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Title: The beacon to elsewhere

Author: James H. Schmitz

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: December 31, 2023 [eBook #72558]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEACON TO ELSEWHERE ***





    _The forces of the Universe met at Lion Mesa. They were
    represented by the rebel Terrans; by Dowland of the Interstellar
    Police; and by the monstrous shapes from an alien galaxy. They all
    sought the same thing: the time-wrenching power of ..._

                        The BEACON to ELSEWHERE

                  Complete Novel by JAMES H. SCHMITZ

                         Illustrated by FINLAY

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Amazing Stories April 1963.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


It didn't happen twice a year that Gustavus Robert Fry, Chief
Commissioner of the Interstellar Police Authority, allotted more than
an hour in his working day to any one appointment. However, nobody in
the outer offices was surprised to learn that the chief expected to
remain in conference until noon today, and was not to be disturbed
before then. The visitor who had been ushered in to him--without
benefit of appointment--was Howard Camhorn, the Overgovernment's
Coordinator of Research. It was a meeting of political mastodons.
Portentous events would be on the agenda.

Seated at the desk in his private office, Gus Fry, massive,
strong-jawed, cold-eyed--looking precisely like the power-house,
political and otherwise, which he was--did not feel entirely at ease.
Howard Camhorn, sprawled in a chair half across the room from the
Chief Commissioner, might have passed for a middle-aged, moderately
successful artist. He was lanky, sandy-haired, with a lazy smile,
lazier gestures. But he was, by several degrees, the bigger VIP of the
two.

Camhorn said, "There's no question at all, of course, that the space
transport your boys picked up is the one we're interested in. But is it
absolutely certain that our Ym-400 is no longer on board?"

Fry shrugged. "It's certain that it isn't in the compartment where
it was stored for the trip--and the locks to that compartment have
been forced. It's possible that whoever removed the two Ym cases has
concealed them in some other part of the ship. That would be easy to
do, but...."

Camhorn shook his head. "No," he said. "Nobody would benefit from that.
I'm afraid we'll have to resign ourselves to the fact that the stuff
has been taken."

       *       *       *       *       *

Fry said, "It looks like it. The police search will go on until your
own investigators get there, but there's no reason to believe anything
will be found."

"The ship's course had been reset so that it was headed into unoccupied
space?"

"Yes," said Fry. "It was only by a very improbable coincidence that
an IPA boat happened to spot it. The transport's new course wouldn't
have brought it anywhere near a traffic lane, inhabited planet, or
normal patrol route. Three weeks later, when its fuel was exhausted,
the planted explosives would have blown it up without a chance that the
wreckage would ever be detected."

"How about the cargo? Have you heard about that? Was it otherwise
intact?"

"As far as we can tell. The shippers will check everything in detail
when the freighter gets back to port. But it's a good guess that the
Overgovernment's Ym-400 is the only item missing."

       *       *       *       *       *

Camhorn nodded. "A group which was planning to pick it up wouldn't be
very interested in ordinary loot. That seems to make it conclusive." He
wrinkled his nose reflectively. "Modus operandi?" he asked.

"Two possibilities," Fry said. "They had themselves loaded aboard with
the cargo, or they intercepted the transport en route and entered it in
flight."

"Which do you like?"

"The first. In fact, the other is hardly a possibility. Even the IPA
couldn't get aboard a modern automatic freighter between ports without
setting off an explosion of alarms in every flight control station on
its course. No such alarm was recorded. And there is no indication of a
forcible entry."

"So our thieves had themselves loaded on," said Camhorn. "Now, Gus,
I've always been under the impression that the check system which keeps
stowaways out of the automatic transports was foolproof."

The IPA Chief shrugged. "It's been foolproof so far. But not because it
was impossible to circumvent. It's simply that circumventing the check
system would add up to so enormously expensive a proposition that the
total cash value of a transport and its cargo wouldn't be worth the
trouble. These people definitely were not considering expenses."

"Apparently not," Camhorn said. "So how did they get the Ym-400 off the
ship?"

"They had a small boat loaded on board with them. That's a supposition,
so far; they left very few traces of their activities. But it's the
only way the thing could have been done. They had obtained exact
information of the transport's plotted route and time schedule. At a
calculated point, they picked up the two cases of YM, rerouted the
ship, timed and planted their explosives, disconnected the alarm system
at the entry lock, and left in the boat. Naturally, another ship was
moving along with the freighter by then, waiting to pick them up.
That's all there was to it."

"You make it sound simple," said Camhorn.

"The difficulty," said Gus Fry, "would be in preparing such an
operation. No matter how much money these people could lay on the
line, they must have spent several months in making the necessary
arrangements without once alerting the port authorities."

"They had enough time," Camhorn admitted reflectively. "Ym-400 has been
shipped for a number of years in the same manner and over the same
route."

"I've been wondering," Fry remarked, "why this manner of shipping it
was selected."

Camhorn smiled briefly. "When was the last time an automatic transport
was hijacked, Gus?"

"Fifty-seven years ago," Fry said. "And the method employed then
wouldn't have worked on a modern transport, or under the present check
system."

"Well, that's part of your answer. Automatic shipping risks have become
negligible. The rest of the answer is that we've avoided too obviously
elaborate safeguards for Ym-400. If we put it on a battleship each time
it was moved, the technological espionage brethren would hear about it.
Which means that everybody who might be interested would hear about it.
And once the word got out, we'd start losing the stuff regardless of
safeguards to people who'd be willing to work out for themselves just
what made it so valuable to the Overgovernment. As it is, this is the
first sample of Ym-400 to go astray in the thirty-two years we've had
it."

"Two thirty-four kilogram cases," Fry said. "Is that a significant
amount?"

"I'm afraid it's an extremely significant amount," Camhorn said wryly.

Fry hesitated, said, "There's something very odd about this, Howard...."

"What's that?"

"I had the definite impression a few hours ago that you were almost
relieved to hear about the transport."

       *       *       *       *       *

Camhorn studied him for a few seconds. "As a matter of fact," he said,
"I was. Because of one thing. If this hadn't been obviously a criminal
act, humanly engineered--if the transport, say, had simply blown up en
route or vanished without giving an alarm...."

"Vanished without giving an alarm?" Fry repeated slowly. "Without human
intervention?"

"If," said Camhorn, "any least part of the Ym-400 it was carrying had
been radioactive, I wouldn't have been surprised to learn something
like that had happened. But, of course, the shipment was stable. And
stable Ym-400 has shown no more disturbing potentialities to date
than the equivalent amount of pig iron. If it ever develops them, the
research programs connected with the substance will be indefinitely
delayed. They may have to be abandoned." He gave Fry his lazy smile.
"Does that explain my apparent relief, Gus?"

"More or less," Gus Fry said. "Would it be a calamity if those
particular programs had to be abandoned?"

"The Overgovernment would consider it a calamity, yes."

"Why?"

"If and when," said Camhorn, "the bugs get worked out of Ym-400,
it may ensure our future control of space against any foreseeable
opposition."

Fry kept his face carefully expressionless.

"So, naturally," Camhorn went on, "we'd prefer to keep dissident groups
from playing around with the substance, or becoming aware of its
possibilities."

Fry said, "There seems to be at least one dissident group which has
much more complete information about Ym-400 than, for example, the
Interstellar Police Authority."

Camhorn shook his head. "We can't say how much they really knew, Gus.
The theft might have been arranged as a speculative operation. There's
enough loose money in large quantities around to make that quite
possible."

Fry grunted. "Do you have any definite suspects?"

"A great many. Unfortunately, there seems to be at least some
probability that the people involved won't turn out to be among them.
However, those lists will provide an immediate starting point. They're
being transferred to the IPA today."

"Thanks," Fry said sourly.

"I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to, Gus. Our Research investigators
can't begin to cope with a number like that. They will cooperate with
you closely, of course."

"Nobody else will," said Fry. "I've come to the conclusion that our
current populations are the least cooperative people in the history of
the race."

Camhorn nodded. "Naturally."

"Naturally? Why should they be? Most of them are a little short
of living space--unless they're willing to put up with frontier
conditions--but otherwise humanity's never had it so good. They're not
repressed; they're babied along--nine-tenths of the time anyway. They
do just about as they damn well please. Thirty percent of them won't
turn out a stroke of honest work from the beginning of their lives to
the end."

"True enough. And you've described an almost perfect setting for
profound discontent. Which is being carefully maintained, by the way.
We don't want humanity to go to sleep entirely just yet. Gus, how much
do you know personally about Ym-400?"

"Nothing," said Fry. "Now and then some rumor about it comes to the
IPA's attention. Rumors of that kind go into our files as a matter of
course. I see the files."

"Well, then," said Camhorn, "what rumors have you seen?"

"I can give you those," Fry said, "in a few sentences. YM--or
Ym-400--is an element rather recently discovered by the
Overgovernment's scientists; within the past few decades. It has
the property of 'transmuting space-time stresses'--that's the rumor,
verbatim. In that respect, it has some unspecified association with
Riemann space phenomena. It has been located in a star system which
lies beyond the areas officially listed as explored, and which at
present is heavily guarded by Overgovernment ships. In this system is
an asteroid belt, constituting the remnants of a planet broken up in an
earlier period by YM action. And there," Fry added, grinning wolfishly,
"I can even bring in a factual detail. I know that there is such a
guarded system, and that it contains nothing but its star and the
asteroid belt referred to. I could give you its location, but I'm sure
you're familiar with it."

Camhorn nodded. "I am. Any other rumors?"

"I think that sums them up."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well," Camhorn said judiciously, "if the IPA is to be of much use
to us in this investigation, it should be better informed than that.
The rumors are interesting, though satisfactorily inaccurate. Ym-400,
to begin with, is not a single element. It's a compound of several
elements of the same series. The symbol attached to it is quite
meaningless...."

"For security reasons?"

"Of course. Now, with one notable exception, all elements in this
series were discovered during the Overgovernment's investigation of
Riemann space properties in the two intragalactic creation areas we
have mapped to date. As you may recall, that program was initiated
forty-five years ago. The elements we're talking about are radioactive:
half-life of up to an hour. It was suspected they had a connection with
the very curious, apparently random distortions of space-time factors
found in the creation areas, but their essential properties made it
impossible to produce them in sufficient quantity for a sufficient
length of time to conduct a meaningful examination.

"Ymir, the last element of this series, was not discovered in the
same areas, or at the same time. It was located ten years later, in
stable trace-quantities in the asteroid belt you've mentioned, and
to date it has not been found anywhere else. Ymir is a freak. It is
chemically very similar to the rest of the series and has an unstable
structure. Theoretically, its presence as and where it was found was an
impossibility. But it was recognized eventually that Ymir produces a
force field which inhibits radioactivity. Until the field is interfered
with the element is stable...."

"What interferes with it?"

Camhorn grinned. "People. Until it's deliberately tampered with, Ymir
is changeless--as far as we know. Furthermore it will, in compound,
extend its inhibiting field effect instantaneously to three other
elements of the same series. A very fortunate circumstance, because
Ymir has been found only in minute amounts, and unknown factors
still prevent its artificial production. The other three elements
are produced readily, and since a very small proportion of Ymir
retains them in stable--or pseudostable--form, they can be conserved
indefinitely."

"_That's_ the Ym-400 compound?" Fry asked.

"That's it."

Fry said thoughtfully, "Perhaps I should remind you, Howard, that this
conversation is being recorded."

Camhorn nodded. "That's all right. Now that we know someone else is
in possession of sixty-eight kilograms of Ym-400, we're confronted
with radically altered circumstances. The loss incurred by the theft
isn't important in itself. The Ymir component in such a quantity is
detectable almost only by its effects, and the other components can be
produced at will.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The question is how much the people who have the stolen compound in
their hands actually know about it. We would prefer them to know
several things. For example, up to a point Ym-400 is easily handled.
It's a comparatively simple operation to reduce or restore the force
field effect. The result is a controlled flow of radioactivity from the
compound, or its cessation. Now, you've mentioned having heard that
Ym-400 transmutes space-time stresses--"

Fry nodded.

"Well," Camhorn said, "as a matter of fact, that's exactly what it
appears to do--as was surmised originally of the unstable elements in
the series. The active compound transmutes space-time stresses into a
new energy with theoretically predictable properties. Theoretically,
for example, this new energy should again be completely controllable.
Have you picked up any rumors of what our experiments with the
substance were supposed to achieve?"

Fry said, "Yes. I forgot that. I've heard two alternate theories. One
is that the end result will be an explosive of almost unimaginable
violence. The other is that you're working to obtain a matter
transmitter--possibly one with an interstellar range."

Camhorn nodded. "Potentially," he said, "Ym-400 is an extremely
violent explosive. No question about it. The other speculation--it
isn't actually too far-fetched--well, that would be the equivalent of
instantaneous space-travel, wouldn't it?"

Fry shrugged. "I suppose so."

"However," Camhorn said, "we haven't transmitted even a speck of matter
as yet. Not deliberately, at any rate. Do you know why, Gus?"

"No. How would I?"

"No rumors on that, eh? I'll tell you. Ym-400, when activated even in
microquantities, immediately initiates the most perverse, incalculable
effects ever to confront an experimenter. There has been, flatly, no
explanation for them. I've had ordinarily unimpressionable physicists
tell me with tears in their eyes that space-time is malevolently
conscious of us, and of our attempts to manipulate it--that it delights
in frustrating those attempts."

Gus Fry grinned sourly. "Perhaps they're right."

"As it happens," Camhorn observed, "the situation is very unfunny, Gus.
Experiments with Ym-400 have, to date, produced no useful results--and
have produced over eleven hundred casualties. Most of the latter were
highly trained men and women, not easily replaced."

Fry studied him incredulously. "You say these accidents have not been
explained?"

Camhorn shook his head. "If they were explicable after the event,"
he said, "very few of them would have happened in the first place. I
assure you there's been nothing sloppy about the manner in which the
project has been conducted, Gus. But as it stands today, it's a flop.
If the stakes were less high, it would have been washed out ten years
ago. And, as I said before, if there were reason to believe that the
stable compound was involved in the disappearance of a space transport,
we probably would postpone further operations indefinitely. One such
occurrence would raise the risks to the intolerable level."

Fry grunted. "Is that what those accidents were like?
Things--people--disappear?"

"Well ... some of them were of that general nature."

Fry cleared his throat. "Just tell me one more thing, Howard."

"What's that?"

"Has any part of what you've said so far been the truth?"

Camhorn hesitated an instant. "Gus," he said then, "can you erase your
question and my reply from the recording?"

"Of course."

"Erase them, please. Then blank out our further conversation."

       *       *       *       *       *

A few seconds later, Fry said, "All right. You're off the record."

"Most of what I told you was the truth," Camhorn said, leaning back in
his chair. "Perhaps not all of it. And perhaps I haven't told you the
whole truth. But we're out to spread some plausible rumors, Gus. We
could not afford to get caught in obvious lies."

Fry reddened slowly. "You feel the Interstellar Police Authority will
spread those rumors?"

"Of course it will. Be realistic, Gus. Naturally, you'll transmit the
information I've given you only to qualified personnel. But there'll be
leaks, and ... well, what better authentication can we have for a rumor
than precisely such a source?"

"If you know of any potential leaks among the IPA's 'qualified
personnel,'" Fry said, "I'd appreciate seeing the names."

"Don't be stuffy, Gus," Camhorn said affably. "We're not slandering the
Authority. We're banking on the law of averages. As you've indicated,
the IPA can't be expected to carry out this investigation unless it's
given some clues to work on. We're giving it those clues. In the
process, we expect to start the spread of certain rumors. That's all to
the good."

"But what's the purpose?"

"I've told you that. Our criminals may or may not be caught as quickly
as we'd like. The group actually in the know may be--probably
is--quite small. But they should have a wide-spread organization, and
they'll be alert for counteraction now. They certainly will get the
information we want them to have, whether it comes to them through the
IPA or through some other channel; and that should be enough to keep
them from committing any obvious stupidities. Meanwhile, we'll have
avoided making the information public.

"We want to make sure they know--if they don't already know it--that
Ym-400 is unpredictably dangerous. That leaves them with several
choices of action. They can abandon those two thirty-four kilogram
cases, or simply keep them concealed until they obtain more complete
information about the material. Considering the manner in which the
theft was prepared and carried out, neither is a likely possibility.
These people are not ignorant, and they aren't easily frightened--and
they certainly have the resources to handle any expense factor."

Fry nodded.

"The probability is," Camhorn went on, "that they'll evaluate the
warning contained in these rumors realistically, but proceed with
experimentation--perhaps more cautiously than they would have done
otherwise.

"Which is as much as we hope to accomplish. I've told you of the losses
among our personnel. We have no real objection to seeing someone else
attempt to pull a few chestnuts out of the fire for us. That's the
secondary purpose of sacrificing some quite valid information. By the
time we catch up with our friends, we expect the sacrifice will have
been--in one way or another--to our advantage."

"And suppose," said Fry, "that their secret experiments with Ym-400
result in turning another planet into an asteroid cloud?"

"That's an extreme possibility," Camhorn said, "though it exists. The
point is that it exists now whatever we choose to do about it. We can
only attempt to minimize the risks."

"You'd still sooner catch them before they start playing around with
the stuff?"

"Of course we would. But we're working against time there."

       *       *       *       *       *

"How much time do we have before the thing gets critical?"

"Well," said Camhorn, "assume they've had at least four or five years
to prepare for the day when they could bring a quantity of Ym-400
into their possession. They'll have made every necessary arrangement
for concealed full-scale experimentation. But, unless they are
utterly reckless, they still have to conduct a thorough preliminary
investigation of the compound and its possibilities. That phase of the
matter shouldn't be too dangerous, and it can't be concluded in less
than six months."

Fry shook his head exasperatedly. "Six months!" he said. "We might get
lucky and pick them up next week, Howard ... but there are eighteen
planets and planet-class satellites at peak population levels,
seventy-three space cities with a total of eight times the planetary
populations, five Freeholder planets on each of which you could keep
an army concealed indefinitely if you wanted to go to the trouble. Add
in close to a hundred thousand splinter populations on semihabitables,
asteroids, spaceborne in fixed stations and mobile craft--we can't do
it, Howard! Not in six months. We've already started putting anyone
who might have the slightest connection with that space transport job
through the strainer, and we'll get on your lists of suspects as soon
as they're placed in our hands.

"But don't expect results in anything less than a year...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Fry, for once, had been too optimistic.

A year and a half went by. Endless series of more or less promising
leads were run into the ground. The missing Ym-400 didn't turn up.

The IPA put out its nets again, and began to check over the
possibilities that were left.

       *       *       *       *       *

Seen from the air, Lion Mesa, in the southwest section of the American
continent on the Freehold Planet of Terra, was a tilted, roughly
triangular table-land, furred green with thick clusters of cedar and
pinyon, scarred by outcroppings of naked rock. It was eight miles
across at its widest and highest point, directly behind an upthrust
mass of stone jutting toward the north and somewhat suggestive of the
short lifted neck and heavy skull of a listening beast. Presumably it
was this unusual formation which gave the mesa its name. From there the
ground dropped to the south, narrowing gradually to the third point of
the triangle. Near the southern tip in cleared ground were the only
evidences of human habitation--half a dozen buildings of small to
moderate size, handsomely patterned in wood and native stone. Directly
adjoining one of the buildings was a large, massively fenced double
corral. This was an experimental animal ranch; it and the mesa plus
half a hundred square miles of surrounding wasteland and mountain were
the private property of one Miguel Trelawney, Terrestrial Freeholder.

For the past twenty minutes, Frank Dowland--Lieutenant Frank Dowland,
of the Solar Police Authority--had kept his grid-car moving slowly
along the edges of a cloud bank west of the mesa, at an unobtrusive
height above it. During that time, he was inspecting the ranch area in
the beam of a high-powered hunting-scope. He had detected no activity,
and the ranch had the general appearance of being temporarily deserted,
which might be the case. Miguel Trelawney's present whereabouts were
not known, and Lion Mesa was only one of the large number of places in
which he was periodically to be found.

Dowland put the scope down finally, glanced at the sun which was
within an hour of setting. He was a stocky man in his early thirties,
strongly built, dressed in hunting clothes. The packed equipment in the
grid-car, except for a few special items, was that of a collector of
live game, the role regularly assumed by Dowland when at work on the
planet. The Freeholder Families traditionally resented any indication
of Overgovernment authority on Terra, and would have been singularly
uncordial to a Solar City police detective here, regardless of the
nature of his mission. But the export of surplus native fauna was one
of the forms of trade toward which they were tolerant. Moreover, they
were hunting buffs themselves. Dowland ordinarily got along well enough
with them.

He now opened a concealed compartment in the car's instrument panel,
and brought out a set of pictures of Trelawney's ranch on the mesa,
taken from an apparent distance of a few hundred yards above it. For
some seconds, Dowland compared the depth photographs with the scene he
had been observing. There appeared to have been no changes in any of
the structures in the eight months since the pictures were taken. At
least not above ground.

Dowland rubbed the side of his nose, scowling slightly. If the ranch
really was deserted, it would be best to leave it alone for the time
being and search elsewhere for Trelawney. To go down uninvited in
the absence of the owner would be as much out of character for an
experienced visitor on Terra as for a Freeholder. If observed at it--a
remote possibility perhaps in this area, but the possibility was
there--he could offer the excuse of a suspicion of engine trouble in
the grid-car. The excuse would be good, once. He preferred to reserve
it as a means of introducing himself to the Trelawneys when he caught
up with them--either Miguel, the current head of the dwindled family,
or Miguel's younger half-brother, Dr. Paul Trelawney. Neither rated as
a serious suspect in the matter of the Overgovernment's missing Ym-400,
but it had been a little difficult to find out what they had been doing
with themselves during the past year and a half. Dowland's assignment
was to find out, and to do it unobtrusively. Strictly routine.

       *       *       *       *       *

Terra, in terms of the YM search, hadn't seemed like too bad a bet
at first. The Freeholders entertained an open grudge against the
Overgovernment, which had restricted their nominally unclouded title
to the planet by somewhat underhanded legal means, when the principle
of the Freehold Worlds was laid down. Essentially, the Families became
the very highly paid caretakers of Terra. To Dowland, raised in the
crowded tunnels of the system of artificial giant asteroids known as
Solar City, the conservation of the natural resources of a living
world looked like a good idea. The Terran Families were interested
in conservation, but on their terms and under their control. The
Overgovernment politely refused.

That was one part of it. The other was that numerous contentious
factions in the space cities and on the so-called open worlds wanted
to spill over on the Freeholder planets. Again the Overgovernment
refused, and again it made sense to Dowland. But the Freeholders
feared--perhaps with justification, so far as Dowland could tell--that
political pressures would mount with each increase in excess population
and eventually lead to such measures. Many of them, probably the
majority, led by Anthony Brand Carter--Firebrand Carter, head of the
largest and wealthiest of the Families--believed that the only safe
solution was to arm the planet. They wanted heavy weapons, and enough
of them: the right to build them, to man them and, if necessary, to
use them to beat off encroaching groups. The Overgovernment pointed
out that the possession and use of major implements of war was by law
its own exclusive privilege. Litigation on the matter had gone on
for decades, was periodically renewed by Carter and his associates.
Meanwhile, many of Terra's sportsmen became members of an extremely
able-bodied group called Carter's Troopers, and assiduously practiced
the skills of battle with the means allowed them. Dowland and the Solar
Police Authority knew the Troopers were crack shots, excellent fliers
and horsemen, but the Overgovernment was not worrying about it at
present.

Mr. Paul Trelawney, the younger of the brothers, had been a Trooper
for two years while in his twenties, then had quarreled violently
with Firebrand Carter, had left Terra to major in physics at the
Overgovernment's universities, and presently received his degree.
What he had done after that wasn't known. He appeared occasionally
on Terra, might be here at present. Miguel, Paul's senior by almost
twenty years, now in his early fifties, had also taken an interest in
physics, attending an Overgovernment university a quarter of a century
earlier. Miguel's studies terminated before he obtained a degree,
as a result of a difference of opinion with the president of the
university, whom he challenged to a duel. The records of both brothers
indicated, in Dowland's opinion, more than a trace of the megalomania
not too uncommon among men with excessive wealth and no real claim
to distinction. But, in spite of their choice of studies, there was
nothing to link either Trelawney to the missing YM. Mental brilliance
might have made them suspect; but their I.Q. readings, while definitely
better than average--a number of notches above Dowland's own, for
that matter--were not outstanding. Their scholastic performance had
been of comparative quality. Miguel, on his return to Terra, had
dropped physics in favor of experimental biology. The ranch on Lion
Mesa was adapted to his hobby, which at the moment was directed to the
production of a strain of gigantic wild hogs for hunting purposes.
Presumably the breeding of bad-tempered tons of bacon on the hoof
satisfied his urge to distinguish himself as a gentleman scientist.
Aside from Paul's brief connection with Carter's Troopers neither
brother had shown any interest in Terran politics.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rather poor prospects, but Dowland's information was that after a year
and a half the better prospects were regarded as nearly exhausted, and
hadn't produced the slightest results, putting the various divisions
of the Interstellar Police Authority in the discouraging position of
now having to suspect almost anybody. If there was no sign of Miguel
Trelawney's presence here by sundown, he decided, he would move on to
the next check point. Trelawney's pets would be cared for by automatic
machinery; it might be several weeks before their owner showed up to
look them over.

His gaze shifted briefly around the plain out of which the mesa loomed.
It was turbulent today; gusty winds shook the car and electric storms
were boiling along the northern mountain ranges. Below, sand and dust
whirled up the mesa's steep flanks. Picking up the hunting-scope
again, Dowland began moving the visibeam almost at random and with low
magnification over the back of the table-land. Dense masses of trees
swept past, shouldered aside here and there by wind-scarred rock. A
thoroughly wild place. He brought the glasses back to the ranch area,
suddenly checked them there....

Somebody was in sight, moving toward the edge of the mesa nearest
him. He caught a flash of something white. Centering carefully on the
figure, Dowland turned on full magnification, and in the lenses, the
image of a young woman appeared at close-up range.

She had come to a stop; and for an instant Dowland was startled to
realize she was peering back at him through a pair of binoculars. But
lacking the visibeam of the IPA, her glasses couldn't, of course, do
much more than show her there was a grid-car up there. Now her free
hand lifted the long white cloth it was holding, and began swinging it
in swift, vigorous gestures through the air above her head.

In spite of the binoculars, Dowland was immediately sure of the woman's
identity--having, in the past few days, studied a number of pictures
of her. She was Jill Trelawney, the youngest of the three surviving
members of the Trelawney Freeholders. Miguel and Paul were her
uncles--and if she was here, one or the other of the men must certainly
be here also.

It was obvious that she was signaling to the car. Dowland glanced at
the communicator in the panel before him, saw it was turned on but
registering no local calls. His eyes narrowed with speculation. This
suddenly looked just a little bit interesting. If the Trelawneys were
expecting a visitor but preferred not to address him over the open
communication system, it indicated that they intended to be hard to
find.

Which might mean a number of things of no interest at all to the IPA.
But....

Dowland took his police gun from the pocket of his hunting jacket, and
began checking it by touch, as he swung the car's nose about toward the
ranch and went slanting down toward the air. Either of the brothers
might decide to make trouble, particularly if they had something to
conceal--but, at any rate, they couldn't claim he hadn't been invited
down.

Picking up the girl in the scope again, he saw that she realized he was
coming in. She had dropped the cloth but was still gazing up toward
the car, her free hand shielding her eyes from the setting sun.

In the next instant, without the slightest preliminary warning, every
instrument in the panel before Dowland went dead. Then the grid-car
began to drop like a stone.

       *       *       *       *       *

The world-wide gravity grid was Terra's general power source. It had
been an idiotically expensive installation; actually, no other planet
could have afforded it at present. Once installed, it was drawn on for
idiotically minor services. There weren't enough human beings on Terra
to begin to make a significant use of the grid.

But, there were compensating features. The grid was esthetically
unobtrusive, and available everywhere. It supplied power for anything
from personal wrist watches on up through the giant docking machines at
the space-ports. And it was reliable. There had been no power failures
and no accidents connected with the grid recorded in its eighty years
of operation.

That shining safety record, Dowland thought, manipulating the flight
controls with desperate haste, might become seriously marred in
something like three-quarters of a minute now. He'd be lucky to get
down alive. And another thought was clamoring for a different kind of
action with almost equal urgency--unusual and unexplained physical
phenomena of any kind were one of the things the YM searchers were
alerted to look out for; and he'd certainly run into one of them here.
He shot a glance down to his camouflaged wrist communicator. Just a few
seconds to spare, and he could get a private-beam alarm in to the Solar
Police Authority representative at the Columbia spaceport.

He didn't have a few seconds to spare. The grid-car was a lousy
glider--ponderous, sickeningly slow to respond. The rim of the mesa
swayed up. If he missed that stretch of cleared ground around the
Trelawney ranch, the car would either tear itself to pieces in the
forest beyond or do a ditch into the piled rubble at the mesa's foot.
He hauled back on the controls again, felt the car actually begin to
rise for an instant--

       *       *       *       *       *

"I'm sorry," Jill Trelawney was crying, running up the slope toward
him. "I'm so terribly sorry. I tired to warn you. I simply didn't
realize--are you hurt?"

Her face, Dowland thought, was probably no whiter than his own. The
canopy had caved in around him, and a jagged chunk of engine was
nestling in the passenger seat to his right. As he tried to stand up,
a section of the plastic floorboard collapsed; his foot followed it
through and struck solid ground. He worked himself out of the seat. The
grid-car creaked tiredly and settled another six inches. Dowland shoved
a piece of canopy aside and found he could straighten out.

He cleared his throat. "I don't think I'm hurt. Anyway, not much."

"Your face--it's bleeding!"

Dowland probed at a cut lip with his tongue and winced. "Didn't notice
it happen ... a lot of stuff flying around there for a moment. Now,
just what's going on?"

The girl swallowed nervously, staring at him. "The power's off."

"That I noticed." Something occurred to Dowland. "That's why you
couldn't call me on the communicator."

"Yes. I...."

"How long has it been off here?"

"Since this morning."

He looked at her thoughtfully, and a quick flush spread up into her
face. "I know," she said. "It was terribly stupid of me to--to get you
to come down. It just didn't occur to me that...."

"It's all right," Dowland said. "I'm here now." She was very
good-looking, though her face was strained at the moment. Strained and
scared. "You could not know how far the failure area extended." He
glanced over at the buildings. The crash of his landing hadn't brought
anyone into sight. "You're not alone here, are you?"

"No." She hesitated, went on half apologetically, "I'm sure I should
remember you, but I don't."

"Well, you wouldn't," Dowland said. "I'm not a Freeholder."

       *       *       *       *       *

The flicker of reaction in her eyes brought a prickling to the hairs at
the back of his neck. The thing looked hot, all right. He continued,
"You just may have heard of me by name, though. Frank Dowland, of
Dowland Animal Exports."

"Oh, yes." Apparently she did recognize the name. "I'm Jill Trelawney,
Dowland. I ... there's been an accident. A bad one, I'm afraid."

"Another accident? What kind?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Do you have a medical kit with you?"

"Of course. Who's hurt?"

"My uncle. Miguel Trelawney. He's up in the house."

"What's wrong with him?"

"That's what I don't know. He looks--I think he's terribly sick. In
some way."

"How long has he been sick?"

She hesitated. "This morning."

"Since the time the grid-power went off?"

Jill looked startled. "Why, yes."

And that about cinched it, Dowland thought. He said, "You two were
alone here?"

"No. I'm sure this all sounds very crazy, but--" She nodded at one
of the buildings down the slope from them, a long wooden structure
identified as a feed barn in Dowland's pictures of the ranch. "My other
uncle, Paul Trelawney--he's locked up in there."

"Locked up?" Dowland repeated.

"Yes. There's a key to the door somewhere, but I can't find it."

"Would Miguel know where it is?"

"I think so."

"Then we'll try to get him conscious again at least long enough to tell
us. You'd better get back to the house, Miss Trelawney. I'll dig out
the kit. Be up there in a minute."

He watched the tall supple figure start back across the slope, shook
his head a little, and turned to the wrecked car. She was either
somewhat stupid, or being cagey with a non-Terran. The last seemed a
little more likely. Too bad if she turned out to be involved with
something like the YM business, but that was out of his hands. He'd
have to report immediately, and the Overgovernment specialists would be
here in an hour. It wasn't his job.

He climbed cautiously back into the car. Out of sight of the house, he
pressed a key on the wrist communicator, said, "Chris? This is Dowland.
Emergency," and waited for the hum of response from the instrument.

There was no hum.

Half a minute later, he had the communicator off his wrist and opened.
He couldn't remember having struck his wrist hard enough against
anything to have damaged it, but the delicate mechanisms inside were a
crystal shambles. There was a portable communicator packed in with his
camping equipment. But it operated on grid-power.

It looked like it was going to remain his job for a while, after all.

       *       *       *       *       *

Miguel Trelawney, in Dowland's unvoiced opinion, was a man who was
dying. He was big-boned and heavily muscled, but on the low couch in
the living room he looked shrunken. Lead-colored skin and thready
pulse. Internal bleeding at a guess--an informed layman's guess.
Radiation burns.

Dowland looked over at the girl. She was disturbed and tense, but
nowhere near hysteria. "We might bring him around," he said bluntly.
"But it will take some hours at least. He's in bad shape."

Her hands, clasped together in her lap, went white around the knuckles.
"Will he ... can you save...."

Dowland shook his head. "I don't know if we can save him here. If we
got him to one of your hospitals tonight, he should have a very good
chance. But we can't do that--unless the grid-power cuts in again."

She said faintly, "What's happened to him?"

"Lady, that's fairly obvious. He's been ray-burned."

"Ray-burned? But how?"

"I wouldn't know." Dowland opened the medical kit, slid out several of
the tiny containers, turned one of them over in his hand. He asked,
"Where was he when you found him?"

"Lying outside the door of the lab."

"Lab?"

Jill Trelawney bit her lip. "The building I showed you."

"Where Paul Trelawney's locked up?"

"Yes. They call it a lab."

"Who are they?"

"Miguel and Paul."

"What kind of lab is it?" Dowland asked absently.

"I don't know. They're building something there. Some sort of a
machine."

"Are your uncles scientists?"

"Yes." Her tone had begun to harden--a Freeholder lady rebuffing a
non-Terran's prying.

Dowland said, "If we knew whether they had radiation suits in that
lab...."

"I believe they do."

He nodded. "That might account for Miguel."

He took a minute hypodermic syringe from the kit, inserted the needle
through a penetration point on the container he had selected, filled it
slowly. Jill stirred uneasily, asked, "What are you giving him?"

Dowland glanced over at her. "I don't know exactly. The brand name's
'medic.' There are around thirty other names for what's probably the
same preparation. They're all very popular wherever good doctors and
good hospitals aren't readily available. I haven't run into medic on
Terra, but I bring along my own supply."

"What will it do for him?"

"Well, as I understand it, as soon as I inject this into his arm, it
will spread through his body and start looking things over. Medic
appears to know what a healthy human body should be like. So it
diagnoses what's wrong--cold symptoms, burned-out lung, hangover,
broken ankle--and then tries to bring the situation back to normal."

       *       *       *       *       *

He slid up Miguel Trelawney's sleeve, inserted the needle tip into the
thick, flaccid biceps, slowly depressed the plunger. "Medic's supposed
to be in the class of a virus--a very well-intentioned virus when it
comes to human beings." He removed the needle, glanced at his watch.
"Almost six-thirty.... A hangover'd get knocked out in three minutes.
But judging from the condition your uncle seems to be in, it might be
four or five hours now before the stuff really begins to take hold with
him. If it can bring him back to consciousness by itself, it probably
won't happen much before morning. Might be earlier; but I don't think
we should wait for that before trying to get your Uncle Paul out of the
lab. If he hasn't come out on his own, he may be in the same shape as
Miguel. Or worse."

Jill's face paled slightly. "Yes. I've been thinking of that."

Dowland stood looking down at her, chewing on his lower lip. "You know,
Miss Trelawney, there's something very odd about the fact that you
found Miguel lying outside the lab when the door was locked."

She nodded. "I know. I don't have any explanation for it."

"Isn't there a storeroom of some kind around--where they might be
keeping radiation suits, for instance?"

"The ranch storehouse is the small square building just south of here.
I went through it this morning looking for a key to the lab. There
aren't any radiation suits there."

"You know what those suits look like?"

"Yes. I've worn them when taking part in attack drills."

"Would you recognize the lab key if you saw it?"

"Yes. Miguel showed me the one he usually carries with him." She got
up, went over to the mantle above the fireplace, took down a circular
wedge of metal, a half-inch thick, with smoothly beveled rim. She
handed it to Dowland. "The key is very similar to this one, but at
least three times as large."

Dowland hefted the object and shook his head. "Lady, by the weight of
it, this thing's metasteel. The stuff they use for bank vaults and
the hulls of battleships. And it looks as if the door to your uncles'
laboratory has an atomic lock because that's what this type of key is
made for. Do you know if the building's lined with steel inside?"

"It might be. Miguel told me that it had been extremely expensive to
build, that he had wanted to make sure no one could get into it while
he was away."

"If it's built of metasteel, he's done just that," Dowland said. "And
that makes it tough." He looked at the key in his hand. "What does this
key fit into?"

"I don't know. But I'm sure there's no other door on the ranch that has
an--an atomic lock. I found the key in Miguel's pocket this morning."

"Well, it's probably no good to us," Dowland said. "Now look, Miss
Trelawney. I'm carrying a protection gun that can be stepped up to
around six times the shock power of a heavy rifle slug. I'll try that
out at full charge on the lock to the lab, and then around the walls.
But if it's all metasteel, shooting at it won't get us anywhere. Then
we might make another search for that key. Or I could try getting down
off the mesa to get help."

Jill looked doubtful. "There's no easy way down off the mesa even in
daylight. And at night it would be worse."

Dowland said, "That part of it won't be too much of a problem. I
brought mountaineering equipment along this trip--planned to pick up a
Marco Polo ram and a few ewes--piton gun, clamp pitons, half-mile of
magnetic rope; the works. Question is, how much good will it do? I've
got a camp communicator, but it's grid-powered, and we don't know how
far the power failure extends around here at ground level. Is there
anyone down in the plain we could contact? They might have horses."

She shock her head. "I would have heard of that. You could wander
around there for weeks before you were seen."

Dowland was silent a moment. "Well," he said, "it should be worth a try
if we can't accomplish anything within another few hours. Judging from
my car's position when its power went off, it shouldn't really be more
than a ten-mile hike from the bottom of the mesa before I can start
using the communicator. But, of course, it will take up a lot of time.
So we'll see what we can do here first."

He slipped his jacket on. "You'd better stay with your uncle, Miss
Trelawney. I--"

He interrupted himself. An unearthly din had begun suddenly outside the
house--whistling squeals, then an angry ear-shattering noise somewhere
between a howl and a roar. The girl started, then smiled nervously.
Dowland asked, "What is _that_?"

"Miguel's pigs. I expect they're simply hungry. The feeding equipment
in the animal house isn't operating either, of course."

"Pigs? I've heard pigs make a racket, but never anything like that."

"These," said Jill, "are rather large. My uncle is interested in
experimental breeding. I understand the biggest tusker weighs nearly
two tons. They're alarming beasts. Miguel's the only one who can get
close to the boar."

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside it was early evening, still light, but Dowland went first to
the wrecked grid-car to get a flashlight. He'd need it during the
night, might even need it immediately if he found he could force
an entry into the laboratory. In that case--if the building wasn't
metasteel after all--he probably would find no YM inside it. Which,
Dowland admitted to himself, would be entirely all right with him.

But he was reasonably certain it was there. The Overgovernment's
instructions about what to watch for remained annoyingly indefinite,
but uniformly they stressed the unusual, in particular when associated
with the disastrous. And so far, that described the situation here. The
large and uncomfortable question was what kind of disaster might be
about to erupt next.

There were other questions, somewhat too many of them at the moment.
But the one he wanted answered immediately concerned Jill Trelawney's
role. There was a guaranteed way of getting the information from her,
but he had to be sure she wasn't as innocent as she acted before
resorting to it. At the very least, he had to establish that the
activities in the laboratory constituted some serious violation of
Overgovernment law--even if not directly connected with YM--and that
the girl knew about it. Otherwise, the whole present pattern of the
Ym-400 search on Terra might become very obvious to all interested
parties.

He thought he had a method of forcing Jill's hand. If she had guilty
knowledge, she might consider a non-Terran animal trader, who'd just
happened to drop in, literally, a convenient tool to use in this
emergency. She wanted to get help, too, though not from the Solar
Police Authority. The Trelawneys couldn't possibly be alone in this
thing.

But she couldn't, if guilty, take the chance of trying to make use of
an Overgovernment cop. A policeman wouldn't be here at this particular
moment by accident. There was some risk in revealing himself--she might
react too hastily--but not much risk, Dowland thought. From what he'd
seen of her, she'd use her head. She'd make sure of him.

The uproar from the animal building lessened as he went back across the
slope to the entrance of the lab. Miguel's beasts might have caught
his footsteps, and started to listen to see if he was coming in. The
outer door to the lab--a frame of the weather-proofed wood that covered
the building--stood slightly open. Dowland pulled it back, looked
for a moment at the slab of metasteel behind it, and at the circular
depression in the slab which was the atomic lock.

In character, so far. Three windows at the back of the house where he
had left Jill Trelawney with Miguel overlooked the lab area. Guilty or
not, she'd be watching him from behind one of those windows, though she
mightn't have come to any conclusions about him as yet. The reference
to his "protection" gun had been a definite give-away; he'd described
an IPA police automatic, and that was a weapon civilians didn't
carry--or didn't mention to strangers if they happened to carry them.

But a Freeholder lady might not know about that.

She couldn't avoid noticing the implications of an IPA antiradiation
field....

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland moved thirty steps back from the door, took out his gun, and
pressed a stud on the side of his belt. Immediately, a faint blue glow
appeared about him. Not too pronounced a glow even on the darkening
slope, but quite visible to anyone watching from one of the windows.
He took a deep breath, sucking air in through the minor hampering
effect of the field.

The rest was a matter of carrying through with the act. He'd known from
the instant of looking at the door that he was wasting his fire on
metasteel. But he slammed a few shots into the five-inch target of the
lock, then worked his way methodically about the building, watching the
weatherproofing shatter away from an unmarred silvery surface beneath.
The gun made very little noise, but Miguel's hogs were screaming
themselves hoarse again by the time he was finished.

Dowland switched off the AR field, and went back to the house. When he
came along the short entrance hall, she was waiting for him, standing
half across the living room, hands clasped behind her back. She looked
at him questioningly.

"No luck, Dowland?"

Dowland shook his head. "Not a bit." He started to shrug the jacket
from his shoulders, saw her dart the gun out from behind her, and
turned his left hand slightly, squeezing down on the black elastic
capsule he was holding between thumb and forefinger. Jill probably
never noticed the motion, certainly did not see or feel the tiny needle
that flashed from the capsule and buried itself in the front of her
thigh. Shocked bewilderment showed for an instant on her face; then her
knees gave way, the gun dropped from her hand. She went down slowly,
turned over on her side on the thick carpet, and lay still.

Well, Dowland thought, he had his proof....

Jill Trelawney opened her eyes again about five minutes later. She
made a brief effort to get out of the deep armchair in which she found
herself, then gave that up. The dark blue eyes fastened on Dowland,
standing before the chair. He saw alarm and anger in them; then a cold
watchfulness.

"What did you do?" she asked huskily.

"I shot first," Dowland said. "It seemed like a good idea."

Her glance shifted to Miguel on the couch across the room.

"How long was I unconscious?"

"Just a few minutes."

"And why...." She hesitated.

"Why are you feeling so weak? You've absorbed a shot of a special
little drug, Miss Trelawney. It does two things that are very useful
under certain circumstances. One of them is that it keeps the recipient
from carrying out any sudden or vigorous action. You might, for
example, be able to get out of that chair if you tried hard enough.
But you'd find yourself lying on the carpet then. Perhaps you'd be able
to get up on your hands and knees. You might even start crawling from
the room--but you'd do it very slowly."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland paused. "And the other thing the drug does is to put the
person into an agreeable frame of mind, even when he'd rather not be
agreeable. He becomes entirely cooperative. For example, you'll find
yourself quite willing to answer questions I ask."

"So you _are_ a police investigator," she said evenly.

"That's right." Dowland swung another chair around beside him, and sat
down facing her. "Let's not waste any more time, Miss Trelawney. Were
you going to shoot me just now?"

She looked briefly surprised.

"No," she said. "Not unless you forced me to it. I was going to disarm
you and lock you in a cellar downstairs. You would have been safe there
as long as was necessary."

"How long would that be?"

"Until I get help."

"Help from whom?"

Angry red flared about Jill's cheekbones. "This is incredible!" she
said softly. "Help from Carter."

"Firebrand Carter?" Dowland asked.

"Yes."

"He's associated with your uncles?"

"Yes."

"Who heads the group?"

"Miguel and Carter head it together. They're very close friends."

"And who else is in it--besides Paul and yourself?"

She shook her head. "There must be quite a few people in it, but I
don't know their names. We feel it's best if we know as little as
possible about one another at present."

"I see. But they're all Terran Freeholders?"

"Yes, of course."

"How did you happen to be told about Carter?"

"In case of an emergency here, I'm to contact him on a tight-beam
number."

"And just what," Dowland asked, "have your uncles been doing here?"

"Building a machine that will enable them to move back through time."

"With the help of Ym-400?"

"Yes."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland stared at her thoughtfully, feeling a little chilled. She
believed it, of course; she was incapable of lying now. But he didn't
believe it. He'd heard that some Overgovernment scientists considered
time-travel to be possible. It was a concept that simply had no reality
for him.

But he thought of the rumors about YM--and of Miguel found lying
inexplicably outside the laboratory building. He asked carefully, "Have
they completed the machine?"

"Yes. They were making the first full-scale test of it this
morning--and they must have been at least partly successful."

"Because of Miguel?"

"Yes."

"You feel," Dowland said, "that Miguel first went somewhere else--or
somewhen else, let's say--and then came back and wound up a little bit
away from where he'd started?"

"Yes."

"Any idea of how he was hurt?"

The girl shook her head. "The grid-power failure shows there was an
accident of some kind, of course. But I can't imagine what it was."

"What about Paul? Do you think he's still in the lab?"

"Not unless he's also injured--or dead."

Dowland felt the chill again. "You think he may be in some other time
at this moment?"

"Yes."

"And that he'll be back?"

"Yes."

"Can you describe that machine?" he asked.

"No. I've never seen the plans, and wouldn't understand them if I did.
And I've never been inside the lab."

"I see. Do you have any reason, aside from the way Miguel reappeared,
to think that the test was a partial success?"

"Yes. At three different times since this morning I've heard the sounds
of a river flowing under the house."

"You heard what?" Dowland said.

"A river flowing under the house. The noises were quite unmistakable.
They lasted for about thirty minutes on each occasion."

"What would that indicate?" he asked.

"Well, obviously ... this time period and another one--the one in which
that river flows--have drawn close to each other. But the contact is
impermanent or imperfect at present."

"Is that the way the machine is supposed to operate?"

"I don't know how the machine is supposed to operate," Jill Trelawney
said. "But that's what seems to have happened."

Dowland studied her face for a moment. "All right," he said then,
"let's leave it for now. Who developed this machine?"

"Miguel did. Paul helped, in the later stages. Others have helped
with specific details--I don't know who those other people were. But
essentially it was Miguel's project. He's been working on it for almost
twenty years."

And that simply couldn't be true. Unless....

"Miss Trelawney," Dowland said, "do you know what Miguel's I.Q. reading
is?"

"Of course. It's 192."

"And Paul's?"

"189." She smiled. "You're going to ask whether they faked lower levels
when they were tested by the university authorities. Yes, they did.
This thing has been prepared for a long time, Dowland."

"What's your own I.Q., Miss Trelawney?"

"181."

       *       *       *       *       *

Her dossier I.Q., based on records of her known activities and
behavior, was an estimated 128. The Freeholders did seem to have
planned very thoroughly for the success of this operation.

"Do you know who hijacked the Ym-400?" Dowland asked.

"Yes. Paul arranged for that."

"Have you seen the stuff yourself?"

"I have. Two small cases of blue ingots. A very dark blue.
Individually, the ingots appear to be quite heavy, though they aren't
very large."

That described exactly what the Overgovernment was looking for.
Dowland asked, "How much of it is in the laboratory?"

"It's all there."

He felt his scalp crawling. "All of it! Haven't your uncles heard that
YM is an incredibly dangerous thing to play around with?"

"Of course. But Miguel examined it very carefully after it was
obtained. If reasonable precautions are taken, there is no way in
which it _can_ become dangerous. The conclusion was that the
Overgovernment has spread rumors as a bluff, to try to prevent the YM
from being used."

"What's happened around here," Dowland said, "might indicate it wasn't
a bluff."

"You're jumping to conclusions, Dowland. A great many other things may
have gone wrong."

"Perhaps. But an I.Q. of 136 keeps telling me that we're in
considerable danger at the moment."

Jill nodded. "That's very probably true."

"Then how about giving me your full cooperation until we--you, I, your
uncles--are all safely out of this?"

"At the moment," Jill observed, "I don't appear to have a choice in the
matter."

"I don't mean that. The drug will wear off in a few hours. You'll be
able to move around freely again, and whether you cooperate or not
will depend on you. How will you feel about it then?"

"That depends," Jill said, "on whether we have reached an agreement."

"Agreement about what?"

"A price for your silence, and for any assistance you can give in
keeping things quiet. You can, of course, set the price as high as you
wish. Terra will meet it."

Dowland stared at her, somewhat astounded. It was as cold-blooded an
attempt at bargaining as he'd run into, considering the circumstances.
And--considering an I.Q. of 181--it seemed rather unrealistic. "Miss
Trelawney," he said, "the only thing silence might get me is a
twenty-year stretch in an IPA pen. I'm not quite that foolish."

"You're also not aware of the true situation."

"All right," Dowland said, "what is it?"

"Miguel and Paul have earned the right to carry out the first of these
tests. They may not complete it. But duplicates of their machine in
the laboratory are concealed about the planet, waiting to be put into
action by other teams of Freeholder scientists. You see? The tests will
be continued until any problems connected with shifting back through
time are recognized and overcome."

Dowland said, "Then why is the entire haul of YM stacked away in the
laboratory here?"

"Because that's where it's to be used at present. You still don't
understand the extent of this operation, Dowland. If we need more of
the Overgovernment's YM, we'll simply take it. It can be done at any
time. The only way the Overgovernment could really prevent future raids
would be by destroying its supplies of YM-400. And it isn't going to do
that--at least not before we've obtained as much as we can use."

       *       *       *       *       *

As far as his own information went, she could be right, Dowland
thought. He said, "So supposing some Freeholder scientists do succeed
eventually in traveling back in time. What will that accomplish?"

"Everything we want, of course," Jill said. "There'll be no more
reason to conceal our activities--and we'll have _time_. As much
time as we need. Thirty or fifty years perhaps. Scientific centers
and automatic factories will be set up in the past, and eventually
the factories will be turning out weapons superior to anything the
Overgovernment has. And then the weapons will come to the present--to
_this_ present, Dowland. Within a year from now, Terra will have
become a heavily armed world--overnight. There'll be no more talk then
of forcing us to remain under Overgovernment rule. Or of making Terra
another Open Planet...."

Theoretically, Dowland could see that such a plan might work. With the
time to do it in, and the resources of a world at the Freeholders'
disposal ... and there would be nothing to keep them from taking back
spaceships and mining the asteroids. For a moment, while Jill Trelawney
was talking, she had made it sound almost plausible.

Only for a moment. She was, of course, telling the truth as she knew
it. They were up to something very dangerous--and very illegal--here,
whatever it was, and they'd spread the time-travel idea around
among the lesser members of the group to help keep the real purpose
concealed. He said, "Just how far back in time are they planning to go,
Miss Trelawney?"

"Six hundred thousand years. The period is regarded as particularly
suitable for what is being planned."

Six hundred thousand years. Nothing half-hearted about the Freeholders,
Dowland thought sardonically, even as to the size of the lies they put
out. "When you waved me in here this evening," he said, "I had the
impression you were expecting someone else. Was I right?"

"Yes. But I wasn't waving you in, Dowland. I was attempting to wave you
off. If you'd been the man I thought it was, you would have realized
it.... Have you considered my suggestion?"

"About selling out to the Freeholders?"

"If you wish to call it that."

"Miss Trelawney," Dowland said amiably, "if I did sell out, would you
admire me for it?"

Her cheeks flushed. "No. You'd be despicable, of course."

Dowland nodded. "That's one thing we agree on. Now, just who was this
man you were expecting, and just why were you expecting him?"

The girl's lips twisted reluctantly for a moment; then words broke
out again. "Carter is to send a man to the ranch with some pieces of
equipment. The equipment either was unloaded at Columbia spaceport this
afternoon, or will be, early tomorrow morning. I thought you were the
messenger. Strange grid-cars don't come through this area more than
once every few weeks. If you'd been the man, you would already have
attempted to call our house communicator by the time I saw you...."

"To make sure the coast was clear before coming in with odd-looking
equipment."

"Yes. You would then have reported to Carter that there was no
answer, which would have resulted in an immediate investigation. I was
attempting to warn the messenger that he shouldn't come closer, that
something was seriously wrong here."

Dowland reflected, nodded. "That would have worked--if I'd been the
man. And now it seems it's a good thing I inquired about this, Miss
Trelawney. Because the messenger actually may have arrived this
evening, received no answer from the ranch, reported the fact, and gone
away again--mightn't he?"

"Yes, that may have happened." Her eyes were furious with frustration.

"And what would Carter do then?"

"He would rush a few squads of Troopers here to investigate."

"Hedgehopping," Dowland nodded, "in approved Trooper style to avoid
detection. They hit the power-failure area, and the first few cars
crash. They report the matter. What would happen then, Miss Trelawney?"

"Damn you, Dowland.... They'd scout around Lion Mesa to see how close
they could get by air. Carter would have horses and climbing equipment
flown in to that point, and they'd continue on horseback."

       *       *       *       *       *

There were other methods, Dowland thought. Parachutes, gliders--they
could even try ditching a few cars on the mesa as he'd done. He
considered, and mentally shook his head. Aside from the difficulties,
the Troopers would be warned to avoid spectacular stunts in the
vicinity of the mesa. They'd come exactly as she'd said. It was a
completely unobtrusive form of approach, even for a large body of men,
and it would still get them here fast.

He said, "Well, let's suppose all that has happened. Carter's Troopers
are on their way here at this minute, riding pellmell. Giving them
every break, what's the earliest moment we can expect them to show up?"

She said, "Not before morning."

"I'd figured it at perhaps two hours before sunrise," Dowland said.
"What would hold them up?"

"They can't climb the mesa at any point near the ranch by night.
A descent might be possible, but even that would be difficult and
dangerous. And they'll be carrying repair equipment to take care of
whatever's gone wrong. So they'll have to come up the northern end,
where it isn't so steep."

"And then," Dowland said, "they still have to come down across the
mesa on foot. Makes sense. And, of course, that messenger actually may
not get here before tomorrow. If he comes then, at what time would he
arrive?"

She shrugged. "Before noon. The hour wasn't specified."

"In any case," Dowland said, "you were figuring on stalling me around
here until Carter's boys turned up. Then you realized I must be an
Overgovernment man, and decided it would be too dangerous to allow me
to prowl about the ranch until help came."

Jill nodded.

Dowland considered her reflectively. "You understand, I believe, that
unless I can somehow get word to the Solar Police Authority within the
next few hours, Miguel's injuries may very well kill him? And that if I
could get word out, an SPA jet would have him in the nearest hospital
ten minutes later?"

"I understand both those things, Dowland," she said. "But I also know
that Miguel would not choose to have his life saved at the cost of
exposing our plans."

Dowland shrugged. "Very well.... Now, were the things that happened
before I got here as you've described them?"

"Yes."

"You know of no way to get into that laboratory at present?"

"Not unless you can find the key to the door."

"That key should be around this immediate area?"

"It should be," she said, "but I haven't been able to find it."

"No further ideas about that?"

"None."

Dowland was silent a moment. "Miss Trelawney, is there anything else
that might be of importance here that you still have not told me?"

Her eyes studied him coldly. "Perhaps one thing...."

"And what's that?"

"If you had been willing to be bribed," Jill Trelawney said, "I should
have asked the Troopers to shoot you."

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a lady, Dowland was thinking a few minutes later, who was
likely to be something of a problem to any man. However, she wouldn't
be his problem for a considerable number of hours now. She had
swallowed the sleep tablet he had given her without any trouble. After
the drug wore off, the tablet would keep her quiet till around dawn.

He stood looking about the wind-swept darkened slopes of the ranch
area. Clouds were moving past in the sky, but there would be
intermittent moonlight. The conditions weren't too bad for the search
he had in mind. There had to be a concealed storeroom about the place
somewhere, in which the Trelawneys would keep assorted stuff connected
with their secret work which they didn't want to have cluttering up the
lab. Including, very likely, any spare keys to the lab. At a guess,
neither of the brothers would have wanted Jill at Lion Mesa during this
crucial and dangerous stage of the project. But they probably were
used to letting their beautiful and headstrong niece do as she wanted.
But they needn't have mentioned things like the storeroom to her. If
he could keep his mind slightly off the fact that within a hundred
yards or so of him there were sixty-eight kilograms of Ym-400--with
an unspecified amount of it at present in its horrendous radioactive
state--he should stand a fairly good chance of finding the storeroom.

And in that case, the half-inch atomic key Jill Trelawney had showed
him, and which was at the moment weighing down his coat pocket,
probably would turn out to be exactly what he needed to get into it.

He located the place just under an hour later. It was a matter partly
of observation, partly of remembering a remark Jill had made. The
building which housed the giant hogs adjoined a corral three times its
size. Corral and building were divided into two sections, the larger
one harboring six sows. The single boar was in the other. A spider
web of gangways led about above the huge stalls. It was the wall
between building and corral which had drawn Dowland's attention by the
fact that a little calculating indicated it was something like a yard
thicker than was necessary.

He brought a dozen campfire sticks over from the grid-car and spaced
them down the central gangway of the building, then deferred further
inspection long enough to locate and trip the automatic feeding
mechanisms. The hungry animal thunder which had greeted him at his
entry ebbed away as they ate furiously and he studied them. They
weren't the grotesque monstrosities he had expected but massive,
sculptured giants with the quick, freewheeling agility of a rhinoceros,
sand-colored, with wickedly intelligent eyes. There wasn't much
question they'd make exciting game for anyone who enjoyed a touch of
personal danger in the hunt.

The danger was more obviously there in the boar. The brute's eight
hundred or so pounds of weight above that of the average of his
prospective harem would not be significant when pitted against an
opponent as physically inferior as a human being. His attitude might.
The sows filed out into the corral after they had eaten what the
feeding machine had thrown into them. The boar remained, watching
Dowland on the gangway above him from the corner of one eye. The eye
reflected no gratitude for the feeding. It was red-rimmed and angry.
The jaw worked with a continuous chewing motion. There was a fringe of
foam along the mouth.

Jill Trelawney had mentioned that no one but Miguel could come near the
boar.

Dowland could believe it. A small steel ladder led down from the
gangway into the brute's stall. Dowland reached into his pocket and
brought out the IPA gun. No sportsman would have considered using it
against an animal. But this wasn't sport. He started down the ladder.

       *       *       *       *       *

The boar stood motionless, watching him. Dowland stopped at the foot of
the ladder. After a moment, he took a step forward. The boar pivoted
and came thundering across the floor of the stall, head low. The gun
made its soft, heavy sound, and Dowland leaped aside. The huge body
that slammed into the far wall behind him was dead before it struck,
nearly headless. He went on to the thick dividing wall between stall
and yard.

The lock to the storeroom door was on the inner side of the wall,
concealed by the planking but not too difficult to find. Dowland
inserted the key, twisted it into position, felt a slight click, and
stepped back as the door began to swing out toward him.

The storeroom contained the general kind of paraphernalia he had
expected to find, including three antiradiation suits. It took Dowland
twenty minutes to convince himself that the one thing it definitely
did not contain in any obvious manner was a key to the laboratory.
Appropriate detection instruments might have disclosed it somewhere,
but he didn't have them.

The fact was dismaying because it ended his hopes of finding the key.
It would take most of the night to make a thorough search of the
various ranch buildings, and at best there would be an even chance
of discovering the key in the process. Wherever it was, it must be
carefully concealed. If Miguel regained consciousness, the information
could be forced from him, but it wasn't too likely that the older
Trelawney ever would wake up again.

Dowland picked up two of the three AR suits, folded them over his
arm, stood, still hesitant, glancing up and down the long, narrow
space of the storeroom, half aware that he was hoping now some magical
intuition might point out the location of the key to him at the last
second. If he could get into the laboratory, he was reasonably sure
he could puzzle out the mechanisms that directed the shift of YM into
radioactivity, and shut them down. A machine was a machine, after
all. Then, with the YM interference eliminated, grid-power should be
available again, and....

Dowland glanced at his watch again, shook his head. No point in
considering it--he couldn't get into the laboratory. An hour and a
half had gone to no purpose. Hunting for the key had looked like a
good gamble, the quickest and therefore least dangerous method of
solving the whole awesome problem. But it hadn't worked out; and what
was left was to work down the side of Lion Mesa, and start hiking
out across the desert. With luck, he'd find the communicator start
picking up grid-power again around dawn--if the YM didn't cut loose
with further unpredictable and much more disastrous "phenomena" before
then. Unsatisfactorily vague as the available information had been,
it implied that what had happened around here was still, so far, on a
very mild level. The Trelawneys, in spite of their confidence that the
Overgovernment was bluffing, that YM was harmless if properly handled,
might have had the good sense to work with only the most minute
quantities to begin with.

       *       *       *       *       *

He left the storeroom door open, turned off the whitely glowing
campfire sticks, and took them, with the AR suits, back to the house
with him. The living room had become almost completely dark. Uncle and
niece were where he had left them. Dowland worked for a minute or two
to release the automatic shutters over the single wide window; they
came down into position then with a sudden thud which shook the room
but failed to arouse the Trelawneys. Dowland relit one of the sticks
and dropped it into the fireplace. The room filled with clear light.

He stacked the other sticks against the wall, laid the AR suits over
the back of a chair. He had considered getting the Trelawneys into them
as a safety measure against whatever might happen before the matter
was over, but had dropped the idea again. It would be questionable
protection. The antiradiation field was maintained automatically
while a suit was worn, and it impeded breathing just enough to have
occasionally suffocated an unconscious wearer. Jill would discover the
suits when she woke up and could use her own judgment about them.

Dowland was coming back from the grid-car with his mountaineering
harness and portable communicator when the hogs began to scream again.
He stopped, startled. There was an odd and disturbing quality to the
racket this time--even more piercing than before--and, unless he was
mistaken, the huge animals were in a sudden panic about something.
Next, he heard them slamming against the sides of the corral,
apparently trying to break out of it. His heart started to pound with
instinctive alarms. Should he go down and investigate? Then, before he
could decide, he heard through the din of the hogs, swelling gradually
to almost match those incredible shrieks in volume, another sound.
For a moment, something seemed to shut off Dowland's listening to the
rumble and roar of a rushing, turbulent mass of water--and his ears
told him it was passing by beneath him.

       *       *       *       *       *

It might have been almost two minutes later before Dowland began
to think clearly again. He had reached the house at a dead run--a
senseless flight reaction under the circumstances, not far from
complete panic. In the darkness outside, the mesa had seemed to sway
and tilt, treacherous footing over the eerie booming of a river which
had rolled through a long-dead past. In those seconds Dowland hadn't
thought to question Jill Trelawney's story about a machine that brought
about shifts in time. His senses seemed to have as much evidence to
support it as anyone could demand.

Back in the house, though the thundering disturbance continued, that
conviction rapidly faded. He could close his eyes and immediately have
the feeling of being on an unstable bridge above the swirls of some
giant current. He could open them again and tell himself that YM-400
had a reputation for freakish effects--and that this specific effect,
at any rate, should not be very harmful since Jill had reported it
as having occurred on three separate occasions during the preceding
day. To speak of such a commotion as being only the sound of a
"river flowing under the house" seemed to approach the outrageous in
understatement; but Jill Trelawney had turned out to be an unusual
young person all around.

She and her uncle hadn't stirred, but Dowland knew that their presence
in the room steadied him. He knew, too, that, whatever happened next,
he couldn't allow himself to be rattled into blind fright again. The
situation was dangerous enough. If he let his nerves stampede him, he
would find himself unable to take any effective action.

He went over deliberately to the mountaineering harness he had dropped
when he entered the lighted room, and began to check through the
equipment. He intended to carry, in addition, only the communicator,
the IPA gun, a canteen of water, and a small flashlight; and he would
abandon the harness and its items at the foot of the mesa. There were
two hunting rifles in the car, with a vastly better range than the
handgun; but a rifle would slow him down and would make very little
real difference if he had the bad luck to run into Carter's Troopers in
the desert.

Somewhat to his surprise, the underground tumult appeared to be growing
fainter before he had concluded his inspection. Dowland paused to
listen, and within a few seconds there was no more doubt about it.
Jill had said it had gone on for half an hour on each of the previous
occasions; but Dowland's watch confirmed that the present disturbance
was subsiding rapidly after less than ten minutes. By the time he stood
up, snapped on the harness and shrugged it into position, it had become
almost inaudible.

Which might be a good sign, or a bad one, or without particular
significance of any kind. He couldn't know, and he'd probably be better
off if he didn't start thinking too much about it. He turned for a
last survey of the room before setting out, and discovered that Miguel
Trelawney had opened his eyes and was looking at him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland stood stockstill for a moment, hardly daring to believe it.
Then, quietly, he unbuckled the harness again, and let it down to
the floor. The eyes of the big man on the couch seemed to follow the
motion, then shifted slowly up toward the ceiling of the room, and
closed again.

"Trelawney," Dowland said softly, without moving.

Miguel Trelawney made a deep, sighing sound, turned on his side and
lay quiet, his back now to Dowland. A few seconds later, Dowland was
looking down at him from the other side of the couch.

It might have been only a momentary thing, a brief advantage medic had
gained in its invisible struggle with a process which would still end
in death. But he couldn't be sure. The eyes remained closed, the pulse
was weak and unsteady. Dowland thought of injecting a stimulant into
Trelawney, and discarded the idea immediately. Medic manufactured its
own stimulants as required, counter-acted any others. Even the effects
of the quiz-drug would be reduced by it, but not enough to keep Dowland
from getting any answer he wanted--provided Trelawney's mind cleared
for only three or four minutes of lucidity.

There was no way of knowing when such a period of lucidity might
develop. But now that the man had appeared to awaken, the possibility
that it would happen within the next hour or two became a very definite
one.

Dowland stood briefly in scowling indecision. The next hour or two
could also see him nearly down the side of the mesa, depending on the
difficulties of the descent ... but there was no real choice. It was a
gamble either way again; if Trelawney didn't awaken, the other gamble
remained.... How long, at most, could he afford to delay?

Leaving YM out of the calculation, since it couldn't be calculated,
he had only the arrival of the Freeholder Troopers to consider. There
was no apparent possibility that any sizable party could appear before
daybreak, but there was an even chance they would be there around that
time. When they came, he must either be in communication with the Solar
Police Authority or far enough away from Lion Mesa to be able to avoid
detection....

Four hours should be enough to give him a reasonable safety margin. He
had till midnight, or a little later.

Dowland pulled a chair up to the side of the couch and sat down. The
night wasn't quiet. The hogs squalled occasionally, and the wind
still seemed to be rising. In spite of his efforts to avoid unsettling
lines of thought, the nightmarish quality of the situation on the mesa
kept returning to his mind and wasn't easily dismissed. The past--the
past of over half a million years ago--had moved close too the present
tonight.... That was the stubborn, illogical feeling--and fear--which
he couldn't entirely shake off.

       *       *       *       *       *

Half an hour later, Miguel Trelawney began breathing uneasily,
then stirred about, but lapsed again within seconds into immobile
unconsciousness.

Dowland resumed his waiting.

His watch had just told him it was shortly before eleven-thirty when he
heard the shots. They were three shots--clear, closely spaced cracks of
sound, coming from a considerable distance away. Dowland was out of his
chair with the second one, halfway down the dark entry hall as he heard
the third. He opened the door at the end of the hall just wide enough
to slip through, moved out quickly, and closed the door behind him to
keep the glow of light from the living room from showing outside.

As the door snapped shut, there were three more shots. A hunting
rifle. Perhaps two miles to the north....

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland stood staring up toward the wind-tossed line of the forest
above the ranch area. Who was up there on the mesa--and why the
shooting? Had the Troopers managed to get some men in by air? What
would they be firing at?

Signal shots, he thought then. And a signal to the ranch, in that
case.... Signaling what?

With that, another thought came, so abruptly and convincingly that it
sent a chill through him.

Doctor Paul Trelawney....

Paul Trelawney, not in the laboratory building--as Jill had surmised.
Gone elsewhere, now returned. And, like his brother, returned to a
point other than the one from which he had left.

A man exhausted and not sure of where he was on the big table-land, an
injured man--or perhaps one weakened by radiation sickness--such a man
would fire a gun in the night to draw attention to himself. To get help.

Minutes later, Dowland was headed in the direction from which the shots
had come, carrying one of his own rifles, along with the police gun.
It was very unlikely he could get close enough to Trelawney--if it was
Trelawney--to be heard approaching; but once he reached the general
area of the shots, he would fire the rifle, and wait for a response.
In the forest, the wind was wild and noisy, and the going was as rough
as he had suspected it would be. Moonlight flowed into the open rocky
stretches occasionally, and faded again as clouds moved on overhead.
Among the trees he could barely see his way and had to advance more
slowly.

He came presently to a wide, smooth hump of rock shouldering up through
the timber, and stopped to check the time. Twenty-five minutes had
passed since he left the area of the house. If he had calculated
correctly, the shots should have come from approximately this point. He
moved somewhat cautiously into the open--a man waiting for help would
think of selecting a place where he could be easily seen; and this
could be the spot Paul Trelawney had chosen. And Trelawney, armed with
a gun, might react rather abruptly if he saw a stranger approach.

But the ridge lay empty under the moon, stretching out for over a
hundred yards to right and left. Dowland reached its top, moved on
among the trees on the north side, and there paused again.

A feeling came, gradually and uneasily, of something wrong around here.
He stood listening, unable to define exactly what was disturbing him;
then a fresh gust of wind whipped through the branches about him, and
the wrongness was on the wind--a mingled odor, not an unfamiliar one,
but out of place in the evergreen forest, on this rocky shelf. A breath
of warm darkness, of rotting, soft vegetation--of swamp or river-bed.
Dowland found his breathing quickening.

Then the scent faded from the air again. It might, he was thinking
seconds later, have been a personal hallucination, a false message from
nerves over-excited by the events of the night. But if Paul Trelawney
_had_ returned to this point from a distant time, the route by
which he had come might still be open. And the opening not far from
here. It was a very unpleasant notion. Dowland began to move on again,
but in a slow and hesitant manner now.

Another five minutes, he thought. At the end of that time, he certainly
must have covered the distance over which the wind had carried the bark
of a rifle--and should, in fact, be a little to the north of Trelawney
on the mesa. If there were no further developments by then, he would
fire a shot himself.

The five minutes took him to another section of open ground, more
limited than the previous one. Again an outcropping of weathered
rock had thrust back the trees, and Dowland worked his way up the
steep side to the top, and stood looking about. After some seconds,
the understanding came suddenly that he was delaying firing the rifle
because of a reluctance to reveal his presence in these woods. With an
abrupt, angry motion he brought up the barrel, pointing it across the
trees to the north, and pulled the trigger.

       *       *       *       *       *

The familiar whiplash of sound seemed startling loud. An instant later,
there was a series of unnerving crashing noises in the forest ahead.
Apparently some large animal had been alarmed by the shot. He heard
it blundering off for a few hundred yards; then there was silence,
as if it had stopped to listen. And then there was another sound, a
deep, long cry that sent a shiver through his flesh. It ended; and the
next thing that caught his attention was a glimpse of something moving
near the edge of his vision to the left, just above the forest. His
head and eyes shifted quickly toward it, and he found himself staring
after a great shadowy thing flapping and gliding away over the tops of
the trees. It disappeared almost immediately behind the next rise of
ground.

Dowland still stared after it, his mind seeming to move sluggishly as
if unwilling to admit what he had seen was no creature he had ever
heard about. Then it occurred to him suddenly that Trelawney had not
yet responded to the signal shot; and almost with the thought, he grew
aware of a renewed disturbance in the forest before him.

This one was much less loud than the other had been. For a moment,
Dowland thought it was being caused by the wind. But the noises
continued; and in a few more seconds it became obvious that
something--something that seemed to be very large indeed--was moving
among the trees and approaching the open area. By that time, it wasn't
very far away.

Dowland turned, his mouth working silently, and slipped down the south
side of the big rock hump, making no more noise than he could help.
Already the trees were shaking on the other side of the rock. He
ducked, crouched, into a thick mass of juniper branches, pushed through
them, and made his way quickly and quietly deeper among the trees. This
new thing, whatever it was, must also have heard the shot. It might
check when it reached the open area and, when it discovered nothing to
arouse its further curiosity, move off again.

But it didn't. Glancing back through the trees, Dowland had an
indistinct glimpse of something very tall coming swiftly around the
shoulder of rock. He turned, scuttled on under the branches, and a
moment later, there was a tremendous crashing at the point where he had
left the open ground. The thing was following him down into the woods.

Dowland turned again, gasping, dropped the rifle, and pulled the IPA
gun from his pocket. The thickets splintered; a towering shape came
through them. He drove three shots at it, had the approximate sensation
of being struck across the head with an iron bar, and felt himself fall
forward. He lost consciousness before he hit the earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he opened his eyes, his first thought was that he should be
feeling a king-sized headache. He wasn't. He was lying face down on
moist forest mold. There was a very dim pre-dawn light about. So
several hours must have gone by since....

Dowland stiffened a moment, then turned his head very slowly, peering
about. After a moment, he pushed himself quietly up on hands and
knees. The trees before him shifted uneasily in the wind. Farther on,
he could make out part of the hump of rock on which he had stood and
fired a shot to draw Trelawney's attention. Between, the ground looked
as if a tank had come plowing into the forest. But there was no giant
shape lying there.

So his three shots hadn't brought it down. But it had gone away--after
doing what to him?

Dowland saw the IPA gun lying beside him, picked it up, and got slowly
to his feet. He ran a hand experimentally over his head. No lumps, not
even a feeling of tenderness ... He would have sworn that the crack
he'd felt had opened his skull. He looked about for the rifle, saw
it, picked it up, and went over to the area where the trees had been
tossed about.

There was a trail there--a very improbable trail. He studied it,
puzzled and frowning. Not the tracks of an animal. If it had been more
regular, such a track conceivably might have been laid by a machine
moving along on a very wide smooth roller. There were no indications
of any kind of a tread. As it was, about all he could say now was that
something very ponderous had crushed a path--a path varying between
approximately eight and fourteen feet in width--through the woods to
this point, and had then withdrawn again along a line roughly parallel
to its approach.... And he could say one other thing about it, Dowland
added mentally. The same ponderous entity could knock out a man for
hours, without apparently injuring him, or leaving any sign of how he
had been struck down.

The last sounded more like a machine again; a machine which was armed
in some mysterious manner. When his shot had flushed up the big flying
creature during the night, he'd almost been convinced that some monster
out of Terra's distant past was there on the mesa. Those two things
just didn't jibe.

Dowland shook his head. He could think about that when he had more
time. He'd lost--he looked at his watch--a little less than four hours.
In four hours, a large number of things might have happened in the
ranch area, with only the one partly attractive possibility among them
that somebody had managed to get into the laboratory and shut off the
YM flow.

       *       *       *       *       *

He started back at a cautious trot. Downhill and with the light
strengthening gradually, covering ground was considerably less of a
problem than it had been during the night. The wind hadn't let up; it
still came in wild, intermittent gusts that bent the trees. Now and
then a cloud of dust whipped past, suggesting that the air over the
desert was also violently disturbed. And it might very well be, Dowland
thought, that YM could upset atmospheric conditions in an area where it
was active. Otherwise, if there was anything abnormal going on in the
forest about him, there were no detectable indications of it.

He came out presently on a ridge from where the ranch area was in view.
It lay now approximately a third of a mile ahead. In the dim light,
everything seemed quiet. Dowland slowed to a walk.

He might be heading into an ambush down there. Jill Trelawney could,
at most, be beginning to wake up from her drugged sleep and for another
hour or so she would be too confused and groggy to present a problem.
But others might be at the ranch by now; Paul Trelawney or a group of
Carter's Troopers. And whether Jill was able to give them a coherent
report or not, any of the Freeholder conspirators would discover very
quickly that somebody who was not a member of their group had been
there before them; they would anticipate his return, be on the watch
for it. Dowland left the direct line he had been following, and headed
east, moving with constantly increasing caution. On that side, the
forest grew closest to the ranch buildings, and he remembered noticing
a hedge-like thicket of evergreens just north of the cleared land. He
could make a preliminary check of the area from there.

He was within a hundred and fifty feet of the point when he discovered
just how healthy the notion of a preliminary check had been. A man was
lying in the cover of the evergreens Dowland had been thinking about,
head up, studying the ranch grounds. He wore an antiradiation suit of
the type Dowland had found in the storeroom; a heavy rifle lay beside
him. His face was in profile. It was smeared now with the sweat and
dirt the AR field had held in, but Dowland recognized the bold, bony
features instantly.

He had finally found Doctor Paul Trelawney.

       *       *       *       *       *

It took Dowland over eight minutes to cover the remaining distance
between them. But the stalk had eminently satisfactory results. He was
within a yard of Trelawney before the Freeholder became aware of his
presence. The IPA gun prodded the man's spine an instant later.

"No noise, please," Dowland said softly. "I'd sooner not kill you. I
might have to."

Paul Trelawney was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was
raw with shock. "Who the devil are you?"

"Solar Police Authority," Dowland said. "You know why I'm here."

Trelawney grunted. Dowland went on, "Why are you hiding out?"

"Why do you think?" Trelawney asked irritably. "Before showing myself,
I was trying to determine the whereabouts of the man who fired a rifle
within half a mile of me during the night."

So they had been stalking each other. Dowland said, "Why couldn't that
person have been your brother or niece?"

"Because I know the sound of our rifles."

"My mistake.... Do you have a gun or other weapon on you?"

"A knife."

"Let's have it."

Trelawney reached under his chest, brought out a sheathed knife and
handed it back to Dowland. Dowland lobbed it into the bushes a few
yards away, moved back a little.

"Get up on your hands and knees now," he said, "and we'll make sure
that's all."

He was careful about the search. Trelawney appeared passive enough at
the moment, but he was not a man too take chances with. The AR suit
turned out to be concealing a tailored-in two-way communicator along
with as many testing and checking devices as an asteroid miner's
outfit, but no weapons. In a sealed pocket, obviously designed for
it, was a five-inch atomic key. Dowland slid the heavy disk out with
fingers that suddenly were shaking a little.

"Does this open your laboratory here?"

"Yes."

Dowland detached the communicator's transmission unit, and dropped it
with the laboratory key into his pocket. "All right," he said, "turn
around and sit down." He waited until Trelawney was facing him, then
went on. "How long have you been watching the ranch?"

"About an hour."

"Seen anyone--or anything?"

Trelawney regarded him quizzically, shook his head. "Not a thing."

"I won't waste time with too many questions just now," Dowland said.
"The laboratory is locked, and the machine you started in there
apparently is still in operation. Your brother was found outside the
laboratory yesterday morning, and may be dead or dying of internal
radiation burns. He was alive and didn't seem to be doing too badly
when I left him and Miss Trelawney in the house last night to go
looking for you. I had to drug Miss Trelawney--she isn't a very
cooperative person. She should still be asleep.

"Now, if I hadn't showed up here just now, what did you intend to do?"

"I intended to stop the machine, of course," Trelawney said. His
expression hadn't changed while Dowland was talking. "Preferably
without involving the Solar Police Authority in our activities. But
since you've now involved yourself, I urgently suggest that we go to
the laboratory immediately and take care of the matter together."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland nodded. "That's what I had in mind, Trelawney. Technically
you're under arrest, of course, and you'll do whatever has to be done
in there at gun point. Are we likely to run into any difficulties in
the operation?"

"We very probably will," Trelawney said thoughtfully, "and it's just as
probable that we won't know what they are before we encounter them."

Dowland stood up. "All right," he said, "let's go. We'll stop off at
the house on the way. I want to be sure that Miss Trelawney isn't in a
position to do something thoughtless."

He emptied the magazine of Trelawney's rifle before giving it to him.
They started down to the house, Trelawney in the lead, the IPA gun in
Dowland's hand.

The house door was closed. Trelawney glanced back questioningly.
Dowland said in a low voice, "It isn't locked. Open it, go on in, and
stop two steps inside the hallway. I'll be behind you. They're both in
the living room."

He followed Trelawney in, reaching back to draw the door shut again.
There was a whisper of sound. Dowland half turned, incredulously felt
something hard jab painfully against his backbone. He stood still.

"Drop your gun, Dowland," Jill Trelawney said behind him. Her voice
was as clear and unslurred as if she had been awake for hours. Dowland
cursed himself silently. She must have come around the corner of the
house the instant they went in.

"My gun's pointing at your uncle's back," he said. "Don't do anything
that might make me nervous, Miss Trelawney."

"Don't try to bluff Jill, friend," Paul Trelawney advised him without
turning his head. There was dry amusement in the man's voice. "No one's
ever been able to do it. And she's quite capable of concluding that
trading an uncle for an SPA spy would still leave Terra ahead at this
stage. But that shouldn't be necessary. Jill?"

"Yes, Paul?"

"Give our policeman a moment to collect his wits. This does put him in
a very embarrassing position, after all. And I can use his help in the
lab."

"I'll give you exactly three seconds, Dowland," Jill said. "And you'd
better believe that is _not_ a bluff. One...."

Dowland dropped his gun.

       *       *       *       *       *

The two Trelawneys held a brief, whispered conversation in the living
room. Dowland, across the room from them, and under cover of two guns
now, couldn't catch much of it. Jill was in one of the radiation suits
he'd brought in from the storeroom. Miguel was dead. He had still
been unconscious when she woke up, and had stopped breathing minutes
afterwards. Medic had done what it could; in this case it simply hadn't
been enough. Jill, however, had found another use for it. Dowland
thought the possibility mightn't have occurred to anyone else in
similar circumstances; but he still should have thought of it when he
left the house. As she began to struggle up from sleep, she remembered
what Dowland had told her about medic, and somehow she had managed to
inject a full ampule of it into her arm. It had brought her completely
awake within minutes.

The murmured talk ended. The girl looked rather white and frightened
now. Paul Trelawney's face was expressionless as he came over to
Dowland. Jill shoved the gun she had put on Dowland into her belt,
picked up Paul's hunting rifle, held it in her hands, and stood waiting.

"Here's the procedure, Dowland," Trelawney said. "Jill will go over to
the lab with us, but stay outside on guard. She'll watch...."

"Did you tell her," Dowland interrupted, "to keep an eye out for
something that stands twice as high as this house?"

Trelawney looked at him a moment. "So you ran into it," he said. "I
was wondering. It's very curious that ... well, one thing at a time. I
cautioned her about it, as it happens. Now come over to the table."

Dowland remained standing beside the table, while across from him
Trelawney rapidly sketched out two diagrams on a piece of paper. The
IPA gun lay on the table near Trelawney's right hand. There might have
been an outside chance of reaching it if one could have discounted
Jill's watchfulness. Which, Dowland decided, one couldn't. And he'd
seen her reload the rifle she was holding. He stayed where he was.

Trelawney shoved the paper across to him.

"Both diagrams represent our machine," he said, "and they should give
you a general idea of what you'll see. This wheel here is at the far
side of the console when we come in the door. The wheel is the flow
regulator--the thing you have to keep in mind. There are scale markings
on it. The major markings have the numbers one to five. Yesterday
morning the regulator was set at five--full flow. Spin the wheel back
to one, and the Ym-400 that's been producing the flow goes inert. Is
that clear?"

Dowland nodded. "Clear enough."

"After that," Trelawney remarked, "we may be able to take things a
little easier."

"What's the quantity you're using in there?"

"No real reason I should tell you that, is there? But I will. The
sixty-eight kilograms the Overgovernment's been grieving about are
under the machine platform. We're using all of it." He grinned briefly,
perhaps at Dowland's expression. "The type of job we had in mind
required quantities in that class. Now, about yourself. We're not
murderers. Jill tells me you can't be bribed--all right. What will
happen, when this thing's settled, is that you'll have an attack of
amnesia. Several months of your life will be permanently lost from your
memory, including, of course, everything connected with this operation.
Otherwise you won't be harmed. Understand?"

"I've heard of such things," Dowland said drily.

It wouldn't, however, be done that way. It was the kind of thing told
a man already as good as dead, to keep him from making a desperate
attempt to save himself. The Freeholders really wouldn't have much
choice. Something had loused up their plans here, and if Dowland either
disappeared or was found suffering from a sudden bout of amnesia, the
IPA would turn its full attention on Terra at once. If he died, his
death could be plausibly arranged to look like an accident or a killing
for personal motives. These people were quite capable of sacrificing
one of their group to back such a story up. And it would pass. Terra
was under no more immediate suspicion than any other world. Dowland had
been on a routine assignment.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were a few brief preparations. Paul Trelawney checked the
batteries in the radiation suits he and Jill were wearing, then
exchanged his set for that of the spare suit. Dowland left his own
AR field off for the moment. It was at least as adequate as the one
developed by the Trelawneys' suits, and in some respects a much more
practical device. But the suit batteries had an effective life of
twenty-four hours, expending them automatically while the suits were
worn. His field would maintain itself for a minimum of an hour and a
half, a maximum of two hours. In this situation, Dowland wasn't sure
how long he would have to depend on the field. A few more minutes of
assured protection might make a difference.

He saw Trelawney studying the mountaineering rig on the floor; then he
picked up the harness and brought it over to him.

"Here, put it on," he said.

"What for?" Dowland asked, surprised.

Trelawney grinned. "We may have a use for it. You'll find out in a
minute or two."

They left the house by a back entrance. Clouds were banked low on the
eastern horizon now; the first sunlight gleamed pale gold beneath them.
In the west the sky was brown with swirling dust. Jill stopped twenty
yards from the laboratory building and stood on the slope, rifle in
hand, watching the men go on. At the door, Dowland switched on his AR
field. Trelawney tossed the disk-shaped key over to him.

"Know how to use it?"

Dowland nodded.

"All right. After you've snapped it in and it releases again, throw
it back to me. It may be the last one around, and we're not taking
it into the laboratory this time. When the door starts moving down,
step back to the right of it. We'll see what the lab is like before we
go in." Trelawney indicated a thimble-sized instrument on his suit.
"This'll tell whether the place is hot at the moment, and approximately
how hot." He waved the IPA gun in Dowland's direction. "All right, go
ahead."

Dowland fitted the key into the central depression in the door, pressed
down, felt the key snap into position with a sharp twisting motion of
its own, released his pressure on it. An instant later, the key popped
back out into his hand. He tossed it back to Trelawney, who caught it
left-handed and threw it over his head in Jill's direction. The disk
thudded heavily into the grass ten feet from her. The girl walked over,
picked it up, and slid it into one of her suit pockets.

The slab of metasteel which made up the laboratory door began moving
vertically downward. The motion stopped when the door's top rim was
still several inches above the level of the sill.

A low droning came from the little instrument on Trelawney's suit. It
rose and fell irregularly like the buzz of a circling wasp. Mingled
with it was something that might have been the hiss of escaping steam.
That was Dowland's detector confirming. The lab reeked with radiation.

He glanced over at Trelawney.

"Hot enough," the Freeholder said. "We'll go inside. But stay near the
door for a moment. There's something else I want to find out about...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Inside, the laboratory was unpartitioned and largely empty, a great
shell of a building. Only the section to the left of the entrance
appeared to have been used. That section was lighted. The light arose
evenly from the surfaces of the raised machine platform halfway over to
the opposite wall. The platform was square, perhaps twenty feet along
its sides. Dowland recognized the apparatus on it from Trelawney's
diagrams. The central piece was an egg-shaped casing which appeared to
be metasteel. Near its blunt end, partly concealed, stood the long,
narrow instrument console. Behind the other end of the casing, an
extension ramp jutted out above the platform. At the end of the ramp
was a six-foot disk that might have been quartz, rimless, brightly
iridescent. It was tilted to the left, facing the bank of instruments.

"A rather expensive bit of equipment over there, Dowland," Trelawney
said. "My brother developed the concept, very nearly in complete
detail, almost twenty-five years ago. But a great deal of time and
thought and work came then before the concept turned into the operating
reality on that platform."

He nodded to the left. "That's Miguel's coat on the floor. I wasn't
sure it would still be here. The atomic key you were searching for
so industriously last night is in one of its pockets. Miguel was
standing just there, with the coat folded over his arm, when I saw him
last--perhaps two or three seconds before I was surprised to discover
I was no longer looking at the instrument controls in our laboratory."

"Where were you?" Dowland asked. "Six hundred thousand years in the
past?"

"The instruments showed a fix on that point in time," Trelawney said.
"But this was, you understand, a preliminary operation. We intended
to make a number of observations. We had not planned a personal
transfer for several more weeks. But in case the test turned out to
be successful beyond our expectations, I was equipped to make the
transfer. That bit of optimistic foresight is why I'm still alive."

What was the man waiting for? Dowland asked, "What actually happened?"

"A good question, I'd like to know the whole answer myself. What
happened in part was that I suddenly found myself in the air, falling
toward a river. It was night and cloudy, but there was light enough to
show it was a thoroughly inhospitable river.... And now I believe"--his
voice slowed thoughtfully--"I believe I understand why my brother was
found outside the closed door of this building. Over there, Dowland.
What does that look like to you?"

Near the far left of the building, beyond the immediate range of
the light that streamed from the machine stand, a big packing crate
appeared to have been violently--and rather oddly--torn apart. The
larger section of the crate lay near the wall, the smaller one
approximately twenty feet closer to the machine platform. Assorted
items with which it had been packed had spilled out from either
section. But the floor between the two points of wreckage was bare
and unlittered. Except for that, one might have thought the crate had
exploded.

       *       *       *       *       *

"It wasn't an explosion," Trelawney agreed when Dowland said as
much. He was silent a moment, went on, "In this immediate area, two
space-time frames have become very nearly superimposed. There is a
constant play of stresses now as the two frames attempt to adjust
their dissimilarities. Surrounding our machine we have a spherical
concentration of those stresses, and there are moments when space here
is literally wrenched apart. If one were caught at such an instant--ah!"

To Dowland it seemed that a crack of bright color had showed briefly in
the floor of the building, between the door and the machine platform.
It flickered, vanished, reappeared at another angle before his ears
had fully registered the fact that it was accompanied by a curiously
chopped-off roar of sound. Like a play of lightning. But this was....

The air opened out before him, raggedly framing a bright-lit
three-dimensional picture. He was staring down across a foaming river
to the rim of a towering green and yellow forest. The crash of the
river filled the building. Something bulky and black at the far
left ... but the scene was gone--

The interior of the laboratory building lay quiet and unchanged before
them again. Dowland said hoarsely, "How did you know what was going to
happen?"

"I was in a position to spend several hours observing it," Trelawney
said, "from the other side. You see now, I think, that we can put your
mountaineer's kit to some very practical use here."

Dowland glanced across the building. "The walls...."

"Metasteel," Trelawney said, "and thank God for that. The building's
sound; the stresses haven't affected it. We'll have some anchor points.
A clamp piton against that wall, six feet above the console walk and in
line with it, another one against the doorframe here, and we can rope
across."

Dowland saw it, unsnapped his harness, fed the end of the magnerope
through the eye of a piton, and twisted it tight. "Are we going
together?" he asked.

Trelawney shook his head. "You're going, Dowland. Sorry about that, but
this is no time for sporting gestures. The rope doesn't eliminate the
danger. But if you find your feet suddenly dangling over the air of a
very old time, you'll still stay here--I hope. If you don't make it
across, I'll follow. We get two chances to shut Ymir down instead of
one. All right?"

"Since you have the gun, yes," Dowland said. "If I had it, it would be
the other way around."

"Of course," Trelawney agreed. He watched in silence then as Dowland
rammed the threaded piton down the muzzle of the gun, locked it in
position, took aim across the machine platform, and fired. The piton
clamp made a slapping sound against the far wall, froze against it.
Dowland gave the loose end of the rope a few tugs, said, "Solid," cut
the rope, and handed the end to Trelawney.

The Freeholder reached up to set a second piton against the doorframe,
fed a loop of the rope through it, and twisted it tight. Dowland
slipped a set of grappling gloves out of the harness, pulled one over
his right hand, tossed the other to Trelawney. "In case," he said, "you
have to follow. Magnerope gets to be wearing on bare hands."

Trelawney looked briefly surprised, then grinned. "Thanks," he said.
"Can you do it with one glove?"

"No strain at that distance."

"Too bad you're not a Terran, Dowland. We could have used you."

"I'm satisfied," Dowland said. "Any point in waiting now for another
run of those cracks in space before making the trip?"

Trelawney shook his head. "None at all, I'm afraid. From what I saw,
there's no more regularity in those stress patterns than there is in a
riptide. You see how the rope is jerking right now--you'll get pulled
around pretty savagely, I'd say, even if you don't run into open splits
on the way across."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dowland was fifteen feet from the door, half running with both hands
on the rope, when something plucked at him. He strained awkwardly
sideways, feet almost lifting from the floor. Abruptly he was released,
went stumbling forward a few steps before the next invisible current
tugged at him, pulling him downward now. It was a very much stronger
pull, and for endless seconds it continued to build up. His shoulders
seemed ready to snap before he suddenly came free again.

The rest of the way to the platform remained almost undisturbed, but
Dowland was trembling with tensions before he reached it; he could feel
the drag of the AR field on his breathing. The steps to the platform
were a dozen feet to his right--too far from the rope. Dowland put his
weight on the rope, swung forward and up, let the rope go and came
down on the narrow walk between instrument board and machine section.
The panels shone with their own light; at the far end he saw the
flow-control wheel Trelawney had indicated, a red pointer opposite the
numeral "5." Dowland took two steps toward it, grasped the wheel, and
spun it down.

The pointer stopped at "1." He heard it click into position there.

Instantly, something slammed him sideways against the console, sent
him staggering along it, and over the low railing at the end of the
platform. The floor seemed to be shuddering as he struck it, and then
to tilt slowly. Dowland rolled over, came up on hands and knees, facing
back toward the platform. Daylight blazed again in the building behind
him, and the roar of a river that rolled through another time filled
his ears. He got to his feet, plunged back toward the whipping rope
above the platform. The light and the roaring cut off as he grasped the
rope, flashed back into the building, cut off again. Somewhere somebody
had screamed....

Dowland swung about on the rope, went handing himself along it, back
toward the door. His feet flopped about over the floor, unable to get
a stand there for more than an instant. It was a struggle now to get
enough air through the antiradiation field into his lungs. He saw dust
whip past the open door, momentarily obscuring it. The building bucked
with earthquake fury. And where was Trelawney?

He saw the red, wet thing then, lying by the wall just inside the door;
and sickness seized him because Trelawney's body was stretched out
too far to make it seem possible it had ever been that of a man. Dust
blasted in through the door as he reached it, and subsided, leaving a
choking residue trapped within the radiation screen. If he could only
cut off the field....

       *       *       *       *       *

His gun lay too close to the sodden mess along the wall. Dowland picked
it up, was bending to snatch the climbing harness from the floor when
light flared behind him again. Automatically, he looked back.

Once more the interior of the building seemed to have split apart.
Wider now. He saw the rushing white current below. To the right, above
the forest on the bank, the sun was a swollen red ball glaring through
layers of mist. And to the left, moving slowly over the river in the
blaze of long-dead daylight, was something both unmistakable and not
to be believed. But, staring at it in the instant before the scene
shivered and vanished again, Dowland suddenly thought he knew what had
happened here.

What he had seen was a spaceship.

He turned, went stumbling hurriedly out the door into the whistling
wind, saw Jill Trelawney standing there, white-faced, eyes huge, hands
to her mouth.

He caught her shoulder. "Come on! We've got to get away from here."

She gasped, "It--_tore_ him apart!"

"We can't help him...." Dust clouds were spinning over the back of the
mesa, concealing the upper slopes. Dowland glanced to the west, winced
at the towering mountain of darkness sweeping toward them through the
sky. He plunged up the slope, hauling her along behind him. Jill cried
out incoherently once, in a choking voice, but he didn't stop to hear
what she was trying to say. He shoved her into the house, slammed the
door shut behind them, hurried her on down the hall and into the living
room. As they came in, he switched off his AR field and felt air fill
his lungs easily again. It was like surfacing out of deep water. The
detector still hissed its thin warning, but it was almost inaudible.
They would have to risk radiation now.

"Out of your suit, quick! Whatever's happening in the lab has whistled
up a dust storm here. When it hits, that radiation field will strangle
you in a minute outdoors."

She stared at him dumbly.

"Get out of your suit!" Dowland shouted, his nerves snapping. "We're
going down the eastern wall. It's our only chance. But we can't get
down alive if we can't breathe...." Then, as she began unbuckling the
suit hurriedly with shaking fingers, he turned to the pile of camping
equipment beside the fireplace and pawed through it.

He found the communicator and was snapping it to the mountaineering
harness when the front door slammed. He wheeled about, startled. Jill's
radiation suit lay on the floor near the entry hall. She was gone.

He was tearing the door open three seconds later, shouted, and saw her
through the dust forty feet away, running up toward the forest.

He mightn't have caught her if she hadn't stumbled and gone headlong.
Dowland was on top of her before she could get up. She fought him in
savage silence like an animal, tearing and biting, her eyes bloodshot
slits. There was a mechanical fury about it that appalled him. But at
last he got his right arm free, and brought his fist up solidly to the
side of her jaw. Jill's head flew back, and her eyes closed.

       *       *       *       *       *

He came padding up to the eastern side of the mesa with her minutes
later. Here, beyond the ranch area, the ground was bare rock, with
occasional clusters of stunted bushes. The dust had become blinding,
though the main storm was still miles away. There was no time to stop
off at the house to look for the quiz-gun, though it would have been
better to try the descent with a dazed and half-paralyzed young woman
than with the twisting lunatic Jill might turn into again when she
recovered from his punch. At least, he'd have her tied up. Underfoot
were grinding and grumbling noises now, the ground shaking constantly.
At moments he had the feeling of plodding through something yielding,
like quicksand. Only the feeling, he told himself; the rock was solid
enough. But....

Abruptly, he was at the mesa's edge. Dowland slid the girl to the
ground, straightened up, panting, to dab at his smarting eyes. The mesa
behind them had almost vanished in swirling dust.

And through the dust Dowland saw something coming over the open ground
he had just traversed.

He stared at it, mouth open, stunned with a sense of unfairness. The
gigantic shape was still only partly visible, but it was obvious that
it was following them. It approached swiftly over the shaking ground.
Dowland took out his gun, with the oddly calm conviction that it would
be entirely useless against their pursuer. But he brought it up slowly
and leveled it, squinting with streaming eyes through the dust.

And then it happened. The pursuer appeared to falter. It moved again in
some manner; something thundered into the ground beside Dowland. Then,
writhing and twisting--slowly at first, then faster--the dust-veiled
shape seemed to be sinking downward through the rock surface of the
mesa.

In another instant, it was gone.

Seconds passed before Dowland gradually lowered the gun again. Dazedly,
he grew aware of something else that was different now. A miniature
human voice appeared to be jabbering irritably at him from some point
not far away. His eyes dropped to the little communicator attached to
his harness.

The voice came from there.

Terra's grid-power had returned to Lion Mesa.

       *       *       *       *       *

A week later, Lieutenant Frank Dowland was shown into the office of the
chief of the Solar Police Authority. The chief introduced him to the
two other men there, who were left unidentified, and told him to be
seated.

"Lieutenant," he said, "these gentlemen have a few questions to ask
you. You can speak as openly to them as you would to me."

Dowland nodded. He had recognized one of the gentlemen
immediately--Howard Camhorn, the Coordinator of Research. Reputedly one
of the sharpest minds in the Overgovernment's top echelons. The other
one was unfamiliar. He was a few years younger than Camhorn, around
six inches shorter, chunky, with black hair, brown eyes, an expression
of owlish reflectiveness. Probably, Dowland thought, wearing contact
lenses. "Yes, sir," he said to the chief, and looked back at the
visitors.

"We've seen your report on your recent visit to Terra, Lieutenant
Dowland," Camhorn began pleasantly. "An excellent report,
incidentally--factual, detailed. What we should like to hear now are
the things that you, quite properly, omitted from it. That is, your
personal impressions and conclusions."

"For example," the other man took up, as Dowland hesitated, "Miss
Trelawney has informed us her uncles were attempting to employ the
Ym-400 they had acquired to carry out a time-shift to an earlier Earth
period--to the period known as the Pleistocene, to be somewhat more
exact. From what you saw, would you say they had succeeded in doing it?"

"I don't know, sir," Dowland said. "I've been shown pictures
representing that period during the past few days. The scene I
described in the report probably might have existed at that time." He
smiled briefly. "However, I have the impression that the very large
flying creature I reported encountering that night is regarded as
being ... well, er ... ah...."

"A product of excited nerves?" the short man said, nodding. "Under such
extraordinary circumstances, that would be quite possible, you know."

"Yes, sir, I know."

The short man smiled. "But you don't think it was that?"

"No, sir," Dowland said. "I think that I have described exactly what I
did hear and see."

"And you feel the Trelawneys established contact with some previous
Earth period--not necessarily the Pleistocene?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you report having seen a spaceship in that prehistorical
period...."

Dowland shook his head. "No, sir. At the moment I was observing it, I
thought it was that. What I reported was having seen something that
looked like a spaceship."

"What do you think it was?"

"A timeship--if there is such a word."

"There is such a word," Camhorn interrupted lazily. "I'm curious to
hear, lieutenant, what brought you to that conclusion."

"It's a guess, sir. But the thing has to fit together somehow. A
timeship would make it fit."

"In what way?"

"I've been informed," Dowland said, "that the Overgovernment's
scientists have been unable to make a practical use of YM because
something has invariably gone wrong when they did try to use it. I also
heard that there was no way of knowing in advance what would happen
to make an experiment fail. But something always would happen, and
frequently a number of people would get killed."

Camhorn nodded. "That is quite true."

"Well, then," Dowland said, "I think there is a race of beings who
aren't quite in our time and space. They have YM and use it, and don't
want anyone else to use it. They can tell when it's activated here, and
use their own YM to interfere with it. Then another experiment suddenly
turns into a failure.

       *       *       *       *       *

"But they don't know yet who's using it. When the Trelawneys turned on
their machine, these beings spotted the YM stress pattern back there in
time. They went to that point and reinforced the time-blending effect
with their own YM. The Trelawneys hadn't intended a complete contact
with that first test. The aliens almost succeeded in blending the two
periods completely in the area near the laboratory."

"For what purpose?" Camhorn asked.

"I think they're very anxious to get us located."

"With unfriendly intentions?"

"The ones we ran into didn't behave in a friendly manner. May I ask a
question, sir?"

"Of course," Camhorn said.

"When the Trelawneys' machine was examined, was the supply of YM
adequately shielded?"

"Quite adequately," Camhorn said.

"But when I opened the door, the laboratory was hot. And Miguel
Trelawney died of radiation burns...."

Camhorn nodded. "Those are facts that give your theory some substance,
lieutenant. No question about it. And there is the additional fact that
after you shut off the YM flow in the laboratory, nearly ten minutes
passed before the apparent contact between two time periods was broken.
Your report indicates that the phenomena you described actually became
more pronounced immediately after the shutoff."

"Yes, sir."

"As if the aliens might have been making every effort to retain contact
with our time?"

"Yes, sir," Dowland said. "That was my impression."

"It's quite plausible. Now, the indications are that Paul Trelawney
actually spent considerable time--perhaps twelve to fourteen hours, at
any rate--in that other period. He gave no hint of what he experienced
during those hours?"

"No, sir, except to say that it was night when he appeared there. He
may have told Miss Trelawney more."

"Apparently, he didn't," Camhorn said. "Before you and he went into
the laboratory, he warned her to watch for the approach of a creature
which answers the description of the gigantic things you encountered
twice. But that was all. Now, here again you've given us your objective
observations. What can you add to them--on a perhaps more speculative
basis?"

"Well, sir," Dowland said, "my opinions on that are, as a matter of
fact, highly speculative. But I think that Paul Trelawney was captured
by the aliens as soon as he appeared in the other time period, and was
able to escape from them a number of hours later. Two of the aliens who
were attempting to recapture him eventually followed him out on Lion
Mesa through another opening the YM stresses had produced between the
time periods, not too far away from the first."

Camhorn's stout companion said thoughtfully, "You believe the birdlike
creature you saw arrived by the same route?"

"Yes, sir," Dowland said, turning to him. "I think that was simply an
accident. It may have been some kind of wild animal that blundered
into the contact area and found itself here without knowing what had
occurred."

"And you feel," the other man went on, "that you yourself were passing
near that contact point in the night at the time you seemed to be
smelling a swamp?"

Dowland nodded. "Yes, sir, I do. Those smells might have been an
illusion, but they seemed to be very distinct. And, of course, there
are no swamps on the mesa itself."

       *       *       *       *       *

Camhorn said, "We'll assume it was no illusion. It seems to fit into
the general picture. But, lieutenant, on what are you basing your
opinion that Paul Trelawney was a captive of these beings for some
time?"

"There were several things, sir," Dowland said. "One of them is that
when Miss Trelawney regained consciousness in the hospital she didn't
remember having made an attempt to get away from me."

Camhorn nodded. "That was reported."

"She made the attempt," Dowland went on, "immediately after she had
taken off her radiation suit to avoid being choked in the dust storm on
the way down from the mesa. That is one point."

"Go ahead," Camhorn said.

"Another is that when I discovered Paul Trelawney early in the
morning, he was wearing his radiation suit. Judging by his appearance,
he had been in it for hours--and a radiation suit, of course, is a
very inconvenient thing to be in when you're hiking around in rough
country."

"He might," the stout man suggested, "have been afraid of running into
a radioactive area."

Dowland shook his head. "No, sir. He had an instrument which would have
warned him if he was approaching one. It would have made much more
sense to carry the suit, and slip into it again if it became necessary.
I didn't give the matter much thought at the time. But then the third
thing happened. I did not put that in the report because it was a
completely subjective impression. I couldn't prove now that it actually
occurred."

Camhorn leaned forward. "Go ahead."

"It was just before the time periods separated and the creature that
was approaching Miss Trelawney and myself seemed to drop through the
top of the mesa--I suppose it fell back into the other period. I've
described it. It was like a fifty-foot gray slug moving along on its
tail ... and there were those two rows of something like short arms. It
wasn't at all an attractive creature. I was frightened to death. But
I was holding a gun--the same gun with which I had stopped another of
those things when it chased me during the night. And the trouble was
that this time I wasn't going to shoot."

"You weren't going to shoot?" Camhorn repeated.

"No, sir. I had every reason to try to blow it to pieces as soon as I
saw it. The other one didn't follow up its attack on me, so it probably
was pretty badly injured. But while I knew that, I was also simply
convinced that it would be useless to pull the trigger. That's as well
as I can explain what happened....

"I think these aliens can control the minds of other beings, but can't
control them through the interference set up by something like our
AR fields. Paul Trelawney appeared in the other time period almost
in their laps. He had a rifle strapped over his back, but presumably
they caught him before he had a chance to use it. They would have
examined him and the equipment he was carrying, and when they took off
his radiation suit, they would have discovered he belonged to a race
which they could control mentally. After that, there would have been no
reason for them to guard him too closely. He was helpless.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I think Trelawney realized this, and used a moment when his actions
were not being controlled to slip back into the suit. Then he was free
to act again. When they discovered he had escaped, some of them were
detailed to search for him, and two of those pursuers came out here in
our time on the mesa.

"As for Miss Trelawney--well, obviously she wasn't trying to get away
from me. Apparently, she wasn't even aware of what she was doing. She
was simply obeying physically the orders her mind began to receive as
soon as she stepped out of the radiation suit. They would have been
to come to the thing, wherever it was at the moment--somewhere up to
the north of the ranch area, judging from the direction in which she
headed."

There was silence for some seconds. Then Camhorn's companion observed,
"There's one thing that doesn't quite fit in with your theory,
lieutenant."

"What's that, sir?"

"Your report states that you switched off your AR field at the same
time you advised Miss Trelawney to get out of her suit. You should have
been equally subject to the alien's mental instructions."

"Well," Dowland said, "I can attempt to explain that, sir, though again
there is no way to prove what I think. But it might be that these
creatures can control, only one mind at a time. The alien may not have
realized that I had ... well ... knocked Miss Trelawney unconscious
and that she was unable to obey its orders, until it came to the spot
and saw us. My assumption is that it wasn't till that moment that it
switched its mental attack to me."

       *       *       *       *       *

The stout man--his name was Laillard White, and he was one of
Research's ace trouble-shooters in areas more or less loosely related
to psychology--appeared morosely reflective as he and Camhorn left
Solar Police Authority Headquarters, and turned toward the adjoining
Overgovernment Bureau.

"I gather from your expression," Camhorn remarked, "that our lieutenant
was telling the truth."

White grunted. "Of course, he was--as he saw it."

"And he's sane?"

"Quite sane," White agreed absently.

Camhorn grinned. "Then what's the matter, Lolly? Don't you like the
idea of time-travel?"

"Naturally not. It's an absurdity."

"You're blunt, Lolly. And rash. A number of great minds differ with you
about that."

Laillard White said something rude about great minds in general. He
went on, "Was the machine these Trelawneys built found intact?"

Camhorn nodded. "In perfect condition. I found an opportunity to look
it over when it and the others the Freeholders had concealed on Terra
were brought in."

"And these machines are designed to make it possible to move through
time?"

"No question about that. They function in Riemann space, and are
very soundly constructed. A most creditable piece of work, in fact.
It's only regrettable that the Trelawney brothers were wasted on it.
We might have put their talents to better use. Though as it turned
out...." He shrugged.

White glanced over at him. "What are you talking about?" he asked
suspiciously.

"They didn't accomplish time-travel," Camhorn said, "though in theory
they should have. I know it because we have several machines based
on the same principles. The earliest was built almost eighty years
ago. Two are now designed to utilize the YM thrust. The Trelawney
machine is considerably more advanced in a number of details than its
Overgovernment counterparts, but it still doesn't make it possible to
move in time."

"Why not?"

"I'd like to know," Camhorn said. "The appearance of it is that the
reality we live in takes the same dim view of time-travel that you do.
Time-travel remains a theoretical possibility. But in practice--when,
for example, the YM thrust is applied for that purpose--the thrust is
diverted."

White looked bewildered. "But if Paul Trelawney didn't move through
time, what _did_ he do?"

"What's left?" Camhorn asked. "He moved through space, of course."

"Where?"

Camhorn shrugged. "They penetrated Riemann space," he said, "after
harnessing their machine to roughly nineteen thousand times the power
that was available to us before the Ymir series of elements dropped
into our hands. In theory, Lolly, they might have gone anywhere in
the universe. If we'd had the unreasonable nerve to play around with
multikilograms of YM--knowing what happened when fractional quantities
of a gram were employed--we might have had a very similar experience."

"I'm still just a little in the dark, you know," Laillard White
observed drily, "as to what the experience consisted of."

"Oh, Lieutenant Dowland's theory wasn't at all far off in that respect.
It's an ironic fact that we have much to thank the Trelawneys for.
There's almost no question at all now what the race of beings they
encountered were responsible for the troubles that have plagued us in
the use of YM. They're not the best of neighbors--neighbors in Riemann
space terms, that is. If they'd known where to look for us, things
might have become rather hot. They had a chance to win the first round
when the Trelawneys lit that sixty-eight kilogram beacon for them. But
they made a few mistakes, and lost us again. It's a draw so far. Except
that we now know about as much about them as they've ever learned about
us. I expect we'll take the second round handily a few years from now."

       *       *       *       *       *

White still looked doubtful. "Was it one of their planets the
Trelawneys contacted?"

"Oh, no. At least, it would have been an extremely improbable
coincidence. No, the machine was searching for Terra as Terra is
known to have been in the latter part of the Pleistocene period. The
Trelawneys had provided something like a thousand very specific factors
to direct and confine that search. Time is impenetrable, so the machine
had to find that particular pattern of factors in space, and did. The
aliens--again as Lieutenant Dowland theorized--then moved through
Riemann space to the planet where the YM thrust was manifesting itself
so violently. But once there, they still had no way of determining
where in the universe the thrust had originated--even though they
were, in one sense, within shouting distance of Terra, and two of them
were actually on its surface for a time. It must have been an extremely
frustrating experience all around for our friends."

Laillard White said, "Hm-m," and frowned.

Camhorn laughed. "Let it go, Lolly," he said. "That isn't your field,
after all. Let's turn to what is. What do you make of the fact that
Dowland appears to have been temporarily immune to the mental commands
these creatures can put out?"

"Eh?" White said. His expression turned to one of surprise. "But that's
obvious!"

"Glad to hear it," Camhorn said drily.

"Well, it is. Dowland's attitude showed clearly that he suspected the
truth himself on that point. Naturally, he was somewhat reluctant to
put it into words."

"Naturally. So what did he suspect?"

White shook his head. "It's so simple. The first specimen of humanity
the aliens encountered alive was Paul Trelawney. High genius level,
man! It would take that level to nullify our I.Q. tests in the manner
he and his half-brother did. When those creatures were prowling around
on the mesa, they were looking for that kind of mentality. Dowland's
above average, far from stupid. As you say, you like his theories. But
he's no Trelawney. Unquestionably, the aliens in each case regarded him
as some kind of clever domestic animal. The only reason he's alive is
that they weren't taking him seriously."

       *       *       *       *       *

"That," Camhorn said thoughtfully, "may have changed a number of
things."

"It may, indeed."

"Do we have anything on hand that would block their specific psi
abilities?"

"Oh, surely. If an AR field can stop them, there's nothing to worry
about in that respect. Our human telepaths wouldn't be seriously
hampered by that degree of interference."

"Very good," Camhorn said. "Do you have any theory about the partial
sensory interpretation of the two areas which both Dowland and Miss
Trelawney reported? The matter of being able to hear the river on the
other planet from time to time."

White nodded. "There are several possible explanations for that. For
one thing...."

"Better save it for lunch, Lolly," Camhorn interrupted, glancing at his
watch. "I see I have two minutes left to make the meeting. Anything
else you feel should be brought up at the moment?"

"Just one thing," White said. "If the Trelawneys' machine is capable of
locating a Terra-type planet anywhere in the universe...."

Camhorn nodded. "It is."

"Then," White said, "we've solved our exploding population problem,
haven't we?"

"For the time being, we have," Camhorn agreed. "As a matter of fact,
Lolly, that's precisely what the meeting I'm headed for is about."

"Then the Terran Freeholders can stop worrying about the political
pressures that have threatened to turn Terra into another hygienically
overcrowded slum-world."

"True enough," Camhorn said. "In another few years, if things go right,
every man, woman and child can become a Freeholder--somewhere."

"So the Trelawneys got what they wanted, after all...."

"They did, in a way. If the brothers knew the whole score, I think
they'd be satisfied. The situation has been explained to their niece.
She is."


                                THE END





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