Andre Norton - Operation Time ...

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Operation Time SearchBy Andre Norton"ATLANTIS? A fairy tale!" The man by the windowhalf turned. "You can't be serious-" He began thatprotest confidently, but that confidence ebbed whenthere was no change in the expression on his companion's face."You saw the films of the first three runs. Did thoselook like the product of someone's imagination? Youhave inspected all the security measures devised tomake sure they were not. A fairy tale, you say." Thequiet gray-haired man leaned a little farther back inhis seat. "I wonder what does lie buried at the roots ofsome of our traditional tales. Norse sagas, once dismissedas fiction, have long since been proven to be chroniclesof historic voyages. Much of our folklore is distortedclan, tribal, or national record. Dragons-now- Ourplanet did have an age in which armored dragonsmarched the earth-""But not in the memory of mankind!" Hargreavescame away from the window, his hands resting on hiships, his chin outthrust as if he welcomed battle, verbal at least."Don't you ever wonder why certain tales havepersisted, why they continue to linger over centuries,told again and again? The man-devouring dragon-"Hargreaves smiled. "I always heard it that the properdragon preferred a diet of tender young maidens-until some doughty knight changed his mind for himwith sword or lance."Fordham laughed. "But dragons, in spite of theirdietary habits, are firmly fixed in folklore around theworld. And their like did once roam the earth-""At a time, I repeat, which far antedated the arrivalof our most primitive ancestor.""As far as we know," Fordham corrected. "What I sayis that there is a persistence of certain types of fairystories. When we set up this project-and you know thereason for it---we had to have a starting point. Atlantis isone of the most lasting of our legends. It has become somuch a part of our heritage that I think it is generallyaccepted as fact-" ."And all founded on a few sentences that were used byPlato to hang some of his arguments on-""But suppose that Atlantis did once exist." Fordham pickedup a pencil, turned it end to end on the pad before him, butmade no markings. "Not in this world-""Where then? On Mars-? They blew themselves up, Isuppose, and left that pocking of desert craters-""Oddly enough, according to legend the Atlanteans dideventually blow themselves up, or the equivalent. No, righthere on this planet. You have heard of the alternate historytheory-that from each major historical decision twoalternate worlds come into being.""Fantastic-" Hargreaves interrupted."Is it? Suppose that it is fact, that on one of those alternatetime lines Atlantis did exist, just as on another dragonsoverlapped mankind.""Even if that were so, how would we know about it?""True. We could be separated from those lines by wholenetworks of major choices and decisions. Yet, supposewhen we were close together, there was a kind of seepage-perhaps individuals even crossed. We have well-authenticated stories of strange and unexplainabledisappearances from our own world, and one or two oddpeople have turned up here under very peculiarcircumstances. And Atlantis is so vivid a story, has so seizedupon the imagination of generations, that we used it for ourcheckpoint.""Just how?""We fed-into the Ibby every known scrap of material onthe subject that is known by the modern worldfrom thereports of geologists sounding the sea bottoms for possibleridges of a sunken continent to `revelations' of cultists. AndIbby gave us an equation in return.""You mean you set up the probe-beam on that?""Exactly. And you have seen the resulting test films. Thosecame from Ibby's calculations. And you'll admit they bearno resemblance to the here and now.""Yes, I'll say that much. And they were taken?""Right out there, over the landscape you've been viewing.We're set today for a ten-minute run, the longest we havedared to try. We use the mound for a checkpoint.""Still having trouble over that?"Fordham frowned. "We gave out the story that we areclearing to build an addition to the labs. This Wilson who ismaking all the fuss is chronically opposed to governmentauthority. He's built up this `Save our historic mound'crusade mainly to get himself space in the city papers and toharass the project. Started a rumor last year that we weredabbling in some weird new experiment that would blowthe whole county off the map. He was warmed then by thesecurity people. But he believes this mound thing is safe.However, `Save our historic mound' isn't as good forarousing interest as `Look out, the eggheads are going toblow us up.' His campaign is already running down."However, the mound makes a good checkpoint because itis older than any other surviving man-made landmarkhereabouts.""What if you turn up mound builders instead ofAtlanteans?""Well, then we'd have a better set of films than those wealready possess to rivet attention on the project, thoughthose we do have are more to our real purpose.""Yes," agreed Hargreaves. "And if this does work-if we canget through ourselves-""We can tap natural resources, riches such as we cannotimagine in this era. We've plundered and wasted and usedup most of the living treasures of our world. So now wehave to try to pillage somewhere else. Well, shall we go tosee-Atlantis?"Hargreaves laughed. "Seeing is believing; one picture isworth a volume of words. Give me a good film to takeback to Washington, and I may be able to up yourcurrent appropriation. All right-show me Atlantis."The weather for early December was surprisingly mild. RayOsborne opened the collar of his leather jacket. His ex-paratrooper boots flattened ragged clumps of last season'sgrass. The shadow of the Indian mound enclosed him now.Early Sunday morning-Wilson had been right in hissuggestion about the time. The fence had had a gap just ashe had promised. There was only one building in sight, thetower part of the hush-hush installation. And on this side ofthe mound, he was safely out of sight, even if anyone wason duty there.What were they planning to build anyway-clearing it flatwith bulldozers? What would people do when there was nomore open country at all? Ray turned to face the mound,readying his camera for the shots he had been sent to take.His finger pressedAnd, as if that had thumbed the red switch of final doom,the world went mad. Ray staggered back, aware only ofintolerable pain in his head, pain associated with violetflashes that blinded him. Silence- He rubbed at his wateringeyes. Mist faded, and he stood, swaying drunkenly, staringabout him in stunned disbelief.The raw wound of the clearing, the distant earthmovingmachinery, and even the mound were gone! He was in theshadow, not of mounded earth, but of a towering gianttree, with another and another beyond!Ray put out a shaking hand. He could feel rough bark-it wasreal! Then he began to run down a moss carpeted corridorbetween trees whose girth was that of monsters. "Getback!" shouted something inside his head. "Back?" askedanother part of his dazed mind. Where was back?Minutes later he burst from the dimness of that incredibleforest into a grass-grown plain. A withered root protrudedfrom the earth to send him sprawling, and he lay drawingair into his lungs with panting gasps. Soon he became awarethat a hot sun beat downupon him, far too warm for winter. He pulled up to hisknees to look about him.Ahead no break in that plain, behind him the forest--nothinghe had ever seen before. Where was he? Shivering,though the earth under him was warm, Ray forced himselfto sit quietly. He was Ray Osborne. He had gone out to theproject on Sunday morning as a favor to Les Wilson, totake some good shots of the mound to go with the articleLes was writing. Shots--his hands were empty! The camera?He must have lost it back there when it happened. What hadhappened?Ray dropped his head between his hands. He fought a battlewith primitive panic and tried to think logically. But howcan one think logically about something such as this? Oneminute standing in a sane, ordinary world-the next beinghere. And where was here?Slowly he got to his feet, thrusting his twitching hands intothe pockets of his jacket. Go back. He half turned to facethat silent density of forest and knew that he could not go inthere again, not yet. His heart began to thump heavily whenhe thought of it. Somehow this open land seemed the lesserof two evils. So he trudged on, to find a little later a breakin the plain. Below was a narrow gully that housed a stream,and around that grew tall brush and saplings.As he sought a path down the steep side, there was acrashing in the brush below. Out of that green thicket,straight at the almost perpendicular slope. hurtled a darkshape. Sharp hoofs pawed frantically at the wall, bringingdown soil and stones. Then, appearing to realize there wasno climbing it, the creature, with a toss of its antlered head,turned to face its hunters.Ray clutched at the grass of the verge to keep from slidingover. The hunted animal was directly below him, head low,breathing in labored snorts. But he could not believe it wasreal. Elk, if this huge monster could be an elk, did not runwild in southern Ohio. It had an antler spread of more thansix feet and was fartaller than Ray-as out of proportion as the foresttrees.From the brush leaped shaggy-coated wolfish beasts.Avoiding the reaching scoop of the elk's antl... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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