“Major, sir,” he said, “we don’t need any security precautions here—so how did you know in advance that the prisoner would be a pregnant female?”
“It seemed likely from blow-ups of the satellite photographs. The natives are usually much slimmer and more mobile than this one.”
“I see.” Surgenor got a disturbing thought—at any minute they could be faced with the daunting task of having to deliver an alien child, with none of the customary facilities. “So why did we have to go for one that was pregnant?”
“When I said they were less mobile I was using the word in the full context of this planet.” Giyani fell back beside Surgenor and offered him a cigarette, which he accepted gratefully in the absence of his pipe. “The scanner records show that pregnant natives don’t flit through time as easily as the others. They materialize solidly, fully into the present, and when they’ve done it they stay around longer. It seems harder for them to vanish.”
“Why should that be?”
Giyani shrugged and blew out a plume of smoke. “Who knows? If it’s all done by mental control, as it seems to be, perhaps the presence of another mind right inside her own body ties the female down a bit. We’d never have caught this one otherwise.”
Surgenor stepped carefully around a newly sheared tree stump. “That’s the other thing I don’t understand. If the Saladinians are so anxious to avoid contact, why did they let a vulnerable female into a sector of space-time occupied by us?”
“Maybe their control over time isn’t as good as they’d like it to be, just the way our grip over normal space isn’t perfect. Since we landed on Saladin some of our intellectual types on the ship have been claiming the natives have proved that the past, present and future are co-existent. All right—they may be if you look at them from the right angle—but supposing the present is still more important than the other two in some way.
“It might be like a wave crest which drags the females along with it when they’re ready to give birth. Maybe the foetus is tied to the present because it hasn’t learned the mental disciplines, or…’
“What’s the point in going over all this woolly theorizing?” Giyani demanded, checking his own expansiveness. “It doesn’t change anything or get us anywhere.”
Surgenor nodded thoughtfully, revising his assessment of Giyani. He had guessed the major was an intelligent man walking into danger with his eyes open, but he had been guilty—as he had also been with McErlain—of regarding him as just another military stereotype with a closed, inflexible mind. His talk with Giyani had been instructive in more ways than one.
At that moment Surgenor got a glimpse of what lay ahead of him on the rough jungle track and he stopped thinking about the major.
A night-black disc about three metres in diameter was floating in the air, its lower rim a short distance above the ground. Its edges were blurred, shimmering, and when Surgenor drew closer he saw that the blackness of the disc was relieved by the intense glitter of stars.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The draped figure of the Saladinian lurched forward two paces and stopped. McErlain moved in between her and the strange black disc and forced her to move away from it.
“Keep her there, sergeant.” Giyani’s voice sounded almost contented. “We may be back in time for breakfast, after all.”
“This is what she was looking for,” Lieutenant Kelvin said. “I’ll bet it’s a kind of lifeline. That’s our own time through there.”
Surgenor shaded his eyes and peered upwards into the disc. The stars within did look exactly like those he had last seen wheeling above the Saladinian desert in the 23rd century AD, although he had to admit that all stars looked pretty much alike. He shivered, then noticed that a gentle breeze was playing on his back. The air currents appeared to be moving in the direction of the enigmatic disc. He began to pick his way through the stand of undamaged vegetation which separated the end of the gouged-out trail from the circle of jet blackness.
“What are you doing, David?” Giyani said alertly.
“Just carrying out a little experiment.” Surgenor got closer to the disc, the lower edge of which was just above his head. He drew deeply on his cigarette and blew the smoke upwards. It travelled vertically for a short distance and was sucked into the blackness. He threw the remainder of the cigarette in after it. The white cylinder gleamed briefly in the sunlight, and did not complete its trajectory on the other side of the disc.
“Pressure differential,” he said, rejoining the group. “The warm air is flowing through into that hole. Into the future, I guess.”
He, Giyani and Kelvin forced their way through the vegetation until they were on the other side of the disc, but from that standpoint in was nonexistent. There was nothing to see, except for McErlain impassively facing the Saladinian with his rifle lying in the crook of his arm. Giyani took a coin from his pocket and threw it in a twinkling arc which took it through the disc’s estimated position. The coin fell to the ground near McErlain.
“It looks tempting,” Giyani said as they moved back round to their starting point, watching the blackness grow from a vertical line through an ellipse to a full circle. “It would be comforting to think that we have only to jump through that hoop to arrive safely back in our own time—but how can we be sure?”
Kelvin clapped a hand to his forehead. “But it’s obvious, sir. Why else would it be there?”
“You’re being emotional, Lieutenant. You’re so anxious to get back to the ship that you’re casting the Saladinians as benevolent opponents who clean you out at poker then give you your money back at the end of the game.”
“Sir?”
“Why should they hit us with a time bomb, and then rescue us? How do we know there isn’t a thousand-metre drop on the other side of that hole?”
“They couldn’t rescue their own female if that was the case.”
“Who says? After we had jumped through and killed ourselves they could re-focus it in some way and let the prisoner stroll through in safety.”
Kelvin’s smooth face was clouded with doubt. “That’s pretty devious, sir. How about if we pushed the prisoner through first?”
“And perhaps have them close the thing up on us? I’m not trying to be devious, Lieutenant. We just can’t afford a wrong assumption in this case.”
Giyani went to the silent woman, pointed at the disc and made an arcing movement with his hand. She stared at him for a moment, hissed faintly and duplicated his gesture. Her gaze returned to McErlain’s face and the sergeant’s eyes locked with hers as if they had entered some kind of rapport. Surgenor began to watch them.
“There you are, sir,” Kelvin said. “We’re supposed to go through.”
“Are you positive, Lieutenant? Can you guarantee me that when a Saladinian repeats a gesture it doesn’t mean ‘negative’ or ‘cancel’?”
Surgenor pulled his gaze away from the sergeant. “We have to make some assumptions, Major. Let’s throw something fairly heavy through the circle and find out if it makes a noise when it comes down on the other side.”
Giyani nodded. Surgenor went to the shallow crater caused by Module Five’s initial contact with the ground and picked up a football-sized rock. He brought it back and, using both hands, lobbed it up into the circle of darkness. Its disappearance was followed by complete silence.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Surgenor said, reneguing on his own experiment. “Perhaps sound doesn’t pass through the opening.”