“Get a tarpaulin, Dawlish,” Nick said tonelessly, getting to his feet.
“Tarpaulin, sir?”
“Yes, damn you! You don’t suppose we’re going to push her down in the sand as she is, do you? Hurry up!”
Dawlish went back to where the ship’s tarpaulins were lying, for use as ground sheets, and came back with one of them. Bronson stood watching the two men and Betty reverently rolling the body in the sheet.
The most harrowing job of all for the trio was to scoop out the grave in the sand—but it had to be done as long as civilized notions remained in their minds. Into the hollow they finally lowered the body, then Dawlish turned to Nick.
“Do you wish me to perform the burial service, sir, or Captain Bronson?”
“You! I don’t want that lunatic anywhere near me. But for him flavoring your mind with idiotic ideas Berny wouldn’t be where she is now. Instead we’d have been married. Get the Bible.”
Dawlish went, his lips tight. He returned after a while, performed the brief rite over the grave, and then helped to fill it in. By the time a rough cross of ship’s timber had been erected, Harley and Lucy came back into view. They were arm-in-arm and actually laughing with each other.
“Hello there!” Harley called, from the higher ground atop the beach. “I think you’re right about the air here, Dawlish. It does do something to you. For about the first time in our married life Lucy and I actually understand one another! We were—what’s this?”
Harley came to a stop and stared blankly at the grave, then to the three grim faces. Lucy frowned.
“Bernice,” Nick explained, his voice flat and hard.
“Bernice?” Harley blinked. “But you can’t mean she’s—”
“I mean she’s dead!” Nick cut in savagely. “Isn’t that enough? What’s the use of saying what her reasons were? Maybe she committed suicide; maybe she was accidentally drowned whilst bathing. We’ll never know the truth. The first one of us to go. It’s an omen, I tell you! One by one we’ll all go!”
“Easy, sir,” Dawlish muttered, gripping Nick’s arm. “It’s only natural for you to be overwrought, but—”
“Oh, shut up!” Nick blazed. “Can’t you see what this place is doing to us? We’re changing! Some of us are becoming much happier; others are becoming more morose. Your nature and mine, Harley, have changed places.”
“Eh?” Harley asked in surprise, looking, fixedly at the grave.
“You’re as light-hearted now as I was earlier on. I’m as bad-tempered as you used to be. Change our names, and except for our appearance being different, nobody would be any the wiser.”
“Aren’t things crazy enough without an idea like that?” Betty objected. “What about me? I haven’t borrowed anybody else’s temperament. I’m still Betty Danvers, and I still think we’ll get out—one day!”
“Where’s Captain Bronson?” Nick asked suddenly.
Dawlish glanced around. “No idea, sir. Strolled off on his own, I suppose—”
“Look here,” Harley interrupted dogmatically, “I don’t see why the subject Nick brought up should be dropped. Can individual natures change places? Has he become me, and have I become him?”
“Of course not, sir.” Dawlish gave a serious smile. “Every living thing is an individual to itself, even in the fourth dimension. It is just coincidence that your nature has become more like Mr. Clayton’s and his more like yours—as it used to be. Just the same, there is a reason for it.”
“There is?” Lucy’s eyebrows rose.
“In our own plane,” Dawlish continued, “human beings and animals—for that matter every living thing—are affected by climatic changes. At least they are called that: actually they are depressional and exhilarational waves produced entirely by the free movement of electrons in the atmosphere which, in turn, affect the electrons making up living beings. We therefore have sudden crazes sweeping whole populaces; sudden crime waves without reason; sudden waves of deep melancholia which often result in anything from financial disaster to actual war. Then come the uplifting waves and we have an era of prosperity, buoyant health, and so on. We believe such occurrences are in ourselves, but they are not. Scientists have proved that we just cannot help ourselves getting buoyant or depressed now and again. It is the power of electrons at work on us.”
“And that’s what is at work here?”
“Yes, but the effect here is much more intense because we are not physically suited to this dimension, therefore we feel the electronic changes with greater keenness. That, I am sure, is why Miss Forbes so suddenly took her own life without any real reason—for I’m sure none of us believes her death was just an accident.”
“It might explain Captain Bronson’s eccentricities, too,” Lucy reflected. “Half the time he’s sane and a good seaman; for the rest he’s like something out of Alice in Wonderland.”
“Exactly,” Dawlish conceded. “It also explains your gradual transition from a happy-go-lucky temperament to one of gloomy foreboding, Mr. Clayton. It also explains, Betty, your absolute conviction that you haven’t got heart trouble any more. In actual fact you probably still have your complaint, but your mind is so lightened of worry by electronic processes you refuse to believe it. Possibly, since the body always obeys the mind, you’ve unwittingly cured yourself. As for me—” Dawlish gave a shrug. “Well, I’ve felt changes, and analyzed them. I’ve chosen a middle course and tried to keep dead level. As leader, I feel that I must.”
“And since these electronic changes must go on all the time, how will we finish up?” Betty enquired.
“Dead!” snapped the voice of Captain Bronson from a few feet away. “That girl showed us, didn’t she?”
The party turned to look at him. He had evidently approached in perfect silence in the sand; and now they came to notice it he had his big revolver in his hand.
“Yes, it’s loaded,” he said, interpreting the expressions. “But you don’t think I’m going to waste bullets on you poor fools, do you? No. If I wasted any at all, it would be on you, Mr. Dawlish, for leading me up the garden path with your talk of escape.”
“I fully believed, at the time, that I was right—”
“Shut up! That girl showed me today that there’s only one way out of this prison, and I’m taking it—”
“Wait a minute!” Nick cried in alarm, leaping up—but he was too late: Bronson deliberately turned the gun upon himself and fired. Then he crumpled slowly into the sand, the weapon falling from his hand.
There was a stunned silence for a moment. Coming so quickly on top of Bernice’s fate this second tragedy was a decided jolt.
Without speaking Nick went for a tarpaulin and within an hour a second grave was lying beside Bernice’s. Those who remained looked at each other.
“Do you suppose,” Betty asked at length, “that each one of us is going to do this sort of thing, finally?”
“I don’t think Lucy or I will, anyhow,” Harley said.
“No?” Dawlish looked questioningly—and Lucy too seemed a little surprised.
“I have a proposition, regarding my wife and myself,” Harley continued. “As you know, since we got stranded here we’ve come to know each other much better and, well, we’d rather like to behave as most married people do and have our own home, our own privacy, and everything.”
“Oh?” Dawlish still looked puzzled.
“It’s pretty certain, isn’t it, that we’re here for the rest of our lives?”
Dawlish shrugged. “You’re as wise as I am, sir. I still hold out hope that perhaps we—”
“I’m afraid we don’t—Lucy and I.” Harley put an arm about her shoulders. “We talked it over during our walk, and we both came to the conclusion that we’re almost glad things worked out the way they did. In the normal run of life we were getting terribly at loggerheads with each other, and most of it was my fault. I was making money so fast I’d no time for anything else. Now I know what a mistake it would have been had I lost
Lucy.”
“So you have a proposition?” Nick asked, anxious to get to the point.
Harley nodded and gave a faint smile. “Now Captain Bronson has finished things for himself, I can’t see any reason why Lucy and I can’t take over his home.”
“Are you serious?” Betty asked, astonished. “You saw what the solitude did to Bronson. In time it would do the same to you.”
“He was by himself,” Harley pointed out. “In this case Luce and I will have each other. After all, since we have to stay here, we might as well do it in comfort in a home already made.”
“We had intended asking Captain Bronson if there was another ship we could turn into a home,” Lucy put in. “As things have worked out, we didn’t get the chance. We can easily take over his place and work out a new pattern for life.”
“No worries, no money, no responsibilities.” Harley’s face broke into a smile. “Be a Paradise!”
“The decision is entirely for you to make, of course,” Dawlish said, “but you have realized, I suppose, that once you get to the island of lost ships you’ll stop there?”
“You’ll come and visit us now and again, surely?” Lucy asked. “Not that we’ll want to leave, but we’ll certainly wish to know how you are getting on.”
“We’ll be all right,” Dawlish replied. “We’ll build another bungalow, or even take over this old tramp steamer as a home. For myself I want to remain around here and explore the possibilities of escape. How about you, Mr. Clayton?”
“I certainly prefer it to being on that lost ship island. And anyhow, two’s company,” he added.
“I go where Daw goes,” Betty announced. “Always!”
“We’ll go in the one remaining boat,” Harley announced. “Perhaps you’ll give a hand to get it released from the davits?”
So the job was done, and in the late evening, amidst the gray light of the cloudless, sunless sky, Harley and Lucy took their departure in the solitary open boat. Quite unafraid, they kept on waving, in between plying the oars, until at last the deep mists of evening had enveloped them.
“That seems to be that,” Nick said at length, drawing a deep breath. “Good luck to ’em. They’ll certainly need—”
He paused, frowning at a curious drumming note distinctly noticeable in the twilight. With the seconds it changed to a dull droning: then suddenly there appeared out of the upper air three enormous shapes, hurtling straight for the beach.
“Birds!” Dawlish cried, whipping out the revolver he had taken from Bronson. “They’ve come after that fish we’ve laid out, just as Bronson said they would.”
At the moment there were four of them, and it did not seem a particularly good idea to stand on the open beach and wait for something to happen. So, moving fast, Dawlish and Betty began to head towards the woodland, pausing in the gloom and looking back at Nick as he remained where he was.
“Come on, sir!” Dawlish yelled at him.
“Not me!” Nick called back. “I’d sooner take a madman’s ride on a flying tortoise in the hope of getting back home, than stick around here and wait for something to happen.”
“It’s suicide!” Dawlish cried—then he whipped up his gun and fired at one of the enormous birds as it hurtled straight towards Nick. By a fraction it missed him as he ducked, and crashed down helplessly into the sand, there to flutter helplessly with its curious blunted wings. The remaining birds, startled by the report of the gun, screeched upwards like living jet-planes and vanished in the mists.
“This is it!” Nick cried, running forward and sitting astride the shell-like back of the bird. “Couldn’t be a better chance for me to ride Pegasus. When he recovers he’ll carry me with him—either to some other part of this infernal wilderness or straight back home. I’m taking the risk.”
“Do you realize what you’re doing?” Dawlish shouted.
“Certainly I do. He can’t attack me if I’m on top of him: his neck isn’t long enough. I’m determined, Dawlish. I just don’t care any more what happens? Understand?”
Dawlish hesitated, Betty hanging onto his arm. Both of them were about fifty yards from where Nick was now clinging to his weird steed; then before Dawlish could decide what to do the bird recovered sufficiently from its bullet wound to get on the move. Its wings projected firmly from the sides of its underbelly as it took to the air.
Nick, utterly desperate, had been prepared for wild flight, but he had never expected the terrific speed at which the weird bird moved. As Dawlish had long ago theorized, the bird flew by natural jet propulsion, sucking air through its queer entrails and ejecting it again with a screech from natural organs at the rear. It flew with dizzying velocity high over the beach, and then began wheeling.
Nick felt sick and horrified. He realized now what an idiot he had been, but just at the moment he had taken the plunge he had been too tired of everything to care. Any chance, however outlandish, had seemed to offer more prospect than the much more remote one of a lucky accident. So he clung on, and the winged horror shot like a bullet through the gathering night. Nick felt the warm wind tearing past him and the wild dipping of the bird made his stomach feel as though it were turning inside out.
On and on the bird flew, leaving the beach infinitely far behind, climbing higher and higher into the crazy sky. Nick wondered if perhaps the monster were going to plunge between planes, and so back to the normal world—the one thing he hoped for.
But it did not happen. The bird had an intelligence he had never suspected. Knowing it could not dislodge its rider by ordinary methods, its only ambition seemed to be to free itself—and there was one sure way to do it. To go so high that eventually the air would be too cold and rarefied for Nick to hold on. This same air would be needed by the bird itself, of course, to propel its body but whether the human being would be able to retain a grip remained to be seen.
So it began to climb. Nick found the air growing cold. He began to shiver. He looked with eyes that were commencing to ache for some signs of a change in the face of things, some sign that he had perhaps crossed from one space to the other.
No such sign came. Only the rod-like stars above, blurred by the fantastic twisting of this crazy plane. And down below a void, so far, so immeasurably deep, it might have been infinite space itself.
Nick began to yawn. He felt himself getting sleepy and he was breathing with difficulty. The bird had slowed down its ascent as the air thinned, but it was still going up. Up—ever up—and Nick stared dumbly into the emptiness. Then he felt his right hand slip on the shell back. His fingers had become numb. He tried to recover his grip, and failed—so he clung on with the remaining hand and that, too, slowly began to lose feeling.
“No!” Nick screamed helplessly, as he knew at last that the bird had deliberately risen to these heights for the sole purpose of destroying him. “No! No—!”
His remaining hand gave way and immediately his knees no longer had a grip on the smooth shell. He keeled sideways and dropped into the gulf. In the few brief seconds of anguish as he fell headlong into the infinite abyss he experienced a reaction of sudden happiness. He was going to join Bernice, going to escape this madman’s world, going— Down, everlastingly down. Faster— Extinction!
And, from the beach, Betty and Dawlish had watched the bird’s climb. Some curious internal discharge from it, perhaps on the principle of a glowworm, had made it visible as it climbed into the sky. It had risen like a thin rocket, ever up, until it had been lost amidst the sloping, crazy stars.
“He should have listened,” Dawlish muttered, his arm going about Betty’s shoulders. “Oh, the fool! The fool! He’d never be able to stand those heights. What madness prompted him to attempt it? There never was a guarantee that the bird would fly into our own plane, anyway.”
“The same madness which led Bernice and Bronson to commit suicide,” Betty whispered. “The same madness which led Harley and Lucy to spend the rest of their lives on an island of lost ships.... All mad, in diffe
rent ways. Madness need not always take a horrible form. Sometimes it is even pleasurable, as in the case of Lucy and Harley. You and I, Daw: perhaps we’re mad, too. Those electronic processes you spoke of.”
“Perhaps. It is not in a form which we can plainly distinguish as crazy—yet I suppose we are otherwise we would not be on this lonely beach nursing a dim illusion that we might get home—some day.”
“It’s gone!” Betty exclaimed suddenly, pointing into the sky.
Dawlish looked. “And that can only mean one thing. Poor Mr. Clayton!”
There was silence. They could assume Nick’s fate, but instinctively, they knew they were right. Nick’s gamble had failed and he had gone the same way as Bernice and Bronson.
“You realize,” Betty said at last, “that you and I are alone in this fantastic place? That whatever is ahead of us we shall do together, until perhaps—”
“We’ll make the ship our headquarters in case the birds come back,” Dawlish said, stirring into activity again. “And the first thing we must do is get a meal: it seems ages since we had one. By doing that we mean no disrespect to Mr. Clayton. I’m sure he would have agreed that the living must carry on.”
“I wonder if they must,” Betty mused. “Or is it perhaps the most sensible way to—end it all?” Dawlish lowered his arm from the girl’s shoulders. Instead he took her arms and shook her gently.
“You are being influenced as they were,” he said deliberately. “There’s only one way to fight it. Ignore it! Defy it! I’ve felt the same many a time before, but I quenched it. It’s an ever-present evil in this plane: a tremendous mental depression caused by the unaccustomed electronic waves. We have got to beat that influence, Betty, or go under for all time.”
She made a sudden effort. “I’m all right now,” she said. “It was just a thought, but now you’ve explained why it came to me, I’ll be on the watch. Let’s get to the ship.”
The Time Trap Page 9