Transit

FOURTEEN

By the end of the morning, Camp Two was an organized and going concern. Three tents had been erected: the trunks, covered with the remaining tent, had been stacked two deep on the seaward side as a windbreak; and all the camping equipment, clothing and personal possessions that might have any immediate use had been stowed away in the spare tent.

Tom and Avery had gathered wood for a fire and had even found time to make a crude and shaky ladder, which proved to be only a very slight improvement on the one part of the rock face that could be climbed without much difficulty. However, they were rather proud of the ladder. It was the principle that mattered.

Tom also spent some time wandering up and down the beach, collecting smooth, roundish rocks between five and ten pounds in weight. These he dumped at the foot of the ladder; and when he had got about a couple of dozen he threw them up to Avery, who stacked them at regular intervals round the small citadel: ammunition in case of siege. There was going to be a warm reception if anyone tried to wreck their camp a second time.

That afternoon, leaving the gun with Mary and Barbara, the two men went hunting. They struck inland, but took care not to wander more than a couple of miles from camp. It was an irrational limitation because, at that distance, they had no means of knowing if all was well back at the rock; and at the same time it placed a futile restriction on the scope of the hunt.

However, neither of them wanted to venture farther. The memory of recent events was still too much with them. Probably, thought Avery, after a day or two they would regain confidence. But, despite the fact that they had left Mary and Barbara with a supply of rocks and the gun, and despite the fact that it would be difficult to storm the camp except by a determined group prepared to suffer casualties, they both became increasingly worried—but pointedly avoided mentioning Camp Two on the brief occasions when they found it necessary to talk.

It was partly this preoccupation that was responsible for the failure of the hunt. They saw several animals— chiefly at some distance and on patches of grassland— but their clumsy efforts at stalking drove the creatures away. Both Tom and Avery had become familiar enough with the reference cards to know the kind of animals for which they were looking and the kind which they hoped to avoid.

They found more of the latter. Tom trod on a snake which, fortunately, was more surprised than he was and slithered away with remarkable speed; and Avery almost walked into a basking rhinotype. According to the cards it was edible; but, recalling the experience of Barbara and Mary, Avery formed the opinion that it was going to take an awful lot of killing—hardly a job for light hatchets and knives.

They had back-tracked away from the rhinotype and circled round it at a respectful distance.

Time wore on, and it began to look as if all the useful animals had made previous arrangements to be elsewhere. Presently, they struck a stream—probably the one that supplied them with water—and decided to follow it for a while in the hope that they might catch some unsuspecting creature drinking. But apparently none were thirsty—or, more possibly, thought Avery, they had fairly regular drinking habits, and the hunt was just badly timed.

The stream, however, led them to an attractive glade, in which it broadened out into a long deep pool, served by a ragged cascade of water falling perhaps twenty feet from a rocky shelf at the far end. The pool itself was about fifty yards long, but at no point was it wider than about fifteen yards.

Tom sat on a boulder and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The afternoon had turned close and heavy; and if terrestrial weather was anything to go by, it was quite likely that there would be a thunderstorm before very long.

‘Let’s take a five-minute breather, and then push off home,’ suggested Tom. ‘We can pick up some fruit on the way back. The bloody animals are on strike today.’ Avery joined him on the boulder. ‘As soon as we can, we must do some systematic exploring inland,’ he said reflectively. ‘It would be one hell of a joke if we were only a few miles from some kind of civilization.’

‘Hilarious,’ agreed Tom without humour. ‘But somehow I don’t think it was the policy of the nuts that brought us here to dump us near anything useful at all…. Christ! Get down quick! ’

As he slid behind the boulder, Avery briefly followed Tom’s startled gaze. At the far end of the glade, near the waterfall, a man and a woman had appeared. They were tall, golden-haired, naked—except for a very brief kind of metallic apron hanging from the man’s waist, and a blue piece of fabric drawn between the women’s legs and apparently attached fore and aft to a cord round her hips.

‘Mary’s Greek types,’ whispered Tom, ‘literally in the flesh. Maybe they’re the very jokers who had fun with our camp. If so, I’ve a good mind to ’

‘Later,’ said Avery impatiently. ‘Let’s see what kind of people they are first.’ He raised his head cautiously and gazed over the top of the boulder.

The strangers were magnificent specimens. Avery judged that they there both well over six foot tall. The woman’s body was soft and feminine, but each of her movements suggested power. The man had the shoulders, narrow hips and careless grace of an athlete. Even at that distance both of them seemed to exude confidence —physical and spiritual. Or perhaps it amounted to something more than confidence, thought Avery, as he watched the way they carried themselves. Perhaps it was more akin to arrogance.

Tom was studying them also; and he, too, was impressed. Crouching behind their boulder, the two men felt disconcertingly like a couple of schoolboys spying on the private world of adults.

The strangers appeared to be chatting and laughing to each other, though any sound they made was drowned by the sound of the waterfall. The man was carrying what seemed to be three short javelins: the woman had what looked like a miniature cross-bow.

Evidently they considered the pool and the waterfall to be a very attractive discovery. After a moment or two, the woman laid her cross-bow down on a broad slab of rock and dived into the pool. The man sat down on the rock and watched. She splashed about and appeared to be trying to tempt her companion to join her. But he, clearly, was determined to stay on watch.

Suddenly, along the edge of the pool about ten yards away from the boulder that hid Avery and Tom, there was a muffled splash followed by a brief arrow formation of ripples that disappeared almost immediately.

‘Hell, what was that?’ asked Tom.

Avery had caught a glimpse and was still recovering from the shock. ‘A crocodile—Mark One,’ he said hoarsely. ‘About four yards of it.’

‘We’d better do something. Maybe it likes goddesses for lunch.’

That was the natural impulse—to stand up and shout. To do something—anything that would get the girl out of the water. But the man at the other end of the glade looked a tough customer. Before anybody could get the concept of crocodile into his head, he might translate the message as warlike intentions; and however things turned out, it was quite possible that somebody might get hurt, or killed—especially if these were the people who had worked off their aggressive feelings on Camp One. It would be ironic, thought Avery, if a pitched battle started because they had tried to save somebody’s life. He was caught in an agony of indecision.

‘Christ, we can’t do nothing! ’ exploded Tom.

But even as he spoke, the problem had been solved.

The man at the other end of the glade stood up on his slab of rock. He peered intently at the pool for a moment or two. Then he stooped, picked up one of the javelins and balanced it speculatively in his hand. He had seen the crocodile. Avery sighed with relief.

But the puzzling thing was that the stranger made no effort to call his companion to safety. He let her splash about and enjoy herself. Only when the crocodile was obviously a few yards away did she appear to notice its shadow. And the next puzzling thing was that, instead of making a panicky dash for the edge of the pool, she just looked at the man—who made a slight motion with his head—pointed towards the crocodile and calmly trod water, waiting.

She did not have to wait long. The man’s arm swung back, then the javelin, released from the flash of his extended hand, sped through the air in a smooth arc. It pierced the surface of the water not more than two yards ahead of the woman. But a foot below the surface it clearly found a target, for it hung like the mast of a sinking ship for a moment, quivering. Then the crocodile rose almost bodily out of the water, its jaws transfixed by the terrible weapon.

But by that time a second javelin was on its way; and that one took the crocodile in its soft belly.

Calmly, the woman swam clear of its death throes, then turned to watch the spectacle. To Avery’s incredulous eyes, she seemed to be enjoying it.

The crocodile took quite a long time to die. When, at last, the body was still she swam back to it and with considerable effort tore out the javelins. Finally, she returned with them to the bank.

The man helped her out of the water; and together they stood laughing and talking for a while, and pointing to the floating body. For some reason completely beyond Avery’s comprehension, they seemed to find it vastly amusing. Eventually they turned away from the pool and made as if to go back the way they had come.

‘I’ve just about seen everything now,’ breathed Tom in awe. ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane. Who in the world would have thought it could be for real?’

‘Depends which world you are thinking of,’ said Avery drily. Then he added: ‘This might be a golden opportunity to find out where those two live.’

‘Golden, perhaps. Dangerous, certainly,’ observed Tom. ‘The way he handled the javelins fills me with respect. I should hate to be on the receiving end Not to put toe fine a point upon it, you and I can hardly be considered silent trackers of the forest.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Besides, it might be a long haul, and we have been away from camp quite long enough.’

‘What about the food problem?’

‘We’ll have to be temporary vegetarians once again.’

It took them the best part of an hour to collect enough fruit and find their way back to camp. The threatened thunderstorm did not materialize; and by the time they had returned to the sea-shore, the sun hung low in the sky. The air was still. A thin spiral of smoke rose from Camp Two. Somebody had obviously lit the fire. Somebody was obviously hoping to have something to roast. Somebody was going to be disappointed.

‘Shall we tell them,’ asked Tom as they approached the rock, ‘about Tarzan and his mate?’

‘Not unless we have to,’ said Avery enigmatically. ‘Well, blessed be the saints—look at that! ’

Tom followed his gaze. ‘A rock pool, So? The tide is out.’

‘Look closer, my old one.’ Avery knelt by the pool and gazed at the thick smooth stones that were not stones. He prodded one with his knife, and it attempted to scuttle away.

‘Crabs!’ exclaimed Tom joyously.

In a couple of minutes they had scooped out half a dozen.

‘The problem is carrying them.’

‘Problem solved,’ said Tom. He took off his shirt. ‘If the little devils puncture it, Mary can go all womanly and do some darning.’

Looking and feeling like a couple of beachcombers, they ascended the rickety ladder with their precious loads of food.

They did not mention the incident at the pool to Mary and Barbara. But after the evening meal, when they were all settled comfortably round the fire, the topic came into the conversation tangentially.

There had been a brief and relaxed silence, when they had each been staring into the patterns of the fire and thinking private thoughts. It was a pleasant time of the day, thought Avery. It was the time between action—or the need for action and decisions—and oblivion. It was itself a twilight world of semi-nirvana, when journeys could be taken without moving (one of these days he would prove that they were on an island: it was so, because he felt it was so), when speculation could take on the appearance of reality, and when memories, dulled by warmth and relaxation after a good meal, could be indulged in without pain. He was all set to treat himself to a succulent and leisurely dessert of memories when Mary broke the spell.

‘Suppose,’ she said suddenly, ‘there were two sets of guinea-pigs.’

‘If you are going to talk about guinea-pigs,’ said Barbara, ‘I’m going to indulge in a little whisky. Anybody else want some?’

‘Me,’ said Tom.

‘And me,’ said Avery surprisingly. ‘A double. I’ll pour my own water.’

Barbara raised an eyebrow, then disappeared briefly into the tent.

‘You mentioned the subject of guinea-pigs,’ pursued Avery. ‘Two sets, I believe.’

‘Us and them,’ said Mary. ‘I have a theory.’

‘First define them.’

Barbara had returned with the whisky and plastic tumblers.

‘The Golden people,’ said Mary. ‘Since I’m the only person who’s seen one, I suppose, I’m the only person who believes in them. But somebody must have wrecked Camp One, and I think they did.’

Tom was about to say something, but Avery silenced him. ‘Tell us about the theory,’ he said.

‘Well, there isn’t much,’ went on Mary brightly. ‘I just think there are two sets of guinea-pigs, and we’re one set. Of course, there may be even more for all I know. Maybe we haven’t come across them yet.’

‘You think there is a kind of experiment in progress?’

‘Don’t be pedantic, Richard,’ said Barbara. ‘By this time we know there’s a kind of experiment in progress. Even Tom forgot all about habeas corpus when he spotted two moons in the sky. After all, nobody is going to snatch us across the light-years—or whatever they are —just to give us a tropical rest cure. Besides, think of those bloody eleven-plus questions we had in solitary confinement.’

‘All right, darling, you’ve made your point,’ said Avery with a smile. ‘The question is ’

‘You called me darling! ’ said Barbara.

Tm sorry. Slip of the tongue.’

She smiled. ‘Also, a strategic error. Now I shall expect it at regular intervals.’

He grinned uneasily, and took a drink of whisky. ‘I’ll try to remember Now where the hell was I?’

‘The question is,’ prompted Tom.

‘Ah, yes. The question is: what for?’ '

‘To see how we live,’ suggested Mary.

‘Not good enough,’ objected Tom. ‘If bug-eyed monsters can hop around London without exciting too much general comment, they can bloody well study us in our natural habitat.’

‘That’s so,’ said Avery. ‘But they may not be interested in our natural habitat.’

‘Where does that get us, then?’

‘Here,’ answered Barbara drily. ‘’Neath two tropical moons, and all that jazz.’

‘Stress conditions,’ said Avery seriously. ‘That’s where it gets us. They want to find out how we behave under stress conditions.’

‘Possibly,’ conceded Tom, ‘but so far nobody has dropped by to check our pulse rates or ask us to fill in any questionnaires.’

‘I’ll come to that later,’ retorted Avery. ‘If Mary’s notion is right—and there is no reason to think that it isn’t—and if another group or groups have been dumped in our vicinity—and there’s a bit of evidence to support that one—then the situation gets complicated. Maybe our invisible bug-eyed scientists want to give us a little healthy competition.’

Mary looked searchingly at Tom and Avery. ‘You’ve been holding out on us,’ she said at length. ‘There’s something you know—or that you’ve seen—that you haven’t told us about.’

‘That’s so,’ agreed Avery contritely. ‘There’s something else, too. It happened a little before the camp was wrecked—or possibly while the operation was in progress. I didn’t want to cause any panic by telling you. But I’m steadily coming to the conclusion that that’s a stupid attitude. We aren’t going to get anywhere, I think, unless we all learn to share everything. And now seems to be a good time to begin All right, tell them about this afternoon, Tom.’

Tom told them, succinctly and graphically. When he had finished, there was a brief silence.

Barbara shivered a little and tossed some more wood on to the fire. Sparks like transient glow-worms danced jerkily up into the night air.

‘I’m almost wishing you’d left us in blissful ignorance,’ she said quietly. ‘The way Tom describes it, I’m tempted to believe that those two have walked straight out of a super-race myth.’

‘My point exactly,’ said Tom. ‘The more I think about it, the more sure I am that those jokers didn’t come from Earth.’

‘The mind simply boggles,’ observed Mary wearily. ‘The more you try to sort things out, the more inscrutable the whole situation gets.’

‘Of course,’ said Avery. ‘They may be indigenous.’

‘In what?’ asked Barbara.

‘Indigenous. They may belong here In that case, if we are the intruders, what they did to our camp—if they did it—is at least understandable.’

‘No,’ objected Mary with a curious conviction. ‘This planet is neutral territory. We have all been brought here —us and them, and anyone else there may be.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ Avery was intrigued.

Then, with typical feminine para-logic, Mary became vague. ‘Because it fits better. There must be a sort of pattern—oh, I can’t explain it—but something has to be worked out…. And the people who brought us here are watching the process through some kind of celestial keyhole— That’s what I feel. I don’t know if it makes any sense.’

‘It makes sense,’ said Avery soberly. ‘The kind of sense I don’t much care for.’

Barbara turned to him. ‘While we are on the subject of astounding disclosures, I believe you have a small contribution to make.’

Avery smiled. ‘Mine’s a real tall one.’

‘They can’t come any taller than the one we have just had.’

‘Judge for yourself.’ He described the glowing sphere to them, his reactions to it, and the way it had just disappeared with a sound as of breaking splinters of glass, and without leaving any trace of its presence on the sand. But he did not mention his earlier fleeting vision of a land mass across the sea. It did not seem now to have much relevance to their predicament.

‘Stone me!’ exploded Tom, when he had finished. ‘The whole set-up is getting crazier and crazier…. You’re sure it was real?’

‘No, of course I’m not sure,’ retorted Avery. ‘Who can be sure of anything here? But I’d dam well swear to it.’

‘Perhaps it was just a sort of balloon,’ suggested Mary, ‘with a camera or something inside.’

‘Yes,’ said Avery, ‘a balloon with the surface temperature of molten metal, and one that just disappears— camera and all—with a snap, crackle, pop.’

For a time there was silence, with each of them retreating into lonely, frightening and absurd worlds of speculation. Profitless speculation, since the facts themselves were absurd; and therefore the degree of improbability of any possible explanation could only be measured against a background that was itself improbable.

Presently, Avery got tired of trying to solve the insoluble. He got up, went into the supplies tent and came out again with the portable record player and the first record he laid his hands on.

‘Let’s see if we can get any music out of this thing.’

‘Was that yours?’ asked Barbara. ‘Back on Earth, I mean.’

‘No, I had a king-size one. I was—am—very fond of music…. I expect our crystal-packing friends just wanted to keep me happy.’ He gave her a thin smile.

Then he found the key of the record player and wound its motor up. Evidendy the mechanical motor operated some kind of small generator as well as the turntable, because the sound was produced from a tiny loudspeaker.

He put the record on and set the pick-up carefully against its edge. It turned out to be a selection from My , Fair Lady.

For a moment or two everyone listened as if they had never heard such music before.

Then the lyric and the voice of Julie Andrews bravely made their debut on an alien world. All I want is a room somewhere…. The sound, indescribably sweet, the thought, subdy appropriate, hung like a small invisible cloud of magic between the security of the firelight and the brooding ring of darkness that surrounded it.

Suddenly, the tension was eased. And they all began to smile at the lovely ridiculous words. But their smiles were just a little too fixed. Looking at his companions, Avery saw firelight mirrored in the suspicious brightness of their eyes. Doubtless his own were just the same….

He held a hand out to Barbara. She took it. Tom and Mary were already leaning close together, drawing comfort from each other.

All I want is a room somewhere….

Avery sighed and surrendered himself to the echoes of a distant world. It was a wonderful and acutely painful luxury.