The Gate of Time

The main island toward which the Hwaelgold was heading was composed of highland which, on Earth 1, would have been the mountainous parts of Colorado. The capital city of Kualono was on the eastern sea coast and was a harbor with great stone temples and palaces and massive granite idols, light airy houses ill-adapted to the cold winters, highways of huge close-fitting stone blocks, and vegetation peculiarly North American. The natives wore few clothes in the summer time and played and swam much like their Hawaiian cousins. In the winter, they wore heavy clothes of spun fabric and feathers. There were also iron mines and smelters and factories now, and automobiles on the roads. Despite the increasing industrialization and trade (mainly with the South African Arabs), the Hivikans lived much as they had in the past: easy-going, laughing, playing, and only vicious in their wars. The last one had taken place some fifty years ago and had made more than enough elbow room in an overpopulated land.

Two Hawks spent much time on the bridge with Gilbert. Ilmika sat on a chair in a corner and knitted; Kwasind stood like a bronze statue of Hercules in one corner. Two Hawks, who had drawn a map from memory of the North America of his native world, indicated the Mississippi River.

“We should be about over it,” he said. “Rather, where it would be if it existed here.”

At that moment, the captain exclaimed. Two Hawks looked up to see him staring through a pair of binoculars to the north. He picked up a pair given him by Gilbert and searched the same quarter of the sea. There, so low on the horizon it could only be viewed with glasses, was a small cloud. The captain, after studying it for a while, gave orders to increase the speed of the Hwaelgold. He explained that the vessel might be peaceful, perhaps a merchantman from South Africa. But if the contact with the ship could be avoided, it would be best.

By dusk, the smoke had come closer. Its estimated speed placed it out of the category of merchant; it could only be a warship, either a destroyer or cruiser. “The direction from which it comes should make it an Ikhwani. But it could be a Perkunishan raider.”

At the end of the second day, the pursuer (if it was one) was a little over a mile away. It glittered whitely in the sun and was identifiable as Arabic.

“I don’t think they’ll sink us,” the captain said. “We are too valuable a prize, a large well-built British craft the Ikhwani can use to enrich their merchant fleet. But they can’t put a prize crew aboard and take the Hwaelgold back to South Africa. It doesn’t have enough fuel or provisions to make the voyage. So, the only thing the Arabs can do is to sail us into Kualono and refuel it there.”

“What will happen to us?” Ilmika said.

“The Ikhwani might make some of the sailors help sail the Hwaelgold to Ikhwan,” he replied. “The rest of us should be left on Hivika, free to make our way back to Blodland as best we can. The Ikhwani won’t want to take more prisoners than they can help. After all, they’d have to feed us. Unless we could be used as slaves. That’s a possibility. Tell the truth, I don’t know. It’s up to God and the Ikhwani.”

Night fell. The cruiser kept a quarter-mile behind the Hwaelgold, its searchlights pi

At midnight, the rainstorm that the captain had been praying for swept like a dropped net out of the west. With it came rough seas. Two seconds after the rain and darkness struck, the captain ordered the Hwaelgold to turn sharply southwards. In a short time, the lights of the cruiser had disappeared. When the sun came up, it shone only upon the Blodland ship. The captain ordered a normal cruising speed, since he had been worried about his engines giving way under the long strain.

17

The seas were empty of alien smoke for the next five days. The dawn of the sixth day, the captain took a reading and verified that their position was only a hundred miles east of Kualono. Within an hour, they should be sighting Miki’ao, a small island. Exactly forty minutes later, the 500-foot peak of Miki’ao reared above the horizon. The captain’s grin of pride, however, was wiped off when smoke was sighted to the rear. He gave the orders for full speed ahead and spent most of the next two hours watching to the aft. This time, the Ikhwani had approached much closer before being detected. It was coming up fast to the southward and at an angle that would intercept them long before they reached the safety of Kualono.

The captain conferred with Gilbert and then ordered the Hwaelgold to turn at a 45-degree angle northward. “There are dangerous reefs just above the harbor,” he said. “I know them well. We’ll make a run through them; perhaps the Ikhwani will pile up on them. If they don’t we’ll run it ashore, if there’s a place on those forbidding cliffs to do so. In any case, the Arabs won’t get their hands on my ship.”

Gilbert said, “He’s making for Lapu Mountain, where the Cave of the Outer Gods is. If we land there, we’ll have a good excuse for trespassing on tabu property. We won’t get there until a little before dusk. So, if the Hivikans don’t see us...”

Two Hawks replied to Gilbert’s smile with one of his own. “We bulldoze our way in then? Great! And what if the Ikhwani respect the marine sovereignty of Hivika and refuse to follow us in? What do we use for an excuse?”

“If they respected the Hivika sovereignty, they would have quit long ago,” the captain said. “Hivika claims extend to fifty miles out from the coast. No, they’re not going to quit unless they come across a Hivikan naval ship. Maybe not then. Ikhwan would like an excuse to go to war with Hivika; it has coveted Hivika for a long time. Only the threat of war with Blodland and Perkunisha kept them from conquest. Now, I don’t know.”

The Hwaelgold, her engines pounding, beat northwestward. Its pursuer steadily cut down the distance between them. By the time that the black headlands of the coast had become quite high, the cruiser was only a half-mile behind. Then smoke flared out of the muzzle of one of its eight- inchers, and a geyser soared up twenty yards off the starboard bow of the Hwaelgold. Twenty seconds later, a second waterspout appeared fifteen yards off the port bow.

By then, the captain was taking his ship on a zigzag course. The path was not chosen at random, however, since the vessel was steering through the narrow cha

By then, the cruiser had quit firing. Evidently, it had not meant to hit its quarry but had only hoped that the shells would make it surrender. Seeing that the Hwaelgold intended to make a run for it, the Ikhwani went after them. It, too, zigged and zagged but at a more cautious pace. Two Hawks wondered why the Arabs were taking such chances. Why should they be so determined to capture them? What was special about the merchantman? Perhaps, their espionage system in Blodland had learned that he was on his way to Hivika. It would then have sent a radio message, by spark-gap transmitter, to an Ikhwani vessel somewhere in the vicinity. And the message would have been relayed by various ships until the cruiser had received it.

This would explain why the Hwaelgold had not been sunk. He was wanted alive so that the Arabs could use his knowledge, just as the Perkunishans and Blodlandish had. That would explain not only their hunting through the reefs but their ignoring the Hivika sea-domain.