Time Travel Omnibus, page 396
Gus expressed his scepticism in an unfriendly and malodious phrase. The plants promptly echoed it.
Sam Mund said bluntly: “So what, pal? We gonna stand here all day and exchange smells with a bunch of pot-bellied skunk-cabbages?”
The “skunk-cabbages” had an answer for Sammy, too. They fell back along one side, moving with a curious shuffling movement as their “roots” slithered through the sand. They moved with amazing swiftness, and their maneuver was as definite as if it had been drawn on paper. They had formed a long “U” around their captives, with the closed end gradually moving in from behind.
“They’re trying to tell us something,” Fay exclaimed.
Spike nodded slowly. “They’re trying to get us to move that way, toward the hills. Herding us like a bunch of sheep—but I still think they’re friendly.”
“And maybe they ain’t,” Sammy Mund insisted. “Any overgrown stinkpot of a squash thinks he can shove me around—”
“Put on your helmet again and you’ll be protected. I’ve still got a hunch they’re trying to help us.”
“Nonsense!” exploded Jones. “I say let’s get rid of ’em and go about our business!”
He raised his blaster again, but just as suddenly he seemed to be hit by a solid, invisible cloud that sent him reeling back. There was that burning odor again—the smell which Spike had subconsciously labeled as “anger.” But there was something else, too, like a hidden threat. Just the faintest trace of a bitter-almond smell which made Dr. Bowers think suddenly of potassium cyanide. . .
But it passed as quickly as it had come. Jones gulped fresh air in gratefully, and a fragrance like an apology swept over the group.
“We’ll play along with them,” Spike said decisively. “Put on your helmets if you want and keep your blasters handy, but no more funny business. I think it’s worth finding out what this is all about.”
Jones was still protesting, but he quickly changed his mind. Two of the “Stinkpots”—as Sammy Mund had tagged them—moved in on him with a sharp pungent scent that was as decided as a poke in the ribs!
IT was a fantastic procession that filed across the sands of that fantastic world. The wondering, uneasy little group of Earthmen—and a hundred, surrounding mobile plants. At first the “Stinkpots” kept their distance, like an escort of honor. But gradually one of them, somewhat larger and more brightly mottled than the rest, moved in closer to Spike as if to make clear that he, too, was a leader.
As he moved along, it seemed to Spike almost as if he were carrying on a “conversation” with this strange being. A steady flow of scent seemed to emanate from his companion, subtly changing in odor and intensity, but always pleasant and definitely “reassuring.”
And the others following were also undergoing a strange reaction which could only be described as “emotional.” The sense of smell might be the least developed of man’s five senses—but it also ties in closely with the basic reactions.
Mrs. Reeves, for instance, had been hypnotized by the scent of lilacs, and had forgotten her predicament to dream of home. Jones, while still keeping a wary and disgruntled eye on things, found himself thinking of rare steak and fried onions. Spike was mentally enjoying a tall, cool one with his new companion, and Gloomy Gus was remembering a dark-haired wench he had left in Marsport.
Only Fay Fairchild remained unaffected. She plodded mechanically on with her eyes on the ground, wrapped in a blanket of shock and grief that nothing could penetrate.
Thus they moved across the shimmering sands, until their goal was reached like the end of a dream. They had approached the rock cliff directly below the spot where the fire still smoldered, and Spike had already marked the well-beaten path which led up to it.
But it was the opening in the base of the cliff which claimed his attention now. It was a narrow canyon, a sheer crevasse with towering sides—and it was also a breathtaking, tropical paradise!
Shadowed from the cruel heat of the sun, fed by a crystal stream which splashed from the rocks at the inner end, the rich soil of the desert had blossomed forth in startling profusion. Vivid flowers on slender stems, low-hanging trees with feathery limbs, singing birds and brilliant flashes of insect wings . . . it was, as Spike told himself with unusual awe, “like finding yourself in Heaven.”
The others stood there for a long moment, blinking sun-weary eyes and pinching themselves mentally. It was too good to be true—it must be a mirage. But then they rushed on in, and knew it was real. They gulped down the cold clear water and bathed their faces and feasted their eyes . . .
All but Spike. The sense of responsibility was still heavy on his shoulders, and he surveyed the incredible little valley with his blaster in hand. It gave him the dreamlike feeling of having been here before, and that bothered him almost as much as the realization that it could be a trap.
Moving as if in a dream, Spike ignored the cool invitation of the brook, and skirted around toward a well-marked path which led away from it. He ducked under a low-hanging limb and then stopped dead with surprise.
Along the base of the cliff which hemmed them in was a long row of caves. Strangely unnatural caves, with large square entrances lined up in a neat, even pattern!
Again that feeling of intangible memory stirred within him. Cautiously he stuck his head into the nearest doorway and stood there peering into the cool, dim interior. He stood there a long time, until at length he turned and found the others had followed and were gaping like tourists.
“Cliff-dwellers,” stated Dr. Bowers matter-of-factly. But then he turned and looked at the plant-creatures incredulously. “Still . . . how on earth could they have ever done this, in solid rock?”
“They didn’t,” Spike answered slowly. “Not unless they use blasters and cook over fires—and go to sleep in six-foot beds!”
V
SPACE had lost its dimensions, and Time stood still, and Reality was a memory long since forgotten . . .
Brad found himself moving down the endless corridor with some dim purpose he couldn’t define. He knew it was something important; something to accomplish, and there was little time.
He hurried his steps, but it wasn’t until he had reached the turn of the passageway that it finally came clear.
Crawford . . . He had to get Crawford!
He reached Crawford’s cabin, but the door was locked. He pounded on it and yelled, but no one answered. And he put his shoulder against it, but the door was too solid.
A sledge was the answer—the sledge he found in an emergency compartment. The door wrenched open with the second blow.
Crawford whirled to face him, hugging the wall. The man couldn’t hear him, because of his helmet, and when Brad tried to grab him he pulled away.
Brad swung at him, but the space-suit hampered the blow and Crawford stumbled aside. Then Brad saw the hole in the bulkhead; saw the small, heavy chest that Crawford had been hiding.
Purpose came then, and bewildering recollection. But even as he reached out for the box, the deafening jangle of the alarm stopped his arm. He turned, and stared, and knew it was still too late. He would never make it . . .
His voice screamed desperately against the resounding chaos inside his helmet. “Let ’er go, Spike! Shove away!”
He heard Fay’s faint cry as he dove for Crawford. They fought for years. They struggled savagely, with Brad unable to seize the blaster but finally knocking it loose. It was a nightmare in slow motion, a remembered dream, as he choked Crawford into unconsciousness with his clumsy gloves.
Then he lost his head. He ran back down the corridor, screaming for them to wait, until at last the airlock door brought him up short. The red light above and the pressure gauge were enough to tell him his doom.
But there was still one thing he could do. One thing he wanted, before the end. He turned, grimly and deliberately, and began to retrace his steps.
But as he walked the corridor stretched interminably ahead, like parallel lines reaching for infinity . . .
THAT first night they had remained in the lush little valley, drugged beyond fear by weariness and sun and a strange feeling that this was “home.”
Spike still had the burden of command to make him cautious, but he gave in without much argument. There was no longer any question of the friendliness of their pot-shaped benefactors—and if the dead-end canyon were a trap, it also gave protection. The surrounding cliffs were high and sheer, and Spike himself stood guard that night at the narrow entrance.
The next day they stripped the lifeboat of all that they needed; and the following week was spent in fruitless exploration. Their world was bounded by impenetrable cliffs and chasms above the valley, and in the other direction the desert stretched an unattainable horizon against the looming globe of the major planet.
There was also the huge bed of ashes on the high point above the camp, and the caves themselves, but there were no other signs of what Dr. Bowers called the “former inhabitants.”
That unexplained mystery caused uneasiness at first, but the presence of the “Stinkpots” was always reassuring. They indicated what fruits were edible. They contributed small animals to the community pot—by waiting in ambush with a swift anesthetic. And they were always at hand with cheerful fragrance.
Dr. Bowers studied them with interest, christened them with the scholarly name of “Olfacts,” and concluded that their metabolism was based on chemicals which they absorbed from the soil, as well as their “smelling.”
“They have only this one specialized sense,” he told the others. “But it’s coupled with a high intelligence and is remarkably acute.”
“Yeah?” said Sammy Mund sceptically. “How come they understand us, then?”
Dr. Bowers put it tactfully. “How does a dog smell ‘fear’ in a human? We’re chemical plants ourselves, with bio-chemical processes accompanying our every reaction. And while our own olfactory equipment may be remarkably crude in comparison—I am beginning to believe I can almost understand them!”
And as time went on the others, too, found themselves carrying on simple “conversations” with their pungent little hosts. Spike tried to put his own talent to practical use by asking the Chief of the Olfacts what had happened to the other humans who had made the caves—but the Chief evaded the question. As Spike reported wryly to Dr. Bowers: “The little pot-bellied sonuvagun just smelled the other way.”
So the days drifted by, and merged beyond counting. Life was easy and pleasant, and it was useless to hope for escape or rescue.
Sammy Mund married Lola De Lao—in a fragrant ceremony—and they settled down to raising children. Mrs. Reeves still bullied her nurse, and wove innumerable table mats from palm-tree fibers. Spike and Gus remodeled the lifeboat condenser into an efficient still, and experimented with various fruits, and were quite content.
Myron Hoak worked hard and long at “converting” the Olfacts, and finally got his message across. The Olfacts had apparently always lived in perfect harmony before—but now they were able to discuss “government” and their arguments were both heated and smelly.
Young Beans, the kid who had always had star-dust in his eyes, was terribly restless at first and quite a problem. He was all for sailing off in the lifeboat, regardless of goal and alone if necessary, but he finally found comfort in the homely young girl who had lost her sweetheart. Another fragrant wedding—and a hasty one—propitiated Mrs. Reeves and delighted the natives.
Even J.R. Jones succumbed, when he found that Elvira Kirkland had talked herself out in her days as a teacher and was content to spend the rest of them as a very good listener.
Dr. Bowers had become recognized as unofficial Leader, since Spike’s dereliction, for he was the eldest and wisest and could teach resignation. He married them, and consoled them; and studied the Olfacts, and worked out a “dictionary” where none was needed.
THE months drifted by, and soon became years—or was it centuries? Time itself had become meaningless where there was no place to go and no haste for tomorrow . . .
For all but one: the woman named Fay. There was no consolation for the grief she bore; there was no answer for her unasked question. Where others existed, she only waited.
But finally the dam broke, and she came to Dr. Bowers. He had been working on his Epic—translating the legend which the Olfacts had told him—but now he laid down his quill and carefully corked the tube of tannic ink.
He studied her with compassion and something of shock, noticing for the first time how white her hair had grown. “What is it, my dear?”
She sobbed incoherently. “I . . . I’m all confused! I can’t get it straight!”
“Confused about what?” he asked, although he already knew.
“It doesn’t make sense . . . nothing seems real. But the rest of you just go on and on, as if we’d been here forever.”
“And perhaps we have,” the professor said gently.
She straightened up indignantly. “That’s nonsense and you know it! You’re just echoing that silly legend the natives tell.”
He glanced down at the meticulously written parchment before him with a quiet smile. “I don’t believe ‘silly’ is quite the word, Fay. Their legend, like the great Legend of man, is an earnest attempt to explain the inexplicable. They—like us—must explain their existence in terms of ‘A Beginning.’ They happen to use us for their frame of reference, that’s all.”
“My frame of reference is us, too!
The Stella the lifeboat . . . our landing here. We all remember that, at least those of us who are of the first generation.”
“Yes . . .” he answered thoughtfully. “Yes—but were those the beginning? How about these caves, which we found already here? And an alien form of life which had already anticipated us—and had a legend to prove it so?”
She stared at him indignantly. “Now you’re going in circles, like that darned old legend! You’re warping things in Time and Space.”
He smiled again, with gentle slowness. “Space is warped, my dear—and Time does the warping.”
* * *
THE corridor. The endless, shining passageway which still lay ahead . . .
Brad moved slowly, trying to fight through the layers which wrapped his memory. He remembered Crawford, and the hidden box. He remembered the fight, the sound of the gong. He remembered all of this a hundred, a thousand, times over.
But memory was only an echo that echoed back, a mirrored mirror that reflected itself.
Still there was something—something ahead. Something yet to do, and so little time.
Crawford . . . the box . . . the fight . . . the gong . . .
Now he had it, crystal-clear! He had to get Crawford, before it was too late!
But the door was locked; latched from inside. He got a sledge, and broke it open.
Crawford wheeled to face him, hugging the wall. He yelled, but his voice was lost inside his helmet. He tried to grab Crawford, but the man pulled away.
Then he swung, but his space-suit impeded. Crawford escaped, but revealed his secret. The box in the hole in the bulkhead—the box that held the answer to everything!
He reached out toward it, but a shattering sound froze him solid. It was the din of the alarm gong . . . and he was too late. His voice rose in a shout that knifed through the bedlam:
“Let ’er go, Spike; shove away!”
Then he dove at Crawford, who blocked the door with his blaster in hand. He dove with Fay’s faint last cry in his ears, and he fought for his life with sheer desperation. Until finally Crawford lay unconscious, half-choked to death, and the alarm was a torment to drive him mad.
He ran back down the passageway, screaming for them to wait—but the airlock door stopped him short. The airlock was empty; the boat was gone.
He turned, grimly and deliberately, and started back. There was one thing yet to do, one thing that still waited . . . at the end of an endless hall.
* * *
“SO you see,” Doctor Bowers went on, “why I take this legend of our little friends quite seriously. Time is fluid, and flows at a different rate for systems in different states of motion. It all depends upon the observer—on your relative point of view. Events which are separated by an interval in one Space-Time system may be simultaneous in a different system.”
Fay frowned uncertainly. “But if you take the legend literally, it means that time moves backward and repeats itself over and over again.”
“Did you ever hear of a ‘phonograph’ ?”
Fay shook her head.
“It was a crude instrument used hundreds of years ago for reproducing sound . . . but let’s skip that. Let’s consider the Stella herself. We know she was moving in a four-dimensional orbit. We know that she was close to the speed of light when we deserted her. And we know that as a moving system approaches that speed, Time approaches zero—within that system, that is.”
He paused. “This is only theoretical; in fact, my colleagues back on Earth have long called it ‘impossible.’ But let’s say the ship ultimately reached super light-speed; in other words, moved not only from finite time into zero time but went beyond. The only ‘beyond,’ my dear, is negative time—‘backward’ time, as you have put it.”
Fay frowned. “Which means the whole cycle repeats itself, over and over again . . . including us?”
Dr. Bowers nodded grimly. “Including us. Including the lifeboat and the landing and all the rest. That’s where the paradox comes in, the legend itself. As observers in another system, we can see ourselves coming, so to speak.”
“You mean it’s only an optical illusion?”
“Optical, tangible, four-dimensional . . . not to mention the odors with which our friends describe it!” He smiled and then concluded seriously, “It wasn’t an optical illusion that made this cave—but a very real blaster.”
The woman was silent for a moment. She raised he head finally, and her voice was low. “What about someone . . . who didn’t escape? What about . . . Captain Hunter?”
Dr. Bowers said nothing, but slowly shook his head. And they sat there in the cool dimness of the cave, each silent and sad, until finally the woman got up and left, without another word.
