its back on us, climbing down. I heard a gasp from Pomfret “Charlie! For Pete’s sake! Charli e ! ”
“I trust I find you in good health, boss,” said Pomfret’s robot butler, his battered, comically ugly face bent quizzically above us.
“You old son of a gun! But how the hell could you be here?”
“There are a growing number of things I do not understand,” Charlie said in his cheerfully metallic voice. “I have been programmed on a liberal basis, thanks to your generosity and broad-mindedness, boss. I deduce we have in some unmechanical way been hurled back into the past.”
The way Charlie said unmechanical gave it the connotation of the deepest depths of depraved evil.
“Yes, we’d figured that out. But—why you as well?”
“I followed you, boss, when you left so hurriedly without a program for the house, without a forwarding address, without any means of contacting you—your radio channels were closed out on your heli—and when the police began asking awkward questions.” His metal face glinted in the sunshine and I could have sworn it held the father and mother of ironic smiles. "Thai another of those peculiar winged-bull creatures appeared. I then realized you must be in some danger and so I contacted my robot friends who quickly told me you had taken a taxi to Standstead. From there you left a plain trail—”
“Oh, no I” Brennan shook his head. “I won’t have that. No one could have followed us—especially in a propeller plane. You—”
Charlie moved his head and again the lights made me think his face smiled. If quartz lenses and speaker grilles can hold an expression, then he did. And who, in this amazing world, is to say that a robot’s face cannot express his reactions to external stimuli?
“You’ll pardon me, sir. I took the liberty of booking on the rocket flight to Beirut. From there I hired this antiquated desert buggy—the rocket must have passed your jet at considerable altitude and speed during the night.” His mechanical insides whirred. “Not so?”
I laughed out loud.
Phoebe jumped as though I’d stung her.
“What’s so funny?” demanded Lottie truculently. “I’m roasting alive. Let’s get aboard and have a drink.”
“As usual,” said Pomfret, helping Lottie up the plane’s ladder, “Lottie puts the most important essential in a nutshell”
“That I’ll grant you,” I said cheerfully.
“And, anyway,” said Pomfret, when we had collected in the smaller airplane’s cramped cabin, “you, I suppose, Charlie, must have used my name to hire this?”
"Why, yes, boss. I could not have obtained the hire otherwise.”
“If we go back, and assuming we can get back into our own time again, the cops will be waiting for us.
They’ll probably book us all for the murder of that girl at Gannets.” Pomfret took a long swig from the glass Charlie had provided by some robotic sleight of hand and sighed.
“We go forward.” Brennan spoke matter-of-factly.
“Forward?”
“We go on our mission. We have plenty of fuel, we have weapons, food and water. Once Khamushkei the Undying sees—in whatever way it is he sees what we are doing—that we haven’t given up, that were still after him, he’ll have to do something else.”
“Something else nasty,” Phoebe said, with a grimace.
“Sure. But one thing’s certain: we won’t be left to rot here.”
With that, Charlie at the controls, we rose into the air, turned sharply eastward and began to pick up speed.
Flying lower than when we had driven faster and higher across these frozen waves in the jet, I was able to study them more clearly, and reach one or two conclusions. Granites and not limestones meant that we must be a long way back in time-assuming Hall Brennan’s theory to be true. Nothing moved out there. No loose sand or dust whipped b ack from those petrified crests. A lifeless world fled past beneath our wings, a world which waited for the green hand of life to fall across it, a
“I trust I find you in good health, boss,” said Pomfret’s robot butler, his battered, comically ugly face bent quizzically above us.
“You old son of a gun! But how the hell could you be here?”
“There are a growing number of things I do not understand,” Charlie said in his cheerfully metallic voice. “I have been programmed on a liberal basis, thanks to your generosity and broad-mindedness, boss. I deduce we have in some unmechanical way been hurled back into the past.”
The way Charlie said unmechanical gave it the connotation of the deepest depths of depraved evil.
“Yes, we’d figured that out. But—why you as well?”
“I followed you, boss, when you left so hurriedly without a program for the house, without a forwarding address, without any means of contacting you—your radio channels were closed out on your heli—and when the police began asking awkward questions.” His metal face glinted in the sunshine and I could have sworn it held the father and mother of ironic smiles. "Thai another of those peculiar winged-bull creatures appeared. I then realized you must be in some danger and so I contacted my robot friends who quickly told me you had taken a taxi to Standstead. From there you left a plain trail—”
“Oh, no I” Brennan shook his head. “I won’t have that. No one could have followed us—especially in a propeller plane. You—”
Charlie moved his head and again the lights made me think his face smiled. If quartz lenses and speaker grilles can hold an expression, then he did. And who, in this amazing world, is to say that a robot’s face cannot express his reactions to external stimuli?
“You’ll pardon me, sir. I took the liberty of booking on the rocket flight to Beirut. From there I hired this antiquated desert buggy—the rocket must have passed your jet at considerable altitude and speed during the night.” His mechanical insides whirred. “Not so?”
I laughed out loud.
Phoebe jumped as though I’d stung her.
“What’s so funny?” demanded Lottie truculently. “I’m roasting alive. Let’s get aboard and have a drink.”
“As usual,” said Pomfret, helping Lottie up the plane’s ladder, “Lottie puts the most important essential in a nutshell”
“That I’ll grant you,” I said cheerfully.
“And, anyway,” said Pomfret, when we had collected in the smaller airplane’s cramped cabin, “you, I suppose, Charlie, must have used my name to hire this?”
"Why, yes, boss. I could not have obtained the hire otherwise.”
“If we go back, and assuming we can get back into our own time again, the cops will be waiting for us.
They’ll probably book us all for the murder of that girl at Gannets.” Pomfret took a long swig from the glass Charlie had provided by some robotic sleight of hand and sighed.
“We go forward.” Brennan spoke matter-of-factly.
“Forward?”
“We go on our mission. We have plenty of fuel, we have weapons, food and water. Once Khamushkei the Undying sees—in whatever way it is he sees what we are doing—that we haven’t given up, that were still after him, he’ll have to do something else.”
“Something else nasty,” Phoebe said, with a grimace.
“Sure. But one thing’s certain: we won’t be left to rot here.”
With that, Charlie at the controls, we rose into the air, turned sharply eastward and began to pick up speed.
Flying lower than when we had driven faster and higher across these frozen waves in the jet, I was able to study them more clearly, and reach one or two conclusions. Granites and not limestones meant that we must be a long way back in time-assuming Hall Brennan’s theory to be true. Nothing moved out there. No loose sand or dust whipped b ack from those petrified crests. A lifeless world fled past beneath our wings, a world which waited for the green hand of life to fall across it, a
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