Dallas climbed down from the jeep and trudged over through the snow. “That Iceland,” he said. “What a climate they got there in October.”
“Save the weather report. Are Ottar and the ship all right?”
“Everything’s fine. The ship is up on the shore for the winter, and when we left Ottar and his uncle were getting smashed on the booze we brought. For a while there we worried he would never show, the Prof had to make four jumps to find him. Seems he stopped for some time in the Faeroes. Between you and me I don’t think he would ever have got to Iceland if his thirst hadn’t got the better of him. Once you get hooked on the distilled stuff, the homebrew doesn’t seem so hot.”
Barney relaxed, for the first time in a long time he realized, as the tension faded. He even managed a slight smile.
“Good. Now let’s get the company moved while we still have some daylight at this end.” He climbed aboard the time platform, walking carefully in the jeep’s tracks so he wouldn’t get his shoes full of melting snow, and opened the door of the control room.
“Got enough juice for another jump?” he asked.
“With the motor-generator going the batteries are charged at all times, a great improvement.”
“Then take us ahead in time to next spring, the year 1005, and land us at a good spot in Newfoundland, one of the sites you and Lyn searched when you were looking for the Viking settlements.”
“I know just the place,” Professor Hewett said, leafing through a notebook. “An ideal location.” He set up the coordinates on the board and activated the vremeatron.
There was the now familiar sensation of temporal displacement and the time platform settled onto a rocky shore. Waves broke, almost over them, and a smother of spray hissed down into the snow. A dark cliff loomed above, crumbling and sinister.
“What do you call this?” Barney shouted above the boom of the breaking waves.
“Wrong coordinates,” the professor called back. “A slight mistake. This is a different site.”
“You had to tell me! Let’s go before we wash out to sea.”
The second time jump brought them to a grassy meadow that overlooked a small bay. Tall trees marched up the bowl of the hills around them in solid ranks, and down through the meadow to the sea there twisted a clear and swift-running brook.
“This is more like it,” Barney said as the others climbed out of the jeep. “Where are we, Jens?”
Jens Lyn looked around, sniffed the air and smiled. “I remember this well, one of the first sites we checked. This is Epaves Bay, really an arm of Sacred Bay on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. That is the Strait of Belle Isle out there. The reason we investigated this site—”
“Great. Looks like just what we want. And isn’t the gadget in Ottar’s ship zeroed in on this strait?”
“That is correct.”
“Then this is the spot for us.” Barney bent and picked up a handful of waterlogged snow from the platform and began forming it into a ball. “We’ll leave the area down by the mouth of the stream there for Ottar. Then set our camp up over there to the right, at the top of the meadow. It looks flat enough to keep the twentieth century off camera. Let’s go. Back to move camp. And I want this slush shoveled off first so we don’t have anyone breaking a leg.”
Dallas bent over to fasten the lace on his boot and the target was too broad to resist. Barney hurled his snowball square into the middle of the taut denim.
“Here we go. Vikings,” he said happily. “Let’s go settle Vinland.”
13
All the world was gray, silent, damp, pressing in on them. The fog muffled everything, soaking up sound as well as sight so that the ocean before them was an unseen presence until a low wave appeared, breaking silently into froth as it rushed up the slope of the sandy beach almost to their feet. The truck, no more than ten feet away, was only a dark shape in the mist.
“Give it another try,” Barney said, squinting into the damp wall of blankness.
Dallas, protected from the weather by an immense black poncho and wide-brimmed Stetson, raised the carbon dioxide pressure flask with the foghorn attached and opened the valve. The moaning blare of sound throbbed out across the water, still echoing in their ears after the valve was closed.
“Did you hear that?” Barney asked.
Dallas cocked his head and listened. “Nothing, just the waves.”
“I swear I heard splashing, like someone rowing. Give it another blast, and keep it up, every minute, and listen closely in between.”
The foghorn sounded again as Barney trudged up the slope to the canvas-shrouded army truck and looked into the back. “Any change?” he asked.
Amory Blestead shook his head no without turning away from the radio receiver. He had earphones clamped to his head and was slowly turning the knob of the directional loop antenna on top of the set. It rotated in one direction, then in the other, and Amory looked up and tapped the pointer on the base of the loop.
“As far as I can tell the ship hasn’t moved,” he said. “The bearing is still the same. They’re probably waiting for the fog to lift.”
“How far away are they?”
“Barney, be reasonable. I’ve told you a hundred times I can tell direction but not range with this setup. I can’t read anything from the signal strength of the responder, could be a mile, could be fifty. The volume has picked up since we first heard it three days ago, so they’re nearer, but that’s all I know. And I can’t work out the distance from the bearings because there are too many variables. We’ve been cutting back and forth so I can’t use the truck’s speedometer to get a baseline, and the Viking ship must have moved—”
“You’ve convinced me. That’s what you can’t tell me—but what can you tell me?”
“The same as before. The ship sailed from Greenland eighteen days ago. I aligned the gyrocompass with the Strait of Belle Isle, put in new batteries and turned on the responder and tested it, and we watched them leave.”
“You and Lyn told me the crossing would take only four days,” Barney said, worrying a hangnail with his teeth.
“We said it might take only four days, but if the weather got bad, the winds changed or anything like that, it could take a lot longer. And it has. But we have picked up a signal from the responder, which means they’ve made the crossing safely.”
“That was two days ago—what have you done for me lately?”
“Speaking as an old friend, Barney, this time traveling is doing absolutely nothing for your nerves. We’re supposed to be making a film, remember? All this other stuff we do is above and beyond the call of duty—not that anyone is complaining. But off with the pressure and make it easier on all of us, as well as yourself.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Barney said, which was about as close as he could ever come to an apology. “But two days—the waiting gets to you after a while.”
“There’s really nothing to worry about. With this fog and no wind to speak of, laying off an unknown coast— they’re not going to do any moving about. There’s no point in rowing around if you don’t know where you’re going. Right now, according to the direction finder, we are as close to them as we can get on dry land and when the fog lifts we can guide them in—”
“Hey!” Dallas shouted from the beach, “I hear something, out there in the water.”
Barney skittered and half slid down the slope to the beach. Dallas had his hand cupped to his ear, listening intently.
“Quiet,” he said, “and see if you can hear it. Out there in the fog. I swear I heard water splashing, like rowing, and voices talking.”
A wave broke and receded, and for a moment there was a hushed silence—and the slapping of oars could be plainly heard.