The plastic that should have filled the hole in the wall was splintered in several razor-like pieces. Some of these pieces lay on the floor beneath the dangling, athletic form of Doctor Manning.
Another piece of jagged plastic was imbedded deeply in Doctor Manning’s neck.
Outside, the waves lapped against the sides of the machine like the swish of a brush against a starched shirt.
Crumpled against what had been the aluminum floor of the lower bubble, curved grotesquely, his neck slanting at a weird angle from his body, was old Arthur Blake. His eyes were open wide, staring out at the ocean. His mouth was open too.
Just above his head, in the aluminum, was the shape of his skull where it had undoubtedly crashed into the metal when the machine collided with the water.
Without a word, Dave crossed to the hanging body of Doctor Manning. He loosened the safety belt and lowered the doctor’s body to the floor.
Neil knelt beside Arthur Blake and felt for his pulse. The old man was dead. Gently, he closed his eyelids and walked over to where Dave stood, looking through the plastic out at the ocean.
Neither said anything for several minutes.
Dave broke the silence, then.
“Let’s give them a decent burial, Neil. They were swell guys.”
They buried them at sea, Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake, an archaeologist and a historian. The sea quickly reached out with a green, rolling tongue and hungrily snatched up its offering.
A silent gloom seemed to descend upon the machine, and Dave and Neil listlessly went about their work, checking the damage, trying to estimate their position in time and space. The instrument panel was badly damaged, with splintered dials and twisted knobs.
One of the fuel tanks in the lower bubble had been punctured and gasoline now sloshed underfoot as they made their way back and forth.
Silently, they pried open the outer hatchway, which had luckily been above the water line when the ship crashed, and lifted themselves out to sit outside the machine, their legs dangling down through the hatchway.
Dave looked past the control room and the upper bubble to the rotors. One rotor was twisted completely out of shape, a bent, metallic pretzel dipping into the ocean whenever a wave rolled under the machine. The other rotor was in comparatively good condition, slightly bent at the tip, giving the illusion of a large golfing iron.
“It looks pretty bad,” Dave said.
Neil didn’t answer. His eyes were busily scanning the horizon. It spread around them, a gigantic circle of water, green and immense. Overhead, a few scattered clouds, bloated and lazy, drifted across the bright blue sky. The sun blazed down fiercely.
No land broke the clean line of sky meeting water. Nothing.
“Where do you suppose we are?” Neil asked.
“Where and when, you mean.”
“First of all, where?” asked Neil.
“Where, I don’t know. I can only estimate.”
“What do you figure?”
“I can only judge by our speed,” Dave said. “We were traveling at top speed, one hundred and fifty miles an hour. We were in the air for over five hours, which means we traveled approximately eight hundred or so miles.”
“That’s a long way,” Neil said, thinking wistfully of the University.
“It’s a lot longer than you think,” Dave said. “The worst part is that I had no control of the machine. We could have traveled in any direction.”
“Which means?”
“Which means we can be somewhere off the coast of Yucatan, or somewhere off the coast of Pensacola, or somewhere off the coast of Lower California in the Pacific. We might even be in the middle of the Great Salt Lake.”
“Isn’t there any way of knowing?”
‘I’m afraid not. And the same holds true for the time angle, although we can estimate a little more closely there. We were in the air for more than five hours, traveling at a time speed of three hundred years an hour, except for the few minutes we were at half-speed.”
“That would put us somewhere around… A.D. 400, wouldn’t it?”
“Approximately. I’d give or take a few centuries and say somewhere between A.D. 100 and 600.”
Neil whistled softly.
“Some fun, eh, kid?” Dave asked.
“Yeah, yeah, some fun.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, the sound of the waves whispering around the machine.
“What’s our next move?” Neil asked.
“An excellent question,” Dave said, assuming the pose of a college professor, one finger placed meditatively beside his temple. “An excellent question.”
“And the answer?”
“Several answers,” Dave said. “First, we find land. Second, we start to fix the mach-”
“How do we find land?”
“Another good question. How do we find land?” Dave became serious. “I don’t know, Neil. I really don’t. We’d better find it fast, though. This machine won’t float forever.”
“I hadn’t even thought of sinking,” Neil said.
“Our food’ll last about two weeks,” Dave said, “But the machine won’t float that long, as light as it is. And if we should hit a storm-”
Dave stopped and watched Neil’s face. Neil’s mouth had dropped open, and his eyes now were large and bright against the copper of his skin. He was staring over Dave’s shoulder, looking out at the horizon.
Quickly, Dave’s head snapped over his shoulder, and he followed Neil’s intent stare. “What is it, kid?”
Neil pointed, his hand on Dave’s shoulder. “There! Look. On the horizon.”
“I don’t see anything. Is it land?”
“No, no, look. It’s a sail. A sail, Dave!”
“Where? I don’t see any-yes, I see it. It’s a sail, Neil. By jumping Jupiter, it’s a sail.”
“And heading this way, Dave. See, it’s heading toward us.”
A look at Dave’s face cooled Neil’s enthusiasm.
“What’s the matter, Dave? That’s a sail out there. A ship! Don’t you understand? We’ll be rescued.”
“There’s one catch,” Dave said, his voice low and serious.
“Catch? What can possibly be wrong with a-?”
“I don’t know a heck of a lot about the Mayas, Neil,” Dave hurried on, “and I sure wish the Doc or Art were here to back me up on this. I’m not even sure we’re near Yucatan, or that we’re in the time I estimated.”
“I don’t get it. What’s all that got to do with-?”
“Just this. If we are sometime between A.D. 100 and 600, and if we are near Yucatan, there shouldn’t be a sail in these waters.”
“But, why not?”
“Because the sail is unknown to the Mayas. That’s why.”
Neil considered this briefly. “Well, that’s simple, Dave, We just aren’t near Yucatan.”
Dave’s eyes flicked again toward the horizon and the approaching sail.
“That’s what bothers me. I don’t know who’s on that ship, or what their business is.”
He looked out over the horizon once more, at the tiny sail in the distance.
“I think,” he said slowly, “we’d better break some rifles out of the gunlocker.”
Chapter 4
The Blond Giant
Without waiting for Neil’s reaction to his statement, Dave dropped down inside the machine. He began walking toward the control room, his feet wide spread on the curved surface below him.