A thorough check revealed nothing abnormal. Everything was functioning perfectly.
Five days later, they were approaching Earth, now a vast crescent in the blackness. The retro-rockets came on, lowering them gently to the surface close to the terminator.
Opening the airlock, they stepped out. The sun was just rising and there, not more than half a mile away, stood the gleaming shapes of the other two ships.
Clive stared at them in utter amazement and opened his mouth to say something, but Anne cut in sharply, a rising note of alarm and puzzlement in her voice.
“Where is everything?”
All around them lay a wide, sandy stretch of uneven ground. In the distance, tall, fernlike trees waved huge branches in the faint dawn light.
“Something’s wrong,” Helen muttered in an awed whisper. “This can’t be Earth.”
“But it is,” Vic said with an odd catch in his voice. “Dear God, I see it all now. That thing we brought back with us. The Martians never conquered space as we have. They had no need to. You see, they conquered time instead.”
Helen shook her head numbly. “You’re not making sense, Vic.”
“Don’t you see? When Mars began dying and they were faced with that catastrophe, they transported everything several million years into the past when it was a younger, flourishing world.
“When I inadvertently activated that time machine, it did the same. That lurch we felt was a time shift. We’re back on Earth all right, there’s no mistake about that. But this is the Earth of several million years in the past!”
NIGHTFALL ON RONAN, by John Glasby Writing as A. J. Merak
Zanos, the small, blue-white sun of Ronan, was now well past its zenith and dipping slowly towards the horizon when Kalam stepped through the doorway to scan the green desert. He stood in the partial shade of the doorway and looked cautiously around. The emerald wilderness stretched away as far as the eye could see, featureless except for the irregular clumps of agas trees bordering the few streams that threaded their way across it — and the Temple.
This stood in the exact center of the Great Wilderness, a vast mound as big as a mountain, dominating the entire landscape. It was a colossus of metal, abraded and worn by long ages of wind and scouring sand, with the great dull doors set in the side facing to where either of the two suns stood at their highest point in the heavens. No one had ever discovered a means of opening those huge doors. No one knew what lay behind them except that it was the abode of the Great God. Whether it had been built by the Xordi after they had arrived on this world, no one knew. There were no records to tell them when it had been erected, or by whom.
He could see no sign, nor even sense, the presence of any of the Xordi. Usually, whenever they wished to converse with any of his race they manifested themselves in the form of thin, wavering columns of energy. Most of the time they were completely invisible.
There was a slight movement at his back and a moment later, Mara came out to stand beside him. There was a worried frown on her face.
“What are you looking for, Kalam?” she asked. “You’ve been on edge for hours.”
He stood silent and she was on the point of repeating her question when he said in a low voice, “Nothing in particular. It’s just a strange feeling I have that something is about to happen.”
“Something to do with the Xordi?”
“No, not them. This is something else.”
Mara saw his gaze flick in the direction of the Temple. Quite suddenly, he seemed oddly obsessed with it. To her, it seemed hat he had, for some reason, imbued it with some special significance, which had never been in his mind before.
In spite of its bulk and the mystery of what lay hidden behind those doors, no one now paid much attention to it. The Temple was there, it had always been there, just as the desert and the hills on the far distant skyline had always been there.
However she knew better than to continue to question him when he was in one of these peculiar moods. Instead, she said, “I hate these blue days. It gets so hot it’s impossible to do anything.”
A small cart, drawn by two shaggy, beak-faced voriin rumbled past along the narrow road. In spite of the frequent packing of the emerald surface by the sandrollers, the wheels sank deeply into the sand. The driver gave them a friendly wave, then reined the voriin to a halt in front of one of the houses further along the perimeter of the small settlement.
Kalam shrugged inwardly. No one else seemed to have this odd premonitory feeling that was tugging insidiously at his mind. Everything seemed normal — at least on the surface.
He eyed the setting sun apprehensively. In the opposite direction, the sky was losing its whiteness and taking on a pale crimson color heralding the rising of Toral, the companion red giant in this system. At times, he wondered why it was always light on this world. No sooner did one sun set, than the other rose, an endless alternation of blue heat and red coolness.
One of the Wise Men had once tried to explain it to him, that these two suns moved around each other in what he called space and somewhere very close to the center lay Ronan. But there were so many other things he didn’t know, couldn’t begin to understand, and it was his endless questioning of such things which seemed to place him apart from most of the others.
They were quite content to get on with their lives in this harsh, barren world without troubling themselves with anything else. But ever since he could remember he had listened attentively whenever one of the Wise Men had visited the small community to talk with the Elders. He had plied them with questions, many of which they had been unwilling, or unable, to answer.
Questions such as: when had the Xordi come to this system and where had they come from? He knew that their arrival must have been so long ago that no one remembered it. And the Xordi themselves never spoke of it. They seemed to be content with watching his people, never interfering in their lives, never giving advice, never answering any questions put to them.
This seemed utterly illogical to him. It they had come as conquerors, why had they not enslaved his people and forced them to work for them? Why, if they were so superior, had they not killed any of them?
Mara suddenly clutched tightly at his arm. She pointed into the blue-hazed distance. “Someone comes,” she said tautly.
He followed the direction of her pointing finger, squinting into the glaring sunlight. He could dimly make out the indistinct figure in the distance moving purposefully towards them. The ripping heat-haze made it impossible to discern details with any clarity.
As the stranger approached, Kalam saw that he was a tall, white-haired man dressed in a white robe that shone brilliantly in the fierce, glaring rays of the setting sun. He carried a long staff in his right hand.
“One if the Wise Men,” Mara said in an awed voice. “What do you think he wants with us?”
Kalam shrugged slightly. “Such men come and go all the time. He may be journeying to some other community and merely seeks food and shelter.”
As the Wise man drew closer, Kalam saw that he was old, incredibly old, his features deeply wrinkled. But his eyes were still keen and alert. He paused in front of them, leaning heavily on his staff.
“Greetings, Kalam,” he said, in a thin, reedy voice. “I have journeyed a long way for this meeting. I must speak with you on matters of great importance.”
Stunned that the other knew his name, Kalam stood staring, open-mouthed for several moments, then pulled himself together with a conscious effort. He stepped to one side, throwing a swift glance at Mara as the Wise man brushed past him.
“I don’t know how you know my name,” Kalam said slowly as he motioned the old man to one of the chairs at the table. “Nor of anything of importance which concerns me.”