Key Out of Time

us

ainbow tint of cloud. The lazy swells of the ocean held the same soft color, darkened with crimson veins whe

-or were those delicate, fluted ovals shells? Even the waves came in languidly. And the breeze which ruffled his hair, smoothed about his sun-browned, half-bare body,

subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming, too wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchan

the ancient voyage tape. Ross himself had helped to loot a storehouse on an unknown planet for a cargo of such tapes. Once they had been the space-navigation guides for

iphered by the best brains of his time, shared out by lot between already suspicious

instead of true continents. The settlement team had had all the knowledge contained on t

period. But no present island string they had visited approximated those on the maps they had seen, and so far they had not found any trace t

s own flesh to break the mental control they had asserted. Then the battle had gone to him. But from it he had brought another scar-the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, fighter, rebel, outlaw by the conventions of

elax, to drop into the soft, lulling swing of this world in which they had found no fault, no danger, no irritant. Yet, onc

ching glitter-fire in the sun. Two hands freed a chin curved yet firmly set, a mouth made more for laughter than sternne

her mask into its pocket on top of the gill-pack. Below his rocky perch she came to a hal

e in? The wa

" Some of his impatience came out in

's been gone so long we'll probably never find any traces. Why don't yo

have only one peep-probe. Once it's set we can't tear it down easily for trans

s far as we've explored ... nothing. Come yourself next tim

re-the dolphin pair, mammals whose ancestors had chosen the sea, whistled back in such close counterfeit of the girl's signal that they could be an echo of her call. Years earlier their species' intelligence had surprised, almo

ad the frog-man equipment made him still freer in the sea. And now the gill-pack which separated the needed oxygen from the water made even that lighter burden of tanks obsolete. But there remained de

the hours when he buckled on gill-pack and took to the sea with those two ten-foot, black-and-sil

efore being summarily recruited into the Project, Ross had been a loner-living on the ragged edges of the law, an indigestible bit for the civilization which had become too ordered and "adjusted" to absorb his

o the past to be trained anew for travel to the stars. First there had been Ross Murdock, criminal. Then there had been Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe, Tim

oughts, truly aware of the feeling which worked

ce more she whistled to the dolphins, waved a casual farewell with one hand, and hea

t the old taped map suggested that this was approximatel

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

elict spaceship. Travis Fox-the Apache archaeologist-had he ever reached Topaz? Or would he and his team wander forever between worlds? Did they set d

ct 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 civi

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 short

ough 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

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

stion 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

ge, all the labors incidental to the establishing of this base-they had shown energy and enthusiasm. It was only during the last couple of weeks that the languor which appeared part of the atmosphere here had crept up on them, so that now they were content to live at a

ra's still damp head was bowed until those black locks, now sleeked to her round skull, almost touched the man's close-cropped brown

modern point to match the site on the ta

. He moved jerkily, not with the fluid grace of those old days when he had faced the vast distan

stic, to fit over the first. The capes marked on the much larger body of land did slip over the modern islands with a surpris

rara mused alo

world-wide cataclysm here to change the contours of the land masses so much. We may have to wait on a return space flight to bri

nt enough." The contrariness which spiked his tongue whenever Karara was present made him say that without thinking. Then the twitch of

ping us to check. This whole area's too big. And you know that it is certain that whatever might be down there would be hidden with sea growths. Suppose ten of us start out in a semi-circle

n her fingers, "PaKeeKee, Vaeoha, Hori, Liliha, Taema, Ui, Hono'ura-they are the best in the water. Me ... you, Gordon, Ross. That makes ten with keen eyes to look, and always there are Tino-rau and Tau

to be sitting in here going over maps, reports, reworking over and over their scant leads. Ashe ha

s dropped down on the bu

and over since they had landed on a Hawaika which diverged so greatly from the maps; the other

, they could tamper with the weather, with the balance of the planet's crust? We don't know the extent of their powers, how

ach, pillowed his head on his arms-"we

she's lips. "That's the

is

ne of those hand weapons

and then saw the point. "You

lain to read in

etup, this hunt for wh

ape lottery, remember. It's a seesaw between us-we advance here, they there. We have to keep up the rac

without answers such as the Baldies would know. But I will admit that I w

you know, I rather like the idea of fishing off Karara's beck

expressionless as he got up t