Time and Again

XXXVIII

For three days Sutton toiled to free the ship from the tons of sand that the treacherous, swift-running river currents had mounded over it. And admitted, when three days were gone, that it was a hopeless task, for the current piled up the sand as fast as he could clear it.

From there on he concentrated on clearing an opening to the entrance lock, and after another day and many cave-ins, he accomplished his purpose.

Wearily he braced himself against the metal of the ship.

A gamble, he told himself. But I will have to gamble.

For there was no possibility of wrenching the ship free by using the engines. The tubes, he knew, were packed with sand and any attempt to throw in the rockets would simply mean that he and the ship and a good portion of the landscape would evaporate in a flashing puff of atomic fury.

He had lifted a ship from a Cygnian planet and driven it across eleven years of space by the power of mind alone. He had rolled two sixes.

Perhaps, he told himself. Perhaps…

There were tons of sand, and he was deathly tired, tired despite the smooth, efficient functioning of his nonhuman system of metabolism.

I rolled two sixes, he said.

Once I rolled two sixes and surely that was harder than the task I must do now. Although that called for deftness and this will call for power…and suppose, just suppose I haven't got the strength.

For it would take strength to lift this buried mass of metal out of the mound of sand. Not the strength of muscles, but the strength of mind.

Of course, he told himself, if he could not lift the ship he still could use the time-mover, shift the ship, lying where it was, forward six thousand years. Although there was hazards he did not like to think about. For in shifting the ship through time, he would be exposing it to every threat and vagary of the river through the whole six thousand years.

He put his hand up to his throat, feeling for the key chain that hung around his neck.

And there was no chain!

Mind dulled by sudden terror, he stood frozen for a moment.

Pockets, he thought, but his hands fumbled with a dread certainty that there was no hope. For he never put the keys in his pockets…always on their chain around his neck where they would be safe.

He searched, feverishly at first, then with a grim, cold thoroughness.

His pockets held no key.

The chain broke, he thought in frantic desperation. The chain broke and it fell inside my clothes. He patted himself, carefully, from head to foot, and it was not there. He took off his shirt, gently, cautiously, feeling for the missing key. He tossed the shirt aside and, sitting down, pulled off his trousers, searching in their folds, turning them inside out.

And there was no key.

On hands and knees, he searched the sands of the river bed, fumbling in the dim light that filtered through the rushing water.

An hour later he gave up.

The shifting, water-driven sand already had closed the trench he had dug to the lock and there was now no point of getting to the lock, for he could not open it when he got there.

His shirt and trousers had vanished with the current.

Wearily, beaten, he turned toward the shore, forcing his way through the stubborn water. His head broke into open air and the first stars of evening were shining in the east.

On shore he sat down with his back against a tree. He took one breath and then another, willed the first heartbeat, then the second and a third…nursed the human metabolism back into action once again.

The river gurgled at him, deep laughter on its tongue. In the wooded valley a whippoorwill began his measured chugging. Fireflies danced through the blackness of the bushes.

A mosquito stung him and he slapped at it futilely.

A place to sleep, he thought. A hay-loft in a barn, perhaps. And pilfered food from a farmer's garden to fill his empty belly. Then clothes.