Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Fourteen

Katerina Shumilova left her camp by the river at dawn. She would have liked to stay longer. The camp had become as much of a home as any place in this world could be for her.

The British had discovered time-travel. They had sent her back into the past, into the age of the dinosaurs. She had seen and heard too much in the past week to doubt it any longer. Flying reptiles with twenty-foot wings, snakes forty feet long, a scaled horror stretching seventy feet from a horned and fanged head to a tail thicker than she was. There were other things that were only crashings in the jungle, shapes under the surface of the river, shadows and dreadful cries in the darkness. She was alone as no other human being had ever been alone. She would be alone as long as she lived.

Some people might have decided that there was no reason to move anywhere and have sat themselves down to die. Katerina was not one of them. She would go on fighting to survive as long as she was alive. Part of this was sheer toughness, part of it was her training. Part of it also was the memory of her father, Pavel Shumilov.

A fighter pilot in the Red Air Force, Captain Pavel Shumilov had been shot down behind German lines it 1943. Both legs broken in the crash, he had dragged himself along, through snow and wind and sub-zero cold, had dragged himself along for five days until he met a Russian patrol. After many painful months in the hospital, he had returned to combat. He had ended the war a Hero of the Soviet Union, an ace with more than thirty German planes to his credit.

So if Katerina did not give up, it was partly because she was the daughter of a man who hadn't given up either.

There were also practical reasons for moving on. There might be better food and water someplace else. There certainly should be some part of this land not completely overrun with dinosaurs. She had seen too many that could swallow her at a gulp, and she preferred to live without them as neighbors. Finally, scientific curiosity was still alive in her. Even though she knew she would die in this land, she wanted to die after learning as much about it as she could.

So that morning she put aside the last of her fear and headed south along the riverbank.

She was no longer naked or defenseless. She wore a hat and a robe, which she had sewn together from large, heavy leaves, using vegetable fiber for thread and fish bones for needles. Other leaves were tied around her legs with strips of bark, and still more strips of bark protected her feet. In one hand she carried a broken branch heavy enough to make a good club. All this made her feel like a human being rather than an animal. The water and the fish from the river would keep her strong as she moved along the river. She was as well off as she could hope to be here and now, and before long she found herself whistling Russian folk tunes as she strode along.

The sun climbed higher. After walking for about three hours Katerina started looking for a place to rest. Then suddenly she wrinkled her nose and stopped. A puff of hot air blowing up the river from ahead brought her the unmistakable stink of something very large and badly decayed. She slipped behind the nearest tree and peered along the bank. She had seen the splintered bones of the victims of the carnivorous dinosaurs before. This could be another one, and the killer could still be around, feeding on its victim.

Katerina watched and listened carefully for a few minutes, saw nothing except large green birds flapping clumsily upward, as though they were gorged, and heard nothing except the normal rustle of leaves and drone of insects. The killer had fed and gone, leaving its victim to the scavengers.

As she moved forward, the smell grew rapidly stronger, until it was nearly overpowering. A few more steps brought her around a line of young trees and in sight of what lay dead beside the river.

It was one of the three-horned monsters, far larger than any she'd seen before, already bloating as well as stinking in the tropical heat. Several more scavenger birds flapped upward from a gaping red trough in the flesh of its back as they saw Katerina. Grim determination and scientific curiosity kept her stomach under control. This would almost certainly be her best chance to examine one of these monsters. She moved closer.

As she did, she realized there was something odd about the body. Except for where the birds had feasted, it was intact. Smashed and broken trees lay all around it, so clearly the beast had died violently. But whatever had struck it down hadn't fed on any part of the body Katerina could see. Had it been struck by lightning, or perhaps bitten by a snake?

Katerina stepped forward again, climbed up on the trunk of a fallen tree, then stopped so abruptly that she nearly lost her balance and sprawled forward off the log onto her face. Then she sprang backward, flattening herself on the ground behind the trunk.

She'd seen the head and neck clearly, and she'd seen half a dozen spears jutting out of the scaled skin or lying on the ground.

Katerina's fingers dug into the bark of the fallen tree as she fought the paralyzing astonishment and the fear sweeping through her. Somewhere in this jungle lived-some creatures, perhaps men, perhaps not-able to make and use spears. Not primitive spears, either-at least one of them had a heavy iron head a foot long. And that meant-

Katerina deliberately stopped thinking for a moment. She knew that if she tried to sort out all at once everything this might mean, she might panic. She could not do that. She would not do that. She would clear her mind and calm herself. She would.

Eventually she did. Then she began sorting out her thoughts. There were intelligent creatures, perhaps human beings, living in this world. Men and dinosaurs had never existed on Earth at the same time. The last dinosaurs had been dead many millions of years before Man's first and remotest ancestors had appeared.

Perhaps the spearmakers were not men. Perhaps they were another intelligent race that had existed on Earth in the time of the dinosaurs, one that had vanished without leaving any traces at. all. Had they evolved on Earth along some lines that scientists hadn't yet even imagined? Or had they possibly come from somewhere other than Earth?

Katerina ran the arguments back and forth in her mind, looking at them as calmly and carefully as she could manage. She couldn't come up with any real answers. This might not even be Earth, for all she knew. The British might have discovered a method of transmission not only through time but through space as well. She might be-she shuddered at the thought-light-years from Earth. In that case, the spearmakers were certainly not human.

At this point she stopped arguing with herself. She realized that she was once again about to frighten herself into panic or paralysis. She didn't like any of the possibilities she faced, and she didn't mind admitting it.

All of the possibilities meant the same thing. She was not alone in this jungle. She would not have to play Robinson Crusoe to the end of her life, however long or short that might be. Sooner or later she would meet the spearmakers. She stood up and walked up to the body.

Close up, it was obvious what had killed the monster. Three feet of spearshaft jutted out of one eye socket. The spear had either been thrown with tremendous force and accuracy or else driven in from close at hand.

A few minutes' more exploring the area turned up two fresh graves, no more than a day or two old. Katerina was tempted to take a spear and dig up one of the bodies. That would answer the question of what sort of being the spearmakers were.

But the day was hot, the smell of the decaying carcass was about to make her sick, and something inside her balked at descrating a grave. Besides, the spearmakers might be rather touchy about their graves. Many primitive peoples were, she recalled.

Instead she took two of the spears. They had heavy wooden shafts and solid iron heads, but they were well made and well balanced. She swung them up on her shoulder and headed on down the river. It was nearly half an hour before the air around her no longer stank of a hundred feet of decaying dinosaur.

By now it was close to noon. Katerina crawled under some bushes, making sure to brush out her trail as well as she could. Under the bushes the air was stiflingly close. But there was shade, and with luck she would be hidden from anything-dinosaur or spearmaker-that might wander along. Enfolded in the darkness, she felt the morning's built-up tension slowly ease out of her. It was easy to fall asleep.

When she awoke, the sun was already well down toward the horizon. She grabbed her spears and scrambled out into the open. Then she picked out a convenient tree and began practicing throwing the spears.

Katerina was a natural athlete, with superb muscles and reflexes made even better by years of training. She found it easy to get used to the spears, not only for throwing but for thrusting and even for swinging like clubs. In half an hour she decided she knew everything about the spears she needed to, shouldered them again, and went over to the river to drink.

She was kneeling down, hands cupped to scoop up the water, when she heard a crackle of bushes behind her. She sprang up, snatching up a spear with each hand as she turned.

Ten men-ten entirely human men, as far as she could tell-were filing out of the bushes. They were brown skinned, lean, and naked except for feather headdresses, belts, and loincloths. Each carried two spears slung over his back and a club hanging from his belt. Each one turned to stare at Katerina as he emerged into the open. The stares did not look at all friendly.