While the others climbed out of the chamber, I looked around. As I said, there was a big range of mountains to the east and north of us. We had materialized at the base of the foothills. These mountains were absolutely bare of vegetation, like some I once saw at the western end of Texas. Likewise our landing place was bare of plant life—at least, plant life large enough to be seen with the naked eye—which gave us a fine view in all directions. Since there wouldn't be any proper firewood in this period, we had brought along a little paraffin camp stove, so my clients wouldn't have to live on cold army rations.
These mountains, I thought, must be the Appalachians, before erosion wore them down to stumps. It turned out later that I was wrong. The forces of erosion had worn these mountains down to a flat plain long before the Appalachians had formed; then another movement of the Earth's surface had raised this part of the country. Erosion had carved out a new range, originally quite as impressive as these, and then had worn it down to low, rounded hills, the present-day Appalachians.
To the west, the prospect was quite different. A few kilometers away, down a gentle slope, stood a band of dark green, and beyond that an arm of the sea, just visible over the treetops.
Hubert asked sharply: "Mr. Rivers, are you sure you haven't taken us forward in time, to a day when mankind has vanished from the Earth?"
"Quite sure," I said. "Professor Prochaska has tried to explain it to me, but I'm no four-dimensional thinker. Seems that, according to his equations, it's theoretically possible to send the chamber forward in time—that is, into the future—but not to get it back. If, for instance, he sent me forward in the machine, and I saw certain things happening, then when I got back I might do something to stop them from happening, or at least to happen differently. That would cause another paradox. Can't have that sort of thing in a logical universe."
"Unless you admit divine intervention," said Zahn, looking benevolent. " 'God hath power to help'—second Chronicles, twenty-five."
"You can admit it if you like," I said. "Me, I'm a hunting guide, not a theologian, and I won't try to argue such questions. Anyway, the professor doesn't want to lose his multi-million-dollar transition chamber by sending it to the future and not be able to recover it."
I pulled out my pocket diastemeter and looked at the distant line of greenery. I said: "The vegetation along the shoreline is about three kilometers from here. If you want to see some Devonian life close up, how about walking down to the shore and back? By that time the crew will have the camp set up, and Ming will have tiffin ready."
The godlies agreed. McMurtrie said: "Reggie, should I bring my gun?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"I see you've got yours."
"Force of habit," I said. "After leading so many safaris and coming upon some bloody formidable creatures, I just don't feel comfortable without it. But I'd suggest you leave yours, so the weight won't tire you out."
The Reverend Zahn proved our least able hiker. Overweight and out of fitness, he kept panting and groaning and complaining about his new field boots. But he stuck with us until we reached the strip of vegetation along the shore of that unknown sea, which stretched to the horizon. The water and sand looked just like water and sand of our own time, the sea being very smooth and calm, with little ripples slapping the sand. But the plant fife was something else.
Have you ever dreamed that you were shrunk to the size of an ant, pushing your way among grass stems on someone's lawn? Well, pushing one's way through a Devonian forest gives that illusion, too. The plants are the ancient relatives of a lot of primitive little things such as you find along stream banks: ferns, horsetails, and lycopods or ground pines. But the lycopods, instead of being little mossy finger-sized plants, were scaly-barked trees ten or fifteen meters tall, without anything you would recognize as leaves.
The horsetails, instead of being the right size for a potted plant, were three or four meters high. And the ferns, like the lycopods, became real trees with trunks like those of palms. The greenery at the top, instead of the fronds of palms, was a mass of fiddlehead ferns. I had the funny feeling that if a man had appeared in this landscape, he'd be the height of a seven-storey building.
At first we saw no sign of animal life. As we strolled through the greenbelt toward the water, looking this way and that, Hubert and McMurtrie had their cameras buzzing. McMurtrie cried:
"Hey, there's a bug!"
He ran a couple of steps and stooped to grab the creature, whatever it was; but it got away from him. He said:
"It looked like a silverfish from our own time. Weren't they the first true insects to come ashore?"
"So scientists tell me," I said.
Hubert said: "I do believe that's a spider!" He adjusted one of his cameras for a close-up shot.
"Better not try to pick it up," said McMurtrie. "I don't know if they'd evolved poison glands so early, but we'd better not take chances."
We sauntered on; McMurtrie exclaimed over a tiny milliped he saw on a tree trunk. He said to Zahn:
"Well, Reverend, you must admit this little forest is like nothing from our own time."
"I admit nothing," said Zahn. "For all I know, Mr. Rivers may have set us down on some forsaken coast of his native Australia. They have all sorts of strange plants and animals there."
"But you must admit we haven't seen any animals except a few—what's the name for all the jointed-legged creatures like insects and spiders, Reggie?"
"Arthropods, I believe," I said.
"Okay, arthropods. But no mammals, birds, or reptiles. That fits what the evolutionists tell us about the earliest land life."
"Does not prove a thing," said Zahn. "There are many parts of the present Earth where the wild life has been killed off or driven away. The fact that we don't see any antelopes or kangaroos does not prove that we might not see plenty if we crossed yonder mountain range." He pointed.
"Hey!" exclaimed Hubert. "There's a real land animal—a reptile, I think!"
We were at the upper edge of the beach, looking toward the water, where little ripples tinkled. On such a coast in Present, you'd expect to find swarms of sea birds, nesting ashore and foraging out in the water. But there was nothing whatever of that sort here.
Hubert indicated a creature lying in the sand a couple of meters from the water's edge. It was of lizardlike shape, clad in a soft, purple-brown skin; I suppose scientists would class it not as a reptile but as an amphibian, a kind of newt or salamander. It must have been about thirty centimeters long and stout for a newt.
Hubert hurried to where the creature lay, bringing up one of his cameras. At his approach, the newt hoisted itself off the sand on its four short legs but did not seem at all inclined to retreat before its human visitor.
It stood there, unmoving, while Hubert shot pictures. Then Hubert thrust out a finger as if to prod the newt into activity. Just as the finger touched the shiny, moist-looking hide, the newt whipped around and clamped its jaws on that finger.
"Ow!" cried Paul Hubert, jumping back and raising his arm. The newt kept its grip and was hoisted off the sand, dangling from Hubert's finger.
"Reggie!" cried Hubert. "How do I get this darned thing to let go? This hurts!"
"Try dunking it in the water," I said.
He stepped to the edge of the sea and lowered the newt into the water. Presently it let go of his finger. Hubert tried to kick it but missed, and it swam away with an eelish wriggle.