“Dark?” protested Travis, clasping his arms about the knees pulled tightly to his chest, and staring northward. His suspicions about the volcanic activity there was borne out now by the redness of the sky, the presence of fumes in the wind. It was a spectacular display, but one which did not give confidence to the viewer. His only satisfaction lay in the miles which must stretch between that angry mountain and the ridge on which he was not stationed.
Ross made no answer. Since Travis had the first watch, his companion had rolled in his hide cloak and was already asleep.
It was a broken night and when Travis arose in the dawn he discovered a thin skim of gray dust on his skin and the rocks about. At the same time a sulphuric blast in his face made him cough raggedly.
“Anything doing below?” he croaked.
Ross shook his head and offered the gourd water bottle.
The small spaceship rested peacefully below and the only change in the picture from the day previous was that there was not so much activity among the scavengers below the open port.
“What are they like—those men from space?” Travis asked suddenly.
To his surprise Ross, whom he had come to regard as close to nerveless, shivered.
“Pure poison, fella, and don’t you ever forget it! I saw two kinds—the baldies who wear the blue suits, and a furry-faced one with pointed ears. They may look like men—but they aren’t. And believe me, anyone who tangles with those boys in blue is asking to be chopped up fine in a grinder!”
“I wonder where they came from.” Travis raised his head. There were a few stars, still dim pinpoints of light in the dawn sky. To think of those as suns nourishing other worlds such as the solid earth now under him—where men, or at least creatures fashioned something like men, carried on lives of their own—was a spread of imagination requiring some effort of mind.
Ross waved a hand skyward. “Take your pick, Fox. The big brains running this show of ours believe there was a whole confederation of different worlds tied together in a United Something-or-other then—” He blinked and then laughed. “Me—saying ‘then’ when I mean ‘now!’ This jumping back and forth in time mixes a guy’s thinking.”
“And if someone were to take off in that ship down there, he’d run into them outside?”
“If he did, he’d regret it!”
“But if he took off in our time—would he still find them waiting?”
Ross played with the thongs fastening the supply bag. “That’s one of the big questions. And nobody’ll have the right answer until we do go and see. Twelve—fifteen thousand years is a long time. Do you know any civilization here that’s lasted even a fraction of that? From painted hunters to the atom here. Out there it could be the atom back to painted hunters—or to nothing—by now.” “Would you like to go and see?”
Ross smiled. “I’ve had one brush with the blue boys. If I could be sure they weren’t still on some star map, I might say yes. I wouldn’t care to meet them on their home ground— and I’m no trained space man. But the idea does eat into a fella…. Ha—company!”
There was movement down in the valley—to the north. But those objects issuing out of the trees at a leisurely and ponderous pace were not Folsom hunters. Ross whistled very softly between his teeth, watching that advance eagerly, and Travis shared his excitement.
The bison herd, the striped horses, the frustrated sabertooth confronting the giant ground sloths, none had been as thrilling a sight as this. Even the elephant of their own time could generate a measure of awe in the human onlooker by the sheer majesty of its movement, its aura of strength and fearlessness. And these larger and earlier members of the same tribe produced an almost paralyzing sense of wonder in the two scouts. “Mammoths!”
Tall, thick-haired giants, their backbones sloping from the huge dome of the skull, the hump of shoulder, to the shorter hindquarters dwarfed tree and landscape as they moved. Three of them towered close to fourteen feet at the shoulder. They bore the weight of the tremendous curled tusks proudly, their trunks swaying in time to their unhurried steps. They were the most formidable living things Travis had ever seen. And, watching them, he could not believe that the hunters he had spied upon in the other valley had ever brought down such game with spears. Yet the evidence that they had, had been discovered over and over again—scattered bones with a flint point between the giant ribs or splitting a massive spine.
“One—two—three—” Ross was counting, half under his breath. “And a small one—”
“Calf,” Travis identified. But even that baby was nothing to face without a modem shotgun to hand.
“Four—five—Family party?” Ross speculated.
“Maybe. Or do they travel in herds?”
“Ask the big brains. Ohhh—look at that tree go!”
The leader in the dignified parade set its massive head against a tree bole, gave a small push, and the tree crashed. With a squeal audible to the scouts, the mammoth calf hustled forward and started harvesting the leaves with a busy trunk, while its elders appeared to watch it with adult indulgence.
Ross pushed the wind-blown tails of wig hair out of his eyes. “We may have a problem here. What if they don’t move on? I can’t see a crew working down there with those tons of tusks skipping about in the background.”
“If you want to haze ’em on,” Travis observed, “don’t let me stop you. I’ve drag-herded stubborn cows—but I’m riot going down there and swing a rope at any of those rumps!”
“They might take a fancy to bump over the ship.” “So they might,” agreed Travis. “And what could we do to stop ’em?”
But for the moment the mammoth family seemed content at their own end of the valley, which was at least a quarter of a mile from the ship. After an hour’s watch Ross tightened the thongs of his sandals and gathered up his spears.
“I’ll report in. Maybe those walking mountains will keep hunters away—”
“Or draw them here,” corrected Travis pessimistically. “Think you can find your way back?”
Ross grinned. “This trail is getting to be a regular freeway. All we need is a traffic cop or two. Be seeing you….” He disappeared from their perch with that swift and silent ability to vanish into the surrounding landscape which Travis still found unusual in a white man.
As Travis continued to he there, chin supported on forearm, idly watching the mammoths, he tried again to figure out what made Ashe and Ross Murdock so different from the other members of their race he knew. Of course he had in a measure felt the same lack of selfconsciousness with Dr. Morgan. To Prentiss Morgan a man’s race and the color of his skin were nothing—a shared enthusiasm was all that really mattered. Morgan had cracked Travis Fox’s shell and let him into a larger world. And then—like all soft and de-shelled creatures—he had been the more deeply hurt when that new world had turned hostile. He had then fled back into the old, leaving everything—even friendship—behind.
Now he waited for the old smoldering flame of anger to bite. It was there, but dulled, as the night fire of the volcano was now only a lazy smoke plume under the rising sun. The desert over which he had ridden to find water a week ago was indeed time buried. What—?
The mammoths had moved, with the largest bull facing about. Trunk up, the beast shrilled a challenge that tore at Travis’ ears. This was beyond the squall of the sabertooth, the grunting roar of a sloth prepared to do battle. It was the most frightening sound he had ever heard.
A second time the bull trumpeted. Sabertooth on the hunt? The Alaskan lion? What animal was large, enough, or desperate enough, to stalk that walking mountain? Man?
But if there was a Folsom hunter in hiding, he did not linger. The bull paced along the edge of the wood and then butted over another tree, to tear loose leaved branches and crunch them greedily. The crisis was past.