Find the Feathered Serpent (Winston Science Fiction)

by Evan Hunter

  “Yes, Neil. I’d consider it a great honor if you took my place.”

  “And the others. Doctor Manning and Mr. Blake? And Dave?”

  “They’ve already agreed. In fact,” and here Doctor Falsen grinned, “you’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”

  And that was how a guy suddenly had the whole pattern of his life changed. For here it was the night before they were leaving! And there the machine stood, proud and strong in the light of the moon. Tomorrow. Tomorrow!

  “You’d better get some sleep, kid,” Rusty’s voice said from the gate. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “Yeah,” Neil agreed. Rusty opened the gate, and Neil stepped through. “You’ll be here when we leave, won’t you, Rusty?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, kid,” Rusty said. “Now go get some sleep.”

  “Good night,” Neil said.

  “Good night, kid.”

  Neil began walking toward the University, looking back at the machine only once.

  Like an enormous hourglass, it stood poised against the blackness of the night, waiting.

  The next day was clear and bright. The sky stretched for as far as the eye could see in a brilliant, almost-blinding sheet of blue.

  The good-bys were over and done with. Neil’s mother had kissed him and cried a little, and then she’d reminded him to change his underwear regularly. Neil’s father had simply shook his hand, the way men do, and wished his son good luck.

  And now Neil waited below while Dave Saunders warmed up the engine of the machine. He wore a linen shirt, open at the throat. His blond head was bare, and his skin against the brilliant white of the shirt was a gleaming bronze in the sun. He wore dungarees, rolled at the cuff, and a pair of solid leather boots.

  Standing beside him was Arthur Blake, dressed in almost the same fashion. He was a small man, with a balding head and quick, intelligent eyes. Two shaggy black eyebrows sprawled over his eyes like elongated hyphens. His nose was sharp and thin, and he spoke in a soft voice.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she, Neil?”

  “She is,” Neil agreed, staring in wonder at the plastic and aluminum dream that was his father’s.

  “Here’s Doctor Manning now,” Arthur Blake said.

  Doctor Manning was at least six-feet-four. He had the square, muscular shoulders of a fullback, complete with a waist that rivaled that of the time machine’s for its slenderness. His face seemed to have been chiseled out of hard granite, set with black coal for eyes. His jaw jutted out like the trapdoor on a gallows, and when he spoke, his voice boomed forth from his enormous barrel chest.

  “Dave warming her up, I see,” he said.

  If anyone looked less like an archaeologist, Neil decided, it was Doctor Manning.

  One of the portholes on the side of the control room opened and Dave’s head popped out.

  “Let’s go, boys,” he called cheerfully.

  Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake started for the machine. Neil walked to where Rusty stood leaning on his rifle. He extended his hand.

  “Good luck, kid,” Rusty said.

  “Thanks,” Neil answered.

  “Come back soon. I won’t know what to do at night, not having that machine to guard.”

  Neil smiled and started for the ship. He climbed the ladder that was in place before the platform. The ladder was of the movable type to be found on any airfield, triangular shaped, with wheels under each leg.

  As Neil climbed the ladder to the plastic hatchway in the lower bubble, his mind wandered back to what had happened less than a month ago on this very spot. His father, after inspecting the machine, had stepped through the hatchway and reached for the ladder with his foot. A negligent attendant had moved the ladder from the hatchway, and Doctor Falsen had tumbled fifteen feet to the ground below. If it hadn’t been for that accident, Doctor Falsen would be climbing the steps now, rather than Neil.

  Neil reached the hatchway and pulled up on the toggle that snapped it open. He climbed through and signaled to the attendant below to wheel the ladder away. Then he pulled the hatchway shut and peered through the plastic. A little way in the distance, the University spires stood out against the sky in dim silhouette. He could almost make out the little house on the campus in Faculty Row. Here, he knew, his mother was probably still crying, and his father would be trying to console her. He bit his lower lip and started for the aluminum ladder that led to the control room. The ladder was bolted securely to the aluminum floor of the plastic bubble, and it rose vertically to an opening in the floor of the control room. Neil climbed it, hand over hand, rung by rung, and poked his head into the control room.

  “Hi,” he called.

  Dave Saunders looked up from the control panel. He was a young man, twenty-six at the most, with straight brown hair and large, warm brown eyes. He had a finely sculpted face with high cheekbones, and a sensitive, thin mouth. He would have been good-looking if it hadn’t been for his nose. While an engineering student, Dave had been a member of the college boxing squad. From what Doctor Falsen had told Neil, Dave was quite good. But he’d been unlucky in one bout, and he sported a broken nose as a result.

  “Good,” Dave said when he saw Neil. “We were waiting for you.”

  “Are we ready to go?”

  “As ready as we’ll ever be. Help me chase these two coots out of here, will you, Neil?”

  “Let’s go, Arthur,” Doctor Manning said. “I can take a hint.”

  “Aren’t you going to stay up here for the take-off?” Neil asked.

  Dr. Manning shrugged his fullback’s shoulders. “Only two people allowed in the control room, Neil.”

  “Well, if you want to stay —” Neil started.

  “We’ll go down below,” Doctor Manning said. “I want to see what happens anyway. With all that clear plastic down there, it’d be a shame to stay cooped up here. Coming, Arthur?”

  He started down the ladder, with Arthur Blake following close behind him.

  “I’ll give you a warning buzzer just before we take off,” Dave said to the descending figures.

  “All right,” Arthur Blake answered as his head went below the floor level into the lower bubble.

  Dave checked a few dials on the instrument panel and nodded his head.

  “Everything seems okay so far. I’d better start the crystal working.”

  “The time crystal?” Neil asked.

  “That’s it, Neil,” Dave said, smiling. “We’re fancy, and we call it the temporium crystal. But time crystal will do.”

  He reached out to a switch on the panel and closed the circuit. A hum, low and steady, filled the machine. Behind it, and almost too faint to be heard, was a slight coughing sound. Dave’s face clouded momentarily, and he studied the dials before him.

  “That’s strange,” he said.

  “What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”

  Dave hesitated before answering. “No-o-o,” he said slowly. “Not by the instruments anyway. Everything seems to be fine. I could have sworn I heard some rumbling when I threw on the generator, though.”

  “I heard something too,” Neil admitted.

  Dave shrugged. “Probably just warming up,” he said. “We haven’t used the machine since its test runs, you know.” He checked his dials again. “Want to press that warning buzzer on your right, Neil?”

  Neil looked over the instrument panel and found a large red button near the right-hand corner. He pressed it with his forefinger, and a loud buzz filled the machine.

  “Ready, Neil?” Dave asked. “Yes.”

  “Nervous?”

  “A little.”

  “Don’t be. Everything’ll turn out fine. We’ll be in Yucatan before you can say Kukulcan.”

  “Here we go,” Dave said.

  He throttled the big machine and an ominous roar filled the aluminum chamber.

  Slowly, steadily, like a giant elevator rising, the machine lifted from the platform.

  “Easy as pie,” Dave said, hi
s mouth breaking into a wide grin. “Switch on the intercom, Neil. We’ll see how the boys in the cheaper seats are enjoying the ride.”

  Neil reached up to the speaker on the wall and snapped a toggle. A red light gleamed as the intercom took on life.

  Dave reached over and depressed the “Press-to-talk” lever.

  “How is it down there, boys?” He released the lever.

  “Fine, just fine,” Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake chorused.

  Dave pressed the lever again and said, “We’re clear of the platform now. I’m putting space travel up to top speed and I’m cutting in the crystal.” He waited.

  “I’ve been waiting to see this for a long time,” Arthur Blake said.

  “There won’t be much to see, Art. It’ll probably look kind of gray out there. Remember that night and day will be changing some thirty times a second.”

  “I’ll enjoy it anyway,” Arthur Blake replied.

  “Well, here we go,” Dave said. He moved away from the inter-com and snapped another switch on the instrument panel. A louder hum filled the machine, and Neil remembered what Dave had told him about the machine. At full speed, the machine was capable o f traveling some three hundred years an hour. That meant five years a minute, a month every single second. Summer would become winter in just six seconds! And, at the same time, the machine would be plowing forward in space at a speed of more than one hundred miles an hour. Of course, the machine was calibrated so that it would land in the right place at the right time. “Neil,” Dave said.

  And that time and place would be Yucatan in A.D. 50 or perhaps later. It all depended on what they found when —

  “Neil!” Dave’s voice was sharp.

  Instantly, Neil snapped out of his thoughts.

  “What is it, Dave?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “What?”

  “Something’s wrong, I said.”

  “But, I don’t understand. You said everything was —”

  Dave turned a worried face to Neil. His brown eyes were large against a pale face, and his nose somehow looked comical against the seriousness of his features.

  There was nothing funny about what he said, though.

  “I can’t control the machine, Neil. I can’t control it!”

  Chapter 2 — Ocean Crack-Up

  THE fear that was in Dave’s eyes leaped across the small room like charged lightning. Neil felt every ounce of blood drain out of his body to leave him limp. He had the strange desire to run down the ladder and leap through the hatchway. He knew fear then, raw, uncontrolled, unreasoning fear.

  “What . . . what . . .” he stammered.

  “There’s something wrong. I knew it the minute I cut in the time crystal. Something wrong, Neil. I can’t control anything. I can’t control our speed, time or space, either one. Something’s jammed.”

  “What — what shall we do?”

  Dave pulled a lever on the instrument panel. Nothing happened. He pushed the lever in again, pulled it out again.

  Nothing.

  “You see? No response. Dead. Dead as last year’s calendar.”

  Neil stared at the lever in disbelief.

  “But all the dials are working,” he protested.

  “Sure, but I can’t control her, Neil.”

  Dave made an infuriated, helpless gesture. “Darn it, darn it, DARN IT!” he shouted.

  “Easy, Dave. There must be some way out.”

  Quickly, Dave scrambled to his feet. “Give me a hand here, Neil,” he said. “The only thing we can do is try to cut our time travel speed. If we can.”

  “What about our space travel?”

  “Can t do a thing with it. It’s stuck at top speed. One hundred and fifty miles an hour. And the worst part is I don’t know where we’re going.”

  Together, they grabbed a sticklike handle that jutted out of the instrument panel. “We’ve got to yank this as far down as she’ll go, Neil. Ready?”

  “Ready,” Neil said tensely.

  “Let’s go then! Pull!”

  Neil strained at the handle, pulling with all the strength in his arms. Beside him, Dave grunted and struggled with all his power.

  “Pull, Neil, pull!”

  “I’m . . . pulling.”

  “Harder.”

  The handle moved down a notch.

  “More,” Dave said through clenched teeth.

  Slowly, reluctantly, the handle edged its way down another quarter of an inch. Neil felt all the strength in his body concentrate in his arms and shoulders. His neck muscles stood out taut as they struggled against his skin, seeming ready to burst through.

  Again, the handle crept down a trifle.

  Dave’s labored voice reached Neil above the beating in his eardrums.

  “A little . . . more . . . just a . . . little . . . more.”

  Neil braced himself and pulled, pulled harder than he’d ever done in his life. Sweat broke out on his face and neck, and his eyes seemed ready to pop. Still he tugged at the rebellious handle, his muscles straining against the tremendous power of the machine.

  Dave suddenly let go. “Enough, Neil. Enough.”

  Neil relaxed his grip on the handle. His chest rose and fell laboriously as he took in great gulps of air. His arms felt dead, two limp, dangling, useless burdens hanging at his sides.

  “We got her to half-speed,” Dave said. “I don’t think it’ll go any farther.”

  Together they collapsed to the floor of the control room, neither speaking, both breathing hard.

  From below, the voices of Arthur Blake and Doctor Manning chattered on excitedly.

  Neil sighed deeply and said, “What now?”

  Dave shrugged. He was lying on his back on the floor, one arm over his eyes. “I don’t know, Neil,” he said softly.

  “Shouldn’t we tell the others?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet. There’ll be plenty of time later. We’ll have to see what happens first.”

  “What can happen?” Neil wanted to know.

  “Anything,” Dave said. “Anything.”

  Slowly, he got to his feet and walked over to the inter-com. He depressed the speaking lever and said, “How is it down there, boys?”

  “Wonderful,” Arthur Blake answered. “You should see the effects out here, Dave. Fantastic.”

  “Look,” Dave said, “Neil and I are going to be doing a little calibrating up here for the next few hours. Think you two fellows can find enough to keep you busy down there?”

  “Sure, sure,” Arthur Blake said. “Just forget we’re around.”

  “We’ll buzz you when we’re through,” Dave said. He released the speaking lever and turned to face Neil. “Well,” he sighed, “that takes care of them for a while.”

  “And what do we do now?” Neil wanted to know.

  “We wait,” Dave said simply, a defeated sadness in his brown eyes.

  They waited. The machine hummed on, every two seconds carrying them a month into the past now that the controls were set at half-speed. And the machine moved geographically at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  A sudden click echoed through the aluminum chamber.

  “What’s that?” Neil asked, jumping to his feet.

  Dave’s eyes scanned the instrument panel rapidly. Quickly, he ran to the emergency handle they’d used to cut the time speed of the machine. The handle had snapped up to the full-speed position again.

  Dave looked at it mournfully. Then, suddenly, his face crumpled into a smile. “No use being grim, I guess. This old machine is just a stubborn cuss, that’s all.”

  Together, he and Neil tried to force the handle down again. It wouldn’t budge at all.

  “Say,” Doctor Manning’s booming voice cut in over the inter-com, “how much longer will you two be up there? We’re getting hungry.”

  Dave smiled and spoke into the inter-com. “A few hours yet. You fellows go ahead and eat. We’ll have a bite up here.”

  “Can’t
you come down for a few minutes?” Doctor Manning complained.

  “Impossible,” Dave answered. “Go on and eat.”

  “Well, all right, if you say so.”

  The speaker went dead.

  “We’ve got to stay up here,” Dave explained. “There’s no telling what might happen.”

  They slumped against the aluminum wall of the ship again, exhausted, waiting for the worst.

  After five hours of top-speed travel, it happened.

  At first, it was just a low rumble in the generator. Dave jumped to his feet immediately. He rushed to the inter-com and threw the switch. “Attention, down there. Attention! There’s going to be trouble. Adjust your safety belts immediately.”

  Doctor Manning’s voice boomed into the control room. “Are you kidding us, Dave?”

  The rumble in the generator grew louder. Spasmodically, the motor attached to the twin rotors began to cough.

  “That’s an order,” Dave barked. “Adjust your safety belts at once!”

  “Trouble, Dave?” Doctor Manning asked.

  “Serious trouble,” Dave snapped. “Stand by for a crash landing, Doc.”

  “Need any help up there?”

  “Nope. Just adjust those safety belts and brace your . . .”

  Suddenly, without warning, the machine began to tremble violently.

  “Stand by,” Dave barked into the speaker.

  The floor began to pitch beneath Neil’s feet. And then the machine began to spin crazily, round and round, over and over, like a mad plastic and aluminum pinwheel in the sky. Neil was smashed into the wall, his shoulder filling instantly with pain.

  “We’re losing altitude,” Dave shouted above the roar of the throbbing generator and motor. He was lifted from his feet and sent scuttling across the floor. He bounced against the far wall, bounced off again, and was lifted into the air to crash with a sickening thud beside Neil. Neil staggered to his feet, clutching one of the wall lockers for support. The machine gave a final, frightening shudder and dropped like a stone. Neil’s fingers were pried loose from the wall locker, and he was flung backward against the instrument panel.

  Wave after wave of grayness folded in on Neil, engulfing him, growing grayer and grayer, and then black, and blacker, and then there was nothing but the aching throb in his shoulder and the terrible sound that burst in his ears.