Just one glimpse was enough to tell him that he had arrived in the Devonian age. Here he knew that there might be a few tetrapods about, but that those ferns were loaded with cyanide, there was no fruit of any kind, and that all available tubers would have the consistency of saturated balsa and be as nourishing. He moved over to the other side of the lava flow, where it plunged down into deep water, and washed the mud from his suit. Returning above, he opened his supply pack, took out his concentrated rations and, seated on the stone, staring down the mudflat, began methodically to fill himself. He was very hungry. His tor was hungry.
As Tack understood it, a mantisal consumed a similar amount of nutrition from its temporary host as did a tor, and the length of its time-jump was also commensurate. But while the mantisal also needed to charge itself like a huge capacitor, the tor did not. It was a fact the Heliothane did not like to admit, that the tor was as far in advance of the mantisal as the hydrogen-powered aircar was in advance of the Model-T Ford. Without recharging, the mantisal jumped inaccurately—the error could be as much as a hundred million years. The tor always jumped accurately and greater control could be exerted at the point of exit. The only problem with the tors was being programmed to jump only in one direction in time: back towards Cowl. No heliothant had yet managed to change that programming.
While he continued eating, Tack noticed movement in the shallow trench his progress had left in the mud. Creatures similar to mudskippers were flopping and bubbling out of the water, gobbling up something he had disturbed to the surface of the mud. Which one of those might it be, he wondered. Could it be the one over there the size of a mature salmon, or the one with the purplish warty skin and eyes like tomatoes? Or was it this little one with whitish skin, sunken eyes, and large flippers that propelled it across the mud at such speed? Which one was his grandad a billion times removed? At that point the white one got too close to the warty one, and the ugly fellow snatched it up and chomped it down, so Tack assumed the warty one was the more likely candidate. This was life on land in the first days—beginning as it meant to continue.
Contemplatively Tack bit off a lump of protein concentrate and threw the remains out to the creatures. They slopped themselves away from it at first, then after a short time circled back in and began fighting over it. Eventually the warty one scuttled off with the prize in its thick lips. Replete himself, and then some, Tack set up his tent, crawled inside it, wrapped himself in the heat sheet and was instantly asleep.
With her regenerating arm locked around his neck and the snout of her weapon jammed up underneath his chin, Saphothere felt he was no longer in a position to resist Meelan. Thus sprawled on the ground, the both of them observed the incursion folding itself back into a fuzzy line in the air, as it closed then disappeared.
‘Right, get up. Put your hands on your head,’ Meelan hissed. ‘One wrong move and you know what will happen.’
She drew away from him, keeping her weapon aimed at his back, and stood waiting while he assumed the position. His carbine lay on the ground only a metre to the side of him, but even as he glanced at it two Umbrathane women stepped out from different parts of the jungle and began jogging up the slope. As they converged on the campsite both of them studied Saphothere with evident hostility.
‘Iveronica,’ Meelan acknowledged the woman Saphothere recognized as the leader of the Pig City Umbrathane.
Stepping forward Iveronica said, ‘I saw Coolis go, but what about the rest?’
The other woman, who could have been Meelan’s double, but for the fact that her lower jaw had been replaced by a metallic prosthesis, hissed, ‘Golan was dragged through with the tor-bearer. Olanda is on his way.’
Saphothere grinned at the jawless woman. ‘What did you say? That wasn’t very clear.’
Meelan belted him across the back of the head, knocking him down on all fours.
‘Soudan, we need him.’ Iveronica restrained the jawless woman, whose carbine was now trained on Saphothere’s midriff. ‘Put it up.’
‘What do we need him for?’ Soudan lowered her weapon. ‘Cowl has given us our way to him and soon all Heliothane will be extinct.’ She gestured to where the incursion had appeared earlier, and where eight thorny objects were scattered on the ground.
‘Information,’ said Iveronica. ‘Cowl won’t be pleased that we didn’t capture the torbearer.’ She glanced aside. ‘Here’s Olanda now. That’s all of us?’
‘Yes, all,’ conceded Soudan. ‘That fucking primitive got Oroida and burnt Golan before she jumped him. I doubt she survived the drag-through—she was a real mess.’
‘He was augmented,’ said Iveronica, her face expressionless as she gazed at Meelan. ‘That’s why he first escaped. Golan and Oroida knew this. They made an error.’
Soudan was glaring at Saphothere, and did not seem to register her companion’s words. She was probing her prosthetic jaw as if she felt it might fall away.
‘Obviously not as genetically advanced as your fellows,’ said Saphothere. ‘How long ago in your time has it been since I just missed hitting that sack of shit between your ears?’
With a snarl Soudan swung her weapon back up. But then a shot hit Soudan squarely between the eyes, spraying Iveronica with pieces of her bone and brain. Saphothere rolled smoothly, snatching up his carbine and firing at the Umbrathane leader as she shook the bloody mess from her eyes. Meelan turned, just as smoothly, and put a cluster of shots into Olanda’s chest, flinging the man back in an explosion of gore. Fire cut up into the sky as Iveronica went down, one leg blown away at the knee. She tried to bring her weapon to bear, but further shots from Saphothere smashed away her weapon and her right arm.
Saphothere stood and glanced round at Meelan. ‘That could have gone better.’
‘How so?’ asked Meelan tightly, as she holstered her weapon and strode over to stare down at Iveronica. ‘I don’t see any of them getting up again.’
The Umbrathane leader, Iveronica, looked up at the two of them.
‘Why?’ she managed, as she bled into the dirt.
‘Seven thousand of our people were on Callisto,’ spat Meelan. ‘When you sat in your nice comfortable ships and leapt back through time with Cowl, what of them?’
‘Losses… were inevitable,’ said Iveronica.
‘You could have picked them up. Callisto was under your control once Cowl erected the phase barrier. You didn’t bother because my kind of Umbrathane has always been cannon fodder for your kind. My people were reduced to less than atoms.’
‘Many have died in our cause.’ Iveronica managed to push herself up onto her remaining elbow. The bleeding from her shattered arm had ceased as her body already began to repair itself. ‘And you have betrayed them all.’
‘Do you need to hear any more?’ Saphothere asked Meelan.
Meelan turned and stared at him for a moment, then abruptly stooped, her right hand closing around the supine woman’s throat and her left hand catching her flailing left arm. With a raised eyebrow Saphothere looked on while Meelan slowly choked Iveronica to death. When it was over, he said, ‘You know, putting that mine on Tack was a bit risky.’
‘Not really.’ Meelan stood, still staring down at the dead woman. ‘No paralytic on the glass, and I set it to detonate far enough away from him to cause no damage as long as he was wearing that suit.’
‘I meant when he threw the damned mine at you,’ said Saphothere, shouldering his carbine and turning away.
After a moment Meelan followed him and they walked down the slope to where the incursion had manifested. Reaching the bottom, Saphothere turned over with the toe of his boot one of the many active scales discarded by the torbeast—one of the tors Cowl had made it leave behind for his Umbrathane allies.