staggered her way through all of this and Barney helped her up onto the tiny deck. She was wearing a white gown with a low-cut kirtle, and looked very attractive with her long blond braids and her cheeks made rosy by the wind.
“Stand up there next to Ottar,” Barney told her, then moved himself out of camera range. “Camera.”
“Good shot of the back of their heads” Gino said.
“Ottar,” Barney shouted, “for Thor’s sake will you turn around, you’re facing the wrong way.”
“Facing the right way to steer,” Ottar said stubbornly, holding onto the handle of the steer-board that came across the deck from the side, and facing full astern toward the vanishing land. “When leaving land always look at it, making sure of direction. That is the way it is done.”
With a certain amount of pleading, cajoling—and bribery—Barney managed to get Ottar and Slithey to the far side of the handle where Ottar had to steer by looking over his shoulder. Slithey stood next to him, her hand resting on the wood next to his, and they got their shots of the receding shore.
“Cut,” Barney finally ordered, and Ottar relievedly went back to the correct position.
“I put you ashore around the point,” he said.
“Suits,” Barney said. “I’ll get on the radio and have one of the trucks waiting for us.”
Slinging the camera overboard was the only tricky part, and Barney stayed aboard after the others had disembarked, waiting until it was safely ashore. “See you in Vinland,” he said, putting out his hand. “Have a good trip.”
“Sure,” Ottar said, crushing Barney’s hand in his. “You find a good spot for me. Water, grass for animals, plenty hardwood trees.”
“I’ll do my best,” Barney said, shaking the blood back into his whitened fingers.
The Viking did not waste any time. As soon as Barney had jumped ashore he ordered, with relieved shouts and loud curses, that the
“They better make it,” Barney said, half aloud. “They just had better make it.” He turned away abruptly and climbed into the truck. “Get me to the platform—and step on it” he told the driver. He could eliminate at least half of his fears at once by finding out if the ship would make a safe arrival in Iceland. The time machine did not simplify his problems, but it at least made the waiting and nail-chewing period a good deal shorter.
The camp was in a turmoil as they drove up, the tents being struck and everything loaded for the move to the new location, but Barney had no eyes for it; he tapped impatiently on the window frame. The entire operation was waste motion if anything happened to the ship. He was out of the car while it was still braking to a stop at the time platform. The jeep was already aboard and Tex and Jens Lyn were watching the professor charge the vremeatron batteries.
“Where’s Dallas?” Barney asked.
Tex pointed with his thumb. “In the can.”
“At a time like this!”
“We can go without him,” Tex said. “It doesn’t need the two of us for this job. All we have to do is deliver Ottar’s winter ration of whiskey once we know he arrived okay,”
“You’ll do what I say. I want two men along for protection, just in case. I don’t want any slip-ups. Here he comes now—get going.”
Barney stepped away from the time platform as the professor activated the field. As always—from the observer’s point of view—the voyage seemed to take no more than a fraction of a second. The platform vanished and reappeared again a few feet farther away.
It had changed though. Professor Hewett was sealed into his instrumentation shack, while the rest were in the jeep, which had its top up and side curtains attached. Almost a foot of snow blanketed everything, and a flurry of airborne snow blew out of the vremeatron’s field and coated the grass around it.
“Well?” Barney shouted. “What happened? Come out of there and report.”
Dallas climbed down from the jeep and trudged over through the snow. “That Iceland,” he said. “What a climate they got there in October.”
“Save the weather report. Are Ottar and the ship all right?”
“Everything’s fine. The ship is up on the shore for the winter, and when we left Ottar and his uncle were getting smashed on the booze we brought. For a while there we worried he would never show, the Prof had to make four jumps to find him. Seems he stopped for some time in the Faeroes. Between you and me I don’t think he would ever have got to Iceland if his thirst hadn’t got the better of him. Once you get hooked on the distilled stuff, the homebrew doesn’t seem so hot.”
Barney relaxed, for the first time in a long time he realized, as the tension faded. He even managed a slight smile.
“Good. Now let’s get the company moved while we still have some daylight at this end.” He climbed aboard the time platform, walking carefully in the jeep’s tracks so he wouldn’t get his shoes full of melting snow, and opened the door of the control room.
“Got enough juice for another jump?” he asked.
“With the motor-generator going the batteries are charged at all times, a great improvement.”
“Then take us ahead in time to next spring, the year 1005, and land us at a good spot in Newfoundland, one of the sites you and Lyn searched when you were looking for the Viking settlements.”
“I know just the place,” Professor Hewett said, leafing through a notebook. “An ideal location.” He set up the coordinates on the board and activated the vremeatron.
There was the now familiar sensation of temporal displacement and the time platform settled onto a rocky shore. Waves broke, almost over them, and a smother of spray hissed down into the snow. A dark cliff loomed above, crumbling and sinister.
“What do you call this?” Barney shouted above the boom of the breaking waves.
“Wrong coordinates,” the professor called back. “A slight mistake. This is a different site.”
“You had to tell me! Let’s go before we wash out to sea.”
The second time jump brought them to a grassy meadow that overlooked a small bay. Tall trees marched up the bowl of the hills around them in solid ranks, and down through the meadow to the sea there twisted a clear and swift-running brook.
“This is more like it,” Barney said as the others climbed out of the jeep. “Where are we, Jens?”
Jens Lyn looked around, sniffed the air and smiled. “I remember this well, one of the first sites we checked. This is Epaves Bay, really an arm of Sacred Bay on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. That is the Strait of Belle Isle out there. The reason we investigated this site—”
“Great. Looks like just what we want. And isn’t the gadget in Ottar’s ship zeroed in on this strait?”
“That is correct.”
“Then this is the spot for us.” Barney bent and picked up a handful of waterlogged snow from the platform and began forming it into a ball. “We’ll leave the area down by the mouth of the stream there for Ottar. Then set our camp up over there to the right, at the top of the meadow. It looks flat enough to keep the twentieth century off camera. Let’s go. Back to move camp. And I want this slush shoveled off first so we don’t have anyone breaking a leg.”
Dallas bent over to fasten the lace on his boot and the target was too broad to resist. Barney hurled his snowball square into the middle of the taut denim.
“Here we go. Vikings,” he said happily. “Let’s go settle Vinland.”
13
All the world was gray, silent, damp, pressing in on them. The fog muffled everything, soaking up sound as well as sight so that the ocean before them was an unseen presence until a low wave appeared, breaking silently into froth as it rushed up the slope of the sandy beach almost to their feet. The truck, no more than ten feet away, was only a dark shape in the mist.
