“There,” said Sam to the taxi driver. “Draw up to the curb, right there.”
It was a perfectly normal street in downtown New York. There was asphalt pavement, a concrete curb and sidewalk, and a street-light. There was a hydrant. A barbershop and a small stationery store occupied the street-level shops in a building which rose skyward.
The taxi stopped. The driver turned.
“We’re not getting out,” said Sam smoothly. He pointed ahead. “Hasn’t that car ahead got a flat?”
The taxi driver looked front. Sam unrolled the copper foil.
“Remember how to leave messages for me,” he said crisply.
Dick Blair touched his pockets, where his weapons and ammunition were. He picked up the sawed-off shotgun. Without a word, he stepped into the two-foot by three-foot sheet of copper-bismuth foil. He stepped down.
Maltby was asleep, his face lined with exhaustion. He did not see what was happening.
Dick Blair vanished in a pool of quicksilver.
There was bright sunshine where he found himself. There were gigantic trees, rising apparently to the height of the buildings which had surrounded the taxicab only seconds before. He tumbled down three or four feet and fell on his hands and knees on the ground. There was sparse brushwood here, and when he straightened up he saw a crude wooden platform, built of hewn planks. It had a cage-like structure of beams upon it, with a door now open. The door had a clumsy but effective latch so that it could not possibly be opened from the inside, but could be opened from without by a mere tug on a leather thong. In any case the cage was empty and deserted, but it had been made by men.
There was music that seemed like bird-song everywhere. The brushwood was green. The particular bush on which he first cast his eyes was not only green, but leafless. It was a mass of slender, branching boughs, each one green as a grass-blade as if its stems had adapted their bark to perform the function of leaves. There was a small, strange flower only inches tall which waved long cilae with remarkable energy, like those marine creatures which fumble endlessly for plankton. But this waved slime-coated threads to catch dust-motes which actually had wings and were insects smaller than gnats.
Overhead, the sky was blue. Something flew, and it was small and nearby, but its outlines were not those of a bird. Something howled suddenly, making an enormous din, and a feathered creature scuttled into view with a duck-like gait, stopped, made that monstrous tumult fitted to a being many times its size, and waddled on again upon some unguessable errand.
It went across a wagon-trail that meandered through this forest, curving erratically, avoiding the larger trees. He moved to it, grimly intent, and examined the wheel tracks. They were wide, as of wooden wheels without metal tires. The horse-tracks were of unshod hoofs. And where whitish dust lay in the road, he saw other tracks. They looked like the tracks of dogs, except that no dog was ever so huge. Great Danes might have such monstrous pads, but surely no lesser breed.
Then a rhythmic squeaking sound came through the music of tiny vocalists. Dick whirled. It sounded like the noise of a squeaky wheel upon a wooden axle. There were thudding hoof-beats, and then a cart came along the trail. It was a wholly ordinary cart, with a wholly ordinary horse in frayed but ordinary harness. A half-naked man, in a loin-cloth only, with hair to his shoulders and an unkempt beard, drove the horse. Behind him a beast like a wolf—only bigger—paced leisurely.
Dick stepped out into the road with automatic leveled.
“Hold up, there!” he said coldly. “I want some information!”
The bearded man gasped.
“My Gawd! Where’d you come from?”
He wasn’t afraid. He was amazed. His mouth dropped open and he stared blankly. The horse stopped.
The beast trotted around the cart and looked at Dick. It was very much like a wolf. It was hairy and sharp-nosed, with pricked-up ears. But no wolf ever had such eyes of such keen intelligence. It looked at Dick estimatingly. It was thinking, in the way in which a man thinks when he comes upon a strange thing.
The man in the cart said quickly:
“The critter has savvy like us. Get me?”
The beast turned its head and looked at the man in the cart. It snarled a little. The sound was bloodcurdling. The man in the cart paled. He seemed to go all to pieces.
The beast trotted toward Dick without haste and without fear. Its eyes were intent. He swung the pistol upon it. It stopped dead, regarding him. No, not him, the pistol. It was looking at the pistol. It made noises which were partly growlings and partly whines. They sounded oddly like speech. The man in the cart said, shaking, “It—wants to know where you come from.”
“Never mind,” said Dick harshly. “I want to know where new-caught prisoners are taken! Where?”
The beast understood. Plainly, impossibly, it understood. It made more noises. The man said, in panic: “No! Please! Y’don’t understand—” He was talking to the beast. The beast turned its head and looked at him. That was all. The man sobbed. He caught the reins around the corner of the cart. He prepared to descend.
“The devil!” snapped Dick. “I want an answer to my question! Where are new-caught prisoners taken?”
The man, shaking in every limb, crawled down to the ground. He moved slowly, abjectly, toward Dick.
“It—it ain’t any use to kill me,” he panted. “I—ain’t done you any harm—”
Out of the corner of his eye as he watched the man, Dick saw a flashing movement. He whirled and the automatic went off. The beast was in mid-leap and the heavy bullet tore into its chest, checking it in mid-air. It fell, inches short of Dick. It struggled convulsively. “Kill it!” panted the man shrilly. “Before it howls—” The beast essayed to scream, dying as it was. Dick shot again. It stiffened and was still. The man from the cart wrung his hands. He seemed stunned by catastrophe.
“Migawd!” he said in a thin voice. “Oh, Migawd! That finishes me! Killin’ it didn’t do no good—”
“Hold on!” raged Dick. “I tell you I want to know where new-caught prisoners are taken! Answer me!”
The gun-muzzle bore savagely on the other man. Five minutes ago Dick had been in a taxicab on a street of the most civilized city in the world. But he was not in that city now, nor bound to its code of conduct or its laws.
“I came here from New York. A girl was brought here three days ago. Where is she?”
The other man turned to him in incredulous hope.
“You come from N’York? You weren’t brought? Can you get back? Gawd! Can you get back?”
“Yes, when I take that girl with me,” rasped Dick. “Where is she?”
The other man fawned upon him. He scrambled up into the cart. He drove it invitingly close to Dick. His eyes were pleading and hopeful and terrified by turns.
“Which way, fella? Which way to get back? W-We got to move fast before somebody comes!”
There was a movement. A second beast came loping around the nearest bend in the trail. Its legs and chest were wet. The man squealed and lashed the horse crazily. It bolted ahead. The beast stopped and regarded Dick with the same intent air of estimation without terror that the other beast had shown. The horse and cart jolted and bounced out of sight down the trail. The beast looked at its dead fellow, and suddenly darted for the underbrush beside the trail. Dick’s pistol crashed. The thing made gurgling noises. It toppled to the ground, kicking in utter silence, then lay still.
These dead beasts made Dick’s flesh crawl. They had looked at him as men would look. The first beast had given commands to the bearded man—who spoke of his own kind as slaves. The man was subject to the beast. It had commanded him to get out of the wagon and keep Dick’s attention on him, and while Dick looked at the man the beast had sprung. The second beast had deduced from the body of the first that Dick had killed it, and was darting to cover when a bullet stopped it. It had acted exactly as a man would have acted if he heard a shot and raced to see what had caused it, and then found himself facing an armed and unexpected enemy.