Time Traders

“Maybe we can trade for some more of these,” Ross had begun almost idly. Then he gave a start and sat straighter in the uncomfortable mess seat.

Ashe laughed. “I wondered just when that possibility was going to dawn on you.”

Ross grinned. “You may well ask. You’d think nothing stuck long between my ears, wouldn’t you? All right—so we set up as traders again. I never did get a good chance to try out my techniques when we were on the Beaker run—too many interruptions.”

Travis waited patiently for them to explain. This was another of those times when their shared experiences from the past shut him out, to remind him that only chance had brought him into this adventure, after all.

“There ought to be some things among all that stuff we routed out to study which should attract attention.” Ross wriggled around Ashe to leave the mess cabin. “I’ll see.”

“Trade, eh?” Renfry nodded. “Heard how you boys on the time runs play that angle.”

“It’s a good cover, one of the best there is. A trader moves around without question in a primitive world. Any little strangeness in his speech, his customs, his dress, can be legitimately accounted for by his profession. He is supposed to come from a distance, his contacts don’t expect him to be like their fellow tribesmen. And a trader picks up news quickly. Yes, trade was a cover the project used from the first.”

“You were a trader, back in time?” Travis asked.

Ashe appeared willing enough to talk of his previous ventures. “D’you ever hear of the Beaker Folk? There were traders for you—had their stations from Greece to Scotland during the early Bronze Age. That was my cover, in early Britain, and again in the Baltic. You can really be fascinated by such a business. My first partner might have retired a millionaire—or that period’s equivalent to one.” Ashe paused, his face closing up again, but Travis asked another question.

“Why didn’t he?”

“The Russians located our station in that era. Blew it up. And themselves into the bargain because they gave us our fix on their own post when they did that.” He might have been discussing some dry fact in a report—until you saw his eyes.

Travis knew that Ross was dangerous. He thought now that Ashe probably could surpass his young subordinate in ruthless action, was there any need to do so. Ross came back, his hands full. He set out his selections for their appraisal.

There was a length of material—perhaps intended for a scarf—which they had found in one of the crew lockers. A small thread of a vivid purple barred the green length, both colors bright enough to rivet attention. Then there were four pieces of carved wood, a coral-shaded wood with flecks of gold. They were stylized representations of fern fronds or feathers, as far as the humans could tell, and Ashe believed they might be part of some game, though playing board and other pieces had not been located. Lastly was the plaque which could so mysteriously reproduce a picture of home for the one holding it. That Ashe pushed aside with a shake of his head.

“That’s too important. We needn’t be too generous the first time, anyway. After all, we’ve only a small offering to top. Try the scarf and two of these.”

“Put them in the port?” Ross asked.

“I’d say no. No use encouraging visitors. Use your judgment in picking out some place below.”

Ashe might have told Ross to take the initiative in that venture, but he followed him out. Travis, his leg having given him a sudden severe twinge, retired to his bunk, to try out the healing properties that resting pad had to offer in the circumstances. He stripped off his suit, stretched out with a grimace or two, and relaxed.

He must have gone to sleep under the narcotic influence of the healing jelly which seeped out and over him, triggered by his need. When he roused, it was to find Ross pulling at him.

“What’s the matter?”

Ross allowed him no time for protest. “Ashe’s gone!” His face might be schooled and impassive, but twin cold devils looked out of his eyes.

“Gone?” The drowsiness induced by the healing of the bunk did not make quick thinking easy. “Gone where?”

“That’s what we have to find out. Get moving!”

Travis, his bruises and aches gone, dressed and buckled the arms belt Ross pushed into his hands. “Let’s have the story.”

Ross was already in the corridor, every line of his taut body expressing his impatience.

“We were out there—fixed up a trading stone. There were a couple of flyers watching us and we waited to see if they would come down. When they didn’t, Ashe said we had better take cover, as if we were going on to the buildings. Ashe detoured around a fallen tree—I saw him go. I tell you—I saw him! Then he wasn’t there—or anywhere!” Ross was clearly shaken well out of his cultivated imperviousness.

“A ground trap?” Travis gave the first answer probable as he followed Ross to the air lock. Renfry was there making fast two lengths of silky cord barely coarser than knitting yarn but which, as they had discovered earlier, was surprisingly strong. Thus hitched to the ship, they could prowl the vicinity and yet leave a guide to their whereabouts.

“I crawled over that ground inch by inch,” Ross said between set teeth. “Not so much as a worm or ant hole showing. He was there one minute—the next he wasn’t!”

Making fast their lines and leaving Renfry as lookout, they descended into the trampled and blasted area about the globe where the green was now withering under a late afternoon sun. Darkness would complicate their search. They had better move swiftly, find some clue before they were hampered further.

Ross took the lead, balancing along a fallen tree trunk to its crown of dropping fern fronds, now crushed and broken. “He was right here.”

Travis swung down into the crushed foliage. The sharp smell of sticky sap, as well as the heavy scents of flowers and leaves, was cloying. But Ross was right. The vegetation on the ground had been pulled away in a wide sweep, and there was no sign that the dank earth beneath had been disturbed. He sighted a round-toed track, but it was twin to the ones he was leaving in the mold and could have been pressed there by either Ashe or Ross. But, because it was the only possible trace, he turned in the direction it pointed.

A moment or two later, at the very edge of the clearing Ross had made during his search, Travis saw something else. There was another tree trunk lying there, the remains of a true forest giant. And it had not been brought down by the landing of the ship, but had lain there long enough for soil and fallen leaves to build up around it, to grow a skin of red-capped moss or fungi.

Across that moss there were now two dark marks, ragged scars, suggesting that someone or something had clawed for a desperate hold against irresistible force. Ashe? But how had he been captured without Ross’s seeing or hearing his struggles?

Travis vaulted the tree trunk. There was his confirmation—another footprint deep in the mold. But beyond it—nothing—absolutely nothing! And no living creature could have continued along that stretch of soft earth without leaving a trace. From this point it did appear that Ashe had vanished into thin air.

Air! Not on the ground but above it was where they would have to search. Travis called to Ross. There were tall trees about them now, trees with twenty feet or more of smooth bole before their first fern branches broke from the trunks. The wind rustled here, but they could sight no movement that was not normal, hear no sounds aloft.

Then one of the blue flyers came along, hovering over Travis, watching him with all four of its stalked eyes. The flyers—had they taken Ashe? He couldn’t believe that. A man of Ashe’s weight and strength, undoubtedly struggling hard into the bargain—at least the scraping on the moss suggested that—could not have been airborne unless by a large flock of the blue creatures working together. But the Apache believed as completely as if he had witnessed it, that Ashe had been taken away either through the air or along a road of treetops.

“How did they get him up?” Ross puzzled. He appeared willing to accept Travis’ idea, but the Apache, in turn, was forced to agree such a maneuver would be difficult. “And getting up,” the time agent continued, “where in the world did they take him?”

“This lies in the opposite direction from the three nearest buildings,” Travis pointed out. “To transport a prisoner might force them to travel in a direct line to their own quarters—speed would matter more than concealment.”

“Which means a direct strike out into the jungle.” Ross eyed the wilderness of trees, vines and brush with disfavor. “Well, there’s one little trick—let me have your belt. This was something they showed us in basic training—good old basic.” He took Travis’ belt, made it fast to his own, increasing its expansion to the last hole before he measured it about the tree. But the girth of the bole was too great. Ross untied his cord connection with the ship, slashed off a length to incorporate in the circle of belts. This time it served, linking him to the bole. With the belt to support him, he hitched up the trunk which overhung the signs of struggle.

The fronds shook as he forced his way between them. “Here’s your clue,” he called down. “There’s been a rope strung about this limb—worn a groove in the bark. And—Well, well, well—they’re not so bright, after all—or they don’t think we are. Here’s a way to travel, all right—by the upper reaches. Come and see!”

A line made of cord and belts slapped down the trunk and Travis caught at it, making the climb with less agility than Ross had shown, to join the other at his perch among the fronds. He found the agent folding up between his hands another rope, a supple green one which aped the vines native to this aerial place.

“You do a Tarzan act.” Ross flipped the rope end for emphasis. “Swing over to that tree, probably find another rope end there—and so on. I still don’t see how they boosted Ashe along. Though”—his eyes narrowed—“maybe they waited to go until I went back to the ship for you.”

Travis eyed the rope. “Leaving that here means one thing—”

“That they intend to return?” Ross nodded. “They may have some bright plans about scooping us up one by one. But who are ‘they’? Not those blue flyers . . .”

“Those might act as their hounds.” Travis tried not to glance at the ground, for his present perch inspired little confidence in him.

“And that fruit present was bait for a trap,” Ross agreed. “It fits. The fruit to get us out of the ship, the flyers to report when we came. Then—pounce!—one of us is snaffled! Only Ashe isn’t going to stay a prisoner.”

“This could be a trap, too,” Travis reminded him as he gave the rope a jerk and discovered Ross had been right, the line was very firmly attached to its tree anchorage.

“True enough. But we’ll find some way.”

“At night?” The sun was close to setting. Travis wanted to be on the trail just as much as Ross, but common sense would pay off better than a reckless dash to the rescue.

“Night—” Ross squinted at the patches of sunlight. “These things move around in the daytime. And they’re used to heights.”

“Which suggests there may be good reasons for not travelling on the ground or in the dark.” Travis was growing a little tired of talking. “Our friend in the red house may be one of those reasons. What is your solution?”

“We go back to the domed place—up to the top. There is a balcony around the dome itself, and we can take our bearings from there.”

Travis could agree with that. But they had to argue down the protests of Renfry. The technician’s demands to accompany them Ross was able to overcome by pointing out crisply that alone of their party Renfry possessed the knowledge, or fraction of knowledge, which might mean their eventual control of the ship, and so of their future. And the need for a scouting party before dark urged the necessity of speed in their try to locate landmarks which might guide them on a hunt for Ashe.

They trod the path they had cut that morning. Travis glanced now and then at the sky when they crossed small glades. He half expected to find the blue flyers on the lookout. But none appeared.

Ross took the inner ramp under the dome at a rapid trot. His pace, however, slowed as they wound their way up past five levels, then six, seven, eight, nine and finally ten. There was no sound in the building, nothing to break the echoing emptiness of the fantastically beautiful shell.

They reached the balcony, a narrow walk curving completely around the bulk of the dome, protected by a breast-high parapet of the carved lace. The wind, now rising in intensity, pulled at their hair, sang weirdly through the openwork. Ross took the lead. He hurried to the vantage point from which they could obtain an unrestricted view in the direction they thought Ashe’s captors had headed.

There were other buildings, or the remains of buildings, rising out of the jungle. Some of them were smaller than the dome, with three or four—at a greater distance—taller. And the taller ones had a certain similarity of outline which suggested that they must have had a common architectural origin.

It was one of those which Ross indicated now. “If they were headed for the nearest building across the treetops—that must be it.” He sighted along his pointed finger as if it were a rifle barrel.

Travis was listing all possible landmarks—though from ground level three-quarters of them would not be of much use. “To the right of that funnel-shaped turret, and the left of the pile of blocks. It may be several miles from here.”

To cut a trail along the ground was possible—using their weapons. But such action would certainly advertise their coming. If they wanted to locate the enemy—provided, of course, that the enemy was roosting in the structure Ross had just chosen—the process must entail a more complicated bit of trail craft. And that kind of scouting could not be done at night.

“There’s one way of checking,” Ross said, as if he were thinking aloud. “If we stay here until dark, we’d know.”

“How?”

“Lights. If we see any lights out there—they would be proof.”

“Slim chance. They’d be fools to use lights.”

“Could be trap-setting again,” Ross demurred. “More bait to pull us in.”

“That’s just guessing. How can we tell what makes their minds tick? We don’t even know what they are. You didn’t like the type who first wore this uniform.” Travis plucked at the blue fabric crossing his chest. “If this was their home planet, wouldn’t they be able to play games with us the way they did with you—by mental control?”

“Look out there!” Ross’s sweep of hand included half the landscape, the sea of untroubled jungle, the buildings rising in isolated islands out of it. “Whatever they had—it’s dead now—long dead. And maybe they’re dead, too—or back at the primitive stage. If they’re primitives, Ashe can handle them to a point; he’s been taught to do just that. I’ve seen him in action. Give me an hour up here past sundown. Then if we see no lights—I’ll go . . .”

Travis drew his weapon. Dark, or even heavy dusk, here might unleash things to lurk in the shadows along their trail. But he could understand Ross’s point, and they had a well-marked path to the ship.

“All right.”

They walked slowly around the dome waiting for the murk of evening to gather. And so they counted at least fifty more fantastic buildings, all different, some even appearing to defy the laws of gravity. Beyond them were those others, tall, thin, of a common mold. Were those the native structures and these others embassies, examples of trans-galactic architecture as Ashe had suggested? If not all of them were stripped, what a wealth of knowledge lay—

Travis was jerked out of speculation by a cry from Ross. There was still a reflection of sunlight in the sky at their backs. But—Murdock’s hunch had paid off. A wink of light flashed across the green from the first of the distant tall towers. Flashed on—off—on.

Was it meant to be an enticing signal?

They held a council of war in the ship, the outer hatch closed against the night, that simple precaution taught them by the desert world.

“It’ll be difficult to go straight through the tangle in that direction,” Renfry observed. “They’d be waiting for you to try it.”

“Sometimes the fastest way is around, not straight,” Ross agreed. He had a map drawn on a sheet of material from the aliens’ stores, the crosses and squares on it marking the various buildings they had sighted. “See here—they bunch, those tall towers. But here, and here, and here, are other buildings. Suppose we head for this one which looks like an outsized oil can, then beyond that there’s a pile of blocks. The one we want is between them. So—move to the funnel top, then start beyond to the block pile—and cut back. If we can make them believe we’re just searching everything in that direction, it’ll buy us time. Reach a point about here”—his forefinger dug into the surface of the improvised map—“and then do a right-about-face and go at top speed.” He looked up challengingly. “Anybody got a better idea?”

Renfry shrugged. “This is your party, you’ve had the training for this type of thing. But I’ll go along.”

“And let some joker take the ship behind our backs?” Ross wanted to know. “They’ve a line on us—they must have or they wouldn’t have scooped up the chief so neatly. He’s no recruit at this type of fun and games, remember. I’ve seen him in action.”

“Through the treetops,” Travis mused. “If that’s their regular mode of travel, then maybe we have another point in our favor. Once we’re really into the jungle, there’s a lot of cover which will give us protection. They can’t watch us from above all the time.”

“You’re both set on this then?” Renfry still studied the map.

Ross stood up. “I don’t propose to let them snatch the chief and get away with it. And the quicker we are on the move—the better!”

But even Ross had to admit that they must wait until dawn to put their plan to the test. They rummaged the ship for supplies and assembled a small pack apiece. Each wore a belt supporting alien weapons. In addition, a coil of the supple cord was wound from shoulder to hip about their bodies, and they had retained the flint knives from their hunter disguise. Brittle though the flint might be, the finely chipped blades could be deadly in close combat. They slung packsacks with food and the froth containers.

Renfry disputed his staying with the ship. But he was forced to admit that there was no way to lock the port behind them and so a guard must remain. However, he insisted upon triggering the armament of the spacer. So when they descended the ladder to the ground in the first dull rose of the early morning, the black mouths of those sinister tubes were thrust from the shell of the globe.

They took turns cutting a path. And, where they could, they pushed through the underbrush, saving the power of the weapons. It was Travis who led when they thrust completely through a fern wall into a green tunnel.

The ground here had been worn into a shallow trough and beaten hard. Travis needed only one look to know that slot for what it was—a game trail, leading either to water or to some favorite grazing ground. It had been well traveled, and for some length of time.

There were tracks here, pads with the pinprick indentations of claws well beyond them, a cloven hoof with so deep a cleavage that the hoof must be almost split in two, and some smaller tracings too alien to be identified.

“This goes in the right direction. Do we follow it?” Travis was in two minds about such an action himself. On one hand they could greatly increase speed and speed might be important. But a well-used game trail not only provided a road for animals—it was as well a lure for creatures who preyed upon such travelers.

Ross moved out on the narrow path. It had twists and turns, but the way did run in the direction of the funnel top which was their first goal.

“We do,” he decided.

Travis dropped into a loose trot which fitted his feet into the slot of the track. He caught small sounds in the vegetation about them—twitters, squeaks, sometimes a harsh, croaking call. But he saw nothing of the creatures that voiced them.

The trail took a dip into a shallow ravine. At the bottom a stream trickled lazily over brown-green gravel and above them the sky was open. There they disturbed a fisher.

Travis’ hand went to the grip of his weapon, dropped away again. Like the blue flyers, this inhabitant of the unknown world gave no impression of hostility. The beast was about the size of a wild cat, and somewhat similar to a cat in appearance. At least, it possessed a round head with eyes set slightly aslant. But the ears were very long and sharply pointed with heavy tufts of—feathers at their tips. Feathers! The blue flyer had been furred, provided with insect wings. The fisher, plainly a ground dweller, was fluffily clothed in soft feathers of the same blue-green shade as the foliage around it. Had it not been crouched on the rock in the open, it would have passed unseen.

Its haunches and hind legs were heavy and it squatted back upon them. Two pairs of far more slender and longer front limbs held a limp, scaled thing which it had been methodically denuding of a series of fringe legs with its teeth and claws. Interrupted, the animal watched Travis with round-eyed interest, displaying neither alarm nor anger at his sudden appearance.

As the man edged forward, the creature freed one front leg, still clasping its prey in the other three, and flicked a fringe leg or two from its feather-clad paunch in absent-minded tidiness. Then folding its breakfast to its middle with the intermediary pair of forepaws, it leaped spectacularly from a sitting position, to be hidden in the brush.

“Rabbit—cat—owl—whatsis,” Ross commented. “Wasn’t afraid though.”

“Means that it either hasn’t any enemies—or none resembling us.” Travis studied the curtain into which the fisher had plunged. “Yes, it’s still watching—from over there,” he added in a half whisper.

But the presence of the feather-clad feaster was in a way a promise of security along this road. Travis found the opening of the trail on the other side of the stream. And he was now better pleased to follow it, even though once more the tree ferns closed in overhead and he and Ross were swallowed in what was a tight tunnel of green.

The indications of a busy, hidden life about them continued to come in sounds. Twice they stumbled on evidence of some hunter or hunters working the trail. Once they found a fluff of plush-like gray fur still bedaubed with pinkish blood, then a clot of cream-yellow feathers and draggled skin.

There was an open apron about the funnel building. A fan of stone, dappled with red moss but not yet claimed in entirety by the jungle and the game trail, skirted this, running on past the building. If they were to continue to follow Ross’s plan, they must strike back now into the jungle again and bull their way through its resilient mass. But first, for the benefit of any watchers, they crossed that moss-spattered apron to the building as if about to search its interior. Only there was no easy entrance here. A grill, of the same imperishable material as that which formed the fan area before the door, forbade their entry. Through its bars they could see parts of the inside. Plainly this particular structure had been left furnished after a fashion, for objects, muffled in disintegrated coverings, crowded the floor.

Ross, his face pressed close to the bars, whistled. “I’d say they were getting ready for movers, only the vans never arrived. The chief’ll want to break in here, might be some of his kind of pickings about.”

“Better collect him first.” Travis stood at the top of those four wide steps leading to the barred door. He could sight the tower which was their ultimate goal, though the fern trees shielded it for about three stories up. He saw no signs of life about it, nothing moved at any of the window holes. Yet there had been that light at yesterday’s dusk.

“All right—we’ll get to it!” Ross came away from the grill. He swung his arm wide in an extravagant gesture to mark not the goal of their choice but the block building beyond it.

They had to cut their way now, using weapons and their hands to pull and break a path between the small, isolated glades where the fall of some giant tree in the past had cleared a passable strip for them. Panting and floundering, they came to the fifth such clearing.

“This is it,” Ross said. “We’ll turn back from here.”

Luckily the summit of the tower showed now and then as a guide. They were approaching it from the back, and by a freakish whim of nature there was less underbrush here. So they had to choose cover, watching the heights for any indication that some scout or spy might lurk aloft. Not that they could be certain of spotting an army under the circumstances, Travis decided gloomily, moving with the wariness of one expecting an ambush at any moment.

They had covered perhaps half of the distance which would bring them to the base of the tower when both of them were startled into immobility by a squall. The battle cry of the thing which had laired in the red hall! And the sound was so distorted by the jungle about them that Travis could not tell whether its source lay before or behind.

That first wail of battle was only the starting signal of a racket loud enough to split human eardrums. A bird thing boomed out of the brush, flew in blind panic straight for the two, blundered past them in safety. A graceful, slender creature with a dappled coat and a single curving horn flashed away before Travis was truly sure he had seen it.

But those howls of rage and blood hunger chorused on. There must be more than one of the beasts—perhaps a pack of them! And from the noise, they were engaged in combat. Travis could only think of Ashe cornered in the tower to face such an enemy. He began to run. Ross drew level with him before they plunged together into a hedge of brush, fighting their way in the straightest line to the base of the tower.

Travis tripped, staggered forward, fighting to regain his balance, and plowed on his hands and knees into the open. He was facing the entrance to the tower, a long, narrow slit of opening. From within came the sounds. Ross, weapon in hand, leaped past him, a blue streak of concentrated action.

The Apache scrambled up, was only a step or two behind the time agent as they entered, finding themselves directly on the foot of an upward-leading ramp. One of those squalling roars, sounding above, ended in a cough. A mass of dull red fur and flashing legs rolled down. Its flat weasel’s head snapped its jaws in convulsive death agony. Ross leaped aside.

“Blast beam got that one!” he shouted. “Chief! Ashe! You up there?”

If there was any answer to that hail, the words were drowned in the screech of the animals. The light was dusky here, but there was enough for the humans to spot the barrier across the ramp. It must have been there for some time. But now it showed a gap, choked by two of the red beasts struggling against each other in their eagerness to force the doorway. Behind them snarled a third.

Travis steadied the barrel of his weapon across his forearm and nicked a darting weasel-head with a sniper’s expert aim. The thing did not even cry out, but reared and somersaulted backward down the ramp as the men jumped apart to give it room.

One of the creatures at the gap caught sight of the two below and pulled back, allowing its fellow through the barrier while it whirled to spring at Ross. His blast beam raked across its shoulders and it screamed hideously, collapsed and scratched frantically with its hind feet to gain footing. Ross fired again and the animal was still. But the rage of the fight beyond the barrier continued.

“Ashe!” Ross shouted. And Travis, catching his breath, echoed that call. To go through the gap in the barrier before them and perhaps be met by a blast from a friend was certainly not to be desired.

“Hullloooo!” The cry was weirdly echoed. It might be coming from ahead of them or above. But both of them had heard it. They pushed past the barrier into a wide hallway.

There was light here, coming from the white flames of smoking brands that lay on the floor at the far end as if tossed from a higher level. One of the red beasts lay dead. The men hurdled the body. Another, dragging useless hindquarters, crept with deadly purpose toward them and Travis picked it off. But the beam in his weapon died before he lifted finger from firing button. Another try proved his fears correct—the charge in the weapon was exhausted.

Something scrambled on the second ramp at the far end of the hall. Ross stood at the foot, his weapon up. Travis stooped to scoop up one of the torches. He whirled the brand in the air, bringing the smoldering end to life.

Ross aimed at a charging weasel-head, missed, flung himself to the side of the ramp and down to the floor to escape the rush. But the beast plunged insanely after him. Travis whirled the torch a second time, swinging its flaming end down against the snaky, darting head of the attacker.

One of those powerful forepaws aimed a vicious swipe that tore the torch from the Apache’s hold. But Ross was up to his knees again, weapon ready. And the red animal died. Travis retreated, a little unsteadily, to pick up a second torch.

“Hullloooo!” Again that shout from overhead. Ross answered it.

“Ashe! Down here . . .”

There were no more squalls from the ramp. But Travis wondered if more of the beasts lay in wait. With a useless weapon he had no desire to climb into the unknown. A flint knife was nothing against the weasel-heads.

They waited, listening, at the foot of the ramp. But when there came no other attack, Ross pattered ahead and Travis followed, nursing his new torch. His hand shot out, closed on Ross’s arm, as he caught up with the other. Something was waiting for them up there.

Travis thrust the torch into that pocket of gloom at the head of the ramp, saw Ross’s weapon at ready—

“Come on in!” The words were ordinary enough, but Ashe’s voice sounded a little breathless and in higher pitch than usual. But it was Ashe, unharmed and seeming his usual self, who stepped into the pool of light and waited for them to join him. Only he was not alone. Half-seen shadows moved behind him. Ross did not holster his weapon and Travis’ hand rested on his knife hilt.

“You all right, chief?”

Ashe laughed in answer to Ross’s demand. “Now that the space patrol has landed, yes. You boys introduced the right play at the proper moment. Come on and meet the gang.”

The torch sputtered as those shadows moved in closer to Ashe. Then a new light blazed up well above floor level and Travis blinked at the company that fire revealed.

Ashe was six feet tall, giving Travis himself an inch or so. But in this company he towered, for the tallest of his companions came only a little above his shoulder.

“They have wings!”

Yes, with a sudden twitch a flap of wing—not feathered, but ribbed skin—had unfurled, pointing up above its owner’s shoulder. Where had he seen a wing such as that? On the statue from the domed building!

However, the faces now all turned toward the humans were not as grotesque as the one of the image. The ears were not so large, the features were more humanoid, though the noses remained vertical slits. Either the statue had been a caricature, or it represented a far more primitive type.

The natives hung back, and from their narrow, pointed jaws came a low murmur, rising and falling, which Travis could not separate into distinct sounds or words.

“Local inhabitants?” Ross still held his weapon. “They the ones who kidnapped you, chief?”

“In a manner of speaking. I take it you accounted for the wild life below?”

“All we saw,” Travis returned, still watching the winged people, for they were people, of that he was sure.

“Then we can get out of here.” Ashe turned to the waiting shadows and holstered his own weapon with an emphatic slam. Two of the winged men beckoned and the rest stood back, allowing Ashe, Ross and Travis to pass them, to climb a third ramp. At the top the humans saw open sunlight, and came out into a wide hall with archways, not doors, down its length.

Travis’ nostrils expanded as he caught a mixture of scents, some pleasant, some otherwise. There was activity here; there were indications of a permanent settlement. The archways were hung with green nets into which flowers had been tucked here and there. Many were like the one he had found on his first day of exploration. Hollowed logs made into troughs stood about the walls. From these grew a mixture of plants, all reaching toward the sun which came through windows, forming a curtain of green from floor to ceiling.

The people were no longer just shadows. And in this brighter light their humanoid resemblance was marked. The furled wings covering their backs might have been folded cloaks. They wore no clothing save ornaments of belt, collar or armlets. Their weapons, which all within sight carried, were small spears—little enough protection against the red killers who had assailed them from below.

They watched the humans closely, keeping up their murmur of speech, but making no threatening gestures. And since it was impossible for the humans to read any expression on their faces, Travis did not know whether the three from the ship were considered prisoners, allies, or merely strange objects of general interest.

“Here . . .” Ashe stopped before one of the curtained archways and pursed his lips to give a gentle hoot.

The curtain parted and he went in, signaling the other two to follow him.

Under their feet was thick matting plaited from vines and leaves. And there were low partitions of latticework over which living plants climbed to form dividing walls, cutting one large room into a series of smaller cubicles around a central space fronting the archway.

“Pay attention to nothing around the wall,” Ashe said quickly. “Keep your eyes on the one at the table.”

One of the winged men squatted by a table raised some two feet from the carpeted floor. Those they had seen in the outer hallway had had dusky lavender skins, close in shade to the stone from which the image had been carved. But this one was much darker, almost a deep purple. And the stiffness of his constrained movements suggested advanced age.

But when the native looked up to meet Ashe’s gaze in welcome, Travis knew that this was not only a man, but a great man among his kind. It was there in his eyes, in the pride of his carriage, and in the slow deliberation with which he regarded the three humans.

“What a junkyard!” Ross stared about him in sheer stupefaction.

“Treasure house!” his chief corrected him almost sharply.

Travis simply stood between them and gazed. Perhaps both descriptions could apply in part.

“They kidnapped you to sort this out for them?” Ross demanded, as if he couldn’t believe a word of that conclusion.

“That’s the general idea,” Ashe admitted. “Question is—where do we start, what do we have, and how can we get across to them the meaning of anything we do find—if we can make it out ourselves?”

“How long have they been collecting all this?” Travis wondered. There were paths through those piles of moldering materials, so one could investigate the contents of the heaps. But the general confusion of the mass was intimidating.

Ashe shrugged. “When your total method of communication consists of gestures, a lot of ragged guessing, and pointing, how is anyone to know anything?”

“But why you? I mean—how are you supposed to know what makes all this tick, or thump, or otherwise run?” Ross asked again.

“We came in the ship. They may have some hazy tradition—legends—that the ship people knew everything.”

“The Fair Gods,” Travis threw in.

“Only we are not Cortez and his men,” Ashe returned with a snap.

“They aren’t the baldies, or that furry-faced operator I saw on the screen of the ship the Russians had. So where do they fit in?”

“Judging by that statue, their ancestors were known to the builders of the dome,” Ashe replied. “But I think they are primitive, not decadent.”

Travis’ imagination made a sudden, swift leap.

“Pets?”

Both of the others looked at him. Ashe drew a deep breath.

“You might just be right!” The way he spaced his words gave them an impressive emphasis. “Give our world enough time and the right combination of conditions and see what could happen to our dogs or our cats.”

“Are we prisoners?” Ross came back to the main point.

“Not now. Our handling of the weasels took care of that. A common enemy is an excellent argument for mutual peace. And we have a common purpose here, too. If we’re going to find out anything which will help Renfry, it will be in just such a collection as this.”

“It’d take a year just to shuffle through the top layer in this mess,” Ross gave a gloomy opinion.

“We know what we are looking for—we have examples on the ship. Anything we can uncover in the process which might help our winged friends, we turn over to them. And who knows what we may find?”

Ashe was right about the attitude of the winged people. The chief or leader, who had first received them in the vine-walled room and brought them in turn into the huge chamber containing the loot gathered by his tribe, showed no unwillingness to let them return to the ship. But their path back, followed on ground and not by the aerial ways of the natives, was supervised by two of the blue flyers that had some link with the winged people—perhaps a relationship not unlike man and hound.

During his period of captivity Ashe had learned that the red weasels were the principal local menace and that the winged folk had tried to wall off the lower sections of their dwelling towers to baffle the hunters. These creatures had worked with sly cunning—which suggested a measure of intelligence on their part also—on the ramp barrier. But only a determined raid made by a whole pack had finally broken through that laboriously constructed wall to get at the living quarters of the flying people. Ashe’s readiness to use his weapon on the behalf of his captors, plus the surprise attack by Ross and Travis had completely destroyed the marauding pack. These two things had also made a favorable impression upon the intended victims. As Ashe had commented, a common enemy was a firm base on which to build an alliance.

“But they can fly,” Ross protested. “Why didn’t they just take off—out the windows, and let those six-legged weasels have the place?”

“For a reason their chief was finally able to make plain. This is apparently the season during which their young are born. The males could have escaped, but the females and young could not.”

They found Renfry awaiting their arrival at the ship in a fingernail-gnawing state of impatience. Relieved to see them whole and together, he greeted them with the news that he had managed to trace the routing of the trip tape through the control board. Whether he could reset another tape, or reverse the present one, he did not yet know.

“I don’t know about rewinding this one.” He tapped the coin-sized disk they had seen ejected from the board on the morning of their arrival. “If the wire breaks—” He shrugged and did not need to elaborate.

“So you’d like to have another to practice on.” Ashe nodded. “All right, we all know what to look for when we start our digging into the treasure trove tomorrow.”

“If any still exist.” Renfry sounded dubious.

“Deduction number one.” Ashe took a long pull from the froth-drink can. “I believe most of the stuff the winged folk have gathered came from towers such as the one that houses their village. And there are a number of towers here. The buildings of radically different design are not duplicated. Which leads you to surmise that the tower structures are native to this planet, while the other types represent imported architecture.

“When that pilot set the control tape to bring the ship here, he was setting course either for his home—or his service headquarters. Therefore, it is not too improbable to suppose that we can hope to come across something in that miscellaneous mixture of loot they’ve gathered which is allied to record tapes we have found on this ship. And I will not rule out journey wires among the litter.”

“There are a lot of ifs, ands, and maybes in that,” Renfry said.

Ashe laughed. “Man, I have been dealing with ifs and maybes for most of my adult life. Being a snooper into the past takes a lot of guessing—then the hard grind of working to prove your guesses are right. There are certain basic patterns which become familiar—which you can use as the framework for your guess.”

“Human patterns,” Travis reminded. “Here we do not deal with humans.”

“No, we don’t. Unless you widen the definition of human to include any entity with intelligence and the power to use it. Which I believe we shall have to do, now that we are no longer planet—or system—bound. Anyway, to hunt through the remains of the tower civilization is our first job.

The next morning found them all, Renfry included, back at the tower. And, in those patches of sunlight which entered the packed room, the job Ashe and the chief of the winged people had set them looked even more formidable.

That is—it did until the cubs, or chicks, or children of the natives turned up to offer busy hands and quick bright eyes to assist. Travis found himself the center of a small gathering of the winged halflings all watching him with eager attention as he tried to disentangle a pile of disintegrating objects. A pair of small hands swooped to catch a rolling container, another helper brought out a box. A third straightened a coil of flexible stuff which was snarled about the top layer of the pile. The Apache laughed and nodded, hoping that both gestures would be translated as thanks and encouragement. Apparently they were, for the youngsters dived in with a will, their small hands wriggling into places he could not reach. Twice, though, he had to hurriedly jerk some too-ambitious delver back from a threatened avalanche of heavy goods.

So much of what they uncovered, examined, and put to one side was either too badly damaged by time to be of any use, or else had no meaning for the humans. Travis struggled with the covers of crumbling containers and boxes. Sometimes he would see them go to dust with their contents under his prying hands; other times he would find their interiors filled only with powder that might have once been fabric.

Lengths of an alloy, fashioned into sections of pipe, he laid to one side. These seemed still intact and might be of use to the winged people, either as material for weapons more effective than their spears, or for tools. Once he came upon an oval box which flaked to bits in his hands. But it left mingled with the powder on his palm a glittering stone set in a scroll of metal, as untarnished and perfect as the day the jewel had been stored. His volunteer assistants hummed with wonder, so he gave it to the nearest, to see it passed from hand to hand and at last gravely returned to his keeping.

By noon none of the four humans, working in opposite corners of the big room, had found anything useful to their own purposes. They met under a window to share food supplies free of dust from the rubbish heap.

“I knew it was a year’s job,” Ross complained. “And what have we found so far? Some metal which hasn’t rusted completely away, a few jewels—”

“And this.” Ashe held out a round spool. “If I’m not mistaken, this is a record tape. And it may be intact. Looks something like those we found aboard the ship.”

“Here comes the big boss,” Ross said, glancing up. “Are you going to ask him for that?”

The chief who had brought them to this storeroom entered the far doorway with his escort. He moved slowly about the perimeter of the room to inspect the piles where the explorers had made such a small beginning. When he reached the humans they stood up, towering over both chief and escort. Though they did not share language and their communication was by gesture, Ashe went to work to suggest a few uses for the morning’s salvage. The gems were understandable enough. And the metal tubes were examined politely without much interest.

Ashe spoke to Renfry across the chief’s shoulder. “Any chance of working these into spears?”

“Given time—and tools—maybe.” But the technician did not sound too certain.

Last of all Ashe displayed the spool, and for the first time the chief became animated. He took it into his own hands and hummed to one of the guards who went off at a trot. He tapped one finger on the red tape and then spread out all the digits several times, ending with a wide inclusive sweep of one arm.

“What’s he trying to tell us, Ashe?” Renfry had been watching the performance closely.

“I think he means that this is only one of many. We may have made a real discovery.”

The guard came back followed by a smaller, younger edition of himself. Taller than the children, the newcomer was apparently an adolescent. He saluted the chief with a clap of his wings and stood waiting until his leader held out the spool. Then, reaching out, the chief caught at Ashe’s hand and put the youngster’s in it—waving them off together.

“You going?” Ross wanted to know.

“I will. I think they want to show us where this came from. Renfry, you had better come too. You might be able to recognize a technical record better than I could.”

When they were gone, the chief and his retinue after them, Ross looked about him with dissatisfaction written plain on his face.

“There’s nothing worth grubbing for here.”

Travis had picked up a length of the tubing, to examine it in the full light of the window. The section was four feet or so long and showed no signs of erosion or time damage. The alloy was light and smooth, and what its original use had been he did not know. But as he ran it back and forth through his hands an idea was born.

The winged men needed better weapons than the spears. And to make such weapons from the odds and ends of metals they had found in this litter required forging methods perhaps none of the visitors, not even Renfry, had the skill to teach. But there was one arm which could be made—and perhaps even the ammunition for it might also exist in the unclassified masses on the floor. It was not a weapon his own people had used, but to the south others of his race had developed it into a deadly and accurate arm.

“What’s so special about that tube?” Ross asked.

“It might be special—for these people.” Travis held it up, put one end experimentally to his lips. Yes, it was light enough to be used as he planned.

“In what way?”

“Didn’t you ever hear of blowguns?”

“What?”

“The main part is a tube such as this—they’re used mostly by South American Indians. A small splinter arrow is blown through and they are supposed to be accurate and deadly. Sometimes poisoned arrows are used. But the ordinary kind would do if you hit a vital point, say one of those weasel’s eyes—or its throat.”

“You begin to make sense, fella.” Ross hunted for a section of pipe to match Travis’. “You plan to give these purple people a better way to kill red weasels. Can you make one to really work?”

“We can always try.” Travis turned to the clustering children and gestured, getting across the idea that such sections of pipe were now of importance. The junior assistants scattered with excited hums as if he had loosed a swarm of busy bees in the room.

As Travis had hoped, he was also able to discover the necessary material for arrows there. Again their original use was unknown; but at the end of a half hour’s search he had a handful of needle-slim slivers of the same light alloy as the pipes themselves. Since he had never built or used a blowgun and knew the principles of the weapon only through reading, he looked forward to a period of trial and error. But at last they gleaned from the room a wealth of raw materials for experiment. And they had not yet done when the youngster who had guided Ashe came back, to pull at Ross’s sleeve and beckon the men to follow.

They wound from one ramp to another, passing the point where the weasels had breached. But they did not leave the tower. Instead their guide went to the back of the entrance hall, putting both hands to a seemingly blank wall and pushing. Travis and Ross, watching his effort, joined their strength to his and a panel slipped back into the wall.

Before them was not a room, but a more sharply inclined ramp descending into a well of shadow which increased in darkness until its foot could not be seen from their present stand. The winged boy took the downward path at a run. His wings expanded until they balanced his body and he skimmed at a speed neither of the humans was reckless enough to try to match.

Once they reached the foot of the descent, they saw in the distance the smoky gleam of a native torch. And, guided by that, they ran along a narrow corridor where dust rose in puffs under their pounding feet.

The room of plunder in the tower above had housed unsorted heaps of bits and pieces. The place they now entered, where Ashe awaited them, was a monument to the precision and efficiency of the same race—or a kindred people—who had flown the ship.

Here were machines, banks of controls, dim, dark screens. And as the humans slowly advanced, the torch displayed racks and racks of containers, not only of record tapes, but of journey disks. Hundreds, thousands of those button spools which had brought them across space, were racked in cylinders with transparent tops and unknown symbols of the other people on their labels.

“Port control center—we think.” Ashe may have temporized by adding those last two words, but there was a certainty in his tone which suggested he was sure. Renfry was filling the front of his suit with samples taken from both record containers and tape racks.

“Library . . .” Travis added an identification of his own.

Ashe nodded. “If we only knew what to take! Lord, maybe everything we want, we need—not only for now but for the whole future—is right here!”

Ross went to the nearest rack, began to follow Renfry’s example.

“We can try to run these on the reader in the ship. And if we take enough of them, the odds are at least one or two should be helpful.”

His logical approach to the problem was the sensible one. They went about the selection as methodically as they could, lifting samples from each rack of holders.

“A whole galaxy of knowledge must be stored here,” Ashe marveled, as his fingers flicked one coil after another free.

They left at last, the fronts of their flexible suits bulging, their hands full. But before they left the tower, Travis also gathered up the lengths of pipe and the needle slivers. And when they were back in the ship, the reader set up, their plundered record rolls ready to feed, the Apache went to work on fashioning the weapon he hoped to offer to the winged people in return for their sharing of the stored wisdom.

Renfry, an array of small tools from the crew lockers aligned before him, was operating on one of the route disks. He pried off its cover and carefully unwound the thin wire spiral curled within. Twice he was doomed to disappointment, that fragile thread upon which a ship could cruise to the stars, snapped brittlely under his most careful handling. The second time that happened he looked up, his face drawn, his eyes red with strain.

“I don’t think it can be done.”

“There’s this.” Ashe reached for one of the waiting disk tapes. “Those you are working with are old. The one in the ship is new.”

There it was again, the jog in time which might return them to their own world—or might not. But that reminder appeared to encourage Renfry. He checked the outside of his disks, pushing aside any which showed the pitting of years. His next choice did not look too different from the one which held their future locked into its spiral. For the third time he pried delicately to force off the case.

But it was not to be that night that they learned anything which was of value to them. The record tapes in the reader gave only a series of pictures, fascinating in themselves, but of no value now. And in addition there were others which merely flashed symbols—perhaps formulas, perhaps written accounts. At last Ashe snapped off the machine.

“We can’t expect to be lucky all the time.”

“There’re thousands of those things stored in that place,” Ross pointed out. “If we do find anything useful—it will have to be by luck!”

“Well, luck is what we have to count on in our game.” Ashe’s voice was tired, drained. He moved slowly, rubbing his hands across his eyes. “When you give up a belief in luck, you’re licked!”

Travis set the mouthpiece of a blowgun to his lips and puffed. A thin, shining sliver, tipped with a fleecy tuft, sped—to hit on his improvised target of a red-veined leaf and pin it more securely to the trunk of a fern tree ten feet away. He was absurdly pleased with the success of his trial shot. He moved back another four feet and prepared for a second test. All the while the low humming of his enthralled native audience buzzed bee-fashion across the clearing.

When he was able to place a second dart almost beside the first, his satisfaction was close to complete. With a crooked finger Travis beckoned to the winged youth who had helped to carry the newly manufactured weapons to the testing ground. He handed over the tube he had just used, picking up a second, slightly longer, from the selection on the ground.

The young warrior laid his spear on the leaf mold, hooking his clawed toes over its shaft while he fumbled with the blowgun. Raising the weapon to his mouth, he gave a vigorous puff. Not as centered as Travis’ shot had been, the sliver hit the tree slightly above the leaf. Two other natives, their wings unfolding slightly as they ran, hurried to inspect the target, and Travis, smiling and nodding, brought his hands together in a sharp clap of approval.

They needed no more urging to try this new weapon. Tubes were snatched, passed from hand to hand, with some squabbling on the outer fringes of the gathering. Then each took his turn to try shooting, with varying degrees of success. They halted from time to time to pick the target clean of ammunition, or put up another leaf over the tattered remnants of the last.

Several of Travis’ pupils had sharpshooters’ eyes, and the Apache believed that with practice they could far surpass his own efforts. When the midday sun bit down on the range, he left the blowguns with the enthusiastic marksmen and went to hunt up his crew mates.

Renfry was still buried in his study of journey tapes and the ship’s circuits. But when Travis climbed to the control cabin he found Ashe there also. The reader was set up on the floor, and both of them were squatting before it, alternately watching some recording and making attacks on the main panel of the pilot’s unit. The case of that had been removed, exposing an intricate wiring pattern. And from time to time Renfry traced one of those threads up or down and either beamed or frowned at the results of his investigation.

“What’s going on?”

Ashe answered Travis. “We may have had our break! This record is a manual of sorts. It provides some wiring blueprints Renfry has been able to identify with that cat’s cradle of cords up there.”

“Some wiring.” Renfry’s enthusiasm did not match Ashe’s at that moment. “About one line in ten! This is like trying to put together a missile head when all your working instructions are written in Chinese code! Yeah—the red cord hits the plate there—but does it say anything about these white loop-de-loops to the left?”

Ashe squinted at the loops in question and consulted the record reader again. “Yes!” Renfry was down on his knees in an instant to see for himself the diagram on the picture screen.

“Anybody home?” Ross’s voice floated up the well of the interior ladder, and Travis could feel the vibration of his footfalls on the rungs as he climbed.

His head and shoulders emerged from the stairwell. His dust-streaked face testified to his occupation of the morning as the investigator on duty in the crazy treasure house at the winged people’s tower.

“Any luck?” Travis asked with some sympathy. Ross shrugged.

“A handful of stuff they may be able to use. I’m no big brain to string together some wire, nails and a couple of pieces of tin and produce a jet all set to fly. Saw your William Tells busy with those spitters of theirs. One of them had already bagged an addition to the dinner pot—not that the dear departed looked too edible. I don’t care for things with about four dozen legs all clawing at once. But I could relish some more civilized food right now.”

Travis glanced at Ashe and the dedicated Renfry. “If we have any today, looks as if you and I are elected to get it ready. They’ve discovered a record which shows the inside of the control board.”

“Well—that’s more like it!” Ross climbed the rest of the way into the cabin and stooped to look over Ashe’s shoulder at the miniature screen. “I’d say it’s closer to the plans for a demon-inspired highway system,” he commented judiciously. “And I’ll settle for a can of stew.”

Renfry and Ashe were pried away and they ate in the absent-minded fashion of men whose complete interest was centered elsewhere. When they had gone, Ross stretched and gazed at Travis.

“Care for a little look-see of our own?” he asked with a casualness which aroused Travis’ suspicion.

“In what direction?”

“That funnel place. Remember—the front hall is packed as if the boys living there had been in a hurry to move out, but had to leave their baggage behind? I’d like to have a good look at the baggage.”

“If I remember rightly, there is also a good stout grill over the doorway,” Travis reminded him.

“And I have a way to get around that. Come on.”

Ross’s way of passing the secured door was simple enough. One of the natives flew to a second-story window equipped with a coil of climbing cord from the ship. He confronted a shutter across the window. But prying with his spear point forced the latch on that, and a few moments later the rope dangled down the side of the building in open invitation to climb.

The gallery into which they so forced a way gave many indications it had been hurriedly stripped. Some ragged tatters of flimsy web, which fell to powder at the touch of a finger, still hung on the walls. And there were pieces of oddly shaped furniture shrouded in dust. But the dust on the floor was marked in places by tracks and, seeing those, their native companion fingered his spear. Then, his eyes on the humans holding their attention, he drove it point down into the pattern of that trail with the vigor of one making a determined attack upon an enemy.

Another lair of the weasel things? Travis, studying those tracks in the half gloom beyond the light from the opened window, believed not. In fact, the marks were disturbingly like a human footprint. And the teasing picture provided by his imagination of some one of the old lords of this place lingering on to haunt its solitude, grew disturbingly in the back of his mind.

Here for the first time they found a stairway, though its treads were so narrow and steep as to make the humans believe that it had been built to accommodate bodies unlike their own. Ross, taking the lead, went down, his explorer’s zeal well tempered with caution, in search of the crowded hall they had seen from without.

Travis sniffed. There was a faint fetid odor, not just the accumulated dust of centuries, leaf mold borne in by the wind, or the taint of some small animal lair. This was not only strong enough to be recent, but the stench was also vaguely familiar.

Warning of a weasel den? He did not think so. This was not quite so rank and compelling as the stench of the red-walled structure those beasts had taken for their own. And it was not the alien but inoffensive odor which clung to the winged people’s quarters.

He noted that the nose flap of their native companion expanded, and the deep-set eyes in that lavender face glittered as they turned alertly from side to side. Not for the first time the Apache regretted the absence of a quick common form of communication. It had proved impossible for the humans to approximate the humming sounds which made up the natives’ speech. And none of them in return appeared able to utter any recognizable word, in spite of all the coaxing and patient repetition of common nouns or action verbs.

The interior of the building was gloomy, though the hall into which they had descended received a greater measure of light from the door. Ross stepped out, skirting a pile of boxes. He laid his hand on the top one, his other hovering over the grip of his weapon.

Travis remained where he was. That smell—it tugged at his memory. They stood still, the winged youth freezing with them. Then a sudden gust of wind through the latticed doorway brought with it a warm, fresh reek and Travis knew—

“The sand people!” His words were a hiss of whisper but they carried the authority of a shout. What were the nocturnal creatures of the shrouded desert world doing here?

“You are sure?” To his surprise Ross questioned his identification no further than that.

“You don’t forget a stink like that in a hurry.” Travis’ eyes were busy, surveying the pools of shadow about the crates and boxes piled in the hallway. Had anything moved out there? Were they being watched now by eyes which could see farther than their own in this dusk?

The hand of the native touched his arm, an appeal for attention. Travis’ head swung slowly as he saw the other ready a spear. He fitted a dart in his blowgun.

“There is something—to the left.” Ross’s whisper was the thinnest trickle of sound. His blaster was pointed at that shadowy corner.

Then the hall came alive, a boiling up of forms from every likely and concealing cover. The attacking things shambled swiftly on four limbs like animals. Their silent advance carried with it an added horror in the fact that those slavering beasts—or their remote ancestors had once been—men!

A blast from Ross’s weapon brought down three of the clumsy runners. A tentacle licked out and then a fourth attacker went down, a dart dancing in its hairy throat. Behind Travis the native ran back a few steps up stairs, launched out into the air with a beat of his wings. Wheeling over the enemy, he stabbed at the boneless middle limbs raised to drag him down with a concentration which hinted at a long enmity between the two species.

Ross cried out. A tentacle flicked from the shadows, coiled about his ankle and pulled, as he fought to keep his balance. He turned his weapon beam on that rope of living flesh. He was answered by a roar as the loop fell away. Then Travis’ dart caught the thing which arose to its hind legs clawing for Ross’s shoulders. The Apache shot as fast as he could insert darts into the pipe. Backed against the stairs, he now flailed out with his weapon as a club, clearing a space to drag Ross with him.

A tentacle had jerked the native’s spear from his hold. Perching on one of the piles of boxes, he rocked back and forth on his refuge, beating his wings to hasten the tumble of the stack. He rose into the air just as the bulky containers crashed down across the foot of the stairway to provide the beginnings of a barricade.

“Weapon charge—exhausted,” Ross panted. Gripping the barrel of the gun, he smashed the butt down on the round skull of a creature scrambling over the wreckage.

They retreated up the stairway. Travis kicked out, catching a hairy head under the chin, slamming its owner back and down to tangle with another eager attacker. The native sent a second pile of boxes crashing. Now he was flying back and forth over the ruck of the enemy’s main body, bombing them with smaller packages snatched up from the heaps.

For a moment the humans were free. Taking advantage of that lull, they won back to the gallery where they had entered what might have proved a trap. The native shot up, over their heads. He stood on the sill of the open window to beckon them on, uttering excited hums which rose to a volume approaching squeaks.

Travis shouldered Ross behind him toward the exit. “I’ve only two more darts—get out quick!”

For a moment the other resisted, then his common sense took command and he ran for the window. Travis aimed a dart at a hunched shoulder and head just appearing above the stairs. But that missile only nicked a furred upper arm, and fangs showed in a gap which was no longer a man’s mouth. Eyes, small, red with fury and yet alight—horribly so—with a spark of intelligence, spotted him.

He backed to the window. A lavender-skinned arm reached over his shoulder, a hand fastened on the blowgun, twisted at it, trying to pull the tube from his grasp. The native still kept his post on the sill; now he wanted the weapon.

And Travis, knowing that the other had a means of escape he himself did not possess, surrendered the blowgun, then boosted his body over and out on the rope. He watched the lavender back of their rear guard. Wings projected outside the frame of the window and they were raised, ready . . .

Then the native threw himself backward and out in a wild display of aerial gymnastics. His wings flapped wide, broke his fall and he soared again, spiraling upward as the first shaggy head protruded from the window. Hairy fists pawed at eyes which were apparently blinded by the sun. Ross had reached the ground, Travis was not far behind him. The rope swung vigorously, scraping him along the building, and he realized that those above were trying to draw him up.

The Apache let go, falling as relaxed as he could, and the lightened rope flapped wildly as it was jerked up into the window. But they were safely out in the day. He did not believe that the nocturnal creatures would pursue them into the light. However, as they crossed the strip of jungle to reach the ship, both of them applied their scoutcraft to discovering whether or not they were being tailed.

Ashe listened to their report frowningly. “It might be worse—if we were staying here.”

Ross threw aside his useless weapon. “D’you mean we’re getting out? When?”

“Another day—maybe two. Renfry is ready to try rewinding the tape.”

For the first time Travis made himself face how much would depend upon the proper handling of that slender length of wire, how one small break would defeat their purpose and leave them exiled here forever. Or how a weakness which they could not see might develop in space, snapping their invisible tie with their home world, to set the ship drifting between solar systems an eternal derelict. Could Renfry rewind the spool? And if it were rewound—would it work in reverse? There could be no test flight. Once they raised ship from this spot, they were gambling with their lives on a very slender thread composed mainly of hope and an illogical belief in luck.

“You understand now?” Ashe asked. “Remember this—we can stay here.”

They would be exiles for the rest of their lives, but they would be alive. There were enemies here, but they could set up an alliance with the winged natives, join them. Suddenly Travis got to his feet. He went to that compartment in the cabin where they had put the square of picture block which could tune in on a man’s memory and make home visible to him. He had to know—whether the past had enough strength to push him into this greatest gamble of his life.

He held the slab between his hands, looked into its curdled depths. Soon he saw—red cliffs rising from the fringe of smoky green marking piñon—a blue sky—the hills of home. He could almost taste the bite of alkali dust in a rising wind, feel the swell of a horse’s barrel between his legs. And he knew that he must take the chance . . .

In the end they all made the same choice. Ross summed up their feelings:

“Time travel—that is different. We’re still on our own world. If something goes wrong and we’re marooned back before history began—well, it’ll give a guy a bad jolt, sure. Who wants to play around with mammoths when he’s more used to jets? But still, he’d know pretty well what he was up against and that the people he’d meet would be his own species. But to stay here— No, not even if we get the job of playing gods for the winged people! They aren’t our kind—we’re visitors, not immigrants. And I don’t want to be a lifetime visitor anywhere!”

They made a last trip to the record library transporting back to the ship and stowing away in every available storage place all the record tapes which appeared to be intact. The chief of the natives, delighted with the blowguns, allowed them to choose other objects from the tribe’s treasure room. He only asked that they return in time, bringing with them new knowledge to share. They saw no more of the nocturnal creatures from the funnel-spired building—though they again took the precaution of sealing the ship at night.

“Will we be back?” Ross asked when Ashe came from his last meeting with the chief.

“Let us get home safely with this haul,” Ashe returned dryly, “and someone will be back, all right. You can depend on that. Well, Renfry?”

The technician looked like a ghost of his usual self. Lines of tension that would probably never fade bracketed his mouth, marked the corners of his tired eyes. His hands shook a little and he could not lift his drinking container to his mouth without hooking all ten fingers about it.

“The tape’s rewound,” he said flatly. “And the wire didn’t break. Tomorrow I’ll thread it ready to run. For the rest—we pray the trip out. That’s all I can tell you.”

Travis lay on his bunk that night—his bunk, their ship . . . The globe and its contents had grown progressively less alien when compared to what lay without. Around his wrist was a heavy band of red metal set with small sea-green stones in a pattern which suggested breaking waves, a gift presented to him by the winged chief at their formal farewell. He was sure that the lavender-skinned flying man had not fashioned that bracelet. How old was the ornament? And from what world, from the art of what forgotten and long-vanished race had it come?

They had not even scratched the surface of what was to be found in this ancient port. Had the jungle-cloaked city been the capital of some galaxy-wide empire, as Ashe suspected? They had had no time to explore very far. Yes, there would be a return—sometime. And men from his world would search and speculate, and learn, and guess—perhaps wrongly. Then, after a while there again would be a new city rising somewhere—maybe on his own world—which would serve as a storehouse of knowledge gained from star to star. Time would pass, and that city, too, would die. Until some representative of a race yet unborn would come to search and speculate—and guess. Travis slept.

He awoke swiftly, with a quick sense of urgency. Over his head he heard the sigh of the speaker from the control cabin.

“All ready,” came Renfry’s voice, thin, drained. Why, the technician must have worked through the night, eager to prove his handiwork.

“All ready.”

They still had time to say “no” to this crazy venture, to choose known perils against the unknown. Travis felt a surge of panic. His hands levered against the bunk, pushing his body up. He had to stop Renfry—they must not blast into space.

Then he lay down once more, made his hands clasp the bunk straps across his body, his lips pressed tightly together. Let Renfry push the proper button—soon! It was the waiting which always wore on a man. He felt the familiar vibration, singing through the walls, through his body. There was no going back now. Travis closed his eyes and tried not to stiffen his whole body in protest against that waiting.

“We’re out—safely.”

“So far—so good.” Another voice made answer to that over the com system.

Travis opened his eyes and wondered if anyone ever became fully inured to the discomfort of a planetary take-off. He had forgotten during the past days when they had been comfortably earth-bound what it meant to be wrenched into the heights beyond the atmosphere and gravity. But at least the tape had worked to the extent that they had lifted safely off world.

And their flight continued, until at length they all breathed easier and began to hold more confident feelings than just hope concerning their future.

“If we simply repeat the pattern,” Ashe observed thoughtfully on the evening of the fifth day, “we set down again on the desert world sometime tomorrow.”

“Be better if we could eliminate that stop,” Travis remarked. There was something in the desolate waste and the night things which repulsed him as nothing else had during this fantastic voyage.

“I’ve been thinking . . .” Ross glanced across the swinging seat to the pilot’s perch where Renfry spent most of his waking hours. “We refueled on the trip out—at the first port. Suppose—just suppose that we exhausted the supply there.”

Renfry grinned, a death’s-head stretch of skin across bones. His thumb jerked downward in the immemorial gesture of sardonic defeat. “Then we’ve had it, fella. Let’s hope that we can stretch our luck past that particular point along with all the rest of the elastic tricks.”

This time they downed on the desert port in the early morning, when the lavish display of flames along the horizon was paling into nothingness. They saw the blaze of the rising sun reflected too brightly from the endless drifts of sand.

“Two days here, roughly—if we do duplicate the pattern exactly.

Waiting two days, cooped up in the ship, not sure that they would take off again. At the thought of it, Travis shifted restlessly in his seat. And the specter Ross had evoked shared the narrow confines of the cabin with them all.

“Any walk-about?” Ross must be feeling it too—that goading desire to be busy, to drown in action ever-present fears.

“Not much reason for that,” Ashe replied calmly enough. “We’ll take a look outside—in daytime. Not that I believe there is much to see.”

The sun-repelling helmets on, they opened the outer hatch. They surveyed the expanse where the winds might have whittled new patterns among the dunes, but where they could see no change since their last visit. The enigmatic sealed buildings still squatted beyond, with no sign of life about.

“What did they do here?” Ross’s hands moved restlessly along the frame of the exit port. “There was some reason for this stop—there had to be. And why were those same things—people, animals, whatever they are—or were—on the other world, in the funnel-topped building?”

“Which are the exiles?” Ashe asked. “Is this their home world, while those others exist across the void and have for generations because they were not recalled in time? Or are these the exiles and the others are at home? We may never know the reason or answer to any questions about them.” He studied the squat building among the creeping dunes. “They must live underground, with the building covering the entrance. Perhaps they live underground on the other planet also. Once they must have been here to service ships—to maintain some necessary outpost.”

“And then,” Travis said slowly, “the ships didn’t come any more.”

“Yes. There were no more ships. Perhaps a whole generation waited—hoping for ships—for recall. Then they either sank into apathy and stagnation, to slide down the hill of evolution, or they more consciously adapted to their surroundings.”

“In the end, the result was the same,” Ross observed. “I don’t think those here are any different from the ones in the funnel building. And there they had a better world to adapt to.”

“Wait!” Travis had been studying that sand-enclosed block with interest. Now he thought that his memory of the place as it had been weeks earlier did not match what he saw now. “Was that elevation on the left there before?”

Ross and Ashe leaned forward, their attention settling on the end of the structure he indicated.

“You’re right, that’s new!” Ross’s affirmation came first. “And I don’t think that projection is made of stone like the rest, either.”

The block which had so oddly appeared on the corner of that distant roof did not flash like metal in the sun’s rays. But neither was it dull. There was a sleek sheen to it, such as might be displayed by opaque glass or obsidian. The hump had no openings that they could see, and what its purpose might be remained as much of a mystery as the rest of this age-old puzzle.

It remained so for only a few moments. Then came action the watchers in the ship did not expect. They had seen the rays which protected the roof of the building against assault or investigation. Now they witnessed the use of another aggressive weapon belonging to the men who had first erected that block.

What was it which lashed out, cracked a whip’s thong about the skin of the ship? A beam of fire? A bolt of energy? A force which the humans could neither imagine nor name?

Travis only knew that the energy wash of that blow crushed him back into the globe, hurled him into the inner door of the lock with Ross and Ashe thrust tight against him. Their bodies were flattened on the metal wall of the ship until the breath was forced from their lungs and the world went black about them.

Travis was on the floor, fighting for the air his body had to have, pain in bands about his chest. And before his blurred eyes was the open door of the port. In that moment all that mattered was that oblong of emptiness. Beneath the torture of his body, he knew that that space must be shut out for what lay beyond it meant final extinction.

He clawed at the body across his knees, turned over somehow and inched painfully from under its weight, moving in a worm’s progress toward the outer port. There was a singing in his ears, filling his head, adding to his daze. Then he was staring out into the glare of sun and sand.

At first he thought he was lightheaded. What he was seeing could not be true. For there was no wind, yet from the hidden floor of the landing space sand was rising in thin, unwavering sheets, walling in the globe. And those curtains of grit arose vertically, unmoved by any breeze! It could not happen—yet before his eyes it did.

He lunged to his knees, thrust against the door, shut out the curtains of sand, the harsh light of the sun, the thing which could not be true. And as his hands fumbled to shoot home the alien bolts, the pain lessened. He could breathe again without the constriction which had held his lungs imprisoned. He turned to the other two.

Alarmed by the congested blueness of their faces, Travis jerked both men up into a sitting position against the wall. Ashe’s blue eyes opened.

“What—?” He only got out that one faint word as Travis turned his attention to Ross.

There was a thin thread of blood trickling from the corner of the younger scout’s slack mouth. He moaned as Travis shook him gently. Ashe moved and winced, his hands going to his chest.

“What happened?” He was able to get out the whole demand this time.

“The space—marines—landed.” Ross’s lips shaped the words one at a time. There was a shadow of a grin about them. “—On me, I think.”

“Hullloooo down there!” The call was disembodied over the ship’s com, but it was imperative. “What’s going on?”

Although the hull could cut out sun, sound, and the world without, they could now feel movement through its layers of protection. It was as if the ship were being buffeted by some force. Those walls of sand? Travis hauled himself to the ladder wall and began to climb, seeking the screen by the controls which was now their only link with outside.

He discovered Renfry standing before that link, his disbelieving eyes on thick curdles of sand, sand rising from the ground with steady purpose to engulf the ship. They were on the point of being buried in a sea of grit, and there was no reason to believe that that was not directed, consciously, by active animosity and intelligence.

“Can we get out?” Travis dragged himself to the nearest seat. “Any way to up ship?”

If the tape governed their departure according to the earlier schedule, they were stuck here for another night, another day. By that time the globe could be so deeply buried that there would be no hope of blasting free from the tons of sand. They would be sealed into a living tomb.

Renfry’s hands went out to the keyboard of the controls, hesitated there. His lips tightened.

“It’s a big risk but I could try.”

“It’ll probably be a bigger risk to stay.” Travis remembered the two he had left at the lock. They must be brought out of danger before the shock of blast-off. “Give me five minutes,” he said. “Then blow—if you can!”

He found Ashe on his feet, dragging Ross out into the corridor. Travis hurried to help.

“Renfry is going to try to blast off,” he reported. “We’re being buried in sand.”

They got Ross to a bunk. Ashe flopped into the adjoining one, and Travis barely made it to the next cabin and the waiting cushion there, when the warning shrilled through the com. There was the vibration of laboring engines. But it went on far longer than before. Travis lay tense, willing the wrench of blast-free to come, counting off seconds . . .

The vibration was building up—higher than he had ever known it to go before. And the ship rocked on its base, movement and sound becoming one, a sickening mixture which churned the stomach, deadened thought but not fear.

The break came in an instant of prolonged red agony. Afterward came blackness—nothing at all . . .

Vibration was gone, sound was gone—but sensation remained. And the clean, aromatic scent of the healing jelly which filled the bunks on occasion of need. Travis opened his eyes. Had they pulled free from the desert planet?

He sat up, brushing the jelly from him. It slid easily from his skin, from the suit, leaving the usual well-being of mind and body. The confidence which had been jolted out of him had already flooded back. He got to his feet, went to peer into the neighboring cabin.

Ashe and Ross still lay inert under the quivering mounds of that substance on which the aliens had based their first aid. He climbed to the control cabin.

Renfry was strapped into the pilot’s chair, but his head lolled limply on his shoulders, his white face alarming Travis. His questing fingers found a slow pulse. He unfastened the technician and somehow managed, with the aid of weightlessness, to get him to his bunk below. The screen presented only that swirl of dead black which was the sign of hyperspace. They had not only broken loose from the sand trap, they were also embarked on the next leg of the long journey which might or might not take them home.

How long had that portion of the journey lasted before? Nine days by Renfry’s watch—nine days between the sand and the fueling port. Nine days until they could be sure that Renfry’s blast-off had not thrown the tape off course.

As they recovered from that shock Ashe took command, using the loot they had gathered from the storehouse of records to focus their interest outside themselves. On the plea of hunting another ship’s operation manual, he set them to work in shifts at the record reader, processing every tape which could still be run through that machine. More than one promising coil broke, whipped into a tangle they did not dare try to unravel. But even those must be kept for the experts at home to study. For Ashe never admitted after their break from the desert world that they were not going to get home. He pointed out that the odds they had already licked totaled a formidable sum and that there was no reason to believe that their luck would not continue to hold.

But even Ashe, Travis thought to himself, must have doubts, be as nervous as the rest—though he did not show it—when Renfry’s watch marked the ninth day’s flight and they had no warning of arrival at the fueling port. They made only a pretense of a midday meal. Travis had calculated rations just that morning. By going on very slim supplies, they would have enough of the food they dared use to see them home—if the voyage was not prolonged. He reported that fact to Ashe and received only an absent-minded grunt in reply.

Then—as if to prove all their worst forebodings untrue—the warning came. Travis strapped down, sharing quarters with Ross this time. The other grinned at him.

“The chief’s called it right again! Here we go for a shot of gas from the service station—then home!”

Even the discomfort of landing could be forgotten when they did see about them the ruined towers marking off landing spaces, the metallic turquoise sky of their first galactic port. Why, they were almost home!

They clattered down to the space lock and opened it eagerly—to watch for the creeping snake of the fuel line and its attendant robot. But long moments went by and there was no movement in the shadow of the nearest tower. Travis studied the immediate terrain. Had they set down in the same square they had visited before? Might a change in so slight a matter provide the reason for the silence about them?

“Could be due to the time element.” As Ashe’s voice sounded in his helmet com, the old man might have been reading his thoughts. “We left the second stop well ahead of our former schedule.”

They clung to that hope as an hour, and then two, passed and there was no movement from the tower. Pooling their recollections of the place, they were fairly certain that they had landed in the same square. And they avoided putting into words the other dire possibility—that the mechanism of the ancient port had at last been exhausted, perhaps by the very effort put upon it weeks before when the globe had been serviced there.

Renfry spoke at last. “I don’t know how much fuel we have on board. I can’t even tell you the nature of that fuel. And whether we can take off without more is also an open question. But if we can, I don’t believe we’ll be able to finish the trip. We may be working against time—but we’ll have to discover if we can push those machines into one more job. And we’ll have to do it quick!”

They swung out of the globe, and Renfry crawled under its arching side, to discover a new catastrophe. If there had been any fuel left in the ship’s sealed storage compartments, it was gone now. There was an ominous damp patch spreading from an opening at ground level.

Renfry’s voice came hollowly. “That’s done it, fellas. She’s empty. Unless you can get that pipe line on the job again, we’re grounded for keeps.”

“What made that open up?” Ross wondered with the bafflement of one to whom machines were still mysterious save for their most obvious functions.

“Might be some mechanism triggered by this.” Ashe stamped on the pavement. “Well, let’s go and look for the robot and that animated pipe line.”

They walked toward the tower. From ground level the structure looked even more pointed and needle-like. There was an opening at the foot, the doorway from which the robot had come. Ashe reached that and stood for a moment peering in.

The chunky robot which had clanked into duty at their first visit was still there, just within the doorway. And beyond, plain to be seen in a rusty, yellowish light, were a corporal’s guard of its fellows. All alike, they were backed against the far wall as if awaiting some long-past official inspection.

From a well in the center of the floor, to be glimpsed around the bulk of the robot in the doorway, was a massive piece of metal which Travis recognized as the “head” of the snake pipe line. Ashe reached out almost reluctantly to push the robot. To their surprise the machine, which had appeared so massive and immobile answered to that handling. It did not react the way a shaken alarm clock would. Instead it toppled forward, oddly flaccid. One of the arms clattered loose and spun across the pavement to strike the snake’s head.

“It’s moving! Look—it’s moving!”

Ross was right. In a jerky, sullen manner the heavy end of the mobile pipe line raised, inched forward about a foot while the humans held their breaths in hope—until it fell supinely once more.

“Hit it again,” advised Ross.

Ashe edged around the prostrate robot to inspect more closely what they could see of the pipe. This small portion displayed no signs of deterioration. He stooped, took a good grip on the “head” and tugged. Then he hurriedly jumped back while Ross and Travis kicked the robot out of the path of the creeping snake. Two feet—three—out in the open it went—and headed for the ship. Renfry saw them coming and waved, crawling back under the bulge of the globe to make ready for the pipe’s arrival.

But they had exulted too soon. Some four feet away from the tower the head sank to earth once more. Ashe tried his former method of revival, without result. They took turns shaking it, together and separately. It was much heavier than the robot and they could not urge it into any further effort.

Renfry came to join in a consultation. He went back to inspect the well from which the pipe emerged, only to return as baffled as before.

“Can we pull it by hand?” Travis wanted to know.

“That’s what we’ll have to try now.” Renfry was grim.

Bringing the light, tough rope from the ship, they fastened lines about the “head,” and set to work. At Ashe’s command they gave a concentrated jerk. The stubborn pipe gave, started forward, but not under its own power. They gained another four, five feet but the effort required to move that dead weight was exhausting. Now their gains were shorter, and the strain they must exert to produce them grew greater and greater.

Ross tripped, went down, levered himself up, his face set in a snarl. He seized the rope again as if it were a man he could tangle with—and jerked in concert with the other three. This time there was no yielding at all, and their feet slipped on the cracked and age-old stone.

Travis sat back on his heels in the immemorial position of the dismounted range rider. The others sprawled beside the tow rope, their faces beet red from their efforts. Renfry squirmed, braced himself on his hands and began to fumble with the latch of his helmet. He threw the bubble back and breathed hard with the immediacy of a drowning man.

“Put on your helmet, you fool!” Ashe raised his head from his arms; his voice in the com was broken by the laboring of his lungs.

But Renfry shook his head, his lips moving in words sealed away by the protection he no longer shared. Travis’ fingers went to the fastenings of his own helmet.

“I don’t think we need these.” He pulled off the bubble and lifted his head to meet the touch of a small, playful breeze. The air was crisp, like that of a Terran autumn. And it filled his lungs in an invigorating way. He reached for the rope, ready to try again.

“There’s no use in pulling ourselves blind.” Ashe’s voice was no longer rendered metallic by the alien com. “The trouble may lie back in the tower.”

Renfry began to crawl on his hands and knees back the length of the pipe, inspecting its surface as he went. At last he staggered to his feet and lurched through the door, the others after him.

They found the technician down by the mouth of the well from which the pipe extended. He was examining the covering there, trying to wriggle the flexible tube back and forth.

“The thing must be caught—below this!” He hammered his fist against the capping.

“Can we get that lid off and see?” Ross wanted to know.

“We can try.”

But such an operation required tools of a sort—levers, wedges . . . There was the line of waiting robots—could parts of their bodies be put to more practical purposes? Ross had picked up a loose “arm,” shed by the one which had disintegrated, testing the rod’s strength with all the force of his own arm and shoulder.

Travis studied the well capping. There was no opening, no vestige of crack into which a wedging tool might be inserted. And now Renfry ran his hands about the ring through which the pipe issued, striving to find by touch what none of them could see. He tapped with the rod, first lightly and then with increasing force, leaving some dents and scratches, but making no other impression on the fitting.

“Does that unscrew?” Ross suggested.

Renfry scowled, spat out a couple of short and forceful words. He transferred his efforts from the pipe to the outer rim of the cover. And there he did make a promising discovery. They worked fast, one at each, to pick the accumulated dust of centuries out of four depressions in which were sunk knobs which might just be the heads of bolts.

Then they turned to the broken robot, dismantled its remains, until they were equipped with pieces of metal to force those heads. It was slow, disheartening work. Once Travis went back to the ship to gather up the containers of the jelly which had poisoned him during the testing of the supplies. They smeared the stuff in and around the stubborn knobs, hoping it would lubricate and loosen, while they pounded and prodded. But their efforts were encouraged when the first bolt yielded, and Renfry used blistered fingers to work it free. And that small success gave a spurt to their labors.

It was nightfall and they were working mainly by touch when Ashe’s bolt came free—the second one.

“This is it for now,” he told them. “We can’t rig any sort of light in here and there’s no use in trying to free the rest in the dark. I’ve hit my fingers more than this blasted thing for the past half hour.”

“Time may be running out on the journey tape,” Ross answered tightly. He was putting into words one of the two fears which grinned over their shoulders during all those hours of punishing labor.

“Well, we aren’t going to lift without fuel.” With a sharp exclamation and a hand to his back, Ashe stood up. “And we can’t work on in the dark without rest or food. Those things we know—the rest we’re just guessing at.”

So they stumbled back to the ship, realizing only when they stopped the battle with the stubborn casing how deeply tired they were. Travis knew that Ashe was right. They could not hope to lick the problem by driving their bodies past the point of human endurance.

They ate more than the proper rations for the meal, wavered to their bunks and collapsed, drunk with fatigue. And Travis was still stiff in the morning. No healing jelly had soothed him. He awakened to Ross’s shaking and blinked foggily up at the other’s thin face.

“Back to the salt mines, brother!” Ross put the blackened and torn nail of an abused finger to his mouth. “I could do with a blowtorch now. Climb out of your downy bed, but fast, and join the slave gang.”

It was midmorning before they worked the fourth and last bolt out of its bed. And for a long moment after Renfry threw it from him with emphatic force, they just sat about the rim of the well, their torn and blistered hands hanging limply between their knees.

“All right.” Ashe roused. “Now let’s see if she’ll come up!”

To get levers to raise the cover they had to dismantle two more of the robots. And they carried out that destruction with savage satisfaction. Somehow, attacking the unresisting semi-manlike forms gave them release from some of the frustration and fear. They got stout bars and went back to attack the well cover.

They never knew afterward how long it took them to pry that plug out of its bed. But a last frantic heave on the part of all, together, suddenly snapped it apart in two halves, displaying the dark hole from which the pipe arose.

Though it was day outside, as brilliantly clear a day as the one before had been, the interior of the tower was not too well lighted and they had no torch to explore those depths. Renfry lay down, to thrust both arms into the well, running his hands along the surface of the pipe as far as he could reach.

“Find anything?” Ashe crouched beside him, peering over one shoulder.

“No . . .” And then he changed that to an excited, “Yes!”

“I can barely touch it—feels as if the scaled coating on the pipe is caught.” He wriggled and Travis caught hold of his legs to anchor him.

In the end Renfry did the rest of the tedious job painfully, with frequent halts for rest. He hung head down in that pit, kept from wedging his head and shoulders in too tightly by the others’ hold on him. He had to work mainly by touch, since his own body blocked out three-quarters of the already subdued light, and with improvised tools hurriedly culled from the litter about them.

The fourth time they pulled him out for a breather, he rolled over on his back and lay gasping. “I’ve pried the thing loose as far down as I can reach.” His words came one by one as if he could barely summon up the strength to push them out. “And it’s still fast farther down.”

“Maybe we can work it loose, pulling from up here.” Ashe’s hands curved about the scaled surface of the pipe where it projected over the side of the well.

“You can try.” Renfry rubbed his fists across his forehead as Travis, with a heave he tried to make gentle, moved the technician’s dead weight away from the side of the opening, to put his own hands overlapping Ashe’s.

Together they strained to move the column of the pipe inside the tube of the well. But it appeared glued to the side where Renfry had fought to free it. Beads of sweat gathered along the line of black hair above Travis’ forehead, trickled down to sting across his lips. And in the half-light he saw Ashe’s jaw line set—sharp under the thin brown skin—while the cords and muscles of his arms and shoulders stood out to be modeled under the fabric of the blue suit.

Then Ross added his weight to the effort. “You pull,” he told Ashe. “Let us push in your direction. If it is ever going to give, that ought to do it.”

For a long, long moment it seemed that the pipe was not going to give, that too much damage existed below. Then Ashe flew back, the hose striking him hard in the chest as the obstruction below gave way and Ross and Travis sprawled halfway across the opening.

They scrambled up and Ross hurried to pull Ashe free of the hose. With Renfry trailing, they went back to the outer air of the port. They took up the towrope once again and began the labor of dragging the hose to meet the ship. The scaled pipe moved sluggishly, but they were winning, foot by painful foot.

Then Travis, during one of their all-too-frequent halts, glanced back and cried out. They were three-fourths of the way to their goal, but from under the belly of the hose snake was spreading a stain of moisture which gleamed in the afternoon light. That last rip to free the tube must have weakened its fabric and the unknown fuel was being lost.

Renfry stumbled back, knelt to explore, and jerked one hand away with a cry of pain. “It’s corrosive—like acid,” he warned. “Don’t touch it.”

“Now what?” Ross kicked dirt over the stain, watched the soil crumble into slime in the dark smear of fluid.

“We can get the pipe on to the ship—and hope that enough of the fuel comes through,” Ashe answered in a colorless voice. “I don’t think we can hope to mend the hose.”

And because they could see no other way out, they went back to hauling at the towrope, trying not to glance back or think of the fuel seeping out of the pipe line. Renfry nursed his burnt hand against his chest until they at last pushed the end of the hose under the curve of the globe. He got down and crawled under, grunting with pain as he fastened the head of the snake against the opening in the ship.

“Is it feeding through?” Ross asked the all-important question.

Renfry, almost as if he dreaded the answer, put his good hand palm-down on the scaled side of the pipe, holding it there for a long moment while they waited to know the future.

“Yes.”

They had no idea how much fuel the ship required—or whether the necessary amount was still available. The moist seepage along the hose continued to spread. But Renfry lay with his hand on the pipe, nodding to them from time to time that the feed of fluid was still in progress.

There came a pop like a small explosion. The head of the pipe dropped from the opening in the ship, the hose now flaccid. Renfry tapped and hammered at the cap which had slid into place, pulling down over it a second protective lock. When that clicked under his efforts he rolled out.

“That’s that. We’ve all we’re going to get.”

“Is it enough?” Travis wanted to ask—to demand. But he knew that the others were as ignorant as he of the proper answer.

They straggled back to the port ladder, somehow pulled themselves up, and made their way in a blind haze of fatigue to the cabin bunks. What they could do they had done—now their success was back again in the hands of blind fortune.

Travis roused out of a doze. The vibration in the walls— They were bound off-planet again! But were they heading home? Or would that unknown fuel only take them into space, abandon them there to drift forever?

He dreamed—of red cliffs and sage, piñon pine, and the songs of small birds in a canyon. He dreamed of the feel of a desert wind against one’s body and the surge of horse muscles between one’s legs—of a world before mankind aspired to space. And it was a good dream, so good a one that even when it drifted from him after the way of dreams, Travis lay very still, his eyes closed, trying to will it back again.

But the sterile smell of the ship was in his nostrils, the feel of the ship was under his hands, closing around his body. And his old claustrophobic dislike of the globe was reborn with an intensity he had almost forgotten. He opened his eyes with a forced effort.

“We’re still on the beam.” Ross sat on the bunk opposite, his face hollow with strain under the blue light. He held up his hands. Both normal and scarred fingers were crossed, and he laughed as he so displayed them. “Soup’s on,” he added.

They counted the ration tins again that day. The contents of those few containers must be stretched to the limit now. Ashe measured out the portions which must serve for nourishment each waking period.

“We will just have enough if the time element remains the same. Stay in your bunks as much as possible—the less energy you burn the better.”

But a man could sleep just so much. And however earnestly they pursued that escape, there came a time when sleep fled and one could only lie, staring up, or with closed eyes, while lone minutes of waiting stretched into hours, always darkened by fears.

“I was thinking,” Ross spoke suddenly into the silence of the cabin he shared with Travis, “when we come in we should show up on the radar screens before we land. It’ll be just like some bright boy to loose off a missile, just for practice. We can’t possibly signal that we’re only space travelers coming home.”

“We’re armed.” But Travis wondered what defenses the globe did have. He knew little about missiles. Their government—other governments—could have any number of unpleasant surprises waiting to greet air-borne craft which could not adequately identify themselves.

“Dream on.” Ross sounded scornful. “I don’t see us knocking down everything shot at us with those cannon. We don’t even know how to aim the things!”

They broke out of hyperspace, that period of discomfort heightened by their weakened condition. But in spite of that weakness, they dragged themselves to the control cabin to watch that cloudy blue ball grow on the vision screen. Travis discovered he was shaking, feeling almost as ill as he had during the food-testing session. Was that blue ball—home? Dared they believe so—or was it a mirage they were all sharing now because they wanted it so badly? Just as the picture device of the aliens could reproduce any man’s home site to lighten his loneliness?

But now the familiar lines of the continents sharpened. Ross’s head went down, his face hidden in his hands. And Ashe spoke slowly certain measured words Travis knew, though they were no part of his own heritage. Renfry’s hands ran back and forth along the edge of the control board, caressingly.

“She did it! She’s brought us home!”

“We aren’t down yet!” Ross didn’t lift his head and his words were sharp, as if perhaps he could insure their eventual safe landing by his very doubt of it.

“She brought us this far,” Renfry crooned. “She’ll take us the rest of the way. Won’t you, old girl?”

They met the jolt of the break into Terran atmosphere, accepted it, half numbed, still unbelieving. Ross released his hold on the chair, made for the well of the ladder.

“I’m going down.” He averted his eyes from the screen as if unable to watch any longer.

And suddenly Travis shared the other’s distrust of that window on space. He followed Ross, swinging down the ladder to their cabin, throwing himself prone in the bunk to await their landing—if there would be a safe landing.

The thin vibration of a take-off motor was nothing to the pressure of air against the globe skin now. It raised a hum which sang in their ears, through every atom of their tense bodies. All the waiting they had managed to put behind them was nothing compared to this last stretch they could not measure by any clock. The feeling that something might—would happen—to negate all their hard-won safety gnawed deep.

Travis heard Ross mutter on the other side of the cabin but could distinguish no words. What were they doing now? Racing night or day around the surface of their world, trying to home on the spot from which the alien journey tape had lifted them weeks ago?

Seconds crawled—minutes—hours . . . One could measure this only by uneven breaths drawn with difficulty as the weight of gravity pulled once more. Were they now registering on radar screens, hostile and friendly alike, summoning a net of missiles to fence them off from the firmness of solid earth? Travis could almost picture the rise of such a rocket, trailing a spear tail of fire—coming in—

He cringed as he lay in the bunk, the soft padding rising about his gaunt body.

“Coming down.”

Had those words sounded through the ship’s com? Or were they only an echo of his own imagination?

He felt the pressure against the padding, the squeeze of chest and lungs, harder to bear because of his weakness. But he did not black out.

There was a jar, the ship rolled, settled slightly aslant. Travis’ hands moved to the straps about him. There was complete silence. He was loathe to break it, hardly daring to move—somehow unable even now to believe that they were down, that under them must rest the brown soil of his own earth.

Ross sat up jerkily. Freeing himself from the protective harness of the bunk, he made for the door. He walked like a sick man, driven by some overwhelming force outside himself.

His voice came as a whisper. “Got—to—see . . .”

And then Travis knew that he must see also. He could not accept any evidence except that of his own eyes. He followed Ross along the corridor—to the inner lock. And when the other fumbled at the closing, he added his own strength to open it.

They went through the air lock, grabbed at the outer port almost together. Ross was shaking, his head hunched between his shoulders, his face gray and wet.

It was Travis who opened the door. They were facing east and the time must be early dawn, for there was a belt of shadow beneath the curve of the ship while on the horizon light banners spread pale gold. He dropped down, his eyes on that band.

“Company coming.” Ross swept out an arm. There was a soaring rumble of sound. A quartet of planes in formation cut across the light patch of sky.

There were spotlights flashing on around the ship—flooding away the shadows. Now Travis could pick out a buckled framework, signs of a disaster. And among the wreckage men were moving, drawing in to the star ship. But beyond them the sun was rising. His sun—rising to light his world! They had made it against all the stacked odds. Travis’ hand smoothed the skin of the globe beyond the frame of the open port, as he might have smoothed the arched neck of the pinto that had brought him through a grueling day’s ride on the range.

The sun was yellow on the distant hills. And they were the good brown earth of home!