The Time Traveler's Almanac (135 page)

“Yes. Red-faced with beak noses and blinkless eyes. One had his hand resting on a window ledge and I noticed it was five-fingered like ours but with digits more slender.”

“Far less than walking pace,” commented Leigh. “That’s what it’s doing. I can amble faster even with corns on both feet.” He had another puzzled look outside. The train had gained forty yards in the interval. “I wonder whether the power Boydell attributed to them is based on some obscure form of cunning.”

“How do you mean?”

“If they cannot cope with us while we hold the ship in force, they’ve got to entice us out of it.”

“Well, we aren’t out of it, are we?” Pascoe countered. “Nobody has developed a mad desire to catch that train. And, if anybody did, he’d overtake it so fast he’d get wherever it’s going before he had time to pull up. I don’t see how they can bait us into being foolhardy merely by crawling around.”

“The tactic would be according to their own logic, not ours,” Leigh pointed out. “Perhaps on this world to crawl is to invite attack. A wild-dog pack reacts that way: the animal that limps gets torn to pieces.” He thought it over, continued, “I’m suspicious of this episode. I don’t like the ostentatious way in which they all kept their eyes fixed on something else as they went past. It isn’t natural.”

“Hah!” said Pascoe, prepared to argue.

Leigh waved him down. “I know it’s a childish blunder to judge any species by the standards of our own, but I still say it isn’t natural to have eyes and not use them.”

“On Terra,” chipped in Walterson, seriously, “some folk have arms, legs, eyes and even brains that they don’t use. That’s because they have the misfortune to be incurably afflicted, as you know.” He went on, encouraged by the other’s silence. “What if this track is a connecting link between the town and a sanatorium or hospital? Maybe its sole purpose is to carry sick people.”

“We’ll soon find out.” Leigh resorted to the intercom. “Williams, is the ‘copter ready yet?”

“Assembled and now being fuelled, commodore. It can take off in ten minutes’ time.”

“Who is duty pilot?”

“Ogilvy.”

“Tell him to fly ahead of that train and report what’s at the other end of the tracks. He’s to do that before taking a look at the town.” He turned to the others, added, “Shallom should have a panorama of the whole area taken on the way down, but it won’t provide the details Ogilvy can get us.”

Pascoe, again standing at the port, asked, “How much slower is slower?”

“Eh?”

“When a thing is already creeping as though next year will do, how can you tell that it has decided to apply the brakes?” He elucidated further, “It may be my imagination but I fancy that train has reduced velocity by a few yards per hour. I hope none of its passengers suffered injury by being slung from one end to the other.”

Leigh had a look. The train had now gone something less than half a mile from his observation point. The tedious speed and slight foreshortening made it impossible to decide whether or not Pascoe was correct. He had to keep watch a full fifteen minutes before he too agreed that the train was slowing down.

During that time the helicopter took off with a superfast
whoosh-whoosh
from whirling vanes. Soaring over the track, it fled ahead of the train, shrank into the hills until its plastic-egg cabin resembled a dewdrop dangling from a spinning sycamore seed.

Contacting the signals room, Leigh said, “Put Ogilvy’s reports through the speaker here.” He returned to the port, continued watching the train.

All the crew not asleep or on duty were similarly watching.

“Village six miles along line,” blared the speaker. “A second four miles farther on. A third five miles beyond that. Eight thousand feet. Climbing.”

Five minutes later, “Six-coach train on tracks, headed eastward. Appears stalled from this height, but may be moving.”

“Coming the other way and at a similar crawl,” remarked Pascoe, glancing at Walterson. “Bang goes your sick people theory if that one also holds a bunch of zombies.”

“Altitude twelve thousand,” announced the loudspeaker. “Terminal city visible beyond hills. Distance from base twenty-seven miles. Will investigate unless recalled.”

Leigh made no move to summon him back. There followed a long silence. By now the train was still less than a mile away and had cut progress down to about one yard per minute. Finally it stopped, remained motionless for a quarter of an hour, began to back so gradually that it had inched twenty yards before watchers became certain that it had reversed direction. Leigh levelled powerful glasses upon it. Definitely it was returning to the base of the bluff.

“Funny thing here,” bawled Ogilvy from the wall. “Streets full of people all struck stiff. It was the same in those villages now that I come to think of it. I went over them too fast for the fact to register.”

“That’s crazy,” said Pascoe. “How can he tell from that height?”

“I’m hovering right over the main stem, a tree-lined avenue with crowded sidewalks,” Ogilvy continued. “If anyone is moving, I can’t detect it. Request permission to examine from five hundred.”

Using the auxiliary mike linked through the signals room, Leigh asked, “Is there any evidence of opposition such as aircraft, gun emplacements or rocket pits?”

“No, commodore, not that I can see.”

“Then you can go down but don’t drop too fast. Sheer out immediately if fired upon.”

Silence during which Leigh had another look outside. The train was continuing to come back at velocity definable as chronic. He estimated that it would take most of an hour to reach the nearest point.

“Now at five hundred,” the loudspeaker declared. “Great Jupiter, I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re moving all right. But they’re so sluggish I have to look twice to make sure they really are alive and in action.” A pause, then, “Believe it or not, there’s a sort of street-car system in operation. A baby eighteen months old could toddle after one of those vehicles and catch it.”

“Come back,” Leigh ordered sharply. “Come back and report on the nearby town.”

“As you wish, commodore.” Ogilvy sounded as if he were obeying with reluctance.

“Where’s the point of withdrawing him from there?” asked Pascoe, irritated by this abrupt cutting-off of data. “He’s in no great danger. What will he learn from one place that he cannot get from another?”

“He can confirm or deny the thing that is all-important, namely, that conditions are the same elsewhere and are not restricted to one locale. When he’s had a look at the town I’ll send him a thousand miles away for a third and final check.” His grey eyes were thoughtful as he went on, “In olden times a Martian visitor could have made a major blunder if he’d judged Earth by one of its last remaining leper colonies. Today we’d make precisely the same mistake if this happens to be a quarantined area full of native paralytics.”

“Don’t say it,” put in Walterson, displaying some nervousness. “If we’ve sat down in a reservation for the diseased, we’d better get out mighty fast. I don’t want to be smitten by any alien plague to which I’ve no natural resistance. I had a narrow enough escape when I missed that Hermes expedition six years ago. Remember it? Within three days of landing the entire complement was dead, their bodies growing bundles of stinking strings later defined as a fungus.”

“We’ll see what Ogilvy says,” Leigh decided. “If he reports what we consider more normal conditions elsewhere, we’ll move there. If they prove the same, we’ll stay.”

“Stay,” echoed Pascoe, his features expressing disgust. “Something tells me you picked the right word – stay.” He gestured toward the port beyond which the train was a long time coming. “If what we’ve seen and what we’ve heard has any meaning at all, it means we’re in a prize fix.”

“Such as what?” prompted Walterson.

“We can stay a million years or go back home. For once in our triumphant history we’re well and truly thwarted. We’ll gain nothing whatever from this world for a good and undefeatable reason, namely, life’s too short.”

“I’m jumping to no hasty conclusions,” said Leigh. “We’ll wait for Ogilvy.”

In a short time the loudspeaker informed with incredulity: “This town is full of creepers, too. And trolleys making the same speed, if you can call it speed. Want me to go down and tell you more?”

“No,” said Leigh into the mike. “Make a full-range sweep eastward. Loop out as far as you can go with safety. Watch especially for any radical variation in phenomena and, if you find it, report at once.” He racked the microphone, turned to the others. “All we can do now is wait a bit.”

“You said it!” observed Pascoe pointedly. “I’ll lay odds of a thousand to one that Boydell did no more than sit futilely around picking his teeth until he got tired of it.”

Walterson let go a sudden laugh that startled them.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Pascoe, staring at him.

“One develops the strangest ideas sometimes,” said Walterson apologetically. “It just occurred to me that if horses were snails they’d never be compelled to wear harness. There’s a moral somewhere but I can’t be bothered to dig it out.”

“City forty-two miles eastward from base,” called Ogilvy. “Same as before. Two speeds: dead slow and slower than dead.”

Pascoe glanced through the port. “That train is doing less than bug-rate. I reckon it intends to stop when it gets here.” He thought a bit, finished, “If so, we know one thing in advance: they aren’t frightened of us.”

Making up his mind, Leigh phoned through to Shallom. “We’re going outside. Make a record of Ogilvy’s remarks while we’re gone. Sound a brief yelp on the alarm-siren if he reports rapid movement any place.” Then he switched to Nolan, Hoffnagle and Romero, the three communications experts. “Bring your Keen charts along in readiness for contact.”

“It’s conventional,” reminded Pascoe, “for the ship’s commander to remain in control of his vessel until contact has been made and the aliens found friendly or, at least, not hostile.”

“This is where convention gets dumped overboard for once,” Leigh snapped. “I’m going to pick on the load in that train. It’s high time we made some progress. Please yourselves whether or not you come along.”

“Fourteen villages so far,” chipped in Ogilvy from far away over the hills. “Everyone in them hustling around at the pace that kills – with boredom. Am heading for city visible on horizon.”

The communicators arrived bearing sheafs of coloured charts. They were unarmed, being the only personnel forbidden to wear guns. The theory behind this edict was that obvious helplessness established confidence. In most circumstances the notion proved correct and communicators survived. Once in a while it flopped and the victims gained no more than decent burial.

“What about us?” inquired Walterson, eyeing the newcomers. “Do we take weapons or don’t we?”

“We’ll chance it without any,” Leigh decided. “A life form sufficiently intelligent to trundle around in trains should be plenty smart enough to guess what will happen if they try to take us. They’ll be right under the ship’s guns while we’re parleying.”

“I’ve no faith in their ability to see reason as we understand it,” Pascoe put in. “For all their civilized veneer they may be the most treacherous characters this side of Sirius.” Then he grinned and added, “But I’ve faith in my legs. By the way these aliens get into action I’d be a small cloud of dust in the sunset before one of them could take aim.”

Leigh smiled, led them through the main lock. Every port was filled with watching faces as they made their way down to the track.

Gun-teams stood ready in their turrets, grimly aware that they could not beat off an attempted snatch except at risk of killing friends along with foes. But if necessary they could thwart it by wrecking the rails behind and ahead of the train, isolating it in readiness for further treatment. For the time being their role was the static one of intimidation. Despite this world’s apparent lack of danger there was a certain amount of apprehension among the older hands in the ship. A pacific atmosphere had fooled humans before and they were wary of it.

The six reached the railroad a couple of hundred yards in advance of the train, walked toward it. They could see the driver sat behind a glass-like panel in front. His big yellow eyes were staring straight ahead, his crimson face was without expression. Both his hands rested on knobbed levers and the sight of half-a-dozen other-worlders on the lines did not make him so much as twitch a finger.

Leigh was first to reach the cab door and stretch out a hand to grasp incurable difficulty number one. He took hold of the handle, swung the door open, put a pleasant smile upon his face and uttered a cordial “Hello!”

The driver did not answer. Instead, his eyeballs began to edge round sidewise while the train continued to pelt along at such a rate that it started pulling away from Leigh’s hand. Perforce, Leigh had to take a step to keep level. The eyes reached their corners by which time Leigh was compelled to take another step. Then the driver’s head started turning. Leigh took a step. More turn. Another step. Behind Leigh his five companions strove to stay with them. It wasn’t easy. In fact it was tough going. They could not stand still and let the train creep away. They could not walk without getting ahead of it. The result was a ludicrous march based on a hop-pause rhythm with the hops short and the pauses long.

By the time the driver’s head was halfway round, the long fingers of his right hand had started uncurling from the knob it was holding. At the same overstretched instant the knob commenced to rise on its lever. He was doing something, no doubt of that. He was bursting into action to meet a sudden emergency.

Still gripping the door, Leigh edged along with it. The others went hop-pause in unison. Pascoe wore the pained reverence of one attending the tedious funeral of a rich uncle who has just cut him out of his will.

Imagination told Leigh what ribald remarks were being tossed around among the audience in the ship.

He solved the problem of reclaiming official dignity by the simple process of stepping into the cab. That wasn’t much better, though. He had avoided the limping procession but now had the choice of standing half-bent or kneeling on the floor.