A tentacle had jerked the native’s spear from his hold. Perching on one of the piles of boxes, he rocked back and forth on his refuge, beating his wings to hasten the tumble of the stack. He rose into the air just as the bulky containers crashed down across the foot of the stairway to provide the beginnings of a barricade.
“Weapon charge—exhausted,” Ross panted. Gripping the barrel of the gun, he smashed the butt down on the round skull of a creature scrambling over the wreckage.
They retreated up the stairway. Travis kicked out, catching a hairy head under the chin, slamming its owner back and down to tangle with another eager attacker. The native sent a second pile of boxes crashing. Now he was flying back and forth over the ruck of the enemy’s main body, bombing them with smaller packages snatched up from the heaps.
For a moment the humans were free. Taking advantage of that lull, they won back to the gallery where they had entered what might have proved a trap. The native shot up, over their heads. He stood on the sill of the open window to beckon them on, uttering excited hums which rose to a volume approaching squeaks.
Travis shouldered Ross behind him toward the exit. “I’ve only two more darts—get out quick!”
For a moment the other resisted, then his common sense took command and he ran for the window. Travis aimed a dart at a hunched shoulder and head just appearing above the stairs. But that missile only nicked a furred upper arm, and fangs showed in a gap which was no longer a man’s mouth. Eyes, small, red with fury and yet alight—horribly so—with a spark of intelligence, spotted him.
He backed to the window. A lavender-skinned arm reached over his shoulder, a hand fastened on the blowgun, twisted at it, trying to pull the tube from his grasp. The native still kept his post on the sill; now he wanted the weapon.
And Travis, knowing that the other had a means of escape he himself did not possess, surrendered the blowgun, then boosted his body over and out on the rope. He watched the lavender back of their rear guard. Wings projected outside the frame of the window and they were raised, ready . . .
Then the native threw himself backward and out in a wild display of aerial gymnastics. His wings flapped wide, broke his fall and he soared again, spiraling upward as the first shaggy head protruded from the window. Hairy fists pawed at eyes which were apparently blinded by the sun. Ross had reached the ground, Travis was not far behind him. The rope swung vigorously, scraping him along the building, and he realized that those above were trying to draw him up.
The Apache let go, falling as relaxed as he could, and the lightened rope flapped wildly as it was jerked up into the window. But they were safely out in the day. He did not believe that the nocturnal creatures would pursue them into the light. However, as they crossed the strip of jungle to reach the ship, both of them applied their scoutcraft to discovering whether or not they were being tailed.
Ashe listened to their report frowningly. “It might be worse—if we were staying here.”
Ross threw aside his useless weapon. “D’you mean we’re getting out? When?”
“Another day—maybe two. Renfry is ready to try rewinding the tape.”
For the first time Travis made himself face how much would depend upon the proper handling of that slender length of wire, how one small break would defeat their purpose and leave them exiled here forever. Or how a weakness which they could not see might develop in space, snapping their invisible tie with their home world, to set the ship drifting between solar systems an eternal derelict. Could Renfry rewind the spool? And if it were rewound—would it work in reverse? There could be no test flight. Once they raised ship from this spot, they were gambling with their lives on a very slender thread composed mainly of hope and an illogical belief in luck.
“You understand now?” Ashe asked. “Remember this—we can stay here.”
They would be exiles for the rest of their lives, but they would be alive. There were enemies here, but they could set up an alliance with the winged natives, join them. Suddenly Travis got to his feet. He went to that compartment in the cabin where they had put the square of picture block which could tune in on a man’s memory and make home visible to him. He had to know—whether the past had enough strength to push him into this greatest gamble of his life.
He held the slab between his hands, looked into its curdled depths. Soon he saw—red cliffs rising from the fringe of smoky green marking piñon—a blue sky—the hills of home. He could almost taste the bite of alkali dust in a rising wind, feel the swell of a horse’s barrel between his legs. And he knew that he must take the chance . . .
In the end they all made the same choice. Ross summed up their feelings:
“Time travel—that is different. We’re still on our own world. If something goes wrong and we’re marooned back before history began—well, it’ll give a guy a bad jolt, sure. Who wants to play around with mammoths when he’s more used to jets? But still, he’d know pretty well what he was up against and that the people he’d meet would be his own species. But to stay here— No, not even if we get the job of playing gods for the winged people! They aren’t our kind—we’re visitors, not immigrants. And I don’t want to be a lifetime visitor anywhere!”
They made a last trip to the record library transporting back to the ship and stowing away in every available storage place all the record tapes which appeared to be intact. The chief of the natives, delighted with the blowguns, allowed them to choose other objects from the tribe’s treasure room. He only asked that they return in time, bringing with them new knowledge to share. They saw no more of the nocturnal creatures from the funnel-spired building—though they again took the precaution of sealing the ship at night.
“Will we be back?” Ross asked when Ashe came from his last meeting with the chief.
“Let us get home safely with this haul,” Ashe returned dryly, “and someone will be back, all right. You can depend on that. Well, Renfry?”
The technician looked like a ghost of his usual self. Lines of tension that would probably never fade bracketed his mouth, marked the corners of his tired eyes. His hands shook a little and he could not lift his drinking container to his mouth without hooking all ten fingers about it.
“The tape’s rewound,” he said flatly. “And the wire didn’t break. Tomorrow I’ll thread it ready to run. For the rest—we pray the trip out. That’s all I can tell you.”
Travis lay on his bunk that night—his bunk, their ship . . . The globe and its contents had grown progressively less alien when compared to what lay without. Around his wrist was a heavy band of red metal set with small sea-green stones in a pattern which suggested breaking waves, a gift presented to him by the winged chief at their formal farewell. He was sure that the lavender-skinned flying man had not fashioned that bracelet. How old was the ornament? And from what world, from the art of what forgotten and long-vanished race had it come?
They had not even scratched the surface of what was to be found in this ancient port. Had the jungle-cloaked city been the capital of some galaxy-wide empire, as Ashe suspected? They had had no time to explore very far. Yes, there would be a return—sometime. And men from his world would search and speculate, and learn, and guess—perhaps wrongly. Then, after a while there again would be a new city rising somewhere—maybe on his own world—which would serve as a storehouse of knowledge gained from star to star. Time would pass, and that city, too, would die. Until some representative of a race yet unborn would come to search and speculate—and guess. Travis slept.