Find the Feathered Serpent (Winston Science Fiction)

by Evan Hunter

  The machine seemed to erupt into a thousand living skyrockets that screamed in Neil’s head, shooting live sparks into every corner of his mind.

  And above the scream of the skyrockets, there was a human scream that penetrated the darkness.

  Beneath it all, like a tiny insistent hammer that pounded at his skull, Neil knew the machine had crashed, and before he dropped off into unconsciousness, he wondered vaguely where they were-and in what time.

  Chapter 3 — A Strange Ship

  THERE was a lapping noise, like the sound of a stiff brush swishing against a starched shirt. Dimly, it reached into Neil’s mind, poked there insistently.

  His eyelids flickered, closed again. The swishing was somewhere above his head, but there was a pain in his right shoulder and he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to stir.

  If only it weren’t for the swishing in his ears!

  His lids struggled open, and a beam of sunlight burst in his eyes, causing him to squint.

  He struggled to his knees and looked around him.

  Something was wrong; something was all wrong.

  The floor wasn’t straight any more. It curved gently like the rockers on a hobbyhorse. And there were portholes on the floor, and through the portholes there was a green swirling underfoot. Neil shook his head and blinked his eyes.

  The instrument panel, which should have been against one of the aluminum, cylindrical walls of the control room, was now on the ceiling, directly overhead.

  The hatchway from which the aluminum ladder led to the bubble below was now halfway up the wall on Neil’s right instead of on the floor, where it should have been. And the wall was flat, rather than slightly curved.

  I’ve gone crazy, Neil thought. I’ve surely blown my cork.

  And then, like the first feeble rays of dawn, Neil understood what the trouble was. He sighed in relief as he realized the machine was lying on its side. He was actually standing on one of the walls. And now, instead of one bubble being below and the other above the control room, one bubble would be to the right and the other to the left of it.

  Suddenly Neil remembered Dave!

  Frantically, his eyes widened as he scanned the machine quickly. His eyes stopped on what appeared to be a crumpled bundle of rags lying in a corner of the machine.

  “Dave!” he shouted, running across the room as fast as he could on the curved floor. “Dave!”

  He dropped to his knees beside his fallen friend and lifted his head into his lap. Carefully, almost tenderly, he brushed the hair off Dave’s forehead. A thin, pencil line of blood trickled from Dave’s left temple, down the side of his face, spilling over his jaw.

  Neil reached for the handkerchief in the back pocket of his dungarees, and wiped the blood from his friend’s face.

  Neil’s fingers quickly sought Dave’s wrist, and he let out a deep breath when he found a pulse there.

  “Dave,” he said, gently, “Dave, can you hear me?”

  The machine rolled under him, and he was aware of the roll but too occupied to interpret its meaning.

  “Dave.”

  Dave shook his head, almost as if he were scolding Neil for speaking. He shook it again, and his eyes suddenly popped open. He stared around the control room, a blank expression on his face.

  “It’s all right, Dave,” Neil said, smiling.

  Dave grinned then, and propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Whew,” he said, shaking his head again. “That’ll teach me to cross streets against the lights, I guess.” He grinned again and sat up. “You all right, Neil?”

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “A little shaken. Otherwise —” Dave cut himself short, and looked quickly at the hatchway leading to the lower compartment. “Where are the others?” he snapped, wide-awake now, suddenly alert.

  “I — I don’t know. You were the first —”

  Dave was on his feet already and heading for the hatchway.

  He was quick to understand the situation. “We’re on our side, I see.” He gripped the edge of the hatchway with his hands and pulled himself up. He dropped through on the other side and Neil scrambled after him.

  Dave was standing stock-still beneath the aluminum ladder that now ran over their heads like a thin catwalk. Neil dropped down beside him, standing now on the plastic part of the bubble. He was surprised to see water beneath his feet, and outside through the clear plastic. Water, green, capped with white rolling breakers, stretching as far as he could see.

  But Dave wasn’t looking out at the water. His eyes were opened wide, two white saucers perched on either side of his crooked, comical nose. He was staring at the limp form of Doctor Manning, hanging from his safety belt on the plastic wall opposite him. Below Doctor Manning, a pool of bright red blood was forming on the floor. To his right, just above the line of the water outside, the plastic wall was slashed in a jagged line, a gaping hole staring out at the green, rolling ocean.

  The plastic that should have filled the hole in the wall was splintered in several razor-like pieces. Some of these pieces lay on the floor beneath the dangling, athletic form of Doctor Manning.

  Another piece of jagged plastic was imbedded deeply in Doctor Manning’s neck.

  Outside, the waves lapped against the sides of the machine like the swish of a brush against a starched shirt.

  Crumpled against what had been the aluminum floor of the lower bubble, curved grotesquely, his neck slanting at a weird angle from his body, was old Arthur Blake. His eyes were open wide, staring out at the ocean. His mouth was open too.

  Just above his head, in the aluminum, was the shape of his skull where it had undoubtedly crashed into the metal when the machine collided with the water.

  Without a word, Dave crossed to the hanging body of Doctor Manning. He loosened the safety belt and lowered the doctor’s body to the floor.

  Neil knelt beside Arthur Blake and felt for his pulse. The old man was dead. Gently, he closed his eyelids and walked over to where Dave stood, looking through the plastic out at the ocean.

  Neither said anything for several minutes.

  Dave broke the silence, then.

  “Let’s give them a decent burial, Neil. They were swell guys.”

  They buried them at sea, Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake, an archaeologist and a historian. The sea quickly reached out with a green, rolling tongue and hungrily snatched up its offering.

  A silent gloom seemed to descend upon the machine, and Dave and Neil listlessly went about their work, checking the damage, trying to estimate their position in time and space. The instrument panel was badly damaged, with splintered dials and twisted knobs.

  One of the fuel tanks in the lower bubble had been punctured and gasoline now sloshed underfoot as they made their way back and forth.

  Silently, they pried open the outer hatchway, which had luckily been above the water line when the ship crashed, and lifted themselves out to sit outside the machine, their legs dangling down through the hatchway.

  Dave looked past the control room and the upper bubble to the rotors. One rotor was twisted completely out of shape, a bent, metallic pretzel dipping into the ocean whenever a wave rolled under the machine. The other rotor was in comparatively good condition, slightly bent at the tip, giving the illusion of a large golfing iron.

  “It looks pretty bad,” Dave said.

  Neil didn’t answer. His eyes were busily scanning the horizon. It spread around them, a gigantic circle of water, green and immense. Overhead, a few scattered clouds, bloated and lazy, drifted across the bright blue sky. The sun blazed down fiercely.

  No land broke the clean line of sky meeting water. Nothing.

  “Where do you suppose we are?” Neil asked.

  “Where and when, you mean.”

  “First of all, where?” asked Neil.

  “Where: I don’t know. I can only estimate.”

  “What do you figure?”

  “I can only judge by our speed,” Dave said. �
�We were traveling at top speed, one hundred and fifty miles an hour. We were in the air for over five hours, which means we traveled approximately eight hundred or so miles.”

  “That’s a long way,” Neil said, thinking wistfully of the University.

  “It’s a lot longer than you think,” Dave said. “The worst part is that I had no control of the machine. We could have traveled in any direction.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means we can be somewhere off the coast of Yucatan, or somewhere off the coast of Pensacola, or somewhere off the coast of Lower California in the Pacific. We might even be in the middle of the Great Salt Lake.”

  “Isn’t there any way of knowing?”

  “I’m afraid not. And the same holds true for the time angle, although we can estimate a little more closely there. We were in the air for more than five hours, traveling at a time speed of three hundred years an hour, except for the few minutes we were at half-speed.”

  “That would put us somewhere around . . . A.D. 400, wouldn’t it?”

  “Approximately. I’d give or take a few centuries and say somewhere between A.D. 100 and 600.”

  Neil whistled softly.

  “Some fun, eh, kid?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, some fun.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes, the sound of the waves whispering around the machine.

  “What’s our next move?” Neil asked.

  “An excellent question,” Dave said, assuming the pose of a college professor, one finger placed meditatively beside his temple. “An excellent question.”

  “And the answer?”

  “Several answers,” Dave said. “First, we find land. Second, we start to fix the mach —”

  “How do we find land?”

  “Another good question. How do we find land?” Dave became serious. “I don’t know, Neil. I really don’t. We’d better find it fast, though. This machine won’t float forever.”

  “I hadn’t even thought of sinking,” Neil said.

  “Our food’ll last about two weeks,” Dave said. “But the machine won’t float that long, as light as it is. And if we should hit a storm —”

  Dave stopped and watched Neil’s face. Neil’s mouth had dropped open, and his eyes now were large and bright against the copper of his skin. He was staring over Dave’s shoulder, looking out at the horizon.

  Quickly, Dave’s head snapped over his shoulder, and he followed Neil’s intent stare. “What is it, kid?”

  Neil pointed, his hand on Dave’s shoulder. “There! Look. On the horizon.”

  “I don’t see anything. Is it land?”

  “No, no, look. It’s a sail. A sail, Dave!”

  “Where? I don’t see any — yes, I see it. It’s a sail, Neil. By jumping Jupiter, it’s a sail.”

  “And heading this way, Dave. See, it’s heading toward us.”

  A look at Dave’s face cooled Neil’s enthusiasm.

  “What’s the matter, Dave? That’s a sail out there. A ship! Don’t you understand? We’ll be rescued.”

  “There’s one catch,” Dave said, his voice low and serious.

  “Catch? What can possibly be wrong with a — ?”

  “I don’t know a heck of a lot about the Mayas, Neil,” Dave hurried on, “and I sure wish the Doc or Art were here to back me up on this. I’m not even sure we’re near Yucatan, or that we’re in the time I estimated.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s all that got to do with — ?”

  “Just this. If we are sometime between A.D. 100 and 600, and if we are near Yucatan, there shouldn’t be a sail in these waters.”

  “But, why not?”

  “Because the sail is unknown to the Mayas. That’s why.”

  Neil considered this briefly. “Well, that’s simple, Dave. We just aren’t near Yucatan.”

  Dave’s eyes flicked again toward the horizon and the approaching sail.

  “That’s what bothers me. I don’t know who’s on that ship, or what their business is.”

  He looked out over the horizon once more, at the tiny sail in the distance.

  “I think,” he said slowly, “we’d better break some rifles out of the gunlocker.”

  Chapter 4 — The Blond Giant

  WITHOUT waiting for Neil’s reaction to his statement, Dave dropped down inside the machine. He began walking toward the control room, his feet widespread on the curved surface below him.

  “Keep an eye on that ship,” he called. And then his body wiggled through the hatchway leading to the control room and the gunlocker.

  Neil watched the patch of sail on the horizon. It was still too soon to recognize what type of ship it was. At the moment, it appeared to be an inch-square piece of cloth pasted against the sky.

  Unconsciously, Neil glanced at his wrist watch, then grinned to himself as he realized he was estimating the time it would take the ship to reach them.

  It was moving exceptionally fast, it seemed, with a strong wind behind it, a wind that tossed Neil’s blond hair wildly about his face.

  There was a peaceful stillness to the entire scene. Neil and the machine waiting. The sea gently rolling, green and silent except for the whispered lapping against the machine. The sky — clear, blue, intense. The clouds watching quietly overhead. And the sail, a little closer now, a little larger, but still unreal, almost ghostly.

  Dave’s voice broke the silence.

  “Want to take these, Neil?”

  He handed two rifles through the hatchway, and Neil accepted them gingerly. Dave grabbed either side of the hatchway and pulled himself up to sit beside Neil. He glanced out at the approaching sail and then lifted one of the rifles from Neil’s lap.

  “I hope you know how to use that,” he said to Neil.

  “I know how to squeeze a trigger. That’s about the extent of it.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. He looked out at the sail again and said, “Looks like we’ve got a little time yet.” He turned again to the rifle in his lap and said. “This little baby here is called the Garand rifle, better known to G.I. Joe as the M1. It’s semiautomatic, gas-operated, and clip-fed, firing a .30 caliber slug.” Dave paused and shook his head, a mild smile on his face. “My gosh, I sound like Sergeant Long,” he said.

  “Who’s Sergeant Long?”

  “The guy who taught me all I know about the M1. A heck of a nice guy who knew this rifle like the back of his hand.”

  Neil’s eyes shifted uncomfortably to the horizon, and Dave followed his glance to the oncoming ship.

  He began speaking hurriedly, as if there weren’t much time in which to give Neil all the details.

  “This is a clip,” Dave said, holding out a fat, rectangular object. “Contains eight bullets. Once this is in the rifle, you don’t have to load again until you’ve fired all eight.”

  “How do you load?” Neil asked.

  “Simple.” He placed his fingers on a lever on the right-hand side of the rifle. “This is the operating rod. Pull it back until you hear a click.” He demonstrated. “Then let it go. That leaves this space in the top of your rifle. Slip the clip in and shove it down until the top bullet is opposite the chamber here.”

  Neil pulled back the operating rod and let it go when he heard the click.

  “You’ve got to be careful with that. Once you hear the click, let it alone. Otherwise, you might uncock it and the darned thing’ll come flying back and hit your hand.” He chuckled softly. “We used to call this ‘M1 Thumb’ because so many guys got smacked on the thumb when that rod snapped back.”

  Neil nodded and inserted the clip into the groove on the top of the rifle.

  “That’s it,” Dave said. “Right there. That’s it.”

  Neil nodded and looked up for further instructions.

  “Now push the operating rod forward and that puts a slug in the chamber, ready for firing. When you squeeze the trigger, the empty cartridge will fly back on the right here. When your clip is empty, it’ll fly out
and make a sort of ‘twang’ sound. Then you go through the process again, putting another clip in the way I showed you. All clear?”

  “Think we’ll have to use these?”

  “I don’t know. In the meantime, point that the other way, and get your finger away from that trigger. I went through three years in the Army without a scratch, and I don’t intend to have you shooting me now.”

  Neil pointed the rifle out at the water and smiled.

  “Here,” Dave said, “you’d better put the safety on until you’re ready to shoot at something.” He reached over inside the trigger guard on Neil’s rifle and pushed a curved bar forward. “When you want to fire, just push that back again and it’ll release the trigger.”

  Quickly and expertly, Dave put the safety on his own rifle and then rested the piece on his knees. He looked out over the water and said, “It won’t be long now.”

  Neil looked over his shoulder and was surprised at how close the ship had come. It definitely looked like a ship now, a ship with a high prow and a big, square sail.

  “I almost forgot,” Dave said, reaching into his pocket. “I ripped this compass from the instrument panel. At least we’ll be able to tell from what direction they’re coming.”

  He held the big compass between his hands and waited for the needle to swing to north.

  “Look at that needle,” Dave said. “Almost as if it knew we were having company. It’s pointing right at the ship.”

  “Then they’re coming from the north?”

  “North it is,” Dave answered.

  The ship was clearly distinguishable now. It rode high on the water, a strong ship with curving prow and stern. The prow jutted high over the sides of the ship, and an animal’s head seemed to be carved into the end of the sweeping, heavy piece of lumber.

  There was a stout mast in the center of the ship, and the big square sail billowed out from it, pushing the trim ship closer to the machine. But what struck Neil about the sail was its coloring. From top to bottom, as bright as a barber pole, were red and white stripes, thick, running perpendicular to the deck of the ship.