Authors: Chad Oliver
Mists of Dawn (46 page)
He
dropped
the
line
in
and
got
an
instant,
thrilling strike.
He
yanked
the
line,
felt
the
lithe,
tugging
pull at
the
other
end,
and
knew
he
had
a
fish.
He
could not
help
thinking
of
how
much
Doctor
Nye
would
have enjoyed
a
chance
to
fish
in
this
paradise—how
hard
it was,
even
now,
to
realize
that
his
uncle
was
far,
far away,
cut
off
from
him
by
the
gulf
of
centuries,
in another
world
that
in
a
sense
was
yet
to
be
born.
Mark
landed
the
fish
after
a
brief
fight,
and
was faintly
surprised
to
find
that
he
recognized
the
fish
at once.
If
he
was
expecting
some
strange
marine
monster of
the
type
so
dear
to
the
hearts
of
writers
of
lurid prehistoric
fiction,
he
was
disappointed.
The
fish
was
a perfectly
ordinary
salmon,
although
a
beauty
that
must have
weighed
close
to
four
pounds.
Mark
broke
the fish’s
neck
and
cleaned
it
speedily
with
his
knife.
It was
the
work
of
but
a
moment,
since
salmon
have
no scales
and
are
an
easy
fish
to
clean.
Mark
started
back
to
Tlaxcan,
the
fish
held
proudly in
his
hand.
He
realized
that
he
was
beginning
to
learn, in
a
way
he
would
never
forget,
the
first
law
of
primitive
life:
you
had
to
eat,
and
getting
and
preparing food
took
a
lot
more
time
than
it
did
when
all
you
had to
do
was
to
stroll
into
a
restaurant
and
order
a
meal. It
almost
seemed
to
him
that
since
he
had
stepped
out of
the
space-time
machine—and
he
had
come
out
in
the first
place
in
search
of
food—it
had
taken
every
single minute
of
his
time
just
to
stay
alive.
If
you
weren’t hunting
something,
then
something
was
hunting
you. Mark
shuddered,
remembering
the
horrible
Neanderthals
who
might
even
now
be
lurking
behind
every bush,
every
rock,
hidden
in
every
twisted
shadow
.
.
.
He
cooked
and
they
ate
the
delicious
salmon,
and then
passed
a
peaceful
night
in
the
lean-to.
With
the coming
of
the
dawn,
Tlaxcan
was
on
his
feet
again
and amazingly
ready
to
go.
Mark
watched
his
companion with
envy.
He
must
have
a
constitution
like
an
ox. Mark
remembered
his
steel-hardness
when
he
had supported
him
the
day
before.
With
a
wound
such as
he
had
received,
he
should
have
been
helpless
for days,
but
here
he
was
almost
as
good
as
new.
Side
by
side
now,
the
two
struck
out
for
what
was, to
Mark,
an
unknown
destination.
He
took
careful
note of
their
direction,
so
that
he
would
not
hopelessly
lose the
space-time
machine.
He
and
Tlaxcan
were
still moving
almost
due
east,
skirting
the
mountain
foothills,
and
going
directly
away
from
the
valley
of
the Neanderthals.