by Chad Oliver
Mark ran and ran and ran, his chest a hot flame of agony, the breath stabbing like knives through his laboring lungs. His mouth and throat were dry, parched, and the cold air washed through him with searing pain. His legs throbbed and his feet were like blocks of ice. He couldn’t go on.
But behind him he still heard the inexorable pounding of the Neanderthals, and the tireless shouts and snarls. They weren’t even tired, those inhuman pursuers of his, they could go on forever, they would run him down if it took them a week.
Suddenly, Mark realized that he could not possibly make the space-time machine, even if he could find it by starlight. He could not hold out that long, and the moon would rise in the night soon, lighting the grassy plains and the mist with ghost light, picking him out as surely as a searchlight. He couldn’t make it.
Mark stopped short, his chest heaving. He had to think. Somehow he had to think. But there was no time —he had only a moment. And he was so tired, ready to drop—it would be so nice just to lie down in the grass and drift away to nowhere . . .
He slapped himself awake. The half-men snarled through the darkness behind him, and they were very close. With desperate decision, Mark reversed his direction and forced his body to run again, back the way he had come, back toward the growling, angry Neanderthals.
But not straight back. Mark had been running almost due north from the valley mouth, and now he was running south. South, but veering a little to the east, just enough to miss the half-men, if he was lucky. If he wasn’t lucky—
They wouldn’t be expecting him to double back, of that he felt sure. He drew his .45 and ran bent over almost double, only a shadow among the shadows. He was close to them, he was even with them, he could smell them in the night—
With horrifying suddenness, a figure loomed up right at his side. Mark dropped like a shot and wriggled through the wet grass on his stomach. Had he been seen? He fought to control his breathing, but it was impossible. Had he been seen? Evidently not. There was no alarm. His body one aching agony, Mark lurched to his feet and ran on.
He wouldn’t fool them long, he figured. They would be back after him. But he knew now that he did not have so much as a prayer on the open plains in the moonlight. The Neanderthals were stronger than he was, and there were more of them. Even as he ran, a small subconscious corner of his mind wrestled with the problem. It was the old, old game of man against man, the hunter and the hunted. But one factor at least was changed—now it was man against half-men, and that made a difference. It had to make a difference. It was his only hope.
Mark angled along the slope of the foothills, bearing somewhat east from the valley of the Neanderthals. The sounds of pursuit were almost lost in the distance now, but Mark did not fool himself into thinking that he had given them the slip. They would pick up his trail and come on, snarling, untiring, like mighty hounds on the scent of a desperate fox. He was the fox.
The foothills continued for a long time, with the dark mountains that shielded the Neanderthal caverns fading by on his right. The ascent was becoming steeper, however, and the scrub pines that dotted the foothills were getting fewer and fewer. Mark redoubled his efforts, but his best speed now was no more than a jagged trot. If he could just reach the mountains, hide himself somehow, somewhere . . .
But the Neanderthals would surely know the mountains around their home well enough to search him out. Mark gasped for breath. He had no hope now, and he knew that he was fast reaching the ultimate limits of his reserve strength. He could only go until he dropped, and then there was the .45. Five shots left. Four for the half-men— And one for himself.
Mark hurled himself into the mountains. The rocks tore at his beaten body, but he kept going. Up and up, and always bearing toward the east, away from the valley of the Neanderthals. He scrambled up smooth cliffs and plunged through snowdrifts, white and ghostly under the stars. He had no way of knowing whether the drifts were a few inches deep, or a few feet, or a few miles, and he had no time for caution. Certain death was behind him, and chance, no matter how slim, was better than that black certainty that pursued him.
His luck held, and he stopped going up the mountain and struck off due east across the snow. He knew that he was leaving footprints, but that couldn’t be helped. Or could it? Ahead of him he saw a black crevice, a deep pass in the mountains. Seeing it clearly before him, dark beside the whiteness of the snow, was the first indication that he had that the moon had risen. He looked up. There it was, coldly beautiful as ever, a silver crescent hanging from the frosty stars….
A wild thought raced through his mind. In his own time, they were preparing to launch a rocket for the moon. Could it be? Did that future time, his time, really exist somewhere? Or was it all just part of the nightmare? Which was the real world, now—or then?
Mark shook his head. He had to hurry. From far below him, he heard the cold chuckle and gurgle of running water. He smiled, beyond pain now, beyond anything save the will to try. He was stripped down to bare essentials now, down to the will to live.
What was the phrase? Survival of the fittest. Well, he would see.
Gingerly, Mark lowered himself over the brink of the chasm. He could see the outlines of rocks and ledges in the side of the pass, and he would just have to trust to fate that they would support him. Going on raw courage alone, Mark fought his way down into the mountain valley. It was hard going, impossible going, and far below him he saw the silver shimmer of the stream, like a cold snake writhing forever across the frozen earth.
He made it, although afterward he never remembered how. He came back momentarily to his senses and found himself standing on the bank of the rushing stream, with the dark shadows of the mountains all around him. He heard nothing but the rustle of the water, but he took no chances. It would be folly to stop now, with victory almost in his grasp.
If he could just hold out—
Which way to go? Mark debated a moment, and decided that his pursuers would expect him to go upstream, into the mountains, away from the plains that had almost trapped him. So Mark went downstream. He stepped into the icy water without even feeling it and fumbled his way across the slippery stream bed. If there were any holes ahead of him, invisible in the moonlight, it would be too bad. But as long as he stayed in the stream they could not follow his trail. Mark’s exhausted mind gave out, but his body kept on.
While the moon sailed serenely through the night sky and the stars marched through the heavens, Mark Nye splashed grimly onward through the icy water of the mountain stream. He struggled on for what seemed to be miles, until the stream ran bubbling out into the plains. Mark dragged himself out of the water and headed east again, away from the Neanderthal caverns and away from the space-time machine that he had little hope of ever seeing again.
The ground was wet and marshy around him, but Mark was unaware of it. He put one foot mechanically ahead of the other and plodded on, his shoes making sucking noises in the soft earth. His pace had slowed to a virtual crawl, and he knew that he had to find some place in which to rest.
He kept on until he could go no farther and then cut back into the mountain foothills. He looked around him dazedly. There were a few pines, but nothing that offered any hope of concealment. He was just on the verge of collapsing where he was and taking a chance when he noticed an outcropping of rock on a little ledge above him to the east. He crawled up to it, hand over hand, unable to stay on his feet. He pulled himself over the outcropping and found a slight depression in the rock wall, surrounded by large and formidable boulders. He dragged his body inside, where he was at least sheltered from the cold wind.
It was not the best possible place, but he could go no farther. He was wet and numb with cold, but he knew that he did not dare to build a fire, even if he had had the strength to do it, which he hadn’t. He took out his .45 and wiped it as dry as he could on his torn shirt, and then returned it to its holster. Gasping for breath, his chest aflame with pain, he thought briefly of climbing out to get some snow
he saw. He could eat the snow and thus quench his thirst a little—
But his body refused to move. It had served him well, but it was spent. Mark heard his heart beating with a rapid, exhausted flutter and he could not even move his hand.
He was hopelessly cut off from the space-time machine. He was ill and unutterably tired, without food or water. He did not even have the satisfaction of knowing that he had eluded the Neanderthals; they might be right behind him, and he was too weak even to pull the trigger of his .45. Mark looked at the cold moon, now fading in the east. From the plains that stretched below him, he heard the trumpeting cry of some animal that he could not even imagine. For the first time, he became aware of the enormity of the thing that had happened to him. He was only a boy, after all, and he was tired and hungry and terribly alone. A line from a poem he had once read whispered through his mind in the dawn of time . . .
I, a stranger and afraid—In a world I never made …
Mark coughed brokenly as sleep washed over him like a warm and comforting sea. He was a long, long way, and a long, long time, from home.
Chapter 8 Flames of Morning
Mark slept the dreamless sleep of complete exhaustion and when he awoke he could not believe that he was alive. He must have died during that night of horror, died and gone to heaven. He did not open his eyes for a moment, but simply lay there and enjoyed the almost forgotten luxury of comfort. He was warm, gloriously warm, and the searing agony of his pains had subsided to a dull ache. Even the ache seemed pleasant to him—such was the relativity of pleasure.
Mark opened his eyes at last, then blinked them shut again. He tried once more, this time opening them to mere slits. He saw the sun, the wonderful sun. And a brilliant blue sky, flecked with scudding white clouds. Almost it seemed that he was back home again in the hills of New Mexico; the sky was the same.
The warmth from the sun’s rays bathed his body, and he soaked them up gratefully. The gentle heat coursed through him, wakening once more the slumbering fires of life. Mark smiled contentedly. The sun’s heat was the most enchanting thing he had ever known.
Mark became aware of the fact that he was lying on his back, and he rolled over on his side. The rocks that had sheltered him were warm and friendly now, no longer the dark behemoths of terror that they had seemed the night before. The scrub pines stretched away down the foothills below him, and beyond them was the grassy plains. The scent of pines was strong in the air, and sweet. Mark saw that the sun was directly above him. It must be noon.
Cautiously, he tested his dry throat. It was still raw and sore, but it seemed little worse than it had been before. Mark knew that the sun had saved him for sure, the sun and the rocks. The great boulders had shielded him from the cutting wind, and the sun must have come up shortly after he had collapsed, warming him and drying out his wet clothes. Mark felt like a new man, through with the terrors of the night and ready to face life again with a fresh spirit.
Mark got to his feet, and his new strength promptly deserted him. He swayed dizzily and almost fell, but caught himself on one of the boulders. He stood with his eyes closed for a moment, waiting for the spinning in his mind to stop, and then struggled erect again. This time he made it, but he was fearfully weak.
He panted from the slight exertion and tasted the dryness of his throat. His mouth felt as if it was full of cotton, cotton that had the fiat, metallic taste of copper pennies. His thirst came back with a vengeance, and with it came a gnawing hunger.
He had to have food—and he had to have it in a hurry. Mark moved carefully from his retreat, every sense alert. He saw nothing that looked dangerous. There was only the blue sky, and the sun, and some faraway tiny shadows on the plains that must have been birds. He crawled up over the ledge, and walked slowly to where he saw a patch of snow under a large rock. He fell to his knees and scooped out a handful, which he forced himself to eat slowly. The snow melted deliciously in his mouth and trickled down his dry throat. Mark ate another handful, and another, and then he felt a little better—well enough, at any rate, to make it to another stream. Water was everywhere in the mountains, and he expected to have no trouble finding it.
Mark waved a weak farewell to the little shelter that had saved his life, and made his way back through the foothills to the edge of the marshy plain. He moved slowly, conserving his strength. He thought for only a moment before he set out once more into the east, determined to put distance between himself and the half-men. Of course, there might be others ahead of him—he had no way of knowing. But that was a chance he had to take.
Mark kept a wary eye out, but he saw no game. He tried not to think about how hungry he was, but he couldn’t help it. He began to construct wondrous edible fantasies as he walked along. He could see himself sitting down at a table in his uncle’s home—the little table in the kitchen, with the clean white tablecloth on it. And there was salad, and turkey soup, and a thick charcoal-broiled steak with hashed brown potatoes, and banana cream pie . . .
Mark smiled ruefully. It was going to be a long time before he saw banana cream pie again. Banana cream pie was fifty thousand years and more away . . .
He kept going, not daring yet to eat the red berries that grew in profusion all around him. He was desperately lonely. In many ways, his loneliness was the worst part of it. Mark had never before realized how completely dependent he had been on other people. In the modern world, in the world he had known, you were never truly alone. If there was something you needed, you went to someone else and got it. If you were hungry, you opened a can that had been processed in a factory. If you were sick and could not move, you picked up a telephone and help was at your side.
A telephone. If only his uncle had not gone upstairs to answer the telephone! So long ago—or was it yet to be? If only his uncle were with him now!
But he wasn’t. Mark could turn to no one—he would have to make it alone or not at all. The sun felt good on his back, but the leather in his shoes had dried out and was now stiff and hard. His feet hurt. But it couldn’t be helped. He kept going.
Finally, he noticed a small clump of shrubs ahead of him and hurried forward as best he could. His eyes had not played tricks on him; he knew the signs of water when he saw them. A small, still pool bubbled out of a spring before him. The water was fairly deep, but clean and pure. Mark could count the pebbles on the bottom. He flopped down beside the clear water and drank his fill. The water was delicious, and he was much refreshed. He got to his feet again, and instantly dropped to all fours and wriggled back into the shrubbery, tugging at his holstered .45.
His heart pounded joyfully. Here was his first real stroke of luck. Mark crossed his fingers and held his breath. If only this dream did not dissolve in smoke like all the others!
It didn’t. As Mark watched, a stately stag walked daintily out of the brush on the far side of the pool and sniffed the air. Then, as though convinced that he was alone and at peace with the world, the stag lowered his muzzle and began to drink. Presently, he was followed by two does and a small fawn. They looked like common reindeer, or caribou, although they appeared to be slightly larger.
Too nervous even to breathe, Mark took careful aim at the buck. His hand trembled, and twice he lowered the gun to steady himself. One of the does sniffed nervously at the air, and the buck raised his antlered head inquiringly. Mark could hesitate no longer. He aimed the clumsy .45 and squeezed the trigger. There was a smashing report, unnaturally loud in the stillness, and the buck spun and leaped for the shrubbery behind him. Mark cried out despite himself.
He had missed!
Mark leaped to his feet and desperately fired again. In mid-air the buck faltered. He came down trying to run, but Mark spotted the telltale red wetness on his left shoulder. He took careful aim but held his fire. He could ill afford to use up another bullet, but he was prepared to do so if he had to. But it wasn’t necessary. The buck managed a few staggering steps and then collapsed in the grass, his great sad eyes looking at Mark in a w
ay that was almost human. The fawn nosed the fallen buck in confusion, then followed its mother away across the plains.
Mark came forward, his hands shaking with excitement. He knelt beside the reindeer and fumbled for his pocketknife.
“Sorry, old boy,” he murmured, “but I never needed a meal in my life like I need this one.”
Mark set to work, but it was tough going. The blade of his knife was razor-sharp, but it was not made for carving. He sawed around the right foreleg, cutting through the skin and as many tendons as he could. Then he placed one foot on the leg between the shoulder and the cut, and attempted to break the bone by force. In his weakened condition, it was far from easy. But he managed, and then carved out several good cuts with his knife.
There might be Neanderthals lurking near, but Mark reasoned that if his shots had not drawn their attention then, nothing else would. Hungry as he was, he did not intend to eat his meat raw. A flat rock by the pool would serve as a fireplace, and the shrubs should kindle up into a good enough fire. Mark found enough shrubs within twenty yards to more than satisfy his needs, and he hacked branches from them with his pocketknife. He trimmed them of foliage and then carefully split several of them down into sections. These he shaved into fine slivers for kindling. He arranged the wood with meticulous care on the flat rock, building it up from tiny shavings to fair-sized branches. He trimmed one stout branch to a sharp, twin-forked point and he was ready.
Mark fished out his matches and struck one on the box. It failed to light, and he saw that the matches were damp. He felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach and began to realize what primitive man was up against. Suppose he had to make his own knife, where would he start? Suppose he had to kindle a fire from a chunk of wood and an improvised drill? Sure, it looked simple enough in the diagrams—but could he do it?
Mark wasted six matches before one hissed and caught. He cupped the priceless light in his hands and applied it to the wood shavings. The wood was damp from the night mists, the flame flickered very feebly and almost died. Mark realized he had never appreciated a fire before. Fires were always something you just took for granted, but not now. He concentrated every atom of his being upon that scanty blaze. He blew gently on it, but it would not catch. He frantically lit another match from the tiny flame and tried again with the same results. He knew that if he could once get a reasonably hot blaze going, however small, the fire would catch. But how? He needed paper, and there just wasn’t any paper.