by Andre Norton
"Right," Ross said. "Let's get out of here."
"Now or never," Gordon agreed.
They gripped the handles of the gliders, flicked up the wings, and began to run.
Almost at once the gliders bucked and sidled as the wings and the wind played tug-of-war. Five, four, three, two—
There was the cliff edge, with a thousand-foot drop beyond. Ross's palms prickled with sweat, his heart thumped in his ears, as he swung himself out and slammed onto the platform.
The straps slapped themselves round him, the nose edged over the cliff, and the glider dropped.
"Whoo-eeeeeee!"The sound tore out of Ross as his guts plummeted, then the wind current caught the glider and tossed it up back toward the cliff.
"Rank! Bank!" Gordon roared from fifty feet away and out.
Ross turned his head, saw the cliff zooming toward him. He jammed his feet against the tail controls and the right wing; the glider banked sharply, sailing with amazing smoothness within a yard of the rocky face of the cliff, then outward and away.
There below was the entire island ring, visible between gouts of smoke rising to join the sheep-backed clouds flocking eastward from the south. Storm coming, Ross thought as he lifted his head and gazed to the north. There, beyond the north shore of Akrotiri's peninsula, were the green waters surrounding the pre-Kameni Island. Weird whitish water spoiled the emerald perfection of that vast lagoon. Steam vents?
Not a storm, Ross thought in slow, chilling shock as his wing moved and he could see past it to the huge, black, tentacled plume thrusting up from the island. It was not a storm, but something far worse: an eruption from what would very soon—maybe even now—be the center of the entire caldera.
Are we too late?
That question, too, was swept away when the quake hit.
Afterward, Ross could never pinpoint where the fault slipped. What he became aware of first was the sound, a great, roaring, grinding growl deeper and more terrifying than mere thunder, which was just air. This sound was far more powerful, the restless shifting of immeasurable strata as magma began forcing its way upward. What Ross saw were rings chasing outward, and then reverberating back, through both land and water.
The gliders emerged round a great fold in the mountain just in time for Ross and Gordon to look down and see Akrotiri trembling, like a toy city when children stomp on the floor all around. With excruciating slowness the remaining roofs toppled inward as walls fell outward, sending rubble, broken furnishings and jars, and clouds and clouds of reddish gold dust spewing into the air.
"Up," Gordon shouted. "Under the cliff, as close as you can!"
Ross didn't need the order. He already had his wings spread to the maximum, riding the updraft. Overhead the snaking tunnels of fire-laden smoke reached out, burning everything they touched. The two Time Agents would be barbecued in midair unless they used the quaking mountain as protection.
A terrifying rain of black stone smashed down behind Ross into the sea, sending up hissing steam columns, some of them high enough to mix in with the smoke overhead.
Hot air whooshed round the cliffs, followed by cold drafts. Both men fought to keep their craft within the lee of relative protection. It was the hot steamy drafts that kept them airborne. They circled round and round, the wings sometimes rattling and trembling as occasional shots of fine glassy black rock rained over them and then fell to the sea below, until, at last, the worst of the fiery smoke began to subside.
They could not stay up forever; already they were circling lower and lower.
It was time to try to land. They did not want to fall on the still-shaking ground anywhere near that city, or on the slipping cliffs that slid down here and there on the mountainsides.
They arced away from their cliff shelter and flew out over the ocean, both looking back, trying to see past the great stretches of their wings.
"What's that?" Gordon cried, peering down through the drifting smoke.
They had emerged far enough around the goat-tracked cliffs to see the harbor, which was filled with little craft, most of them with handkerchief-size sails luffing in the wind.
"Evacuation, looks like!"
"Our people must have found something out," Gordon shouted back.
Ross frowned, looking down there. Eveleen, where are you? he called silently.
Now they were out beyond the city, which mostly lay in ruins. Not all the buildings had fallen, but most. They did not see any bodies on those rubble-filled narrow streets. Still, Ross felt his guts tighten. Just because they couldn't see past all the rubble and the smoke didn't mean things weren't really bad.
A fretful gust of wind shook the glider, making the wings clatter, and the nose dove down. Ross tightened his grip on the controls and managed to get the craft to straighten out.
Ross stilled the trembling in his fingers, renewed his grip on the handholds, and urged the glider upward again, trying to gain altitude and time. He glanced over. Gordon was about twenty feet above him, maybe fifty feet away. Ross could see Gordon squinting through the smoke and dust haze to the shores.
Ross turned his attention downward. Would they see Baldies even if they were there? He remembered the business about holographic images. Both the Baldies and the Kayu had them. They definitely had the tech edge; the Time Agents hadn't even dared use their radios.
That would have to change,Ross thought.Meanwhile, what's to keep them from shooting at us up here?
Yet they drifted on, and nothing happened. As they emerged from one dust cloud, they could see the crumbled remains of tiny villages dotting the lower peninsula of the crescent-shaped island.I hope the people got out, Ross thought.
Reminded of the evacuation, Ross craned his neck and looked directly below. They were nearly past the harbor now. On the shore chaotic scrambling resolved into some desperate fights to gain ships: as he watched a line of men emerged from one of the rocky hills behind the farthest warehouses and ran down to the shore, where they attacked a family trying to load household items onto a fishing boat. Ross watched in growing but impotent anger as the burly men struck down family members; his fists tightened unconsciously on the controls, momentarily sending his glider bucketing dangerously in the wind. He shifted his attention to fighting for stability, and when the craft had smoothed out, though the wings hummed and rattled, he looked back. He was relieved to see that two parties of fisher folk had come to the aid of the family. Ross's last glimpse of the altercation was of the attackers, now tiny dots, retreating into the hills.
The hills. He frowned, thinking—
"There's our ship," Gordon shouted.
Ross whipped his head around and saw Gordon pointing downward. Well beyond the mass of boats drifting south lay their own craft. As Ross stared into the sunlight, he thought he caught a brief glint from field glasses.
"Let's aim for 'em," he called, pointing with his chin.
"After you," Gordon answered.
Ross banked his glider. Now that the flight was nearly over, he discovered he was almost sorry.
He realized they were going to have to crash-land on the water and wondered if the gliders would survive. He wondered if he would survive.
The air currents buffeted them hard, cold, hot, sulfur-and-hot-rock-smelling, dust-laden, cold again. Their speed increased as they spiraled downward. The horizon tipped up crazily; for a moment all Ross could see was dark green.
Then the ship revolved into view, passing again. Ross caught a glimpse of Eveleen's pale face. She stood on the taffrail, poised to dive.
Down, and he spread the wings in a desperate attempt to flatten out. Splash! That was Gordon, hitting the water.
Ross skimmed just above the waves. White water splashed up, making him gasp. Then he hit, and would have been wrenched badly had the straps not retracted with efficient, alien speed. He rolled off the platform and plunged into water.
After that nearly effortless flight, he felt heavy, clumsy. He splashed, kicking up his feet, and then struck ou
t swimming.
A moment later an arm appeared, and there was Eveleen. Hands closed around his neck, and lips met his, warm/cold, in a trembling, salty kiss.
CHAPTER 19
"ALL RIGHT," GORDON Ashe said at last. "What have we got?"
Eveleen scooted closer to Ross. She was not the least bit cold—if anything, the air was more sultry than it had been during the day—but the amount of EM in the air, left over from the extraordinary fire the day before and the lightning now, and the subsonic rumblings that came ever more frequently, put her flight-or-fight instincts on overdrive.
Rain hammered down on the canopy overhead, a drenching, stinging rain full of grit and dust. The fleet had vanished southward during a fierce, blood-crimson sunset, the last sails tiny dots on the horizon as the limb of the sun vanished in a sinister purple haze.
For a time the outriding storm clouds had paraded on to the east, underlit like a villain's face in an old movie. There was nothing subtle in that spectacular sunset; the colors were brilliant, as if the sky had been painted by all the ancient gods with their elemental passions.
Lightning flaring from time to time promised no mercy during the night, either; before they'd exchanged stories, Ashe and Stavros both insisted everyone get the ship battened down.
Because of that quake the island was no longer safe at night, not without a thorough exploration. One thing for certain about major quakes: you never get just one. There are always aftershocks, and some of these can be as bad as the original event.
So they'd all worked to get equipment locked down, and Stavros had used the engines to move the ship eastward to a little cove that might afford some protection from the oncoming weather. There was no one around to hear the growl of the engines, not with the continuous rumble of thunder across the sky.
While Stavros had directed the battening down, Kosta had fired up the microwave and brought out some frozen food from the emergency rations cache. They all had earned a good meal, and it was quite unlikely they would be able to forage on the island anymore. As they ate, each took turns talking about their experiences since the last time they'd met—a time that seemed to Eveleen at least a week ago.
Now they sat crowded on the half-deck below the canopy, Eveleen and Ross together on a hammock, the Greeks perched on barrels that masked advanced tech, and Gordon Ashe on the only fold-down chair.
"What have we got?" Ashe asked again, looking around at the four faces.
Eveleen sipped gratefully from her mug of hot coffee and said, "Nobody saw Linnea, so she's still missing."
"And we will make searching for her top priority," Ashe responded. "Next?"
Ross said, "If we can believe the Kayu, we have a week to make certain the entropy device is not reversed. The Baldies have to know that."
"And will be acting accordingly. We'll get back to them," Ashe said.
"Do you believe the Kayu?" Eveleen asked.
"Yes, I believe them. At least, Ican perceive no benefit to be gained from their going to all the trouble to contact us just to lie."
The others nodded, looking tired and strained.
"So we will say we have seven days to keep the Baldies busy. After that, the blow could happen anytime; both sides will be scrambling to leave."
Eveleen winced, thinking of the many threats implied in his flat statement.
"We have the globe ship," Kosta said.
"A globe ship," said Ross. "Could be there were only two Baldies and the rest holos, or maybe there's another?"
"There's rarely been more than one in any other encounter, has there? I mean with Baldies real-time?" asked Eveleen. "If I remember right, the science team decided they were spread really thin; otherwise, with their tech advantages, they'd have taken over long ago."
"If you believe the Kayu, the Baldies aren't interested in conquest, just stopping space flight. But I still believe they are indeed spread thin, so I'm betting your undersea globe ship is the only one in this time/space. So here are our three main areas of action, as I see it," Ashe said, holding up his hand. "We have to keep the globe ship out of the Baldies' hands to prevent them from damping the oscillations and again shunting off the energy building up to the big blow."
"We're going to have to stay out of their mitts," Ross said. "That won't be easy. They have the seek-and-find tech, and what little we've got is easy for them to detect."
"And we're alone on the island now, or nearly," Eveleen said. "And I'm including Linnea. The Kallistans have evacuated, as the archaeologists predicted. That leaves just us and the Baldies—"
"And the Kayu," Ashe put in.
"Right," she said. "And the Kayu. But the Baldies are the ones who are going to know that anything that moves and isn't them is a target."
Ross shook his head. "I still wonder about that 'they value life' talk that the Kayu tried to hand us."
Eveleen said, "Perhaps the Baldies warned the oracle. After all, someone had to, or how did they know to get the people out?"
Ross shrugged. "Gordon and I were with the Kayu, so they certainly didn't. But maybe one or the other of them had some way of warning those priestesses." He frowned, then recalled his flight down. "At any rate, there's one more gang out there, unless they did manage to get the boat. Out from the brush behind the warehouses came a slew of guys ..." He went on to describe the attack on the fishing boat.
Eveleen rubbed her forehead. "Wait a minute. Behind the warehouse?"
"Yes," Ross said. "I was just wondering whether these might have been responsible for the attack on our camp, and not the Baldies, when we first landed."
"We will have to keep these men in mind, but there is nothing to be done about them now." Ashe sat back, cradling his coffee in his hands. "To return to our first dilemma, it makes sense that either or both sets of aliens had that cave wired. If they were studying the Kallistans at all, it seems to me that the first place you'd go is where all of them go, to their oracle. Listening to what went on there must have given them the local languages, at least, and clues to customs as well."
Eveleen snapped her fingers. "So their egg-computer has what Linnea wanted so badly: a full dictionary of words corresponding to Linear A!"
Ross nodded once. "Ah. And what can be wired for sound can go both ways. Maybe they broadcast Voices' for the Kallistan priestesses to hear."
"Well, if the Baldies tried to save the Kallistans, and I hope they did, why have they shot at us in the past?" Eveleen asked.
"Well, if they're hyper-ecologists of some sort, as the Kayu said, maybe they think of it as pruning," Ashe replied, finishing off his coffee. "We're spinning out in guesswork. Too much of that without facts is just a waste of time. I suggest we all get some shut-eye while we can. At least this storm ought to mask searches, giving us some time for rest. As soon as it's light, you two had better secure that globe ship." He nodded at the Greek agents. "Once we have it, we can explore it on our time, and maybe figure out a way to permanently disable their entropy adjusters."
Kosta grunted in agreement and tossed the dregs of his coffee overboard.
They all settled down then. Eveleen realized her head ached. Trying to keep quiet she reached into the pouch she wore under her flaring skirt, pulled out some sinus tabs.
Now what? The prospect of trying to swallow them in a dry mouth made her stomach churn.
Lightning flared, a vivid purple slash across the sky. She saw a hand reach toward her from one of the other hammocks, holding out a cup of purified water. In grateful silence she took it, swallowed the tabs. Thunder banged and crashed, dying away in a ragged grumble; she heard someone else popping tabs from a seal-pac.
She passed the cup on, felt fingers take it.
Then she lay back down, and despite the storm doing its best to battle the volcano for mastery of sky, earth, and water, she fell deeply asleep.
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JUST ABOUT THE time Eveleen fell asleep, Linnea woke up, gasping. Rain slashed down out of the sky, a piti
less downpour. By the flare of lightning Linnea saw that all the priestesses were now awake, two of them bending over a third.
What could they do? Where could they go? At least the air was not cold. They would not freeze. But as a fairly severe aftershock rumbled below the ground, louder than the thunder, Linnea worried about landslides. Mudslides, caused by those frightening steam vents.
A hot, sharp smell brought her head around. Fire, the most ancient threat of all, made her scrabble back in the mud. Moments later vague shapes appeared. Lightning flared again, and then lights snapped into being. Linnea blinked, dazzled.
"Come. Rise and come this way." The voice was tenor, flat, the accent in the Ancient Greek impossible to guess at.
The lights shifted to a trail that steamed, despite the pouring rain. Am I hallucinating? Linnea thought.
"Ah!" A woman's voice gave a soft cry of anguish, and Linnea turned again.
The lights snapped over to the priestesses, revealing Ela and one other holding up the older woman who Linnea had decided was second in command to the seer. The seer herself was on her feet, her clothing sodden with mud. She looked old and frail and very unhappy.
"Her arm," Ela said in a frightened voice. "She fell, and hurt her arm, when the ground shook."
"She must walk," came one of those flat tenor voices.
That's not Ross, or Stavros, or Kosta, and it certainly isn't Gordon,Linnea thought. She said in tentative Ancient Greek, "Who is it?"
The figures remained behind the lights, perceptible as no more than shadows. Lightning flared again, but Linnea had been looking at the ground. She turned her head, too late.
Thunder crashed right overhead, making her teeth ache. Another lightning bolt illuminated the scene. Linnea watched the ground again, the abnormally flat ground: someone, she realized, had cleared a new path. But the ground was smoking. Was it some freak of the volcano? No, the edges were straight, as though a beam of heat had cut through the rock and soil.