opened and Amory Blestead came in. “Over here, Amory,” he said. “This is our cameraman, Gino Cappo. Amory Blestead, technical adviser.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Amory said, shaking hands, “I always wondered how you got those repulsive effects in
“You mean in
“Christ!” He turned to Barney. “Dallas told me to tell you they’ll be down with Ottar in about five minutes.”
“About time. We’ll have the Prof warm his machine up.”
Barney climbed painfully into the back of the army truck and dropped onto the boxes. He had managed to grab about an hour’s sleep on the couch in his office before another urgent message from L.M. had dragged him awake and up to L.M.’s office for an extended wrangle over budgeting. The pace was beginning to tell.
“I have recalibrated all my instruments,” Professor Hewett said, tapping happily on a dial face, “so that now I can guarantee the utmost precision temporally arid geographically in all future time transports.”
“Wonderful. See if you can recalibrate us to arrive just after our last trip, close to the same time, the same day, The light was good—”
The door crashed open, and loud, guttural singing filled the warehouse. Ottar stumbled in with Jens Lyn and Dallas Levy each clutching one of his arms, holding him up rather than restraining him, since he was obviously roaring drunk. Tex Antonelli came behind them wheeling a handtruck loaded with packing cases. It needed all three of them to heave the Viking up into the truck, where he passed out, mumbling happily to himseli. They piled the boxes in around him.
“What’s all this?” Barney asked.
“Trade goods,” Lyn said, pushing the crate labeled JACK DANIELS in over the tailgate. “Ottar signed the contract. I was very surprised to discover an Icelandic notary public here—”
“You can find anything in Hollywood.”
“And Ottar agreed to study English once he was back in his own house. He has developed a decided taste for distilled beverages and we agreed on a payment of one bottle of whiskey a day for every day of study.”
“Couldn’t you have fobbed him off with some rotgut?” Barney asked as a second crate of Jack Daniels slid into the truck. “I can see myself trying to justify this on the gyp sheet.”
“We did try,” Dallas said, shoving in a third case. “Slipped him some Old Overcoat 95 per cent grain neutral spirits, but it was no sale. He developed an educated palate early. Two months, five cases, that’s the bargain.”
Jens Lyn climbed in and Barney admired his knee-high engineer’s boots, puttees, many-pocketed hunting jacket and sheath knife. “Why the Jungle Jim outfit?” he asked.
“A simple matter of survival and creature comfort,” Lyn said, making room for the sleeping bag and a packing crate that Dallas pushed up to him. “I have DDT for the body lice that are sure to abound, halazone tablets for the drinking water and a quantity of tinned food. The diet of the time is restricted, and I am sure unwholesome to modem tastes. Therefore I have taken a few simple precautions.”
“Fair enough,” Barney said. “Climb m and lock up the tailgate, let’s get rolling.”
Though the vremeatron still whined and crackled with the same intensity, there was no longer the tension there had been on the first trip. The conditioned reflexes of mechanized man took over and the voyage through time became just as commonplace as a ride in a high-speed elevator, a trip in a jet plane, a descent in a submarine or a blast-off in a rocket. Only Gino, the newcomer, showed some apprehension, darting rapid glances at the bank of electronic gadgetry and the sealed warehouse. But in the face of the others’ calm—Barney managed to doze off Airing the transition while Dallas and the Danish philologist quarreled over the opening of one of the whiskey bottles and the resultant loss thereby of a day’s English lessons—he relaxed a little. When the transition did occur he half rose, startled, but sat down again when the bottle was passed to him, though his eyes did widen considerably when the ice-blue sky appeared outside and the tang of salt spray filled the truck.
“That’s a pretty good trick,” he said, pointing his light meter. “How’s it done?”
“For details you have to ask the Prof here,” Barney said, gasping over too large a swallow of the whiskey. “Very complex. Something about moving through time.”
“I get it,” Gino said, stopping his diaphragm down to 3.5. “Something like the time zones when you fly from London to New York. The sun doesn’t seem to move and you arrive at the same time you took off.”
“Something like that.”
“Good light. We can get some good color with light like this.”
“If you drive don’t drink,” Dallas said, leaning out to hand the bottle to Tex, who sat behind the wheel in she cab. “One slug and let’s get on the trail, pardner.”
The starter whined the motor to life and, looking out over the cab, Barney saw that they were following the tire tracks of another truck, clearly visible in the damp sand and gravel. Memory pushed up through the layers of fatigue and he hammered on the metal roof of the cab over Tex’s head.
“Blow your horn,” he shouted.
They were coming to the rocky headland and the horn sounded as they swung around it. Barney stumbled over the crates and trod on the sleeping Viking as he rushed to the rear of the truck. There was the rising grumble of another engine as an identical army truck passed them, going in the opposite direction. Barney reached the open rear and clutched the bent-wood canvas support over his head. He had a quick glimpse of himself in the rear of the other truck, white-faced and wide-eyed and gaping like a moron. With a feeling of sadomasochistic pleasure he raised his open hand, thumb to nose, and wiggled his fingers at his shocked other self. The rock headland came in between them.
“Get much traffic around here?” Gino asked.
Ottar sat up, rubbing his side, muttering something foul under his breath. Jens quieted him easily with a lone drag from the bottle as they braked to a sliding stop in the loose gravel.
“Primrose Cottage,” Tex shouted back, “last stop.”
Reeking smoke still drifted down from the chimney hole of the squat, turf house, but there was no one in sight. Weapons and clumsy tools littered the ground. Ottar half fell, half jumped from the truck and bellowed something, then clutched at his head with instant regret.
“Let’s get moving,” Barney said. “Get these cases unloaded and ask Dr. Lyn where he wants them. Not you, Gino, I want you to come with me.”
They climbed the low hill behind the house, pushing through the short, stubbly grass and almost tripping over a ragged and wild-looking sheep that went baaing down the hill away from them. From the top they had a clear view of the curving bay that swept away from them on both sides, and the vast, slate-gray ocean. A long roller came in, breaking up on the beach, then hissing away again through the pebbles. A grim-looking island with cliff sides that fell straight to the foaming ocean stood in the middle of the bay, and farther off, just a dark blur on the horizon, was another, lower island.
“Pan right around in a circle, 360 degrees, so we can Study it later. Zoom in for a close-up on that island.”
“What about going inland a bit, take a look at the land there?” Gino asked, squinting through the viewfinder.
“Later, if there’s time. But this is going to be a sea picture and with all this free ocean I want to use it.”
“Along the shore then, we should see what’s behind the point there.”
“That’s all right—but don’t go alone. Take Tex or Dallas with you so you stay out of trouble. Don’t get more than a fifteen-minute walk away, so we can find you when we have to leave.” Barney glanced along the shore and noticed the rowboat; he took Gino’s arm and pointed. “There’s an idea. Get Lyn to translate and have a couple of the locals row you offshore a bit. Give me some shots of the way this place looks coming in from the sea…”
“Hey,” Tex said, pulling himself over the brow of the hill, “they want you down at the shack, Barney. Pow- wow of some kind.”
“Just in time, Tex. Stay with Gino here and keep an eye on him.”
