The Venusian sat wooden-faced, but a thin beading of sweat sprang out on his forehead.
“Very good,” said Everard in his pidgin Cimbric. “Mount on the rear saddle, Boierik, and we’ll put this magic horse through her paces.”
The blond man nodded and obeyed. As Everard took the front seat, he felt a gun muzzle held shakily against his back. “Tell Arkonsky we’ll be back in half an hour,” he instructed. They had approximately the same time units here as in his world, both descended from the Babylonian. When that had been taken care of, Everard said. “The. first thing we will do is appear in midair over the ocean and hover.”
“F-f-fine,” said Boierik. He didn’t sound very convinced.
Everard set the space controls for ten miles east and a thousand feet up, and threw the main switch.
They sat like witches astride a broom, looking down on greenish-gray immensity and the distant blur which was land. The wind was high, it caught at them and Everard gripped tight with his knees. He heard Boierik’s oath and smiled stiffly.
“Well,” he asked, “how do you like this?”
“Why… it’s wonderful.” As he grew accustomed to the idea, the Cimbrian gathered enthusiasm. “Balloons are as nothing beside it. With machines like this, we can soar above enemy cities and rain fire down on them.”
Somehow, that made Everard feel better about what he was going to do.
“Now we will fly ahead,” he announced, and sent the scooter gliding through the air. Boierik whooped exultantly. “And now we will make the instantaneous jump to your homeland.”
Everard threw the maneuver switch. The scooter looped the loop and dropped at a three-gee acceleration.
Forewarned, the Patrolman could still barely hang on. He never knew whether the curve or the dive had thrown Boierik. He only got a moment’s glimpse of the man, plunging down through windy spaces to the sea, and wished he hadn’t.
For a little while, then, Everard hung above the waves. His first reaction was a shudder. Suppose Boierik had had time to shoot? His second was a thick guilt. Both he dismissed, and concentrated on the problem of rescuing Van Sarawak.
He set the space verniers for one foot in front of the prisoners’ bench, the time unit for one minute after he had departed. His right hand he kept by the controls—he’d have to work fast—and his left free.
Hang on to your hats, fellahs. Here we go again.
The machine flashed into existence almost in front of Van Sarawak. Everard clutched the Venusian’s tunic and hauled him close, inside the spatiotemporal drive field, even as his right hand spun the time dial back and snapped down the main switch.
A bullet caromed off metal. Everard had a moment’s glimpse of Arkonsky shouting. And then it was all gone and they were on a grassy hill sloping down to the beach. It was two thousand years ago.
He collapsed shivering over the handlebars.
A cry brought him back to awareness. He twisted around to look at Van Sarawak where the Venusian sprawled on the hillside. One arm was still around Deirdre’s waist.
The wind lulled, and the sea rolled in to a broad white strand, and clouds walked high in heaven.
“Can’t say I blame you, Van.” Everard paced before the scooter and looked at the ground. “But it does complicate matters.”
“What was I supposed to do?” the other man asked on a raw note. “Leave her there for those bastards to kill—or to be snuffed out with her entire universe?”
“Remember, we’re conditioned. Without authorization, we couldn’t tell her the truth even if we wanted to. And I, for one, don’t want to.”
Everard glanced at the girl. She stood breathing heavily, but with a dawn in her eyes. The wind ruffled her hair and the long thin dress.
She shook her head, as if to clear it of nightmare, ran over and clasped their hands. “Forgive me, Manslach,” she breathed. “I should have known you’d not betray us.”
She kissed them both. Van Sarawak responded as eagerly as expected, but Everard couldn’t bring himself to. He would have remembered Judas.
“Where are we?” she continued. “It looks almost like Llangollen, but no dwellers. Have you taken us to the Happy Isles?” She spun on one foot and danced among summer flowers. “Can we rest here a while before returning home?”
Everard drew a long breath. “I’ve bad news for you, Deirdre,” he said.
She grew silent. He saw her gather herself.
“We can’t go back.”
She waited mutely.
“The… the spells I had to use, to save our lives—I had no choice. But those spells debar us from returning home.”
“There is no hope?” He could barely hear her.
His eyes stung. “No,” he said.
She turned and walked away. Van Sarawak moved to follow her, but thought better of it and sat down beside Everard. “What’d you tell her?” he asked.
Everard repeated his words. “It seems the best compromise,” he finished. “I can’t send her back to what’s waiting for this world.”
“No.” Van Sarawak sat quiet for a while, staring across the sea. Then: “What year is this? About the time of Christ? Then we’re still upstairs of the turning point.”
“Yeh. And we still have to find out what it was.” “Let’s go back to some Patrol office in the farther past. We can recruit help there.”
“Maybe.” Everard lay down in the grass and regarded the sky. Reaction overwhelmed him. “I think I can locate the key event right here, though, with Deirdre’s help. Wake me when she comes back.”
She returned dry-eyed, though one could see she had wept. When Everard asked if she would assist in his own mission, she nodded, “Of course. My life is yours who saved it.”
After getting you into the mess in the first place. Everard said carefully: “All I want from you is some information. Do you know about… about putting people to sleep, a sleep in which they may believe anything they’re told?”
She nodded doubtfully. “I’ve seen medical Druids do that.”
“It won’t harm you. I only wish to make you sleep so you can remember everything you know, things you believe forgotten. It won’t take long.”
Her trustfulness was hard for him to endure. Using Patrol techniques, he put her in a hypnotic state of total recall and dredged out all she had ever heard or read about the Second Punic War. That added up to enough for his purposes.
Roman interference with Carthaginian enterprise south of the Ebro, in direct violation of treaty, had been the final roweling. In 219 B.C. Hannibal Barca, governor of Carthaginian Spain, laid siege to Saguntum. After eight months he took it, and thus provoked his long-planned war with Rome. At the beginning of May, 218, he crossed the Pyrenees with 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and 37 elephants, marched through Gaul, and went over the Alps. His losses en route were gruesome: only 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse reached Italy late in the year. Nevertheless, near the Ticinus River he met and broke a superior Roman force. In the course of the following year, he fought several bloodily victorious battles and advanced into Apulia and Campania.
The Apulians, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites went over to his side. Quintus Fabius Maximus fought a grim guerrilla war, which laid Italy waste and decided nothing. But meanwhile Hasdrubal Barca was organizing Spain, and in 211 he arrived with reinforcements. In 210 Hannibal took and burned Rome, and by 207 the last cities of the confederacy had surrendered to him.
“That’s it,” said Everard. He stroked the coppery mane of the girl lying beside him. “Go to sleep now. Sleep well and wake up glad of heart.”