Mists of Dawn (97 page)

“You
too,
old
fellow,”
he
told
his
dog.
“This
is
your home.
Go
with
Tlaxcan.
Do
you
understand?
Go
with Tlaxcan!”

He
pointed
after
his
friend
across
the
fields.
Fang whined
deep
in
his
throat
and
wagged
his
bushy
tail hopefully.

“No,”
Mark
said.
“I
must
go
alone.
Go
with
Tlaxcan!”

The
wolf-dog
seemed
to
understand,
with
that
intuitive
knowledge
of
the
strange
ways
of
their
masters that
good
dogs
always
have.
He
looked
sorrowfully
at Mark
with
deep
and
liquid
eyes
and
trotted
slowly away
into
the
gathering
gloom,
following
Tlaxcan through
the
shadows.

They
were
gone.
Mark
was
alone.

With
a
terrible
loneliness
buried
deep
within
him, Mark
set
off
northward
toward
the
gray
sphere
of
the space-time
machine,
invisible
now
in
the
darkness.
The cold
wind
blew
in
his
face,
and
he
felt
like
an
ant
crawling
across
the
earth,
alone
and
unprotected.

He
remembered
the
dream
he
had
had,
so
long
ago. He
had
been
racing
across
this
gray
world,
the
half-men
snarling
behind
him.
The
gray
grass
had
shimmered
beneath
a
gray-smoke
wind
that
whipped
and billowed
before
his
very
eyes.
And
ahead
of
him—a great
gray
sphere,
waiting
on
a
cold,
gray
plain.
Even as
now
…

Except,
of
course,
that
there
were
no
Neanderthals around
now.
Or
were
there?
Had
some
of
them doubled
back?
What
could
he
do,
without
any
weapon but
the
empty
.45
he
had
picked
up
and
the
stone
knife of
the
Mroxor?

Suddenly,
the
night
seemed
full
of
sounds.
Ominous sounds.
.
.

Mark
redoubled
his
pace,
and
the
bulge
of
the
spacetime
machine
loomed
up
out
of
the
grayness
before him.
It
was
just
as
he
had
left
it,
a
lifetime
ago,
silent and
ghostlike
under
the
first
stars
of
the
night.

A
cold
chill
ran
through
him
as
he
remembered
the monster
half-man
who
had
waited
inside
the
machine in
his
dream.
He
told
himself
that
such
thoughts
were nonsense,
but
still
it
was
all
that
he
could
do
to
throw the
gray
switch
that
activated
the
entry
port.
He
held his
breath.
If
the
port
failed
to
open—

With
a
mechanical
hiss,
a
strange,
foreign
sound
here on
the
plains
of
the
darkening
Ice
Age,
the
circular door
slid
open.
The
interior
glowed
with
soft
white light,
spilling
out
like
cold,
shining
oil
into
the
night. Mark
stepped
through
the
entry
port,
feeling
nervous and
unreal
with
the
smooth
metallic
sphere
all
around him.

The
space-time
machine
was
empty.
Mark
threw
the inside
switch,
his
hands
clumsy
on
the
almost-forgotten machinery,
and
the
circular
entry
port
hissed
shut
behind
him,
sealing
him
in.
All
was
as
he
had
left
it, except
that
the
yellow
caution
light
in
the
control panel,
signifying
that
the
machine
was
rebuilding
its energy
potential,
was
out.