Nick lay with his feet higher than his head,
the whole left side of his face smarting. Groggily he levered
himself up on his hands and blinked, then shook his head to banish
the queer not-here feeling. He could hear a whimpering sound from
behind, but at first he was so much occupied with his own aches and
pains that it had no meaning.
He looked around.
The bike lay entangled in broken brush into which it must have
slammed with force. Nick sat up farther. Bike—the jeep! Where was
the jeep? Now the whimpering alerted him to what might be a serious
accident. He had no idea what had happened—memory seemed at fault.
They had just come around the turn in the Cut-Off and then . . .
Nick got shakily to his feet.
There was no road.
He staggered toward the jeep. That was there, yes, slammed
against a tree. A tree that had no business being there at all, for
seemingly it had sprung up right in the middle of what had been a
newly cleared road.
There was no road!
He reached the jeep, supported himself against it. His aching
head still seemed foggy. Fog—mist—cloud—there was something about
that he could faintly remember. But that did not matter now. What
did was the girl behind the wheel of the jeep.
She was supported partly by her seat belt, partly by the wheel
itself. Her eyes were still covered with those sunglasses. With an
effort Nick reached over and jerked them off. She was unconscious,
he decided.
The whimpering came from the Peke huddled against her, licking
at her arm. Lung growled at Nick but only halfheartedly, as he slid
in beside Linda.
As far as Nick could see she had no open wounds, but—broken
bones? His hands were shaking with a tremor he found it hard to
control, as he eased her back in the seat so he could get at the
fastening of the seat belt.
“What—what—” She opened her eyes but, though they
were turned in his direction, they did not seem to focus on
him.
“Hold still!” Nick ordered. “Let me get this
open—”
A few minutes later he sighed with relief. She had no broken
bones. The side of his face, where it had scraped gravel, was raw,
but that was minor. They could have been killed. Looking about him
now, with eyes entirely aware, he wet his lips with the tip of his
tongue.
Killed—if they had been going any faster—slammed up against
these trees. But where—where did the trees come from?
They were huge, giants, and the underbrush beneath them was thin
as if their mighty roofing overhead of leaves and branches kept any
weaker growth from developing. The jeep was trapped between the one
against which its nose was stuck, and a log of a fallen giant
behind it, boxed in neatly so there was no hope of getting it out.
Impossible, but that was the way it was.
Nick moved slowly around the machine, ran his hands across the
top of the log, dislodging moss and fallen leaves. It was very
apparent that this had been here, half sunk in the mucky soil, for
a long, long time. But—there was the jeep—and—where was the
road?
“Please—” Linda had edged around on the seat and was
looking at him, her eyes very wide and frightened.
“Please—where are we—what—happened?” She cuddled Lung
against her. Now and then the small dog whined. He was
shivering.
“I don’t know,” Nick answered slowly. Only what he
suspected was so frightening he did not want to face the fact
that it might be the truth.
“But—there’s no road.” Linda turned her head
from side to side, searching. “We were just driving along and
then—Where is this?” Her voice slid up the scale;
Nick judged she was close to panic.
He was not far from that himself. But they had to hold on, to
lose control would do no good. He hurried back to climb into the
jeep.
“You—you know—!” She did have her voice under
control now, was watching him narrowly. “What has happened?
If you know—tell me!”
But he still hated to face what must be the truth. “I
don’t know,” he said carefully. “It is only a
guess.” He hesitated. Those trees there were certainly good
evidence. What more did he want? They were out of the Cut-Off, in
such woods as had not been seen in this part of the country for two
hundred years or more when the first settlers had attacked the
great forests to carve out mastery of the land.
“Did your friends know anything about the history of the
Cut-Off?” he began. How could you explain to anyone what
might have happened, something so bizarre, so improbable?
“No.” Linda cradled Lung in her arms, murmuring
soothingly to him now and again. Her one-word reply was
uncompromising. It was apparent she wanted the truth, or what he
thought might be the truth.
“Well, the Cut-Off has a history of disappearances—running back as long as records were kept around here—”
(“Around here.” But surely this “here”
was not the “here” of a short time ago.)
“The last time it happened was in 1955, two men going out
to the lake to fish. But before that there were others.
That’s why the Cut-Off wasn’t in use. Not until they
built the new freeway and closed off the other road in.”
“Disappearances to where?” Linda demanded
sharply.
“That’s it, nobody knows—knew. There are places . . . ” Nick paused again. Would she believe him? She had to
believe the evidence now before them at least. “Places where
people do disappear—like the Bermuda Triangle—a whole flight of
Navy planes went there, and the rescue ship after them. There have
been planes and ships and people—and on land, in other places, army
regiments even.” Though he did not want to remember, all the
stories he had read flooded back into his mind. “They just
flew, or rode, or walked into—nowhere.”
Linda sat very still. She no longer watched him. Her gaze was
straight ahead at that giant tree trunk against which the jeep was
nosed.
“What—what is the theory about it then?” Her voice
quivered a little. Nick could sense her effort at control.
“One is that there is a magnetic field like a
whirlpool—that anything caught in it may be thrown into another
space-time continuum.”
“And—that may be what has happened to us? How do we get
back?”
There was no answer to that. There never had been through all
the centuries of such disappearances. Nick stared at the tree too
now, fiercely willing it to vanish, for them to be back in the
Cut-Off.
“There is no return.” Linda made that a flat
statement rather than a question. “We—we’re trapped in
this—this place!”
“No!” Nick exploded. “We’re not sure of
that! Anyway we can try—we can always try—but”—he regarded
the dim, shadowed places under the trees
uneasily—“let’s get out of here. On to the
lake—”
He had a feeling that they were under observation, not that he
could detect any movement, any sign they were not alone. To get out
of this place of trees, where a man was dwarfed and lost, into the
open was a desire goading him to action.
“We can’t take the jeep.” Linda stated the
obvious.
“No, but I can the bike—push it now—and we can ride if the
road gets better and you are willing to hold on.”
“Yes! Yes, let’s get out of here!” Her reply
was feverishly eager.
She opened her shoulder bag, took out a leash she hooked to
Lung’s collar. “My bag—it’s small.” She
reached into the back of the jeep, pulled out a canvas duffel bag.
Then she laughed, though that sound was a little ragged. “All
that stuff back there for the party tonight Jane—Jane may have to
wait some for it.”
Nick’s foreboding lightened. Linda was taking it well. Did
she really believe him? Did he believe himself? But his first panic
had subsided. And action drew him. Maybe if they could just find
the lake, a familiar landmark—Don’t think of any future
beyond the next few minutes, he warned himself.
Mentally he inventoried the contents of his saddlebags—first-aid
kit, sweater, swimming trunks, matches, a hunting knife,
flashlight, chocolate bars, water canteen, two shirts, tool kit for
the bike—transistor radio—Radio!
He was out of the jeep, hurrying back to the bike. Radio—if they
could hear anything on that—Nick fumbled with the buckles of the
saddlebag as Linda joined him.
“What is it?”
“My radio—if we can pick up anything—”
“Oh, hurry!” She shifted from one foot to the other
impatiently as he untangled the gear and brought out the small
transistor.
Three stations, he flipped the switch from one to the next. Only
silence. Then—A gabble of sound, not static, more like speech. But
not in any language he had picked up before.
“There! Turn it up!” Linda urged.
“You’ve got something!”
“But what?” Nick asked.
“But what” was right. This sounded like gasps,
clicks, and even a gabbled singing, but it made no sense. He
thumbed the set off.
“Whatever that was, it was no broadcast of ours,” he
said bleakly.
“But somebody was broadcasting,” Linda pointed out.
“Which means we aren’t alone here. Maybe if we can find
people they will be able to help us.”
Nick was not too sure. The language, if language that had been,
was far removed from anything he had ever heard in his life and he
had monitored a lot of foreign broadcasts with Gary Langford when
Gary had his ham outfit. But Linda was right about getting out of
here. He had the small compass and the lake was northeast—or it
should be—if there was still any lake at all.
They could not keep to a straight line, but the lack of heavy
underbrush was a help. And with the compass to steer by they wove a
path among the towering trees, rounding boles that the two of them
together could not have hoped to span with out-stretched arms.
The bike seemed uninjured, but Nick had to wheel it along,
walking beside it. There was no opening through which they dared
ride. Linda carried her duffel bag slung over her shoulder by its
cords and had let Lung down to patter along over the thick layers
of countless years of fallen leaves. The little dog seemed to have
lost his fear. But, while he sniffed at a moldering branch now and
then, or snuffed into a pile of last season’s leaves, he made
no effort to pull to the end of his leash, staying close to
Linda.
Though the trees about them were awe inspiring, there were
sounds in this forest familiar enough to allay some of their
distrust. For there were not only birds to be heard and sometimes
seen, but those winged inhabitants appeared unusually fearless as
well as curious about the intruders.
Intruders Nick felt they were. This was a place that did not
know man and had no idea of his species’ destructiveness. The
barked giants about them had never felt the bite of axe and stood
in arrogant pride. Had it not been for that gabble from the
transistor Nick would have suspicions that the phenomenon which
haunted the Cut-Off had brought them to a space where his kind had
never existed at all.
“It—it is so quiet.” Linda moved closer, laid one
hand on the bike near his. “Except for the birds. I never saw
woods like this before. The trees—they are huge! When I was little
my aunt had an old copy of Swiss Family Robinson—there was
a tree in it that they turned into a house. You could do that with
most of these.”
Nick had one eye on the compass. They had had to make a good
many detours, but they were still heading for the lake. Only here
among all these trees it was hard to judge distance. Surely they
couldn’t be too far away from it now. But—what if there was
no lake here?
He wanted that lake, he had to see it. The body of
water was a promise of security somehow—without the lake they would
be lost entirely. Nick hardly heard Linda’s comment, he was
so intent on willing the lake to be waiting for them, hoping that
the stand of trees would soon thin so they could glimpse it.
“Nick!” Linda’s hand flew from the bike to his
wrist, tightened about it in a convulsive grip.
But he had seen it too.
They closed ranks, the bike between them. Lung lunged to the
full length of his leash, set up a frenzied barking, not unlike
that with which he had challenged Rufus. It was plain he resented what he saw.
Where it had come from was a minor mystery. For it was such a
shimmering, dazzling white in this greenish gloom that it caught
and held the eye almost at once. Yet they were so suddenly aware of
it that it might have emerged from the tree against whose bark it
was now framed.
“I—don’t—believe—” Linda’s voice trailed
away. She saw it, Nick saw it. And so did Lung, still dancing on
two hind feet at the farthest reach of his leash, jerking the strap
in her hands, waving his forepaws in the air with his furious
desire to be at this new enemy.
“What do you see?” Nick’s wrist was still in
her tight grasp. They had both taken knocks back there in their
rough transition into this alien world. Perhaps this was a
collective hallucination. Only—would the dog share it?
“A unicorn,” she answered.
“Don’t—don’t you see it, too?”
The creature was about the size of a large pony, not a horse,
Nick thought. Its coat was that dazzling white, almost a source of
light. The mane and tail were also white. But that single spiraled
horn set just between and above the creature’s wide dark eyes
was golden. And it, too, glowed. This was certainly the fabled
unicorn, as Nick had seen it in reproductions of medieval
paintings.
It stared back at them and then tossed its head, so that the
forehead fringe of mane about the base of the incredible horn
lifted. Then the creature pawed the earth with one slender hoof,
lowered its head, and snorted at Lung as if replying to the
Peke’s shrill challenge. To all appearances, Nick thought it
real enough.
Once more it tossed its head and then turned and paced away
among the tree trunks, its white glow speedily lost.
“But unicorns—they are not—they never were alive,”
Linda said in a voice hardly above a whisper.
Something he had read came to Nick’s mind then. All the
old legends of dragons and griffins, the People of the Hills, the
very core of folklore and myth—men had believed in them for a long
time, had sworn oaths in court that they had seen such, had had
converse with the more humanlike figures of an unnatural, magical
world. Could it have been that, just as he, Linda and Lung had been
caught up in some force that had deposited them here, some of the
creatures native to this world had been dropped into theirs? But a
unicorn! Now that it was gone Nick had already begun to doubt what
he had seen, to try to rationalize it.
“Wait here!” he ordered Linda and started for the
place where the animal had stood. There he went down on one knee to
examine the thick leaf mold. Then he wished he had not, for it was
cut and patterned by tracks. Something had been there, unicorn or
not.
Nick hurried back to Linda and the bike. They must get out of
these woods as quickly as they could. For that sensation, which had
come upon him earlier was back full force. They were under
observation—by the unicorn? It did not matter. Nick was aware they
were invaders in this place. And sometimes intruders meet with
active retaliation.
“I did see a unicorn,” Linda was repeating,
apparently to herself. “It was right there, under that tree.
I have to believe that I saw it—believe that or—I just have to
believe it!” She had picked up Lung, holding him high on her
breast so his silken head was right under her chin. The Peke had
stopped barking and was licking her face, or as much of it as his
tongue could reach.
“Let’s get going.” Nick’s tone was
rough. They must get away—out into the open, if they could find any
open.
The compass did bring them out a few minutes later into a space
where the giant trees ceased and brush took their places. They
pushed through the thinnest section of this and came to an expanse
of tall grass, which in turn gave way to reeds bordering the
lake—or a lake.
Along the shoreline, they could see no cabins, though by now
Nick had ceased to hope to find those, or any sign that their own
species had ever been there. Wading through the shallows were
several herons that paid no attention to the newcomers. And in a
rough pasture farther to the south animals were grazing. They were
so light of hide Nick wondered if they had chanced upon a small
herd of unicorns. Then one raised its head and showed branched
antlers. But who had ever heard of silver-gray deer?
“There’re no cabins—” Linda loosed her hold on
the bike, let her duffel bag thump to the ground. “Nick, what
are we going to do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He was no
superman, no use in her turning to him as if he could get them out
of this by flexing his muscles or something like that. “If
you want to know the truth, I’m hungry. We might as well
eat.”
By the angle of the sun it must be close to noon. And he
was hungry. It appeared that even a jump across time (if
that was what had really happened to them) was not enough to subdue
one’s appetite.
“Hungry!” Linda repeated. Then she laughed, even if
it was a small and difficult sound. “Why, I guess I am,
too.”
The grazing deer paid no attention to them. And, here in the
open, nothing could sneak up on them without attracting attention.
Linda moved on to a place where the grass did not appear as
tall.
“Here’s a good place.” She beckoned as if this
were an ordinary picnic. But Nick thought now about food. Not of
how hungry he was, but of the meagerness of the rations they
carried.
He had been depending on the store of canned goods at the cabin,
and all else he had was what he had picked up at the store. That
would not last long. Then they would have to live off the country.
But what if they could not?
Even in the countryside of his own world he did not know much
about what could be eaten in the way of berries (if any could be
found) or other growing things, except those from gardens. There
were survival books supposed to explain just how you could live off
the wild, but such knowledge had never appealed to him and he had
never read one. No, they would have to go light on their
provisions. Back in the jeep—if they could find their way back—were
the two melons and all those cases of drinks. But that was not
much.
He squatted down on his heels, facing Linda who had settled
cross-legged in the grass.
“Listen—about food—I don’t have much. You have
anything in that?” He pointed to her bag.
“You mean—” He could see from the expression on her
face that she understood. Then she went on, steadily enough.
“You mean we might not be able to find anything to eat
here?”
“Well, there might be fish in the lake. And there are
blackberries—at least there were blackberries near our cabin. But
this isn’t our lake. We had better go easy with what we have
until we know the score.”
Linda pulled at the knotted drawstring of the duffel bag.
“I don’t have much, but I was taking two boxes of
peanut brittle up to Jane, and a tin of English toffee—Jane loves
peanut brittle and Ron has this thing about toffee—the rum-flavored
kind. There’re the melons and all that Coke and stuff back in
the jeep. But it’s heavy to carry. I don’t think we can
pack it along with us. Nick, where will we go? There’re no
houses here, and beyond there”—she pointed to the far side of
the lake—“it looks like more woods.”
She was right. There was a dark rise of trees over there,
matching that from which they had just emerged. In fact, as far as
Nick could see, though the lake curved farther south and that end
of it was now hidden, the water was ringed by forest. Suppose they
did work through that, and they had no idea how many miles of it
there were, what lay beyond? He had a hazy idea, from a novel he
had read concerning the early American wilderness, that such growth
could extend across a state with very few breaks.
“I don’t know,” he said frankly again.
“But I’d rather be here in the open than under the
trees. We can move down to the end of the lake—there’s an
outlet—the Deep Run—there, if this is like our lake. Maybe we could
work out of the woods using that for a guide.” He was rather
proud of himself for remembering that.
“If this lake is like the one you know,”
she commented. “Does it look like it, really,
Nick?”
He stood up, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun,
which was hot now, but not as hot, he thought, as it might
have been in their world. Slowly he studied the part of the lake
visible from here. It was hard to equate this untouched, wild land
with that where cabins and small docks were visible. But he was
almost certain the contours of the shoreline were not too
dissimilar from those he had known since he was small. And he said
so.
“Do you suppose,” Linda asked, “that we have
gone back in time—that we’re in the country that existed long
before our people came into it? That—that we may meet
Indians?” She shot another wary glance at the woods.
“That would not explain the unicorn. Nor gray deer—”
Nick indicated the peacefully grazing herd. “We could be in
an alternate world.” He was unrolling the package of
food from the store, but now his hands were still as he thought of
what he was saying. Alternate worlds, time travel—such things did
not exist! They could not—not for Nick Shaw a very ordinary person
who only wanted a quiet weekend for himself. He was Nick
Shaw, he was alive, yet this was happening! Unless, of
course, he had really knocked himself out back there with the bike
and maybe now was in a hospital with a vivid dream—
“Alternate world? But unicorns—they never existed at all.
They are only fairy tales.” Linda shook her head.
“Nick!” For the second time her voice soared up and she
caught at him. “Nick, look there! Isn’t that
smoke?”
She pointed south beyond the deer and he followed her finger
with his gaze. She was right! From somewhere in the brush beyond
the meadowland a beacon of smoke was rising. And smoke could mean
only one thing—people! Ted and Ben—trapped here all those years!
Nick’s thought flew first to them. But company—company to
help them, to let them know they were not alone in a nightmare!
Hastily he repacked the food, put the bag back on the bike. He
wished they dared ride, but it would be folly to try. And they had
better be careful about getting around those deer. The animals
looked harmless enough but that was not saying they would remain so
if alarmed.
They wanted to run, but the grass tangled and pulled at their
feet and the bike wheels, so that they floundered along at little
better than a walking pace. Also, at Nick’s insistence, they
made a detour around the edge of the open space where the deer
were, putting a screen of brush between them and the animals. And
they froze once as the stag that was the leader flung up its head
and stared straight at the bush behind which they happened to
be.
Nick felt very naked and exposed then. He had heard that if you
were absolutely still animals would lose interest in you and he
scowled a warning at Linda. She nodded, holding her hand about
Lung’s muzzle. But the Peke appeared to understand and did
not fight for his freedom and a chance to bark.
The stag watched them, or at least Nick thought they were its
quarry. But after a time when the two dared hardly draw a full
breath, the stag grunted and trotted toward the lake. When it was
what seemed to Nick a safe distance away they hurried on.
But this closer sight of the deer presented another puzzle.
Surely these gray animals were larger than those of Nick’s
own world, differing in size as they did in color. He wished he
knew more, could get enough hints to answer some of his questions,
if those might be answered at all.
They moved on, around the curve in the lake. Yes, there was the
opening to Deep Run. So this place did follow the general pattern
of their own world. And the smoke rose near the mouth of the Run.
Nick felt some return of satisfaction at being proved right on one
point of geography. But his triumph was speedily dashed.
“Stand where you are, chums!”
Nick lay with his feet higher than his head,
the whole left side of his face smarting. Groggily he levered
himself up on his hands and blinked, then shook his head to banish
the queer not-here feeling. He could hear a whimpering sound from
behind, but at first he was so much occupied with his own aches and
pains that it had no meaning.
He looked around.
The bike lay entangled in broken brush into which it must have
slammed with force. Nick sat up farther. Bike—the jeep! Where was
the jeep? Now the whimpering alerted him to what might be a serious
accident. He had no idea what had happened—memory seemed at fault.
They had just come around the turn in the Cut-Off and then . . .
Nick got shakily to his feet.
There was no road.
He staggered toward the jeep. That was there, yes, slammed
against a tree. A tree that had no business being there at all, for
seemingly it had sprung up right in the middle of what had been a
newly cleared road.
There was no road!
He reached the jeep, supported himself against it. His aching
head still seemed foggy. Fog—mist—cloud—there was something about
that he could faintly remember. But that did not matter now. What
did was the girl behind the wheel of the jeep.
She was supported partly by her seat belt, partly by the wheel
itself. Her eyes were still covered with those sunglasses. With an
effort Nick reached over and jerked them off. She was unconscious,
he decided.
The whimpering came from the Peke huddled against her, licking
at her arm. Lung growled at Nick but only halfheartedly, as he slid
in beside Linda.
As far as Nick could see she had no open wounds, but—broken
bones? His hands were shaking with a tremor he found it hard to
control, as he eased her back in the seat so he could get at the
fastening of the seat belt.
“What—what—” She opened her eyes but, though they
were turned in his direction, they did not seem to focus on
him.
“Hold still!” Nick ordered. “Let me get this
open—”
A few minutes later he sighed with relief. She had no broken
bones. The side of his face, where it had scraped gravel, was raw,
but that was minor. They could have been killed. Looking about him
now, with eyes entirely aware, he wet his lips with the tip of his
tongue.
Killed—if they had been going any faster—slammed up against
these trees. But where—where did the trees come from?
They were huge, giants, and the underbrush beneath them was thin
as if their mighty roofing overhead of leaves and branches kept any
weaker growth from developing. The jeep was trapped between the one
against which its nose was stuck, and a log of a fallen giant
behind it, boxed in neatly so there was no hope of getting it out.
Impossible, but that was the way it was.
Nick moved slowly around the machine, ran his hands across the
top of the log, dislodging moss and fallen leaves. It was very
apparent that this had been here, half sunk in the mucky soil, for
a long, long time. But—there was the jeep—and—where was the
road?
“Please—” Linda had edged around on the seat and was
looking at him, her eyes very wide and frightened.
“Please—where are we—what—happened?” She cuddled Lung
against her. Now and then the small dog whined. He was
shivering.
“I don’t know,” Nick answered slowly. Only what he
suspected was so frightening he did not want to face the fact
that it might be the truth.
“But—there’s no road.” Linda turned her head
from side to side, searching. “We were just driving along and
then—Where is this?” Her voice slid up the scale;
Nick judged she was close to panic.
He was not far from that himself. But they had to hold on, to
lose control would do no good. He hurried back to climb into the
jeep.
“You—you know—!” She did have her voice under
control now, was watching him narrowly. “What has happened?
If you know—tell me!”
But he still hated to face what must be the truth. “I
don’t know,” he said carefully. “It is only a
guess.” He hesitated. Those trees there were certainly good
evidence. What more did he want? They were out of the Cut-Off, in
such woods as had not been seen in this part of the country for two
hundred years or more when the first settlers had attacked the
great forests to carve out mastery of the land.
“Did your friends know anything about the history of the
Cut-Off?” he began. How could you explain to anyone what
might have happened, something so bizarre, so improbable?
“No.” Linda cradled Lung in her arms, murmuring
soothingly to him now and again. Her one-word reply was
uncompromising. It was apparent she wanted the truth, or what he
thought might be the truth.
“Well, the Cut-Off has a history of disappearances—running back as long as records were kept around here—”
(“Around here.” But surely this “here”
was not the “here” of a short time ago.)
“The last time it happened was in 1955, two men going out
to the lake to fish. But before that there were others.
That’s why the Cut-Off wasn’t in use. Not until they
built the new freeway and closed off the other road in.”
“Disappearances to where?” Linda demanded
sharply.
“That’s it, nobody knows—knew. There are places . . . ” Nick paused again. Would she believe him? She had to
believe the evidence now before them at least. “Places where
people do disappear—like the Bermuda Triangle—a whole flight of
Navy planes went there, and the rescue ship after them. There have
been planes and ships and people—and on land, in other places, army
regiments even.” Though he did not want to remember, all the
stories he had read flooded back into his mind. “They just
flew, or rode, or walked into—nowhere.”
Linda sat very still. She no longer watched him. Her gaze was
straight ahead at that giant tree trunk against which the jeep was
nosed.
“What—what is the theory about it then?” Her voice
quivered a little. Nick could sense her effort at control.
“One is that there is a magnetic field like a
whirlpool—that anything caught in it may be thrown into another
space-time continuum.”
“And—that may be what has happened to us? How do we get
back?”
There was no answer to that. There never had been through all
the centuries of such disappearances. Nick stared at the tree too
now, fiercely willing it to vanish, for them to be back in the
Cut-Off.
“There is no return.” Linda made that a flat
statement rather than a question. “We—we’re trapped in
this—this place!”
“No!” Nick exploded. “We’re not sure of
that! Anyway we can try—we can always try—but”—he regarded
the dim, shadowed places under the trees
uneasily—“let’s get out of here. On to the
lake—”
He had a feeling that they were under observation, not that he
could detect any movement, any sign they were not alone. To get out
of this place of trees, where a man was dwarfed and lost, into the
open was a desire goading him to action.
“We can’t take the jeep.” Linda stated the
obvious.
“No, but I can the bike—push it now—and we can ride if the
road gets better and you are willing to hold on.”
“Yes! Yes, let’s get out of here!” Her reply
was feverishly eager.
She opened her shoulder bag, took out a leash she hooked to
Lung’s collar. “My bag—it’s small.” She
reached into the back of the jeep, pulled out a canvas duffel bag.
Then she laughed, though that sound was a little ragged. “All
that stuff back there for the party tonight Jane—Jane may have to
wait some for it.”
Nick’s foreboding lightened. Linda was taking it well. Did
she really believe him? Did he believe himself? But his first panic
had subsided. And action drew him. Maybe if they could just find
the lake, a familiar landmark—Don’t think of any future
beyond the next few minutes, he warned himself.
Mentally he inventoried the contents of his saddlebags—first-aid
kit, sweater, swimming trunks, matches, a hunting knife,
flashlight, chocolate bars, water canteen, two shirts, tool kit for
the bike—transistor radio—Radio!
He was out of the jeep, hurrying back to the bike. Radio—if they
could hear anything on that—Nick fumbled with the buckles of the
saddlebag as Linda joined him.
“What is it?”
“My radio—if we can pick up anything—”
“Oh, hurry!” She shifted from one foot to the other
impatiently as he untangled the gear and brought out the small
transistor.
Three stations, he flipped the switch from one to the next. Only
silence. Then—A gabble of sound, not static, more like speech. But
not in any language he had picked up before.
“There! Turn it up!” Linda urged.
“You’ve got something!”
“But what?” Nick asked.
“But what” was right. This sounded like gasps,
clicks, and even a gabbled singing, but it made no sense. He
thumbed the set off.
“Whatever that was, it was no broadcast of ours,” he
said bleakly.
“But somebody was broadcasting,” Linda pointed out.
“Which means we aren’t alone here. Maybe if we can find
people they will be able to help us.”
Nick was not too sure. The language, if language that had been,
was far removed from anything he had ever heard in his life and he
had monitored a lot of foreign broadcasts with Gary Langford when
Gary had his ham outfit. But Linda was right about getting out of
here. He had the small compass and the lake was northeast—or it
should be—if there was still any lake at all.
They could not keep to a straight line, but the lack of heavy
underbrush was a help. And with the compass to steer by they wove a
path among the towering trees, rounding boles that the two of them
together could not have hoped to span with out-stretched arms.
The bike seemed uninjured, but Nick had to wheel it along,
walking beside it. There was no opening through which they dared
ride. Linda carried her duffel bag slung over her shoulder by its
cords and had let Lung down to patter along over the thick layers
of countless years of fallen leaves. The little dog seemed to have
lost his fear. But, while he sniffed at a moldering branch now and
then, or snuffed into a pile of last season’s leaves, he made
no effort to pull to the end of his leash, staying close to
Linda.
Though the trees about them were awe inspiring, there were
sounds in this forest familiar enough to allay some of their
distrust. For there were not only birds to be heard and sometimes
seen, but those winged inhabitants appeared unusually fearless as
well as curious about the intruders.
Intruders Nick felt they were. This was a place that did not
know man and had no idea of his species’ destructiveness. The
barked giants about them had never felt the bite of axe and stood
in arrogant pride. Had it not been for that gabble from the
transistor Nick would have suspicions that the phenomenon which
haunted the Cut-Off had brought them to a space where his kind had
never existed at all.
“It—it is so quiet.” Linda moved closer, laid one
hand on the bike near his. “Except for the birds. I never saw
woods like this before. The trees—they are huge! When I was little
my aunt had an old copy of Swiss Family Robinson—there was
a tree in it that they turned into a house. You could do that with
most of these.”
Nick had one eye on the compass. They had had to make a good
many detours, but they were still heading for the lake. Only here
among all these trees it was hard to judge distance. Surely they
couldn’t be too far away from it now. But—what if there was
no lake here?
He wanted that lake, he had to see it. The body of
water was a promise of security somehow—without the lake they would
be lost entirely. Nick hardly heard Linda’s comment, he was
so intent on willing the lake to be waiting for them, hoping that
the stand of trees would soon thin so they could glimpse it.
“Nick!” Linda’s hand flew from the bike to his
wrist, tightened about it in a convulsive grip.
But he had seen it too.
They closed ranks, the bike between them. Lung lunged to the
full length of his leash, set up a frenzied barking, not unlike
that with which he had challenged Rufus. It was plain he resented what he saw.
Where it had come from was a minor mystery. For it was such a
shimmering, dazzling white in this greenish gloom that it caught
and held the eye almost at once. Yet they were so suddenly aware of
it that it might have emerged from the tree against whose bark it
was now framed.
“I—don’t—believe—” Linda’s voice trailed
away. She saw it, Nick saw it. And so did Lung, still dancing on
two hind feet at the farthest reach of his leash, jerking the strap
in her hands, waving his forepaws in the air with his furious
desire to be at this new enemy.
“What do you see?” Nick’s wrist was still in
her tight grasp. They had both taken knocks back there in their
rough transition into this alien world. Perhaps this was a
collective hallucination. Only—would the dog share it?
“A unicorn,” she answered.
“Don’t—don’t you see it, too?”
The creature was about the size of a large pony, not a horse,
Nick thought. Its coat was that dazzling white, almost a source of
light. The mane and tail were also white. But that single spiraled
horn set just between and above the creature’s wide dark eyes
was golden. And it, too, glowed. This was certainly the fabled
unicorn, as Nick had seen it in reproductions of medieval
paintings.
It stared back at them and then tossed its head, so that the
forehead fringe of mane about the base of the incredible horn
lifted. Then the creature pawed the earth with one slender hoof,
lowered its head, and snorted at Lung as if replying to the
Peke’s shrill challenge. To all appearances, Nick thought it
real enough.
Once more it tossed its head and then turned and paced away
among the tree trunks, its white glow speedily lost.
“But unicorns—they are not—they never were alive,”
Linda said in a voice hardly above a whisper.
Something he had read came to Nick’s mind then. All the
old legends of dragons and griffins, the People of the Hills, the
very core of folklore and myth—men had believed in them for a long
time, had sworn oaths in court that they had seen such, had had
converse with the more humanlike figures of an unnatural, magical
world. Could it have been that, just as he, Linda and Lung had been
caught up in some force that had deposited them here, some of the
creatures native to this world had been dropped into theirs? But a
unicorn! Now that it was gone Nick had already begun to doubt what
he had seen, to try to rationalize it.
“Wait here!” he ordered Linda and started for the
place where the animal had stood. There he went down on one knee to
examine the thick leaf mold. Then he wished he had not, for it was
cut and patterned by tracks. Something had been there, unicorn or
not.
Nick hurried back to Linda and the bike. They must get out of
these woods as quickly as they could. For that sensation, which had
come upon him earlier was back full force. They were under
observation—by the unicorn? It did not matter. Nick was aware they
were invaders in this place. And sometimes intruders meet with
active retaliation.
“I did see a unicorn,” Linda was repeating,
apparently to herself. “It was right there, under that tree.
I have to believe that I saw it—believe that or—I just have to
believe it!” She had picked up Lung, holding him high on her
breast so his silken head was right under her chin. The Peke had
stopped barking and was licking her face, or as much of it as his
tongue could reach.
“Let’s get going.” Nick’s tone was
rough. They must get away—out into the open, if they could find any
open.
The compass did bring them out a few minutes later into a space
where the giant trees ceased and brush took their places. They
pushed through the thinnest section of this and came to an expanse
of tall grass, which in turn gave way to reeds bordering the
lake—or a lake.
Along the shoreline, they could see no cabins, though by now
Nick had ceased to hope to find those, or any sign that their own
species had ever been there. Wading through the shallows were
several herons that paid no attention to the newcomers. And in a
rough pasture farther to the south animals were grazing. They were
so light of hide Nick wondered if they had chanced upon a small
herd of unicorns. Then one raised its head and showed branched
antlers. But who had ever heard of silver-gray deer?
“There’re no cabins—” Linda loosed her hold on
the bike, let her duffel bag thump to the ground. “Nick, what
are we going to do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He was no
superman, no use in her turning to him as if he could get them out
of this by flexing his muscles or something like that. “If
you want to know the truth, I’m hungry. We might as well
eat.”
By the angle of the sun it must be close to noon. And he
was hungry. It appeared that even a jump across time (if
that was what had really happened to them) was not enough to subdue
one’s appetite.
“Hungry!” Linda repeated. Then she laughed, even if
it was a small and difficult sound. “Why, I guess I am,
too.”
The grazing deer paid no attention to them. And, here in the
open, nothing could sneak up on them without attracting attention.
Linda moved on to a place where the grass did not appear as
tall.
“Here’s a good place.” She beckoned as if this
were an ordinary picnic. But Nick thought now about food. Not of
how hungry he was, but of the meagerness of the rations they
carried.
He had been depending on the store of canned goods at the cabin,
and all else he had was what he had picked up at the store. That
would not last long. Then they would have to live off the country.
But what if they could not?
Even in the countryside of his own world he did not know much
about what could be eaten in the way of berries (if any could be
found) or other growing things, except those from gardens. There
were survival books supposed to explain just how you could live off
the wild, but such knowledge had never appealed to him and he had
never read one. No, they would have to go light on their
provisions. Back in the jeep—if they could find their way back—were
the two melons and all those cases of drinks. But that was not
much.
He squatted down on his heels, facing Linda who had settled
cross-legged in the grass.
“Listen—about food—I don’t have much. You have
anything in that?” He pointed to her bag.
“You mean—” He could see from the expression on her
face that she understood. Then she went on, steadily enough.
“You mean we might not be able to find anything to eat
here?”
“Well, there might be fish in the lake. And there are
blackberries—at least there were blackberries near our cabin. But
this isn’t our lake. We had better go easy with what we have
until we know the score.”
Linda pulled at the knotted drawstring of the duffel bag.
“I don’t have much, but I was taking two boxes of
peanut brittle up to Jane, and a tin of English toffee—Jane loves
peanut brittle and Ron has this thing about toffee—the rum-flavored
kind. There’re the melons and all that Coke and stuff back in
the jeep. But it’s heavy to carry. I don’t think we can
pack it along with us. Nick, where will we go? There’re no
houses here, and beyond there”—she pointed to the far side of
the lake—“it looks like more woods.”
She was right. There was a dark rise of trees over there,
matching that from which they had just emerged. In fact, as far as
Nick could see, though the lake curved farther south and that end
of it was now hidden, the water was ringed by forest. Suppose they
did work through that, and they had no idea how many miles of it
there were, what lay beyond? He had a hazy idea, from a novel he
had read concerning the early American wilderness, that such growth
could extend across a state with very few breaks.
“I don’t know,” he said frankly again.
“But I’d rather be here in the open than under the
trees. We can move down to the end of the lake—there’s an
outlet—the Deep Run—there, if this is like our lake. Maybe we could
work out of the woods using that for a guide.” He was rather
proud of himself for remembering that.
“If this lake is like the one you know,”
she commented. “Does it look like it, really,
Nick?”
He stood up, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun,
which was hot now, but not as hot, he thought, as it might
have been in their world. Slowly he studied the part of the lake
visible from here. It was hard to equate this untouched, wild land
with that where cabins and small docks were visible. But he was
almost certain the contours of the shoreline were not too
dissimilar from those he had known since he was small. And he said
so.
“Do you suppose,” Linda asked, “that we have
gone back in time—that we’re in the country that existed long
before our people came into it? That—that we may meet
Indians?” She shot another wary glance at the woods.
“That would not explain the unicorn. Nor gray deer—”
Nick indicated the peacefully grazing herd. “We could be in
an alternate world.” He was unrolling the package of
food from the store, but now his hands were still as he thought of
what he was saying. Alternate worlds, time travel—such things did
not exist! They could not—not for Nick Shaw a very ordinary person
who only wanted a quiet weekend for himself. He was Nick
Shaw, he was alive, yet this was happening! Unless, of
course, he had really knocked himself out back there with the bike
and maybe now was in a hospital with a vivid dream—
“Alternate world? But unicorns—they never existed at all.
They are only fairy tales.” Linda shook her head.
“Nick!” For the second time her voice soared up and she
caught at him. “Nick, look there! Isn’t that
smoke?”
She pointed south beyond the deer and he followed her finger
with his gaze. She was right! From somewhere in the brush beyond
the meadowland a beacon of smoke was rising. And smoke could mean
only one thing—people! Ted and Ben—trapped here all those years!
Nick’s thought flew first to them. But company—company to
help them, to let them know they were not alone in a nightmare!
Hastily he repacked the food, put the bag back on the bike. He
wished they dared ride, but it would be folly to try. And they had
better be careful about getting around those deer. The animals
looked harmless enough but that was not saying they would remain so
if alarmed.
They wanted to run, but the grass tangled and pulled at their
feet and the bike wheels, so that they floundered along at little
better than a walking pace. Also, at Nick’s insistence, they
made a detour around the edge of the open space where the deer
were, putting a screen of brush between them and the animals. And
they froze once as the stag that was the leader flung up its head
and stared straight at the bush behind which they happened to
be.
Nick felt very naked and exposed then. He had heard that if you
were absolutely still animals would lose interest in you and he
scowled a warning at Linda. She nodded, holding her hand about
Lung’s muzzle. But the Peke appeared to understand and did
not fight for his freedom and a chance to bark.
The stag watched them, or at least Nick thought they were its
quarry. But after a time when the two dared hardly draw a full
breath, the stag grunted and trotted toward the lake. When it was
what seemed to Nick a safe distance away they hurried on.
But this closer sight of the deer presented another puzzle.
Surely these gray animals were larger than those of Nick’s
own world, differing in size as they did in color. He wished he
knew more, could get enough hints to answer some of his questions,
if those might be answered at all.
They moved on, around the curve in the lake. Yes, there was the
opening to Deep Run. So this place did follow the general pattern
of their own world. And the smoke rose near the mouth of the Run.
Nick felt some return of satisfaction at being proved right on one
point of geography. But his triumph was speedily dashed.
“Stand where you are, chums!”