“Sound is vibration,” Giyani said pedantically. “Starlight is vibration, too, and we can see stars in there.”
“But…’ Surgenor began to lose his temper. “I’m prepared to take my chances, anyway.”
“I’ve got it,” Kelvin put in. “We can get a downwards view.” Without waiting for permission from the major he swarmed up the silver bole of a tree and inched out on a horizontal bough which extended fairly close to the dark circle. When he was as close as he could get he stood up, balancing precariously by holding on to springy upper branches, and shaded his eyes.
“It’s all right, sir,” he shouted. “I can see the desert floor in there!”
“How far down?”
“Less than a metre. It’s at a higher level than the ground here.”
“That’s what caused the impact when we came through,” Surgenor said. “We’re lucky the level had altered so little in a few million years or so.”
Unexpectedly, Giyani smiled. “Good work, Lieutenant. Come down from there and we’ll build some kind of a ramp up to the lower edge.”
“Why bother?” Kelvin’s voice was taut and there was a desperate grin on his face. “I can make it from here.”
“Lieutenant! Come…’ Giyani’s voice faded away as Kelvin made an ungainly leap towards the circle. The lieutenant appeared to slip as he was jumping off, losing valuable height, but he tilted himself forward in the air as though diving into water. As his body was disappearing through the lower half of the circle one of his legs intersected the edge of the blackness, just at the ankle. A brown army boot fell into the vegetation below with an unpleasantly heavy thud. Even before he glimpsed the redness of blood, Surgenor knew that Kelvin’s foot was still in the boot.
“The young fool,” Giyani said disgustedly. “He’s finally managed to finish himself.”
“Never mind that,” Surgenor shouted. “Look at the circle!”
The black disc of night was shrinking.
Surgenor watched in arctic fascination as the circle contracted steadily, like the iris of an eye reacting to strong light, until its diameter was reduced to roughly two metres. Even when the inward movement had ceased he kept staring at the edge, reassuring himself that the portal to the future was not going to vanish completely.
“That’s bad,” Giyani whispered. “That’s very bad, David.”
Surgenor nodded. “It looks as though the power which keeps that hole open partially expends itself when something passes through. And if the shrinkage is proportional to the mass transmitted…What diameter would you say it was before Kelvin went through?”
“About three metres.”
“And it’s about two now—which means the area has been…halved.”
The three men stared at each other as they performed the simple piece of mental arithmetic which made them mortal enemies. And slowly, instinctively, they began to move apart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I very much regret this,” Major Giyani said soberly, “but there is no point in continuing the discussion. There can be no argument about who has to go through next.” The late afternoon sun, reflecting from the unbroken green of the jungle vegetation, made his face appear paler than normal.
“That means you, of course.” Surgenor looked down at his hands, which were cut in several places from the work of building a crude ramp up to the lower rim of the circle.
“Not of course—it simply happens that I am the only one here who has had a thorough briefing on the whole Saladinian situation. That fact, coupled with my special training, means that my report on this affair would be of greater value to Staff than one from either of you.”
“I question that,” Surgenor said. “How do you know I haven’t got an eidetic memory?”
“This could become childish, but how do you know I haven’t got one?” Giyani’s right hand descended, with seeming carelessness, on to the butt of his sidearm. “Anyway—with hypno techniques available it isn’t a question of what can be remembered, but of what one has taken the trouble to observe.”
“In that case,” McErlain put in, “what have you observed about this jungle?”
“What do you mean, sergeant?” Giyani said impatiently.
“Simple question. There’s something very unusual about this jungle we’re in. A real hotshot observer like you is bound to have picked it up by this time—so what is it?” McErlain paused. “Sir.”
Giyani’s eyes flicked sideways. “This is no time for parlour games.”
The sergeant’s words had struck a chord in Surgenor’s memory, reminding him that he too had sensed something out of place about their surroundings, something which made them different from any other jungle he had ever been in. “Go on,” he said.
McErlain glanced around triumphantly, almost possessively, before he spoke. “There aren’t any flowers.”
“So what?” Giyani looked baffled.
“Flowers are designed to attract insects. That’s the way most plants reproduce—through winged bugs getting pollen on their legs and bodies and spreading it around. All this stuff,” McErlain waved at the surrounding palisades of foliage, “has been forced to reproduce some other way. Some other way which doesn’t depend on…’
“Animal life!” Surgenor blurted the words out, wondering how he could have failed to complete the discovery earlier. This jungle, the ancient green world of Saladin, was quiet. No animals moved in its undergrowth, no birds sang, no insects throbbed in the still air. It was a world without any form of mobile life.
“Quite an interesting observation,” Giyani said coldly, “but hardly relevant to the immediate problem.”
“That’s what you think.” McErlain spoke with a savage intensity which caused Surgenor to look at him more closely. The big sergeant appeared to be standing at ease, but his eyes were locked on Giyani. He had positioned himself close to the silent Saladinian woman, closer than one might have expected under the circumstances. It was almost as if—the thought disturbed Surgenor—he and the alien woman had begun to share a bond.
Surgenor turned his attention to the ramp they had built with trees felled by the module. The base of it was only a few paces away from him, and he could have sprinted up it to reach the portal in as little as two seconds—but he was certain that the sergeant could burn him down in a fraction of that time. His main hope seemed to lie in Giyani and McErlain becoming so intent on their own conflict that they would forget to keep an eye on him. He edged closer to the ramp and tried to think of a way to steer the two soldiers into a direct confrontation.
“Major,” he said casually, “you say your principal concern is with the overall situation? With serving Earth’s interests in the best way possible?”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, has it occurred to you that the Saladinians didn’t set up that tunnel, lifeline, or whatever it is, for our benefit? Their sole concern was probably with rescuing the prisoner.”
“What of it?”
“In that case, you have a chance to make a really important gesture of goodwill. One which might make the Saladinians much more co-operative with our forces. If we sent the prisoner through to her own time…’
Giyani undid the retaining strap of his holster with a single rapid movement. “Don’t try to be clever with me, David. And move away from that ramp.”
Surgenor experienced an upsurge of fear, but did not move. “How about it, Major. The Saladinian mind is so alien to us that we’ve no idea what that woman over there is thinking. We can’t exchange a single thought or word with her or her people, but there’d be no mistaking our intentions if we sent her through the circle.” He put his foot on the base of the ramp.