Chapter 6

I scrambled to the edge of the pit and played the light around inside. It shelved back at one side, and a dark mouth showed, sloping down into the earth--the hiding place from which the globes had swarmed.

Foster was wedged in the opening. I scrambled down beside him, tugged him back to the level ground. He was still breathing; that was something.

I wondered if the pub owner would come back, now that the lights were gone--or if he’d tell someone what had happened, bring out a search party. Somehow, I doubted it. He didn’t seem like the type to ask for trouble with the ghosts of ancient sinners.

Foster groaned and opened his eyes. “Where are ... they?” he muttered.

“Take it easy, Foster,” I said. “You’re OK now.”

“Legion,” Foster said. He tried to sit up. “The Hunters...”

“OK, call ‘em Hunters if you want to. I haven’t got a better name for them. I worked them over with the flashlights. They’re gone.”

“That means...”

“Let’s not worry about what it means. Let’s just get out of here.”

“The Hunters--they burst out of the ground--from a cleft in the earth.”

“That’s right. You were halfway into the hole. I guess that’s where they were hiding.”

“The Pit of the Hunters,” Foster said.

“If you say so,” I said. “Lucky you didn’t go down it.”

“Legion, give me the flashlight.”

“I feel something coming on that I’m not going to like,” I said. I handed him the light and he flashed it into the tunnel mouth. I saw a polished roof of black glass arching four feet over the rubble-strewn bottom of the shaft. A stone, dislodged by my movement, clattered away down the 30 slope.

“Hell, that tunnel’s man-made,” I said, peering into it. “And I don’t mean neolithic man.”

“Legion, we’ll have to see what’s down there,” Foster said.

“We could come back later, with ropes and big insurance policies,” I said.

“But we won’t,” said Foster. “We’ve found what we were looking for--”

“Sure,” I said, “and it serves us right. Are you sure you feel good enough to make like Alice and the White Rabbit?”

“I’m sure. Let’s go.”

Foster thrust his legs into the opening, slid over the edge and disappeared. I followed him. I eased down a few feet, glanced back for a last look at the night sky, then lost my grip and slid. I hit bottom hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I got to my hands and knees on a level, gravel-strewn floor.

“What is this place?” I dug the flashlight out of the rubble, flashed it around. We were in a low-ceilinged room ten yards square. I saw smooth walls, the dark bulks of massive shapes that made me think of sarcophagi in Egyptian burial vaults--except that these threw back highlights from dials and levers.

“For a couple of guys who get shy in the company of cops,” I said, “we’ve a talent for doing the wrong thing. This is some kind of Top Secret military installation.”

“Impossible,” Foster replied. “This couldn’t be a modern structure, at the bottom of a rubble-filled shaft--”

“Let’s get out of here fast,” I said. “We’ve probably set off an alarm already.”

As if in answer, a low chime cut across our talk. Pearly light sprang up on a square panel. I got to my feet, moved over to stare at it. Foster came to my side.

“What do you make of it?” he said.

“I’m no expert on stone-age relics,” I said. “But if that’s not a radar screen, I’ll eat it.”

I sat down in the single chair before the dusty control console, and watched a red blip creep across the screen. Foster stood behind me.

“We owe a debt to that ancient sinner,” he said. “Who would have dreamed he’d lead us here?”

“Ancient sinner?” I said. “This place is as modern as next year’s juke box.”

“Look at the symbols on the machines,” Foster said. “They’re identical with those in the first section of the journal.”

“All pot-hooks look alike to me,” I said. “It’s this screen that’s got me worried. If I’ve got it doped out correctly, that blip is either a mighty slow airplane--or it’s at one hell of an altitude.”

“Modern aircraft operate at great heights,” Foster said.

“Not at this height,” I said. “Give me a few more minutes to study these scales...”

“There are a number of controls here,” Foster said, “obviously intended to activate mechanisms--”

“Don’t touch ‘em,” I said. “Unless you want to start World War III.”

“I hardly think the results would be so drastic,” Foster replied. “Surely this installation has a simple purpose--unconnected with modern wars--but very possibly connected with the mystery of the journal--and of my own past.”

“The less we know about this, the better,” I said. “At least, if we don’t mess with anything, we can always claim we just stepped in here to get out of the rain--”

“You’re forgetting the Hunters,” said Foster.

“Some new anti-personnel gimmick.”

“They came out of this shaft, Legion. It was opened by the pressure of the Hunters bursting out.”

“Why did they pick that precise moment--just as we arrived?” I asked.

“I think they were aroused,” said Foster. “I think they sensed the presence of their ancient foe.”

I swung around to look at him.

“I see the way your thoughts are running,” I said. “You’re their Ancient Foe, now, huh? Just let me get this straight: that means that umpteen hundred years ago, you personally had a fight with the Hunters--here at Stonehenge. You killed a batch of them and ran. You hired some kind of Viking ship and crossed the Atlantic. Later on, you lost your memory, and started being a guy named Foster. A few weeks ago you lost it again. Is that the picture?”

“More or less.”

“And now we’re a couple of hundred feet under Stonehenge--after a brush with a crowd of luminous stinkbombs--and you’re telling me you’ll be nine hundred on your next birthday.”

“Remember the entry in the journal, Legion? ‘I came to the place of the Hunters, and it was a place I knew of old, and there was no hive, but a Pit built by men of the Two Worlds... ‘“

“Okay,” I said. “So you’re pushing a thousand.”

I glanced at the screen, got out a scrap of paper, and scribbled a rapid calculation. “Here’s another big number for you. That object on the screen is at an altitude--give or take a few percent--of thirty thousand miles.”

I tossed the pencil aside, swung around to frown at Foster. “What are we mixed up in, Foster? Not that I really want to know. I’m ready to go to a nice clean jail now, and pay my debt to society--”

“Calm down, Legion,” Foster said. “You’re raving.”

“OK,” I said, turning back to the screen. “You’re the boss. Do what you like. It’s just my reflexes wanting to run. I’ve got no place to run to. At least with you I’ve always got the wild hope that maybe you’re not completely nuts, and that somehow--”

I sat upright, eyes on the screen. “Look at this, Foster,” I snapped. A pattern of dots flashed across the screen, faded, flashed again...

“Some kind of IFF,” I said. “A recognition signal. I wonder what we’re supposed to do now.”

Foster watched the screen, saying nothing.

“I don’t like that thing blinking at us,” I said. “It makes me feel conspicuous.” I looked at the big red button beside the screen. “Maybe if I pushed that...” Without waiting to think it over, I jabbed at it.

A yellow light blinked on the control panel. On the screen, the pattern of dots vanished. The red blip separated, a smaller blip moving off at right angles to the main mass.

“I’m not sure you should have done that,” Foster said.

“There is room for doubt,” I said in a strained voice. “It looks like I’ve launched a bomb from the ship overhead.”

The climb back up the tunnel took three hours, and every foot of the way I was listening to a refrain in my head: This may be it; this may be it; this may be...

I crawled out of the tunnel mouth and lay on my back, breathing hard. Foster groped his way out beside me.