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With the late afternoon sun, the shadow of the westward mountains filled the valley before them. They stumbled and slid down the scree, looking back over their shoulders, expecting the worm to emerge from the tunnel at any moment. They did not speak, but Floyd kept them walking east, down the alpine-meadow-clad skirts of the mountain, until they came to a low, treed hill, which was crowned with a grassy knoll like the pate of a balding man’s head. Here they sat down, exhausted, looking fearfully at the round hole in the mountain wall.
“What were those things?” asked Vlad.
“Beats me if I know,” said Dwight, “but it certainly answers Stan’s complaint about the lack of new life forms, in spades!”
No one was much in the mood for jokes.
“Now what do we do?” asked Floyd.
“We could try skirting the swamp, again,” Glenn offered without enthusiasm.
“We’d be dead now,” said Vlad, “if the rain hadn’t driven us inside that tunnel. That whole mountainside must be under an overhanging glacier. It would be like playing Russian roulette.”
“Even if we were successful in getting through alive,” said Al, “that broken rock terrain is so treacherous, O’Reilly would never consider that as a route past the mountains. We would still have to find another way.”
“All right,” said Floyd. “If I’m hearing you correctly, we don’t want to try the caves again and we don’t want to attempt the broken rock. The only thing left is to head north and hope we find a pass through these mountains. We’re safe enough here. Even if a worm comes, it can’t get through these trees at the foot of this hill without making a lot of noise.”
His words were not reassuring. They made camp and boiled the few potatoes they’d carried with them. They also had some cold, wild turkey left over from a bird they had shot and cooked two days before.
After supper, they each had a cup of tea and felt the tension of the day begin to ebb from their bodies.
“I wonder what those worms eat,” asked Kyle, “that is, when they can’t get ‘hiker’?”
“I don’t know,” said Stan, “but I bet those scree beds that we see coming out of the tunnels are some of the rock that they’ve taken out of the tunnels.”
“That can’t be all of it. There must be a lot more, judging by the size and length of the tunnels,” said Vlad.
“Maybe they eat the luminescent green stuff,” suggested Brendon.
The night sky became dark as the clouds moved in. Floyd set guards in rotation. Dave didn’t have a watch this night, so he turned in and was asleep almost as soon as his head hit his sleeping bag.
__________
The next morning the air was cold, foggy, and pregnant with rain. After a brief, cold breakfast, they descended the hill and soon were lost in the soupy fog. Dave, his sight diminished by the morning haze, found his hearing enlivened; he could plainly hear water dripping from trees and babbling in a nearby brook.
Using his compass, Floyd found a game trail that headed approximately north. As Dave began plodding along, he fell in step with Vlad Sowetsky. The others, ghostly shapes in the fog ahead, could be heard distinctly as they stepped on twig and stone.
“So what were you studying at Halcyon, Vlad?” asked Dave.
“I was a graduate physics student in Hoffstetter’s group.”
“Oh really!” said Dave. “Were you working on the Hoffstetter field generator or on something else?” Dave pretended he didn’t know.
“I wasn‘t only working on the field generators, but I was Hoffstetter’s right-hand man.”
“So why weren’t you seconded to the physics project?” asked Dave.
“Why indeed?” said Vlad bitterly. “Did you see my interview on Halcyon television right after the dislocation?”
“As a matter of fact I did,” Dave admitted. “I thought you spoke quite courageously.”
“Well,” said Vlad, “Jennifer McCowan, who had talked me into giving the interview, was given a slap on the wrist, but Blackmore and Hoffstetter had me put in the slammer in the zoology building as if I’d started the riot! When O’Reilly found out, he had me let out. As soon as they let me out, I hightailed it to Botany Bay. Now that Blackmore is chancellor, I’m afraid to go back to Halcyon in case they throw me back in my old cage. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to go on this expedition.”
“But the riot wasn’t your fault.” protested Dave.
“Of course not,” said Vlad. “It was really Hoffstetter’s stupidity that was to blame for the riot. When that came out, Hoffstetter never forgave me, even after he and Blackmore began to whitewash the deed with their weekly television program.”
“Was it really Hoffstetter’s fault?” asked Dave.
“There is no question that it was Hoffstetter’s fault. And I’m not just saying that to exonerate myself. You see, I’d warned Hoffstetter that we shouldn’t build the large demonstration field generators right away because there were too many unknowns. But he overruled me. At Botany Bay, I was afraid if I started talking, and Blackmore heard about it and found out where I was, he’d lock me up again.”
Floyd called a halt by a creek, and Vlad and Dave sat down on a patch of sand by the side of a quiet pool.
Another idea began to trouble Dave. “Vlad, you used the word whitewash just now. What did you mean?” he asked with trepidation.
“Between you, me, and the doorpost, all that nonsense about being home at Christmas that Hoffstetter and Blackmore have been feeding the masses on their television show is a load of crap. I had time to inspect the wreckage after the fire department put out the blaze. That equipment was completely destroyed and can’t be replicated at Halcyon. Without that equipment, we don’t have a hope of getting back.”
Steady, old fellow! Don’t let this overwhelm you. Dave forced his mind back to the topic at hand. Taking a deep breath, he continued. “So do you still believe all that stuff you said about time quantization and Halcyon slipping into a trailing time interval? What did you call it?” asked Dave.
“Mintival,” said Vlad. “Yes, I believe it more than ever. Hasn’t it puzzled you why so many species here are almost identical to species back home?”
“But we’ve found some new ones, like the worms and that new bird,” said Dave.
“Opera bird,” said Vlad. “Well, that’s true, and there are those Happy Berries. That’s not unanticipated; one wouldn’t expect the two space-times to be completely the same. But back to my question: how do you explain the amazing similarities between this space-time and ours?”
“I assumed it must have something to do with the close relationship this world has with ours,” said Dave.
“What if, in the past, the time differential between this space-time and ours was much smaller? What if the wall was so thin that portals opened up, so people and other life forms could move back and forth quite easily? Wouldn’t explain the similarity between the flora and fauna here and back home?”
“Hmm. Movement back and forth? Is it possible that these portals still exist?” asked Dave.
“I suppose it’s possible,” said Vlad. He paused momentarily, as if deciding whether or not to continue, then turned and looked at Dave gravely.
“Dave, it’s very important that you remember all of what I’ve just told you.”
“Why?” Dave asked, bewildered.
Vlad took a deep breath and continued. “I have a reason for going into this in such detail. I’ve had a foreboding growing in my mind that I’m not going to make it back to town, and I had to tell someone before...” His voice trailed off to a whisper.
“You’re a scientist; surely you don’t believe in forebodings. It’s a psychological phenomenon brought on by stress.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Vlad, but his eyes told a different story.
__________
The ten men spent many weeks traveling north along the eastern fringe of the mountains. The mountain rampart was unbroken except for high snowbound shoulders next to even higher mountain peaks. For the most part, they traveled in the alpine meadows on the shoulders of the mountains, where the hiking was easier.
As the weeks went by, they experienced evidence for the end of autumn everywhere. The nights were growing cooler, and many of the trees on the foothills had begun to lose their leaves.
Finally, in December, they had their first reason for optimism. They were near the great river, which they could see gleaming far to the north, when they came upon a long valley that ran westward between two mountain peaks. Out of this valley, a creek bubbled and danced over a series of waterfalls to the valley floor, then continued east to the distant sea. As they followed this creek up the steep incline, they came to a valley, which was clad in upland junipers, rising gently to a pass in the west. After so many weeks of fruitless searching, Dave noticed that the group interactions had completely changed since the pass. Everyone was laughing and joking again.
Finding a grassy meadow near a pool past the top of the first waterfall, they paused to rest. Glenn promptly dowsed Dave with water as he stooped to drink, and before long, everyone ended up in the pool except Floyd, who watched the antics with apparent amusement. The others quickly took that situation in hand, and Floyd was also unceremoniously baptized.
While their clothes dried in the sun, they sat on a rock looking east. Dave observed that the creek ran almost due east toward the coast. Beyond the creek, he could see a curious, shallow volcanic cone. But then his reverie was interrupted.
“This is the first gap in the mountains we’ve found since the swamp,” said Floyd. “What do you think we should do?”
I’d like to go home! Dave thought, but said nothing as he waited for the others to speak.
“There’s no point in traveling north,” said Floyd, at last breaking the silence. “Halcyon has already sent boats along the south shore of the river mouth looking for a passage past the mountains. But the mountains come right down to the south riverbank, so there’s no route west along the river’s edge.”
Dwight recalled their duty. “But this valley may lead to a blind canyon,” he said. “Shouldn’t we confirm that it actually goes through the mountains?”
“That’s true,” conceded Floyd. “We really don’t know what lies beyond that pass ahead.”
Floyd put his hand on his forehead and looked into the fire they had built. After a few seconds he said, “I’ll climb up to that shoulder on the south side of this valley.” He gestured to an outcropping of rock up the slope of the southern mountain. “Since the mountains bend a little toward the east, I should be able to see if there are any valleys between here and the great river. That will complete our observations of the mountains to the north. I think Dwight is right; we need to travel up this valley just far enough to establish that this is either a pass through the mountains or a blind canyon. Then we’ll have done our duty and we can head home.”
Al and Floyd made the long climb up to the mountain shoulder to survey the mountains to the north, while the rest set up camp beside the pond at the crest of the ridge. They spent the afternoon bathing in the frigid waters of the pond and relaxing on the grass in the bright sunshine. Floyd and Al returned late in the evening to report that mountains marched in an unbroken chain north to the river.
The thought of going home to Botany Bay brightened everyone’s spirits, and Floyd’s proposal to explore the pass had everyone’s enthusiastic approval. This was a decision that Floyd was going to regret for the rest of his life.