Galactic Derelict E-Book

Andre Norton

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A sequel to Time Traders, the Cold War race through time remains Norton's background. Both search for abandonded wrecks of a race that had interstellar travel in Man's infancy. Travis Fox, Apache, joins Ross Murdock and Dr. Gordon Ashe, time agents, in an attempt to transfer an intact alien ship through 20,000 years to the present... mayhem ensues.

Leseprobe

Galactic Derelict

by Andre Norton

First published in 1959

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Galactic Derelict

by

Andre Norton

Chapter 1

Hot—it sure was stacking up to be a hot one today.

He’d better check on the spring in the brakes before the sun really boiled up the country ahead. That was the only water in this whole frying pan of baking rock—or was it?

Travis Fox hitched forward in his saddle. He studied the pinkish yellow of the desert strip between him and that distant line of green juniper against the buff of sagebrush which marked the cuts of the brakes. This was a barren land, forbidding to anyone unused to its harshness.

It was also a land frozen into one color-streaked mold of unchanging rock and earth. In that it was probably now rare upon the rider’s planet. Elsewhere around the world deserts had been flooded with sea water purified of salt. Ordered farms beat ancient sand dunes into dim memories. Mankind was fast breaking free of the whims of weather or climate. Yet here the free desert remained unaltered because the nation within which it lay could afford to leave land undeveloped.

Someday this, too, would be swept away, taking with it the heritage of such as Travis Fox. For five hundred years, or maybe a thousand now—no one could rightly say when the first Apaches had come questing into this territory—they had dominated these canyons and sand wastes, valleys and mesas. His tough, desert-born breed could travel, fight, and live off bleakness no other race dared face without supplies from outside. His ancestors had waged war for almost four centuries across this country. And now the survivors wrested a living from the region with the same determination.

That spring in the brakes … Travis’ brown fingers began to count off seasons in taps on his saddle horn. Nineteen … twenty … This was the twentieth year after the last big dry, and if Chato was right, that meant the water which should be there was due to fail. And the old man had already been correct in his prediction of an unusually arid summer this year.

If Travis rode straight there and found the spring dry, he’d lose most of the day. And time was precious. They had to move the breeding stock to a sure water supply. On the other hand, if he cut back into the Canyon of the Hohokam on a hunch and was wrong—then his brother Whelan would have every right to call him a fool. Whelan stubbornly refused to follow the Old Ones’ knowledge. And in that his brother was himself a fool.

Travis laughed softly. The White-eyes—deliberately he used the old warrior’s term for a traditional enemy, saying it aloud, “Pinda-lick-o-yi”—the White-eyes didn’t know everything. And a few of them were willing to admit it once in a while.

Then he laughed again, this time at himself and his own thoughts. Scratch the rancher—and the Apache was right under the surface of his sun-dried hide. But there was a bitter note in that second laugh. Travis booted his pinto into a lope with more force than was necessary. He didn’t care to follow the trail of those particular thoughts. He’d make for the place of the Hohokam and he’d be Apache for today. Nothing would spoil that as his other dreams had been spoiled.

Whelan thought that if an Apache lived like the White-eyes, and set aside all the old things, then he would prosper like the White-eyes. To Whelan there was nothing good in the past. Even to consider the Old Ones, what they did and why they did it, was a foolish waste of time. Travis bit again on disappointment, to find it as fresh and bad-tasting as it had been a year earlier.

The pinto threaded a way between boulders along a dried stream bed. Odd that a land now so arid could carry so many signs of past water. There were miles of irrigation ditches used by the Old Ones, marking off sun-baked pans of open land which had not known the touch of moisture for centuries. Travis urged his mount up a sharp slope and headed west, feeling the heat bore into his back through the faded shirt fabric.

He doubted if Whelan knew the Canyon of the Hohokam. That was one of the things from the old days, a story preserved by such as Chato. And there were now two kinds of Apache—Chato and Whelan. Chato denied the existence of the White-eyes, living his own life behind a shutter which he dropped between him and the outside world of the whites. And Whelan denied the existence of the Apache, striving to be all white.

Once Travis had seen a third way, that of blending the white man’s learning with Apache lore. He thought he had discovered those who agreed with him. But it had all gone, as quickly as a drop of water poured upon a rock would vanish here. Now he tended to agree with Chato. Knowing that, Chato had freely given him information Whelan did not have, about Whelan’s own range land.

Chato’s father—again Travis counted, fingertip against saddle horn—why, Chato’s father would be a hundred and twenty years old if he were alive today! And his grandfather had been born in the Hohokam’s valley while his family were hiding from the U.S. Cavalry.

Chato had guided Travis to the lost canyon when he was so small he could barely grip a horse’s barrel with his short legs. And he had returned there again and again through the years. The houses of the Hohokam had intrigued him, and the spring there never failed. There were piñons with nuts to be gathered in season, and some stunted fruit trees still yielding a measure of fruit. Once it had been a garden; now it was a hidden oasis.

Travis was working his way into the maze of canyons which held the forgotten trail of the Old Ones when he heard an unfamiliar hum. Instinctively he drew rein, knowing that he was concealed by the shadow of a cliff, and glanced skyward.

“ ’Copter!” he said aloud in sheer surprise. The ageless desert country had claimed him so thoroughly during the past few hours that sighting a modern mode of travel came as a shock.

Could it be Whelan, checking up on him? Travis’ mouth tightened. But when he had left the ranch house at sunup, Bill Redhorse, Chato’s grandson, had been tinkering with the engine of the ranch bus. Anyway, Whelan couldn’t waste fuel on desert coasting. With the big war scare on again, rationing had tightened up and a man kept his ’copter for emergencies, using horses again for daily work.

The war scare … Travis thought about it as he watched the strange machine out of sight. Ever since he could remember there had been snapping and snarling in the news. Little scrimmages bursting out, smoldering, talk and more talk. Then, some months back, something odd had happened in Europe—a big blast set off in the north. Though the Russians had clamped down their tight screen of secrecy, rumor said that some kind of new bomb had gone wrong. All this might be leading up to an out-and-out break between East and West.

The government must believe that. They’d tightened up regulations all along the line and slapped on additional fuel rationing. Tension filled the air and whispers of trouble to come.

Out here it was easy enough to shove all that stuff out of one’s mind. The desert silenced the bickering of men. These cliffs had stood the same before the brown-skinned men of his race had trickled down from the north. They would probably be standing when the White-eyes blasted both white and brown men out of it again.

The sight of the ’copter had triggered memories Travis did not like. He continued to wonder, as the machine disappeared in the direction he himself was following, what its mission was here.

He did not sight it again, so it must not be carrying a local rancher. If the pilot had been hunting strays, he would circle. Prospectors? But there had been no news of a government expedition, and no one else had been permitted to prospect for years.

Travis located the entrance of the hidden canyon and studied the ground as he rode. There was no sign that anyone had passed that way for a long time. He clicked his tongue and the horse quickened pace. They had gone about two miles along that snaking path when Travis brought his mount to a halt.

A puff of breeze tickling his nose had warned him. This was no desert wind laden with heat and grit, for it carried the scent of juniper and pine. The pinto nickered and mouthed its bit—water ahead. But the land before them was not empty of men.

Travis swung out of the saddle, taking his rifle with him. Unless the terrain had altered in the past year, there was a good cover on the lip of the hidden canyon’s entrance. Without being seen, he would be able to survey the camp whose smells of wood smoke, coffee, frying bacon were now reaching him.

The ascent to his chosen spy post was easy. From below the pine scent rose, heavier now, drawn out by the sun’s rays. Small, busy birds twittered about their own concerns. There was a cup of green lying there, around a spring-fed pool which mirrored the hot blue of the sky. Between that water and the vast shallow cave holding the city of the Old Ones, stood the ’copter. A man was tending a cooking fire while another had gone to the pool for water.

Travis did not believe they were ranchers. But they wore sturdy outdoor clothing and moved about the business of camping with assurance. He began to inventory what he could see of their supplies and equipment.

The ’copter was a late model. And in the shade offered by a small stand of trees he could make out bedrolls. But he did not sight any digging tools or other indication that this was a prospecting team. Then the man walked back from the pool, set his filled bucket down by the fire. He dropped cross-legged before a big package and unwrapped its canvas covering. Travis watched him uncover what had to be a portable communicator of advanced design.

The operator was patiently inching up the antenna rod, when Travis heard the pinto nicker. Age-old instinct brought him around, still on his knees, with rifle ready. But he found himself fronting another weapon aimed directly and mercilessly at his middle.

The oddly designed barrel did not waver. Above it gray eyes watched him with a chill detachment worse than any vocal threat. Travis Fox considered himself a worthy descendant of the toughest warriors this stretch of country had ever seen. Yet he knew that neither he nor any of his kind had ever faced a man quite like this one. This man was young, no older than himself. Subtle menace did not altogether fit with his slender body or calm, boyish face.

“Drop it!” The intruder expected no resistance.

Travis obeyed, allowing the rifle to slip from his hands and slide across his leg to the gravel.

“On your feet. Make it snappy. Down there … ” The gentle voice and even tone of the orders oddly increased the menace Travis sensed.

The Apache stood up, turned downslope and walked forward with his hands up. He did not know what he had stumbled on, but that it was important—and dangerous—Travis did not doubt.

The man cooking and the man at the com set both sat back on their heels, calmly surveying Travis as he advanced. To his eyes they were little different from the white ranchers he knew in the district. Yet the cook … ?

Travis studied him in puzzlement, certain that he had seen the man or his likeness before under very different circumstances.

“Where did you flush this one, Ross?” asked the man at the com.

“Lying up on the ridge, getting an eyeful,” Travis’ captor replied.

The cook stood up, wiped his hands on a cloth, and started toward them. Eldest of the three strangers, his skin was deeply tanned, his eyes a startlingly bright blue against that brown. He radiated authority which did not suit his present employment but which marked him, for Travis, as the leader of the party. The Apache guessed his own reception would depend upon this man’s reaction. Only why did some faint twist of memory persist in outlining the cook’s head with a black square?

Since the stranger seemed to be in no hurry to ask questions, Travis met him eye to eye, drawing on his own brand of patience. There was danger in this man, too, the same controlled force his younger companion had revealed when trapping the Apache on the heights.

“Apache.” It was a statement, rather than a question. And it raised Travis’ estimation of the stranger. There were few men nowadays who would or could distinguish Apache from Hopi, Navajo, or Ute in one brief glance.

“Rancher?” That was a question this time and Travis gave it a truthful answer. He sensed that using evasive tactics with this particular White-eye would only lead to his own disadvantage.

“Rider for the Double A.”

The man by the com unit had unrolled a map. He ran a forefinger along a wavy mark and nodded, not at Travis, but to the interrogator.

“Nearest range to the east. But he can’t be hunting strays this far into the desert.”

“Good water.” The other nodded at the pool. “The Old Ones used it.”

Obliquely that was another inquiry. And Travis found himself replying to it.

“The Old Ones knew. Not those only.” With his chin he pointed to the ruins in the great shallow cave. “But the People in turn. Never dry, even in bad years.”

“And this is a bad year.” The stranger rubbed his hand along his jaw, his blue eyes still holding Travis’. “A complication we didn’t foresee. So Double A runs a herd in here in dry years, son?”

Against his will, Travis found himself replying with the exact truth. “Not yet. Few of the riders know of it now. Not many care to listen to the stories of the old men.” He was still puzzling over the teasing memory of seeing this man’s lean face before. That black border about it—a frame! A picture frame! And the picture had hung over Dr. Morgan’s desk at the university.

“But you do … ” There came another of those measuring stares like the one which had stripped away his rancher’s clothing to display the Apache underneath. Now those eyes were trying to sort out the thoughts in his head, thoughts of Dr. Morgan’s study. This man’s picture had hung there, but with a stepped pyramid behind him.

“It is so.” Absently he used another speech pattern as he tried to remember more.

“The problem is, buster”—the man by the com unit stood up, spoke lazily—“just what are we going to do with you now? How about it, Ashe? Does he go in cold storage—maybe up there?” He jerked a thumb at the ruins.

Ashe! Dr. Gordon Ashe! He’d put a name to the stranger at last. And with the name came a reason for the man’s presence there. Ashe was an archaeologist. Only Travis did not have to look at the com unit or at the camp to guess that this was no expedition to hunt ancient relics. He had had firsthand knowledge of those. What were Dr. Ashe and his companions really doing in the Canyon of the Old Ones?

“You can put your hands down, son,” Dr. Ashe said. “And you can make it easy for yourself if you agree to stay here peaceably for a time.”

“For how long?” countered Travis.

“That depends,” Ashe hedged.

“I left my horse up there. He needs water.”

“Bring the horse down, Ross.”

Travis turned his head. The young man holstered his strange-looking weapon and climbed upslope, to reappear shortly leading the pinto. Travis unsaddled his mount and turned the animal loose. He returned to find Ashe awaiting him.

“So not many people know of this place?”

Travis shrugged. “One other man on the Double A—he is very old. His grandfather was born here, long ago when the Apaches were fighting the army. Nobody else is interested any more.”

“Then there was never any digging done in the ruins?”

“A little—once.”

“By whom?”

Travis pushed back his hat. “Me.” His answer was short and hostile.

“Oh?” Ashe produced a package of cigarettes, offered them. Travis took one without thinking.

“You came here for a dig?” he counter-questioned.

“In a manner of speaking.” But when Ashe glanced at the cliff house, Travis thought it was as if he saw something far more interesting behind or beyond those crumbling blocks of sun-dried brick.

“I thought your main interest was pre-Mayan, Dr. Ashe.” Travis squatted on his heels, brought out a smoldering twig from the fire to light his smoke, and was inwardly satisfied to note that he had startled the archaeologist with that observation.

“You know me!” He made a challenge of the words.

Travis shook his head. “I know Doctor Prentiss Morgan.”

“So that’s it! You’re one of his bright boys!”

“No.” That was short, a bitten-off warning not to probe. And the other man must have been sensitive enough to understand at once, for he asked no other question.

“Chow ready, Ashe?” asked the man with the com. Behind him the youngster Ashe called “Ross” came to the fire, reached out for the frying pan. Travis stared at his hand. The flesh was seamed with scars. Once before the Apache had seen healed wounds like those—from a deep and painful burn. He looked away hurriedly as the other apportioned food onto plates, and he got his own lunch from his saddlebags.

They ate in oddly companionable silence. The first tension of their meeting eased from the range rider. His interest in these men, his desire to know more about them and what they were doing here, dampened his annoyance at the way he had been captured. That young Ross was a slick tracker. He had to be experienced to trap Travis so neatly. The Apache longed for a closer look at the other’s weapon. It was not a conventional revolver. Wearing it ready for use said that they expected attack—from whom?

The longer Travis studied the three men he sensed a distinction between Ashe and Ross on one hand and Grant, the com operator on the other. Ashe and Ross were alike in more than their heavy tans, their silent walk, their keen watchfulness. As Travis watched them go through the natural business of eating and policing camp, the surer he was that they had not come to this place to explore cliff ruins. They had to be engaged in some more serious—and perhaps deadly action.

He asked no questions, content to let the others now make the first move. It was the com unit which broke the peace of the small camp. A warning cackle brought its tender on the run. He snapped on earphones and relayed a message.

“Procedure has to be stepped up. They’ll start bringing the stuff in tonight!”

Chapter 2

“Well?” Ross’s glance swept over Travis, settled on Ashe.

“Anybody know you were coming here?” the older man asked the range rider.

“I came out to check the springs. If I don’t return to the ranch within a reasonable time, they’ll hunt me up, yes.” Travis saw no reason to enlarge upon that with two other bits of information. One, that Whelan would not be unduly alarmed if he did not return within twenty-four hours, and the other, that he was supposed to be in the brakes to the south.

“You say that you know Prentiss Morgan—how well?”

“I was in one of his classes at the U—for a while.”

“Your name?”

“Fox. Travis Fox.”

The com operator cut in, again consulting his map. “The Double A belongs to a Fox—”

“My brother. But I work for him, that’s all.”

“Grant”—Ashe turned now to the com man—“mark this top priority and send it to Kelgarries. Ask him to check Fox—all the way.”

“We can ship him out when the first load comes in, chief. They’ll store him at headquarters as long as you want,” Ross offered, as if Travis had ceased to be a person and was merely an annoying problem.

Ashe shook his head. “Look here, Fox, we don’t want to make it hard for you. It’s pure bad luck that you trailed in here today. Frankly, we can’t afford to attract any attention to our activities at present. But if you’ll give me your word not to try and go over the hill, we’ll leave it at that for the present.”

The last thing Travis wanted to do was leave. His curiosity was thoroughly aroused. He had no intention of going unless they removed him bodily. And that, he promised himself silently, would take a lot of doing.

“It’s a deal.”

But Ashe was already on another track. “You say you did some digging over there. What did you uncover?”

“The usual stuff—pottery, a few arrowheads. These mountain ruins are filled with such things.”

“What did you expect, chief?” Ross asked.

“Well, there was a slim chance,” the other returned ambiguously. “This climate preserves. We’ve found baskets, fabrics, fragile things lasting—”

“I’ll take the bones and baskets—in place of some other things.” Ross held his scarred hand against his chest. He rubbed its seamed flesh with the other, as if soothing a wound that still ached. “Better get out the lights if the boys are going to drop in tonight.”

The pinto continued to graze in the center of the meadow while Ross and Ashe paced out two lines and spaced small plastic canisters at intervals. Travis, watching, guessed they were marking a landing site. But it was twice the size needed by a ’copter such as the one now standing beyond. Then Ashe settled with his back against a tree, reading a bulging notebook, while Ross brought out a roll of felt and opened it.

What he uncovered was a set of five stone points, beautifully fashioned, too long to be arrowheads. Travis recognized their distinctive shape by the pattern of their flaked edges! Far better workmanship than the later productions of his own people, yet much older. He had held their like in his hands, admired the artistry of the forgotten weapon maker who had patiently chipped them into being. Folsom points! They were intended to head the throwing spears of men who went up against mammoth, giant bison, cave bear, and Alaskan lion.

“Folsom man here?” He saw Ross glance toward him, Ashe’s attention lift from the notebook.

Ross picked up the last point in that row, held it out to Travis. He took it carefully. The head was perfect, fine. He turned it over between his fingers and then paused—not sure of what he knew, or why.

“Fake.”

Yet was it? He had handled Folsom points and some, in spite of their great age, had been as perfectly preserved as this one. Only—this did not feel right. He could give no better reason for his judgment than that.

“What makes you think so?” Ashe wanted to know.

“That one was certified by Stefferds.” Ross took up the second point from the line. But Travis, instead of being confounded by that certification from the authority on prehistoric American remains, remained sure of his own appraisal.

“Not the right feel to it.”

Ashe nodded to Ross, who picked up the third stone head, offering it in exchange for the one Travis still held. The new point was, to all examination by eye, a copy of the first. Yet, as he ran a forefinger along the fine serrations of the flaked edge, Travis knew that this was the real thing, and he said so.

“Well, well.” Ross studied his store of points. “Something new had been added,” he informed the empty space before him.

“It’s been done before,” Ashe said. “Give him your gun.”

For a moment it seemed as if Ross might refuse. He frowned as he drew the weapon. The Apache, putting down the Folsom point with care, took the weapon and examined it closely. Though it looked much like a revolver, Travis noted enough differences to set it totally apart. He sighted it at a tree trunk and found that when held correctly for firing, the grip was not altogether comfortable. The hand for which it had been fashioned was not quite like his own.

Another difference grew in his mind the longer he held the weapon. He did not like that odd sensation …

Travis laid the gun down beside the flint point, staring at them with astonished eyes. From both of them he had gained a common impression of age—a wide expanse of time separating him from the makers of those two very dissimilar weapons. For the Folsom point that feeling was correct. But how could the gun give him the same answer? He had come to rely on that peculiar unnamed sense of his. Its apparent failure now was disconcerting.

“How old is the gun?” asked Ashe.

“It can’t be—” Travis protested. “I won’t believe that it is as old—or older—than the spearhead!”

“Brother”—Ross regarded him with an odd expression—“you can call ’em!” He reholstered the gun. “So now we have a time guesser, chief.”

“Such a gift is not too uncommon,” Ashe commented absently. “I’ve seen it in operation before.”

“But a gun can’t be that old!” Travis still objected. Ross’s left eyebrow raised in a sardonic arc as he gave a half-smile.

“That’s all you know about it, brother,” he observed. “New recruit?” That was addressed to Ashe. The latter was frowning, but at Ross’s inquiry he smiled with a warmth that for a second or two made Travis uncomfortable. It so patently advertised that those two were a long-established team, shutting him outside.

“Don’t rush things, boy.” Ashe stood up and went over to the com unit. “Any news from the front?”

“Cackle-cackle, yacketty-yak,” snorted the operator. “Soon as I tune out one band interference, we hit another. Someday maybe they’ll make these gadgets so they’ll operate without overloading a guy’s eardrums. No, nothing for us yet.”

Travis wanted to ask questions, a lot of them. But he was also sure that most would receive evasive answers. He tried to fit the gun into the rest of his jigsaw of surmises, hints, and guesses, and found it wouldn’t. But he forgot that when Ashe sat down once more and began to talk archaeologist’s shop. At first Travis only listened, but soon he was being drawn more and more into answering, into giving opinions and once or twice daring to contradict the other. Apache lore, cliff ruins, Folsom man—Ashe’s conversation ranged widely. It was only after Travis had been led to talking freely with the pent-up eagerness of one who has been denied expression for too long, that he understood the other man must have been testing his knowledge.

“Sounds rugged, the way they lived then,” Ross observed at the conclusion of Travis’ story of the use of their present camp site by Apache holdouts in the old days.

“That, from you, is good,” Grant laughed. He snapped on his earphones once more as the com came to life. With one hand he steadied a pad on his knee and copied the message.

Travis studied the shadows on the cliffs. It was close to sundown now, and he was growing impatient. This was like being in a theater waiting for the curtain to go up—or lying in wait for trouble to come pounding around some bend.

Ashe took the scribbled page from Grant, checked it against more scribbles in his notebook. Ross was chewing on a long stem of grass, outwardly relaxed and almost sleepy. Yet Travis suspected that if he were to make a wrong move, Ross would come alert in an instant.

“You know this country must have been popping once,” Ross commented lazily. “That looks like a regular apartment house over there—with maybe a hundred, two hundred people living in it. How did they live, anyway? This is a small valley.”

“There’s another valley to the northwest with irrigation ditches still marked,” Travis replied. “And they hunted—turkey, deer, antelope, even buffalo—if they were lucky.”

“Now if a man had some way to look back into history he could learn a lot—”

“You mean by using Vis-Tex?” Travis asked with careful casualness, and had the satisfaction of seeing the other’s calm crack. Then he laughed, with an edge on his humor. “We Indians don’t wear blankets or feathers in our hair any more, and some of us read and watch TV, and actually go to school. But the Vis-Tex I saw in action wasn’t too successful.” He decided on a guess. “Planning to test a new model here?”

“In a way—yes.”

Travis had not expected a serious answer like that. And it had come from Ashe, plainly to the surprise of Ross. But his assent opened startling possibilities.