“Because if you do try and leave here, you’ll lose your personality, your future will be changed, and you’ll never meet me again.” Her lips trembled.
“That’s a private reason,” Corson said. “But why is the Council interested in me?”
“They didn’t say. I think they believe Uria will have need of you. They’re afraid some danger threatens the planet and they’re convinced that only you can avert it. Why, I just don’t know.”
“I have some idea,” Corson said. “Can you take me to them?” Antonella seemed dismayed by the question.
“That might be rather difficult,” she said. “They live three hundred years ahead, and I myself have no means of traveling in time.”
Chapter 10
Corson broke the subsequent silence with an effort.
“You’re trying to tell me you come from three centuries in the future?”
She agreed.
“And what assignment does this Council of yours plan to give me?” She shook her head, her hair swooping around her shoulders. “None that I know of. They simply want you to stay on this world.”
“I can prevent the disaster just by sticking around?”
“Something like that.”
“Very comforting. And at this moment, while we’re talking, nobody is exercising any direct responsibility on this planet?”
“No. The present Council supervises a period of a little over seven centuries. It’s not very much. I’ve heard of Councils on other worlds which have to look after a millennium or more.”
“Well, at least that has the advantage of guaranteeing a stable power structure,” Corson sighed. “And how do you intend to get back to your own age?”
“I don’t know. The idea is that you’re supposed to find a way.” Corson whistled. “They’re landing me with more and more problems, aren’t they? Well, we have this much in common, anyhow: we’re both lost in timel”
She took his hand.
“I’m not lost,” she said. “Let’s go back. The light’s failing.”
They returned to the floater, deep in thought and with bowed heads.
“One thing at least is definite,” Corson said. “If you’re telling the truth, I’m going to find some means I don’t yet know about to reach that period of the future that you hail from, and up there I’m going to meet you even before you come to give me this warning. You’ll see me for the first time, I’ll see you for the second. I shall make advances that you’ll find incomprehensible. And at the end of that trip perhaps I’ll make sense of this unfathomable muddle.”
He dropped on the cushions, and sleep overcame him while they flew toward the airborne city, its pyramidal splendor licked by the violet tongues of the sunset.
Chapter 11
He was awakened by cries, grinding noises, the clumping of boots on a rough surface, orders shouted in a snarling voice, the spiteful clatter of weapons. It was absolutely dark. The floater was swaying from side to side. He turned toward Antonella, whose face he could not even discern in the inky blackness.
“Has there been an accident?”
“No, we’re being attacked. I didn’t cog anything but this black cloud, and I couldn’t work out what it was.”
“And what’s going to happen next?”
“I can’t see anything. Just darkness, utter darkness.” There was despair in her tone.
He reached out and squeezed her shoulder for reassurance. But in this total obscurity, no contact, however intimate, could dispel the sense of separation.
He whispered, “I’ve got a gun, you know!”
And in a single continuous movement he drew the weapon from its holster and swept the space around, trigger hard down. Instead of the fierce silver ray he was used to, a weak beam of violet shone from the muzzle. Two hands’ breadths away, it faded into nothing. This must be a force field, tuned to absorb not only light but even the most penetrating types of radiant energy. Within his very body Corson felt a nasty prickling sensation, as though his cells were threatening to lose their grip on each other.
A voice so deep and powerful it was like a blow in the belly boomed from an incredibly distant cave.
“Corson, don’t shoot—we’re friends!”
“Who are you?” he cried, but the words were as shrill as though he were hearing through a tiny, tiny spy mike.
“Colonel Veran,” the voice answered. “You don’t know me, but that doesn’t matter. Hide your eyes—we’re going to lift the screen.”
Corson put away his gun and in the darkness felt for Antonella’s hand.
“Do as he says. Does the name mean anything to you?”
She whispered, “I don’t know anybody called ‘Colonel’!”
“That’s a rank, a military rank. His name is Veran. I don’t know him any more than you do, but—”
Like a lightning flash. Between his fingers Corson saw at first only a blank whiteness, which shortly dissolved into a horde of needles as red as blood that drove through his closed lids. When he was able to open his eyes properly he saw that the floater was hovering in a forest glade. It was broad day. They were surrounded by men in gray uniforms, carrying unknown weapons. Beyond the ring of soldiers he could make out two machines, or two mounds of something, whose details were blurred to his suffering eyes. There were two more like them on each side, and when he turned his head he found two more still at his back. More soldiers were standing guard on them.
Tanks?
Then one of the things moved, and Corson almost cried out.
Those “mounds” were Monsters!
Monsters exactly like the one which the Archimedes had been sent to turn loose on Uria. Creatures so terrifying that human beings of Corson’s day, in that age when war had impoverished language, had been able to invent no other name for them but Monster.
Corson glanced at Antonella. Tight-lipped, she was keeping up a pretty good front.
Now a man in a green uniform left the group of gray-clad soldiers and approached the floater. Three meters away he drew himself up stiffly and said in a sharp voice, “Colonel Veran! Miraculously escaped with the rump of the 623rd Cavalry Regiment from the Aergistal disaster. Thanks to you, Corson. Your idea of setting up a beacon saved our lives. What’s more I see you’ve managed to get hold of a hostage. Fine. We shall interrogate her later.”
“I was never—” Corson began. Then he fell silent. If this alarming person felt he owed Corson a debt, let him go on thinking so.
He jumped down from the floater. It was only then that he noticed the soldiers’ uniforms were torn and stained, and there were deep dents in the blackened masks which covered their faces. Oddly, none of the men in sight appeared to be wounded, even slightly. The reason sprang to Corson’s mind from his past experience.
Casualties get finished off…
That name “Aergistal” meant nothing to him. These uniforms were none he recognized. The rank which translated into Pangal as “colonel” must have been used for fifteen thousand years at least. This Colonel Veran might have emerged from any battle fought between Corson’s time and the present, although the fact that his men used trained Monsters did indicate that he must come from a period fairly long after Corson’s own. How long would it have taken to communicate with the Monsters, train them, following the first tentative experiments by the Solar Powers—ten years, a hundred, a thousand?
“What was your rank?” demanded Colonel Veran.
Instinctively Corson straightened to attention. But he was grotesquely aware of the unmilitary nature of his dress. And of the situation. He and Veran were no more than ghosts at this point in time. As for Antonella, she had not yet been bom.
“Lieutenant,” he said in a dull voice.