Andre Norton - [Time Traders (Ross Murdock) 07]

by Atlantis Endgame (epub)

  Linnea knew one thing for certain: she must find the rest of her team.

  She bundled up her skirts into her arms and scooted between the rock slabs, her awareness of their weight, of the inexorable press of stone against stone and how it could so easily crush her, driving her headlong in urgency—and fear.

  ——————————

  THIS THING ISN'T old,Eveleen thought, looking at the globe ship.

  At first she'd assumed it was another find, perhaps a crashed ship from farther back in prehistory. But as she flippered closer, examining the smooth glasslike substance that formed the hull, she realized that there were no barnacles on it, no sea life attached. If the material was somehow impervious to the amazing adaptability of sea life, it would be a first.

  No, this thing is new, or at least, it's newly here.

  It's the Baldy ship, she thought then, looking at it in amazement.

  Just then a puff of dust caught her eye and she turned her head. The sea life glowing along the cavern walls waved wildly, and rocks tumbled with hypnotizing slowness through the water.

  Quake! Another of those little ones.

  She turned her attention to Kosta, who waved an arm at the ship.

  She looked down. Before, it had been difficult to make out anything, but now, suddenly, the interior of the ship lit with a variety of colors, some of them blinking quickly. Alarms?

  What it meant was, someone might just be along to deal with it. Someone with weapons.

  A touch on her arm made her recoil. Eveleen realized her heartbeat was up, adrenaline racing through her system. Danger! Only where?

  Kosta pointed upward. Eveleen looked, and where there had been darkness before, a smooth cylindrical vertical shaft, made of clear glass, touched down to the top of the globe ship. She had missed it before; they both flippered up and felt it, solid, smooth, airtight.

  Kosta pointed down into the ship. Around the equator, lights chased, the same blue-white cold light of the transporter mechanisms.

  Kosta jerked his head toward the ship, and inside his mask, she saw him grin. It was his pirate grin, and she gasped, realizing what he wanted to do: steal the globe ship!

  Why not?

  Both of them now turned their attention to the ship. How to get into it without it flooding?

  But Kosta had learned something about the alien tech. He sped upward again, feeling along the outer connection between the tube shaft and the globe ship. She saw him straighten out, manipulating something.

  Clank! Whirr! Sounds reverberated, weirdly flattened, through the water: under the shaft something slid shut in the ship, and then the tube retracted a foot or so.

  Kosta then motioned to Eveleen. He mimed pushing the ship, waved his hand at the sled. Pushing?

  Well, why not? It wasn't one of the huge deep-space twelve-crew jobs, like the one that had taken them to the faraway library planet, last mission. This one was small, everything right there: a two- or four-seater scout craft, she'd call it. And under water, it was just mass they had to deal with, which merely took patience.

  Kosta ran the sled up to within a few feet of the side of the ship and let it sink slowly while he reached into a pouch and pulled out a brick of some plastic material. He began to mold it into a pancake, then slapped it on the nose of the sled and revved its engine to ram it gently into the ship. He began to pulse the engine, slowly. At first the mass resisted: it was as though nothing was happening. But eventually, the globe began to rock ever so slightly, and then more and more as he timed the engine pulses carefully. Finally, with a puff of mud squirting from underneath, the ship moved up into the water!

  Then began a strange ultra-slow-motion bat-and-ball game, with the biggest ball Eveleen had ever seen. They maneuvered the globe ship through the cavern, back to the access tunnel.

  Getting out was a lot faster than coming in, now that they didn't have to explore every inch of the walls. They sped as fast as they could, pushing the globe ship faster and faster until it finally shot out of the cavern into the water and dropped slowly down to the seafloor below.

  What now? A little beeping noise warned her thatnow was the right time to get to the surface: she was on her emergency air.

  Kosta pointed upward. Ah, there was the ship.

  As Eveleen grabbed hold of the sled she caught sight of the alien-tech device, and saw that it had gone blank. Batteries? Broken?

  They refastened the sled to the ship and surfaced. Her mind was full of questions. Beside her, Kosta shoved back his mask and looked up at Stavros.

  "We found one of their ships. Moved it to the seafloor below," he gasped.

  Stavros was already reaching over the side to hand them up. "I will put a marker down. But something happened here: the target went dead," he said.

  They looked at his alien tech-location device. It was just as blank as the one Kosta had carried.

  Rumbling from the cliffs not four hundred yards away brought all three of them around. Strange little waves propagated out and high up a section of cliff gave way, causing a landslide. They watched the slab of rock smash into the water, sending seaweed-veined water shooting up.

  When the sound had diminished, Kosta said, "Something has happened. We must get back."

  Stavros did not wait for an answer—not that Kosta or Eveleen would have argued.

  More tremors shook the cliffs as the ship moved back toward the harbor area. Eveleen, looking up at Akrotiri built into the cliffs overhead, like steps, made mental calculations and looked back again.

  That underwater cave, the one that had connected the shaft with the globe ship. Could that perhaps lead up to that mysterious little room high up on the edge of the city?

  Another question,she thought grimly, but before she could say anything, Kosta exclaimed, "Look!"

  Stavros exclaimed something in idiomatic Greek.

  They all turned their attention westward. Streams of people moved down the road at a frantic pace, many of them carrying bulky objects on their backs. Eveleen, squinting against the glaring sunlight, counted at least three looms, several rolled rugs, and uncountable jars and reed-mat bundled objects.

  "It's an evacuation," she said.

  Stavros thumped a fist onto the rail. "We must find Ashe."

  And Ross, Eveleen said, but silently.

  "We must first defend the boat," Kosta stated with grim portent. "If this is the big evacuation that the scientists posited, in reality that means people are going to do anything, anything at all, to get themselves a ship."

  CHAPTER 17

  LINNEA HEARD WOMEN'S voices behind her and halted on the trail. A cluster of older women appeared, huddling around something. Two of them looked up in mute appeal, and Linnea hurried back up the trail to discover that the three women had fashioned a kind of stretcher from two staff's lashed together with lengths of woven fibers of some sort and cloth laid over the whole. On this stretcher lay the seer, her face blanched.

  "She cannot walk," Ela gasped. "The goddess departed from her spirit with such speed, she could not at first find her body."

  Meaning, she got herself a migraine? Linnea thought, reaching for the end of one of the staffs. Ela paused to tuck the linen shroud more securely around the poor woman; then she picked up her end and they started down the trail.

  At first they tried to keep their steps in sync, but the trail narrowed so abruptly in places it became nearly impossible. Added to that was the frustration of stumbling and slipping over stones that one could not see.

  Before too long Linnea's hands ached, and her clothing was damp with sweat. At least I get some exercise, she thought with bleak humor; how the other women managed, she did not know. But her mind raced on, and she watched it race,

  amazed at how one's thoughts will catch at any diversion from threatening danger: as a long tremor, one with a sickening jolt in the middle of it, silenced and stilled them all, what flitted through her stream of consciousness was the absurdity of discussing exercise machines wit
h women who had lived three thousand years before she was born.

  When the tremor stopped, they picked up their poles and started forward, halting again when an ominous rattling above heralded a landslide.

  Hastening back up the trail, they watched in fear as boulders leaped crazily down, one smashing onto the trail and sending a chunk of it scattering down the hillside below. A hail of rubble followed, ending at last with a pall of choking dust.

  "Come. We must push through," Ela cried hoarsely.

  They stepped gingerly over the layer of dirt and stones nearly obliterating the trail and hurried on.

  Abruptly the trail widened, and they were able to establish a rhythm. If the seer disliked the swinging, jolting stretcher, she said nothing; she gripped the poles at each side, her eyes closed.

  The sun began to sink toward the west, and thirst had gone from pestering to agonizing when Linnea realized dully that they were rounding the last hill.

  A gasp from Ela brought the stretcher parade to a halt. Her face, weirdly lit, was turned toward the north. Linnea stared in fear and wonder at the pre—Kameni Island, or what she assumed was that island.

  The land itself was utterly obscured by a sky-scraping black cloud, one that had to be reaching at least twenty miles into the air. The cloud was not solid: writhing columns of smoke, from which flames of fire darted, reached like the fingers of death into the east.

  "The holy snakes," one of the women whispered, in awe.

  Without any warning at all the women were flung against the cliff side and then down onto the ground.

  Pain lanced through Linnea's shoulder, but she was only peripherally aware of it. Why was the world sideways?

  "Ayah," a voice moaned.

  Linnea felt something sting her cheek, and who was pushing her so hard?

  The ground, air, and sky roared, jolting her so forcefully she could not struggle to her elbows. Tiny stones clattered all around, pinging her face and arms as she tried to see who was moaning. Black surged overhead, darting down flames toward the mountain from which they had just come.

  Clack! Something dark flickered across her vision; there was a pain across her temple, and the world went dark.

  ——————————

  "WHAT THE—" Stavros never finished his exclamation.

  As the three watched, the island seemed to shrug, and then shudders rippled down in rings from the mountain, churning the water into nervous, choppy wavelets.

  They had come to a halt maybe a quarter mile from the shoreline, to avoid trouble. From there they watched the swarms of people pouring into every imaginable type of vessel, from the beautifully painted and decorated pleasure boats to the single-masted tradecraft.

  As one boat veered near, Stavros shouted in Ancient Greek, "Where does everyone go?"

  "The seer has spoken! The goddess says to live on the water, under the sky! The earth and fire demons are going to battle! I go to warn the other towns!" He pulled on the rope controlling his sail, and the little boat glided away toward the pre-Kameni Island.

  Stavros turned to the other two, who shrugged. What the heck did that mean, other than "get out of here"? Had the Baldies somehow manipulated the oracle?

  Whatever had happened, the entire population of Akrotiri appeared to have taken seriously the command to evacuate.

  Even fishing smacks and little rowboats were crowded so dangerously some of them were so low the rails were a hand's breadth above water.

  Eveleen watched as the evacuation began in an orderly fashion, turning desperate on the edges: there were, as Kosta had predicted, some fights for some of the boats. She winced, wishing there was something she could do, but they were helpless to interfere.

  She watched one small family, consisting of a woman and two children, shoved back away from a skinny little fishing smack. The woman ran, crying, from one boat to another, until at last one of the great, decorated boats of the priests paused, and she and her children were pulled on.

  That was when the side of the mountain gave a heave, and quake waves fled outward, flinging people down onto the ground, sending donkeys braying, goats scolding, and every bird on the island winging into the air, squawking in angry protest.

  "It's the big quake," Eveleen whispered, appalled, but afraid to look away.

  Wave after wave of shaking toppled walls, and cracks spider-webbed up the few standing higher buildings. Then, with majestic slowness, the three-story buildings came crashing down, walls crumbling in either direction.

  From somewhere jugs emerged, rolling down a cliff, some smashing, others hopping, until they fell a hundred yards into the sea below. Flames shot up somewhere else, as up in the sky, great writhing clouds of black sent out deadly jets of burning flame to lick the top of the mountain.

  "Oil," Kosta said, pointing.

  All it would take was one untended lamp and spilled olive oil; the flames spilled hungrily from the windows of a storehouse, just to be doused by the thunderous rumble and choking dust of a landslide.

  On and on the shaking went, the clouds moving eastward raining down black bits of obsidian first in boulders, then in rocks, then pebbles, and finally in small, stinging bits of glass, until at last the firestorm and motion gradually subsided. By now the waves shuddered back and forth, some slapping back up onto the beaches, drenching terrified people, forcing them back up onto land.

  But down they came again, from wherever they had been hiding during the deluge of burning rock, carrying children, animals, birds, and household goods, to cram into the boats.

  Eveleen turned her head. Already many of the ships and boats were plying southward as fast as they could, oars rising and falling with fear-driven jerks, sails tautened by terror-strengthened hands.

  They would get away. Maybe they would even make it to Crete, their beautifully painted jugs and vases to influence the painters there into a new style, a new way of looking at the world.

  Eveleen, with a mental shrug, wished them well, and turned her attention back to the shoreline.

  Where was Boss?

  "Let us land," Stavros said at last. "Over there, out of sight of the evacuation. We must find Murdock, Ashe and Linnea Edel."

  CHAPTER 18

  AFTER ROSS'S "WHAT'S next?" he stepped back to wait for a reaction.

  Ashe shook his head, but before he could speak, the Kayu spoke with clear urgency into the translator.

  "This segment of the mountain is unstable. We will have to evacuate at once. The onset of chaos in the gravitational knot is releasing more energy than we expected. Now the Earth must find its balance point again."

  Action, reaction.

  Ashe said grimly, "It's going to be interesting, getting down the mountain if he means what I think he means."

  Ross and Gordon turned their attention to the aliens, who had embarked on a fast exchange.

  Gordon muttered under his breath, "I wish I could reverse that damn translator of theirs."

  Then the first Kayu beckoned to the two Time Agents. "We shall give you our two wind vessels, though you cannot use our00 ° for returning to the mountain. But you do not need that."

  Wind vessels? Ross mouthed the words to Ashe.

  Ashe said under his breath, "Use 'em to spy on the Greeks and Baldies, I'll bet."

  "You musst come now," the Kayu said.

  Ross and Ashe followed the swaying robes, not back to the surface, but farther inside. Ross noted that they passed the room where he and Eveleen had been imprisoned for a night, and then they were all three enclosed in a cylindrical elevator shaft made of some stonelike white material, with a source of light impossible to detect.

  A whoosh of air carrying a faint smell of ozone hit their faces, but they felt no accompanying drop in stomach like one experienced with elevators in their own time. Ross didn't know if they'd gone up, down, or sideways. The opaque door slid open again, and they emerged onto a cliff. Hot, smoky wind teased hair and clothing; the smell of sulfur fingered its way in even past thei
r breathing masks.

  The Kayu touched some kind of control that Ross didn't see because of the limited field of vision caused by his mask; a section of what had looked like solid rock flickered out of existence, leaving what at first appeared to be two giant bird shapes.

  "Hang gliders," Ashe said.

  "Sort of," Ross amended. He'd been hang gliding with Eveleen. These things looked different.

  The Kayu said in its hissing speech, "It holdss humanss."

  Gordon gave a shrug and bent over the closest one. Ross also bent, but what he tried to spot was the video projector that had projected the holographic rock. He couldn't find anything, even when he ran his hands over the rough pumice.

  "Come on," Gordon said.

  A tremor growling deep underground underscored the urgency.

  He and Ross dragged the gliders out. At once the wind tried to take them, even though the wings were folded down.

  Gordon examined them swiftly; from the look on his face he was doing some fast mental calculations.

  Ross bent his attention to the controls, which appeared to be simple. Levers controlled the wing struts and the tails: levers for hands up front, for feet at the back. Out beyond the glider platform someone had painted great glassy bird-eyes on either side of a raptor's beak. So the Kayu had used these to glide in the air over the island, then, and to the locals they would look like giant birds. Had the Baldies seen them? If they were just gliding, there would be no energy signature to detect.

  His thoughts were broken when Gordon thumped his arm and pointed. "Lie here. Strap in like this. I think we'll need to balance them for weight up front," Gordon said. "I suspect, from the look of these things, that the Kayu are lighter than we are."

  "Is this a really stupid idea?" Ross asked Gordon as they dragged the gliders to the back of the cliff, giving themselves maximum running room. The straps, Ross noted, were made from some silky material that had enormous tensile strength. "I mean, where did that Fur Face go?"

  "I don't know, but it looks as if this is the only way down," Gordon said. "And if they've used them, well, so can we." His mouth tightened in an ironic smile.