Key Out of Time | Page 3

as perilous as any they had known. Yet this
time they had to depend upon Karara and the dolphins.
"Tomorrow"--Ross was still not sorting out his thoughts, truly aware of
the feeling which worked upon him as a thorn in the finger--"I will
come."
"Good!" If she recognized his hostility for what it was, that did not
bother her. Once more she whistled to the dolphins, waved a casual
farewell with one hand, and headed up the beach toward the base camp.
Ross chose a more rugged path over the cliff.
Suppose they did not find what they sought near here? Yet the old
taped map suggested that this was approximately the site starred upon it.
Marking a city? A star port?
Ashe had volunteered for Hawaika, demanded this job after the
disastrous Topaz affair when the team of Apache volunteers had been
sent out too soon to counter what might have been a Red sneak
settlement. Ross was still unhappy over the ensuing months when only
Major Kelgarries and maybe, in a lesser part, Ross had kept Gordon
Ashe in the Project at all. That Topaz had been a failure was accepted
when the settlement ship did not return. And that had added to Ashe's
sense of guilt for having recruited and partially trained the lost team.

Among those dispatched over Ashe's vehement protests had been
Travis Fox who had shared with Ashe and Ross the first galactic flight
in an age-old derelict spaceship. Travis Fox--the Apache
archaeologist--had he ever reached Topaz? Or would he and his team
wander forever between worlds? Did they set down on a planet where
some inimical form of native life or a Red settlement had awaited them?
The very uncertainty of their fate continued to ride Ashe.
So he insisted on coming out with the second settlement team, the
volunteers of Samoan and Hawaiian descent, to carry on a yet more
exciting and hazardous exploration. Just as the Project had probed into
the past of Terra, so would Ashe and Ross now attempt to discover
what lay in the past of Hawaika, to see this world as it had been at the
height of the galactic civilization, and so to learn what they could about
their fore-runners into space. And the mystery they had dropped into
upon landing added to the necessity for that discovery or discoveries.
Their probe, if fortune favored them, might become a gate through time.
The installation was a vast improvement over these passage points they
had first devised. Technical information had taken a vast leap forward
after Terran engineers and scientists had had access to the tapes of the
stellar empire. Adaptations and shortcuts developed, so that a new
hybrid technology came into use, woven from the knowledge and
experimentation of two civilizations thousands of years apart in time.
If and when he or Ashe--or Karara and her dolphins--discovered the
proper site, the two Agents could set up their own equipment. Both
Ross and Ashe had had enough drill in the process. All they needed
was the brick of discovery; then they could build their wall. But they
must find some remainder of the past, the smallest trace of ancient ruin
upon which to center their peep-probe. And since landing here the long
days had flowed into weeks with no such discovery made.
Ross crossed the ridge of rock which formed a cocks-comb rise on the
island's spine and descended to the village. As they had been trained,
the Polynesian settlers adapted native products to their own heritage of
building and tools. It was necessary that they live off the land, for their
transport ship had had storage space only for a limited number of

supplies and tools. After it took off to return home they would be
wholly on their own for several years. Their ship, a silvery ball, rested
on a rock ledge, its pilot and crew having lingered to learn the results of
Ashe's search. Four days more and they would have to lift for home
even if the Agents still had only negative results to report.
That disappointment was driving Ashe, the way that six months earlier
his outrage and guilt feelings over the Topaz affair had driven him.
Karara's suggestion carried weight the longer Ross thought about it.
With more swimmers hunting, there was just that much increased
chance of turning up some clue. So far the dolphins had not reported
any dangerous native sea life or any perils except the natural ones any
diver always had at his shoulder under the waves.
There were extra gill-packs, and all of the settlers were good swimmers.
An organized hunt ought to shake the Polynesians out of their present
do-it-tomorrow attitude. As long as they had had definite work before
them--the unloading of the ship, the building