Atalanta. The hooded figure questioned Chiron about each of them.
'Good,' the strangely familiar voice said, finally. 'You have done well. Go now. It is almost dawn. Tell no one about our meeting.'
'I would ask only one question,' Chiron said. 'Many of these youths are near and dear to me. The quest they have embarked upon will hold great dangers for them. Tell me, will they succeed?'
'No man should know his fate,' the hooded figure said, 'nor that of another. Some will die and some will live. What becomes of them is the province of the gods. Go now. Wish them well upon their journey.'
Chiron bowed from the waist, then turned and came back in Delaney's direction. Delaney ducked behind some bushes to avoid being seen and waited until the centaur had passed. When he looked up again, the hooded figure was no longer in the clearing. He ran to the stone altar and looked around in all directions, but there was no sign of a trail or even of anyone having been there in the first place. The ground around the altar and the stone platform it stood upon was damp with early morning drizzle, but the only tracks visible in the gray dawn were Chiron's hoof prints.
5
'The Isle of Lemnos,' Tiphys said, steering toward the green island lying ahead of them. 'We had best anchor tonight in the protection of its bay, Jason. The sun is getting low and unfamiliar waters can be treacherous at night. Besides, we shall need to go ashore in search of fresh water to replenish our supply.'
'And m-m-meat,' said Hercules, whacking himself on the belly with a sound like wood splitting.
'Very well,' said Jason. 'We anchor for the night at Lemnos. Argus, Mopsus, Idmon, Telamon and Oileus, you shall remain with the ship while the rest of us go ashore in search of water and provisions.'
'Lemnos,' Steiger said, 'according to the myth, an island of beautiful Amazon women.' He glanced at Delaney and grinned. 'Think that's what we'll find?'
'I'm more worried about having a ringer on this voyage,' said Delaney.
Steiger nodded, suddenly serious. 'If he's among the Argonauts, it would explain the hooded cloak. He wouldn't want to be recognized. But if the centaur's in on some sort of plot with him, why would he want to disguise himself for a private meeting?'
'Maybe the centaur never knew what he really looked like and he wanted to keep it that way. And that raises more questions.'
'You said you thought you recognized the voice. None of the Argonauts' voices ring any bells with you?'
Delaney shook his head. 'Several of them have deep voices. And whoever it was could have been altering his normal voice.'
'Too bad you didn't notice if anyone was missing when you trailed Chiron.'
'If anyone had left during the night, one of us should have spotted him,' Delaney said. 'And if someone left after I did, he should have spotted me.'
'If one of these characters was equipped with a warp disc,' Steiger said, 'he could have clocked out of the cave and to that clearing without anyone noticing.'
Delaney glanced at him sharply. 'I think we'd better talk about this. Let's see if we can split away from the main group once we're ashore.'
They spoke in low voices, but the Argo was not the best place to hold a surreptitious conversation. No space had been wasted in the construction of the galley and they were all in fairly close contact all the time. All three temporal agents had been on ocean voyages before, but no matter what the time period or what type of vessel, one thing about life on the sea remained constant. Time passed very slowly.
The Argo was an uncomplicated vessel. There was no need to climb the rigging to take in or let out sails, because there was only the one simple, triangular lateen sail which could be hoisted or taken down easily and quickly. There was no need to perform maintenance on armaments, because there were none. There was no need to maintain engines or generators, pumps or electrical equipment or any of the other items found on more modern ships. The Argo was as primitive as a ship could be short of the reed vessels of the Polynesians. Shipboard duties were simple. There was not much else to do save row or watch for leaks and bail if the need arose. When they were close to shore, one of the men would go into the bow and let down a weighted rope so that soundings could be taken. Theirs was not an ambitious ocean-crossing voyage so much as an extended offshore cruise. On their course in the Aegean Sea, they were never very far from land and much of their voyage would be spent following the coastline, sailing between the islands and the mainland. With the proper crew and under the right conditions, the Argo might have been capable of crossing an ocean, but even expert sailors would have found it quite a hardship.
The Vikings, sailing roughly similar vessels in the North Sea, braved far more of the dangers of the deep than did the Argonauts, and most of the Argonauts were not experienced sailors. The majority of them were landlubbers to whom the voyage took on epic proportions. When the sea was calm, they rowed, which was backbreaking work. When the winds were fair, they made slow headway under sail with the oars shipped. At such times, there was not a great deal to do on board.
The sun had burned every one of them. They had rigged an awning to provide some very much needed shade, but skin was nevertheless tender and muscles were still sore. Hylas was kept busy applying olive oil to sunburned skin and some of the crew felt seasick, even in the relatively calm seas they had experienced. Delaney, who had once endured a squall in the crow's nest of a British man o'war, wondered uneasily how this crew would fare in the event of a storm.
While they were under sail, a listless lethargy was the prevalent atmosphere on board and even Orpheus, a seemingly inexhaustible source of songs and tales, fell to sitting idly on deck and staring out to sea, lost in his own thoughts. After a day's sail, the Argonauts looked forward to spending time ashore.
They anchored in the small protected bay and waded in, pleased at the prospect of getting in some hunting. They split up into small groups and went off in different directions to explore the island. It gave the temporal agents a chance to go off by themselves.
'You're going to call me a paranoid again,' said Steiger, 'but hear me out first. I've been thinking about this ever since we left Mount Pelion. Something's wrong here. Someone else is conducting some sort of covert operation on this voyage. Our friend with the hooded cloak really seems to get around. He could be someone in the pay of King Pelias, someone who's infiltrated the Argonauts as we have, but there's another possibility that worries me even more. Our hooded friend might not be working for Pelias at all.'
'I'm not calling you a paranoid yet,' said Finn, 'but I'm reserving judgment.''
'All right. Consider this. The centaur shows up in our time-line, coming through conveniently at a point where we just happen to have Observers stationed. The fact of the centaur's existence predisposes us to consider the possibility that physical laws might be significantly different in this universe. The debriefing of the centaur seems to corroborate the events described in one of our most ancient myths, in which supernatural forces figure prominently. We witness at least one event so far, at Delphi, which appears to be supernatural. We've got some mysterious hooded figure cropping up both at Iolchos and at Pelion. Now maybe supernatural events are natural here, but consider that any one of us could have duplicated the seemingly magical appearance and disappearance of the Oracle… by using a warp disc. Our friend in the hooded cloak might be getting around the same way.'
'Wait,' said Andre, 'let's go back to the beginning for a moment. What do you mean by saying that the centaur appeared 'conveniently' at a point in time where we happened to have Observers on the scene? Assuming it was all planned somehow, how could the opposition have arranged to have a confluence occur at such a convenient point?'
'They didn't have to arrange it,' said Steiger. 'Suppose they discovered the confluence first. They could have conducted a scouting expedition just as Curtis did. They have the ability to scan for warp discs somehow. Wouldn't it make sense that it would be the first thing they'd do? They could have discovered we had Observers in the area and decided to take advantage of that fact.'
'So they created a centaur in their genetic engineering labs, programmed it, and sent it through the confluence to provide us with disinformation meant to send us on some sort of wild goose chase?' said Delaney. 'Maybe. It's a long shot, but it's possible, I suppose. But if this whole thing is a setup of some sort, then they'd have
