Chantal. She seized on the one important fact, surprised to find herself so vehement about it. “Ask him if Red and Magwareet will get back safely.”

  A brief exchange: then, “He can’t tell. He doesn’t know who they are, or anything about this time he’s in. But he can tell that nothing is going to happen to harm him in the near future—that’s why he’s so calm and sure of himself.

  “Chantal, this means that the human race can have four-dimensional awareness, and if it wasn’t for the risk of monkeying with history and changing it, we’d have the perfect key to communication with the Being right in the palms of our hands.”