Hammond knew the constellations thoroughly. A close knowledge of star-groups was a part of the astrogation course that had been pounded into him and the other volunteers before they ever went to Canaveral. And the northern constellations, glittering low above the sea, were not right. Ursa Major and Draco and the others were all revolving slowly around the celestial northern pole. But the center of that movement, the pole-star, was no longer Polaris. It was a fainter star that he recognized as Delta Cygni, many degrees across the heavens from the former polar star.
He could not quite believe it at first. But as the plastic sphere bobbled and drifted on toward the land, as he watched the stars up there moving like cosmic clock-hands, there could no longer be any doubt. Hammond faced a staggering realization.
"But that would mean that hundreds of years have gone by. No, not hundreds—thousands!"
The celestial pole constantly changed position in the heavens, due to the precession of the equinoxes. Every twenty-seven thousand years, the pole described a small circle in the sky. If the pole was now at or near Delta Cygni, it had described more than a third of that circle. And that would mean that something like ten thousand years had passed since he had last checked the northern stars.
Ten thousand years? It was too ridiculous, too fantastic. There was some aberration of the starlight, or something wrong with his eyes. There was no possible way in which such a vast period of time could have elapsed since he had taken off, since . . . .
Hammond's angry mental repudiation of what he saw suddenly received a check. An icy feeling invaded his mind. Maybe there was an explanation that he hadn't thought of, a stupefying one. That frozen sleep, the ultra-hypothermia that had gripped him in suspended animation in the satellite—he had assumed without thinking about it that it had been comparatively brief in duration. A few days, perhaps even a week, but no more. But had he any reason for assuming that? The absolute cold of space, gripping every cell in his body when he opened the hatch out there, was a changeless thing. It could have held him frozen a year as easily as a day. A year—or a thousand years.
How long had he lain in frozen sleep?
The glittering hands of the vast star-clock answered him, but he could not accept that terrifying answer.
And yet—it would explain the thing that was otherwise incomprehensible, the return of Explorer Nineteen to Earth. When he had opened the hatch to avoid a torturing end, the satellite had been beyond the Moon, on its way out into space in a vast elliptical orbit. He had calculated that it would return on that orbit in many years, and that after returning many times in many centuries it might fall into the gravitational field of Earth. If that had happened, if the star-clock told true time, for a hundred centuries Kirk Hammond had sat frozen in the sphere until at last it swung so close to its parent planet that it was pulled down into the atmosphere, where frictional heat had revived him.
Hammond's mind recoiled from the thought. He could not, would not, believe it. If that were true, countless generations had risen and died on Earth since he had ridden the roaring flames up from Canaveral. If it were true, whole races and empires could have flashed forth and blown away like candles on the wind during that frozen coma that had seemed so brief to him. And if it were true, all on Earth whom Kirk Hammond had known were dead for ages, their dust dispersed and their memory forgotten.
"John Willing, and Barnett, and Cray, and that girl in Cleveland, and—"
No. There was some other explanation, there had to be. He would find out when he reached land. He would laugh then at having had such a fantastic thought. Willing would laugh, they would all laugh.
He peered toward the land with an increased tenseness and urgency. He wanted to reach it as soon as possible, to disprove the nightmare thought he had been afflicted with.
The dark line of the coast was thicker, higher against the starlit sea. Presently he made out a spectral white line below it and knew it to be surf. A sharp alarm jabbed him as he thought of the bobbing plastic sphere being hurled against rocks. His alarm increased when he came nearer and could make out the irregular blacker blots of jagged rock around which the surf was creaming. He unloosened his straps and made ready to scramble out and swim, as the long swell bore the sphere forward in a smooth rush.
There was no shock of impact. The surf sucked the sphere in between two craggy boulders and deposited it on a little beach of sand as gently as a mother would put down a child. Hammond had the sphere open instantly. He jumped out and fell onto his face, filling his mouth with wet sand. His legs could no more support him than a pair of wet strings. He had forgotten how many hours he had sat cramped in the satellite—not to mention how long he had remained rigid in frozen sleep out there in the gloom and glare of space.
He lay in the sand unable to move. He gave up.
Then the cold flood of the surf washed over him and he was nerved to effort again by the shock of the chill water and the fear of being swept back into the ocean. He still could not stand, but he crawled and floundered further up the beach until he reached a towering rock with rough eroded sides that he could cling to. After a few minutes Hammond got hold of the rock and hauled himself up to a standing position. His legs were steady enough to hold him if he leaned against the rough stone. Thus leaning, he turned his head to peer again at those incredible northern constellations.
But as he turned his head, he glimpsed the firefly lights.
They looked like that—three or four fireflies flitting about far out over the starlit sea whence he had come. They seemed to dance and waver, to spin and mill and spread out in a pattern of increasing area. He knew that they could not really be glowing insects, so they must be lighted planes of some kind, but they did not look or fly like any planes he knew.
Without warning, a powerful hand grabbed Hammond's right wrist from behind.
"What the devil—!" he exclaimed, starting to whirl around.
He did not complete the movement. His right arm was instantly drawn up into a painful hammerlock behind his back. Unable to break free, Hammond wildly squirmed his head around to look up at his assailant.
The man who held him was a big hulking individual in loose dark jacket and trousers. He topped Hammond by at least a foot. He had short-cropped, bristling black hair partly covered by a tight turban over the back of his skull. But what made Hammond gasp in astonishment was his face. It was a massive, battered-looking face that reminded him of an old-time boxer's, not at all unlikable even though his narrowed eyes were glaring down at Hammond with hostility and suspicion. What was odd about it was the color it showed in the starlight.
The man's face was pale blue.
Holding Hammond like a child, the blue man pointed with his free hand in the direction of the distant firefly lights and spoke harshly. Hammond could not understand a word he said. It was not English or any other language he had ever heard. And standing there on what should have been the familiar American coast, facing this man of a race and language he had never known, there fell upon Hammond a terrible conviction that the hands of the star-clock had told true time and that his frozen sleep had indeed carried him across an age.
The blue man seemed upset by Hammond's obvious lack of understanding, and puzzled by something else. He pointed to Hammond's head and then to his own, then once more at the few fireflies flickering out there over the sea.
"Vramen! Vramen!" he repeated sharply, in a tone that might be either a suspicious challenge or a warning.
Hammond could not understand at all. Again the man pointed to his own head and then he pointed at Hammond's, questioningly. That made Hammond look at him more closely. He saw now that the tight turban that partially covered the blue man's skull was of a gleaming metallic fabric.
"Vramen!" yelled the other suddenly, pointing eastward.
Hammond looked and saw that the distant fireflies were now separating. One still hovered low above the sea out there. But the others were now quartering westward over the ocean, in a search-pattern that was rapidly approaching the coast.
The blue man's face expressed indecision, a mingled doubt and apprehension. Abruptly he dragged Hammond down to the ground into the deep black shadow beside the big boulder. Hammond struggled angrily but the blue man held him without effort and fiercely motioned him to be still.
Hammond looked up and saw one of the fireflies approaching at a low altitude. It was a craft that flew quite silently and at great speed. He could make out a long, transparent hull or fuselage—the light from inside it, and its darting, searching movements, were what had made him think of fireflies. Beside him, the blue man had suddenly released his hold and was frantically active. He had unwound part of his metallic cloth turban and was using a thin knife to cut off the length he had unwound. It was so incomprehensible a thing to do that Hammond forgot to take advantage of his momentary freedom and gawked in wonder.
And suddenly Hammond heard a clear voice speak inside his mind. It was a commanding voice resounding in his brain, carrying an hypnotic weight of authority.
"Come from hiding and show yourself," it commanded. "Signal your whereabouts to us!"
Hammond, totally without volition, found himself getting up and starting mechanically out of the shadow toward the starlit beach. The blue man grabbed his ankles and tripped him. As Hammond sprawled, the man hastily wrapped around his head the length of metallic cloth he had cut from his own turban. At once the hypnotic mental command stopped.
Hammond found himself shaking violently, as though drawn back from the edge of an abyss. The whole swift experience had been unearthly in nature. He lay in the shadow, trembling like a hunted animal. What kind of an Earth had he been thrown into?
His companion seemed to take it all as a matter of course. The blue man crouched, looking up shrewdly at the firefly craft that kept darting to and fro. Those flitting, silent fliers were moving along the coast in a continuing regular search-pattern. Now Hammond began to understand a little. That eerie mental command must have come from the searching craft—and because it was mental there had been no language difficulty, a thought directly transmitted would not require any translation. The metallic turban was of a material that provided shielding against that hypnotic attack. The blue man wore it for that reason, and a length of it had screened Hammond from it.
The blue man now uttered a grunt of satisfaction. The firefly craft were flying straight back to the one that still hovered far out over the sea. They had, obviously, given up the search for the time being.
Sitting up, the blue man looked at Hammond. He still looked wary. But he seemed tremendously curious and interested, rather than hostile. Finally he touched his own chest and spoke.
"Rab Quobba," he said.
That, at least, was unmistakable. Hammond touched his own chest and spoke his name.
"Hammond?" the other repeated, accenting it oddly. He stared puzzledly at Hammond, and then he pointed west toward the dark land and asked, "Do Rurooma?"
That meant nothing at all. Hammond made a shrugging gesture to show his ignorance.
Rab Quobba frowned. He was a big and formidable man but he did not look to Hammond like an intellectual type, and he was clearly out of his depth. He pointed inland again and repeated, "Rurooma? Dal Vramen?"
It sounded to Hammond as though he was being asked if he came from the place whence the searching firefly craft had come. He could not be sure, but he took a chance. He shook his head.
Quobba frowned and hitched his feet and then seemed to make up his mind. He motioned to Hammond to accompany him, and started southward with long strides along the beach. Hammond hesitated a moment and then went with him. He had not the faintest idea where they were going or who this big man with the oddly bluish skin might be. He had been pitchforked into an Earth that was as incomprehensible to him as another planet. But he had sensed menace in the searching firefly craft—that uncanny hypnotic attack had been upsetting. And Rab Quobba had been friendly, at least so far.
He took a dozen steps and then stopped, swaying. His legs were too weak and leaden, he couldn't keep up. Quobba turned swiftly and came back to him. The blue man seemed to take in Hammond's weakness. He grunted and put one arm around Hammond to help him along.
Quobba kept wherever possible in the shadow of the great boulders that studded the beach. He moved fast between patches of shadow, and he kept a wary eye on the fireflies out there over the sea. He seemed in a sweating hurry to get where they were going. A hazy dimness settled over Hammond's brain. His strength was running out and he moved his legs like an ill-made mechanical doll, his weight hanging more and more on Quobba's massive arm. Then for a moment he was startled out of his daze. Far to the west inland, a sword of light struck upward into the starry sky. It was like a monster lightning-bolt going up, leaving a livid fiery trail. As it faded out there came a distant twanging sound.
Quobba, in answer to Hammond's wondering look, pointed briefly westward and then straight upward at the stars. Hammond wondered. That fiery flash had looked like the trail of an ascending space-ship. Then, if all those had really passed, men had fully conquered space by now? Perhaps even interstellar space?
But if that were so, why were some of the men of Earth furtively hiding—and from whom?
He was reeling and knew he could go no farther when Quobba finally stopped. They were in the shadow of a huge boulder, on a rocky ridge well inland from the coast. The blue man looked carefully all around the starry sky. Then he spoke sharply.
"Shau Tammas! Quobba—aben!"
A section in the side of the great boulder swung inward, disclosing a dark aperture. At first, Hammond thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then he realized that the whole boulder must be a hollow camouflage. He had little time to look, for Quobba drew him hastily inside. There was a sighing sound as the aperture closed behind them, and they were in utter darkness. Then a globe overhead flashed into light.
Hammond stood rocking on his feet and staring. The interior of the big fake boulder was a small room. There were three other men in it, men dressed also in dark jackets and slacks. Two of them were quite ordinary young men of his own age. The other man, whom Quobba was addressing as Tammas, was not ordinary at all. He was a wizened little chap with a wrinkled golden-yellow face and beady black eyes, yet with no Oriental cast of countenance whatever. He exclaimed in wonder at the sight of Hammond, and the other two stared in dumb amazement.
Hammond's dazed eyes swept from the men to the big instrument that occupied much of the room. It looked like a six-inch refracting telescope mounted on a heavy pedestal, and yet there were things about it that didn't fit a telescope at all. He noticed that a section of the ceiling above it was so mounted that it could be swung aside, allowing the big tube to sweep the sky. The unfamiliar instrument, the unfamiliar technology it represented, completed Hammond's bewilderment.
Quobba took the turban off Hammond's head and drew him by the arm toward a well-mouth that yawned at one side of the chamber. A narrow spiral stair of metal dropped down this vertical shaft. Hammond went down it with the blue man going ahead and reaching back to steady him. The wizened little yellow man named Shau Tammas came after them with monkey-like agility. There was bright white light below, and they went down into the light, into a great room or hall that had been cut or blasted somehow out of solid rock.
The room was big and lofty. Brilliant white globes in the rock ceiling shed an almost shadowless illumination. Around the walls were unfamiliar machines, tables of whirring instruments, glittering metal assemblies. There were more than a score of people working busily at the machines—most of them were men, but some were women who wore shirts and shorts. The majority of these people were of a perfectly familiar type but there were a few who looked as unusual as Quobba and Tammas—a couple of stocky men with dull red skins, a lanky hollow-eyed man with a curious smooth gray complexion. They turned from their work to look at Hammond in surprise and quick-rising alarm.
He stared back, seeing their faces as though in a dream. He knew that he was nearly out. He would have sunk to the floor if Rab Quobba had not steadied him as he led him across the hall. Behind him wondering and excited men and women followed, their voices rising in a buzzing chatter. They went through connecting rock-cut halls to a small chamber that seemed their destination. Here were shelves of curious metal-bound books, wall-charts of astronomical diagrams, a couple of littered desks.
"Ez Jon Wilson, lanf do nos Hoomen," Quobba said to Hammond, pointing to the man who was coming toward them.
Jon Wilson was past middle age. He overwhelmingly reminded Hammond of someone, and suddenly he remembered. There had been a man named John Brown of Harper's Ferry, a long time ago. A harsh, fanatic leader. He had seen pictures of that man and this one was like him—the same gaunt narrow face of iron-hard planes, the same iron-gray hair, the deep hollow-caverned eyes, everything but the beard. The impact of those eyes was like a blow, and in them was an alert anxiety as he looked at Hammond.
There was a girl at his side, slender in her brief garment, her dark hair falling to touch her shoulders. She was pretty as a hawk, and her dark eyes were wide with wonder.
"Ez an do Vramen?" she asked quickly of Rab Quobba.
"Nun, Iva!" the blue man said. His battered face was earnest as he made rapid explanations, pointing excitedly upward toward the rock ceiling.
To Hammond it was more like a dream every minute. The whole scene was blurring. He had kept going on sheer nerve, but now the inevitable reaction hit him like a mountain falling on him. He tried to hold on, to fight back the shapeless darkness. He became aware that an altercation was going on. A tall hard-eyed man with sandy hair was speaking rapidly to Wilson, gesturing at Hammond with suspicion in every line of his face. Suspicion and hate.
"Dito, ez fa Vramen!" the sandy-haired man said, and a mutter of agreement came from those crowded in behind Hammond. But Quobba shook his head in angry denial.
"Ez nun, Lund!"
But the sandy-haired man only talked louder, against Quobba.
It was pretty obvious, Hammond thought, that at least some of these people thought he was a spy or ally of some enemy of theirs called the Vramen. And, ignorant as he was of their language, how was he going to tell them the truth about himself?
Even more important, how was he going to make them believe it?