Edmund Cooper

by Transit

  Evidently they considered the pool and the waterfall to be a very attractive discovery. After a moment or two, the woman laid her cross-bow down on a broad slab of rock and dived into the pool. The man sat down on the rock and watched. She splashed about and appeared to be trying to tempt her companion to join her. But he, clearly, was determined to stay on watch.

  Suddenly, along the edge of the pool about ten yards away from the boulder that hid Avery and Tom, there was a muffled splash followed by a brief arrow formation of ripples that disappeared almost immediately.

  ‘Hell, what was that?’asked Tom.

  Avery had caught a glimpse and was still recovering from the shock. ‘A crocodile—Mark One,’ he said hoarsely. ‘About four yards of it.’

  ‘We’d better do something. Maybe it likes goddesses for lunch.’

  That was the natural impulse—to stand up and shout. To do something—anything that would get the girl out of the water. But the man at the other end of the glade looked a tough customer. Before anybody could get the concept of crocodile into his head, he might translate the message as warlike intentions; and however things turned out, it was quite possible that somebody might get hurt, or killed—especially if these were the people who had worked off their aggressive feelings on Camp One. It would be ironic, thought Avery, if a pitched battle started because they had tried to save somebody’s life. He was caught in an agony of indecision.

  ‘Christ, we can’t do nothing! ’ exploded Tom.

  But even as he spoke, the problem had been solved.

  The man at the other end of the glade stood up on his slab of rock. He peered intently at the pool for a moment or two. Then he stooped, picked up one of the javelins and balanced it speculatively in his hand. He had seen the crocodile. Avery sighed with relief.

  But the puzzling thing was that the stranger made no effort to call his companion to safety. He let her splash about and enjoy herself. Only when the crocodile was obviously a few yards away did she appear to notice its shadow. And the next puzzling thing was that, instead of making a panicky dash for the edge of the pool, she just looked at the man—who made a slight motion with his head—pointed towards the crocodile and calmly trod water, waiting.

  She did not have to wait long. The man’s arm swung back, then the javelin, released from the flash of his extended hand, sped through the air in a smooth arc. It pierced the surface of the water not more than two yards ahead of the woman. But a foot below the surface it clearly found a target, for it hung like the mast of a sinking ship for a moment, quivering. Then the crocodile rose almost bodily out of the water, its jaws transfixed by the terrible weapon.

  But by that time a second javelin was on its way; and that one took the crocodile in its soft belly.

  Calmly, the woman swam clear of its death throes, then turned to watch the spectacle. To Avery’s incredulous eyes, she seemed to be enjoying it.

  The crocodile took quite a long time to die. When, at last, the body was still she swam back to it and with considerable effort tore out the javelins. Finally, she returned with them to the bank.

  The man helped her out of the water; and together they stood laughing and talking for a while, and pointing to the floating body. For some reason completely beyond Avery’s comprehension, they seemed to find it vastly amusing. Eventually they turned away from the pool and made as if to go back the way they had come.

  ‘I’ve just about seen everything now,’ breathed Tom in awe. ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane. Who in the world would have thought it could be for real?’

  ‘Depends which world you are thinking of,’ said Avery drily. Then he added: ‘This might be a golden opportunity to find out where those two live.’

  ‘Golden, perhaps. Dangerous, certainly,’ observed Tom. ‘The way he handled the javelins fills me with respect. I should hate to be on the receiving end Not to put toe fine a point upon it, you and I can hardly be considered silent trackers of the forest.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. Besides, it might be a long haul, and we have been away from camp quite long enough.’ ‘What about the food problem?’

  ‘We’ll have to be temporary vegetarians once again.’

  It took them the best part of an hour to collect enough fruit and find their way back to camp. The threatened thunderstorm did not materialize; and by the time they had returned to the sea-shore, the sun hung low in the sky. The air was still. A thin spiral of smoke rose from Camp Two. Somebody had obviously lit the fire. Somebody was obviously hoping to have something to roast. Somebody was going to be disappointed.

  ‘Shall we tell them,’ asked Tom as they approached the rock, ‘about Tarzan and his mate?’

  ‘Not unless we have to,’ said Avery enigmatically. ‘Well, blessed be the saints—look at that! ’

  Tom followed his gaze. ‘A rock pool, So? The tide is out.’

  ‘Look closer, my old one.’ Avery knelt by the pool and gazed at the thick smooth stones that were not stones. He prodded one with his knife, and it attempted to scuttle away.

  ‘Crabs!’ exclaimed Tom joyously.

  In a couple of minutes they had scooped out half a dozen.

  ‘The problem is carrying them.’

  ‘Problem solved,’ said Tom. He took off his shirt. ‘If the little devils puncture it, Mary can go all womanly and do some darning.’

  Looking and feeling like a couple of beachcombers, they ascended the rickety ladder with their precious loads of food.

  They did not mention the incident at the pool to Mary and Barbara. But after the evening meal, when they were all settled comfortably round the fire, the topic came into the conversation tangentially.

  There had been a brief and relaxed silence, when they had each been staring into the patterns of the fire and thinking private thoughts. It was a pleasant time of the day, thought Avery. It was the time between action—or the need for action and decisions—and oblivion. It was itself a twilight world of semi-nirvana, when journeys could be taken without moving (one of these days he would prove that they were on an island: it was so, because he felt it was so), when speculation could take on the appearance of reality, and when memories, dulled by warmth and relaxation after a good meal, could be indulged in without pain. He was all set to treat himself to a succulent and leisurely dessert of memories when Mary broke the spell.

  ‘Suppose,’ she said suddenly, ‘there were two sets of guinea-pigs.’

  ‘If you are going to talk about guinea-pigs,’ said Barbara, ‘I’m going to indulge in a little whisky. Anybody else want some?’

  ‘Me,’ said Tom.

  ‘And me,’ said Avery surprisingly. ‘A double. I’ll pour my own water.’

  Barbara raised an eyebrow, then disappeared briefly into the tent.

  ‘You mentioned the subject of guinea-pigs,’ pursued Avery. ‘Two sets, I believe.’

  ‘Us and them,’ said Mary. ‘I have a theory.’

  ‘First define them.’

  Barbara had returned with the whisky and plastic tumblers.

  ‘The Golden people,’ said Mary. ‘Since I’m the only person who’s seen one, I suppose, I’m the only person who believes in them. But somebody must have wrecked Camp One, and I think they did.’

  Tom was about to say something, but Avery silenced him. ‘Tell us about the theory,’ he said.

  ‘Well, there isn’t much,’ went on Mary brightly. ‘I just think there are two sets of guinea-pigs, and we’re one set. Of course, there may be even more for all I know. Maybe we haven’t come across them yet.’

  ‘You think there is a kind of experiment in progress?’ ‘Don’t be pedantic, Richard,’ said Barbara. ‘By this time we know there’s a kind of experiment in progress. Even Tom forgot all about habeas corpus when he spotted two moons in the sky. After all, nobody is going to snatch us across the light-years—or whatever they are —just to give us a tropical rest cure. Besides, think of those bloody eleven-plus questions we had in solitary confinement.’

  ‘All right, da
rling, you’ve made your point,’ said Avery with a smile. ‘The question is ’

  ‘You called me darling! ’ said Barbara.

  Tm sorry. Slip of the tongue.’

  She smiled. ‘Also, a strategic error. Now I shall expect it at regular intervals.’

  He grinned uneasily, and took a drink of whisky. ‘I’ll try to remember Now where the hell was I?’

  ‘The question is,’ prompted Tom.

  ‘Ah, yes. The question is: what for?’ '

  ‘To see how we live,’ suggested Mary.

  ‘Not good enough,’ objected Tom. ‘If bug-eyed monsters can hop around London without exciting too much general comment, they can bloody well study us in our natural habitat.’

  ‘That’s so,’ said Avery. ‘But they may not be interested in our natural habitat.’

  ‘Where does that get us, then?’

  ‘Here,’ answered Barbara drily. ‘ ’Neath two tropical moons, and all that jazz.’

  ‘Stress conditions,’ said Avery seriously. ‘That’s where it gets us. They want to find out how we behave under stress conditions.’

  ‘Possibly,’ conceded Tom, ‘but so far nobody has dropped by to check our pulse rates or ask us to fill in any questionnaires.’

  ‘I’ll come to that later,’ retorted Avery. ‘If Mary’s notion is right—and there is no reason to think that it isn’t—and if another group or groups have been dumped in our vicinity—and there’s a bit of evidence to support that one—then the situation gets complicated. Maybe our invisible bug-eyed scientists want to give us a little healthy competition.’

  Mary looked searchingly at Tom and Avery. ‘You’ve been holding out on us,’ she said at length. ‘There’s something you know—or that you’ve seen—that you haven’t told us about.’

  ‘That’s so,’ agreed Avery contritely. ‘There’s something else, too. It happened a little before the camp was wrecked—or possibly while the operation was in progress. I didn’t want to cause any panic by telling you. But I’m steadily coming to the conclusion that that’s a stupid attitude. We aren’t going to get anywhere, I think, unless we all learn to share everything. And now seems to be a good time to begin All right, tell them about this afternoon, Tom.’

  Tom told them, succinctly and graphically. When he had finished, there was a brief silence.

  Barbara shivered a little and tossed some more wood on to the fire. Sparks like transient glow-worms danced jerkily up into the night air.

  ‘I’m almost wishing you’d left us in blissful ignorance,’ she said quietly. ‘The way Tom describes it, I’m tempted to believe that those two have walked straight out of a super-race myth.’

  ‘My point exactly,’ said Tom. ‘The more I think about it, the more sure I am that those jokers didn’t come from Earth.’

  ‘The mind simply boggles,’ observed Mary wearily. ‘The more you try to sort things out, the more inscrutable the whole situation gets.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Avery. ‘They may be indigenous.’

  ‘In what?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘Indigenous. They may belong here In that case, if we are the intruders, what they did to our camp—if they did it—is at least understandable.’

  ‘No,’ objected Mary with a curious conviction. ‘This planet is neutral territory. We have all been brought here —us and them, and anyone else there may be.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ Avery was intrigued.

  Then, with typical feminine para-logic, Mary became vague. ‘Because it fits better. There must be a sort of pattern—oh, I can’t explain it—but something has to be worked out.... And the people who brought us here are watching the process through some kind of celestial keyhole— That’s what I feel. I don’t know if it makes any sense.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ said Avery soberly. ‘The kind of sense I don’t much care for.’

  Barbara turned to him. ‘While we are on the subject of astounding disclosures, I believe you have a small contribution to make.’

  Avery smiled. ‘Mine’s a real tall one.’

  ‘They can’t come any taller than the one we have just had.’

  ‘Judge for yourself.’ He described the glowing sphere to them, his reactions to it, and the way it had just disappeared with a sound as of breaking splinters of glass, and without leaving any trace of its presence on the sand. But he did not mention his earlier fleeting vision of a land mass across the sea. It did not seem now to have much relevance to their predicament.

  ‘Stone me!’ exploded Tom, when he had finished. ‘The whole set-up is getting crazier and crazier.... You’re sure it was real?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not sure,’ retorted Avery. ‘Who can be sure of anything here? But I’d dam well swear to it.’ ‘Perhaps it was just a sort of balloon,’ suggested Mary, ‘with a camera or something inside.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Avery, ‘a balloon with the surface temperature of molten metal, and one that just disappears— camera and all—with a snap, crackle, pop.’

  For a time there was silence, with each of them retreating into lonely, frightening and absurd worlds of speculation. Profitless speculation, since the facts themselves were absurd; and therefore the degree of improbability of any possible explanation could only be measured against a background that was itself improbable.

  Presently, Avery got tired of trying to solve the insoluble. He got up, went into the supplies tent and came out again with the portable record player and the first record he laid his hands on.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get any music out of this thing.’

  ‘Was that yours?’ asked Barbara. ‘Back on Earth, I mean.’

  ‘No, I had a king-size one. I was—am—very fond of music.... I expect our crystal-packing friends just wanted to keep me happy.’ He gave her a thin smile.

  Then he found the key of the record player and wound its motor up. Evidendy the mechanical motor operated some kind of small generator as well as the turntable, because the sound was produced from a tiny loudspeaker.

  He put the record on and set the pick-up carefully against its edge. It turned out to be a selection from My , Fair Lady.

  For a moment or two everyone listened as if they had never heard such music before.

  Then the lyric and the voice of Julie Andrews bravely made their debut on an alien world. All I want is a room somewhere.... The sound, indescribably sweet, the thought, subdy appropriate, hung like a small invisible cloud of magic between the security of the firelight and the brooding ring of darkness that surrounded it.

  Suddenly, the tension was eased. And they all began to smile at the lovely ridiculous words. But their smiles were just a little too fixed. Looking at his companions, Avery saw firelight mirrored in the suspicious brightness of their eyes. Doubtless his own were just the same....

  He held a hand out to Barbara. She took it. Tom and Mary were already leaning close together, drawing comfort from each other.

  All I want is a room somewhere....

  Avery sighed and surrendered himself to the echoes of a distant world. It was a wonderful and acutely painful luxury.

  FIFTEEN

  After those first few hectic days there came a period of relative calmness, a time of adjustment—and rest. They needed it. They needed it badly. They only realized how much strain they had been under in retrospect, when they had time to develop a routine for the normal processes of living; when they found that they even had time to spare—time off from the struggle for survival.

  The only really significant event that occurred on the day after the incident at the pool was that Tom and * Avery, out hunting, found the home of a whole colony of rabbitypes. The creatures lived underground as does the terrestrial rabbit, but they could also swim and climb I trees. Their colony had been established in the banks of the stream that was Camp Two’s water supply. It was about half a mile inland; and for fifty yards or more, the ground was riddled with innumerable rabbitype holes. The animals were even less intelligent than their terrest
rial counterparts. The two men soon found tha*- the easiest way to catch them was to knock them out of the trees with stones. They could be stunned with quite small stones; and a smooth hunting formula was soon developed.

  Instead of looking for rabbitypes on the ground, they scanned the tree tops. When one was found containing what Tom began to call bobtail fruit, Avery would station himself by the trunk, and Tom—who had a better aim—would let fly at the creatures with pebbles he had gathered for the purpose on the sea-shore. If he missed or merely startled the rabbitype, it would invariably begin to climb down the tree. As it had to descend backwards, gripping the trunk with the short claws on all six feet, all Avery had to do was pick it off and kill it by swinging its head sharply against the tree. If Tom scored a hit, whoever was nearest to where it fell from the tree would dive on it before it had time to regain its senses.

  With a meat supply so easily assured, the two men felt that they had solved one of the major problems of existence. If necessary, they could live quite well off rabbi-types and fruit for an indefinite period.

  Although Avery was consumed with curiosity about the kind of world to which they had been brought, exploration was held in abeyance for a while. His original impatience was tempered by the growing conviction that their stay—if not actually permanent—was going to be quite a long one. Exploration could wait. It could wait until they had learned more about their immediate environment, until they had become more confident and efficient in the art of survival. Avery was particularly anxious to avoid any encounter with the ‘golden people’ until—well, until it was no longer avoidable. Sooner or later there would have to be a meeting; but as experience so far had done nothing to convince him that the outcome would be harmonious, he felt it would be wise to avoid a possible clash until he, Tom, Mary and Barbara had become a more efficient group and therefore a better potential fighting unit.

  After a day or two, they fell into a routine that enabled them to do most of the necessary work in the mornings, thus leaving the afternoons and evenings free for relaxation or ‘optional tasks’.