Prison of a Billion Years Read online

proof--unless someonelike Slade could take a hostage, double back to the prison dome, thehermetically sealed dome and somehow trick or overpower the guards whowatched the time traveling machine outside the prison dome.

  Outside. Naturally, it would be outside. That way the prisonerscouldn't get at it.

  Unless, like Slade, they too were outside.

  Outside, where life had not yet been born. Outside, the infant earth.Let a man escape. What did his escape matter? He would live exactlyas long as it took a man, reasonably healthy, to starve to death.

  Unless he had a hostage and a plan....

  * * * * *

  She became aware of rain when they left the cliff overhang. There wasalmost no wind and the rain came down slowly at first, huge slow dropswhich splattered on the black rock.

  "If it gets any harder," Slade said, "we'll have to duck under thecliff for protection. You don't know what a rain can be like backhere. I seen them through the dome."

  But they couldn't go under the cliff for protection, not if theywanted to keep going. For the cliff dropped suddenly in a wild jumbleof rocks and then there was nothing but the sloping black beach,sloping down to the sea.

  Then, all at once, someone opened the sluicegates and the rainbombarded them. It slapped and bounced off the rock like pistol shots.It struck them like hammers. They staggered under its weight.

  "We'll have to go back to the cliffs!" Marcia cried. She yelled itagain at the top of her voice because she realized Slade would nothear her otherwise as the rain cracked and exploded and splattered andcrashed. There were no droplets of water. For each one had size andshape and weight, swift-falling, hammering weight as it came down.Each one, Marcia thought wildly, struggling to keep her feet, was thesize of your clenched fist there in the gray dawn of Earth.

  "The cliffs!" she cried again.

  But Adam Slade shook his head, grabbed her arm above the wrist andpulled her after him. He pointed ahead, in the direction they had beengoing. He said nothing. There was no need to talk. They were goingforward and if it killed them probably Adam Slade did not care much.

  He wanted that prison time machine for his escape and he was eithergoing to get it or die in the attempt.

  They went on slowly. First one would fall and then the other and whenit was Slade who had fallen, she would wait patiently, hopefully. Ifhe ever released his hold on the M-gun--

  But if it were Marcia who fell, Slade would yank her to her feetsavagely, yelling words which she had heard at first but which after awhile, after an eternity of the storm, seemed to merge with the soundof the rain and the far booming of thunder out over the water andthen, as if by magic, she was walking again and stumbling along withSlade, drenched and beaten and half-drowned.

  She hardly remembered when night came, but presently she was aware ofthe darkness and the mist over the sea and over the rock and nowengulfing them with its white ectoplasmic tendrils. In the mist sheknew she could escape Slade, and yet she did not. Without Slade now,now in the middle of nowhere there by the sea on the shores of theyoung Earth, she would die in the storm. With Slade--at least fornow--was life. And she went on.

  The thunder followed them--and came closer.

  By the middle of the night it sounded like artillery at a distance ofhalf a mile, like a barrage of big atomic shells just out of sightbehind a black ridgeline which wasn't there. And through the deeperrain-wet darkness of early morning, through the mist, tearing the mistto tatters, shredding it, came the spears and forks and lances oflightning. It was, Marcia thought, a nightmare of a storm. And shemust remember it, for it would make a story, a real story, if ever shelived to tell it.

  By morning, the air smelled of ozone. It reeked of ozone and aroundthem as the gray light seeped out of the wet sky and the rain suddenlyslackened as if the weak daylight dispelled it, the black rocks wereblasted and broken where lightning had struck.

  In the dawn's first light another helicopter came.

  "Get down!" Slade shouted, and they dropped among the blasted blackrocks, hiding there, not moving. The helicopter came on through theslackening rain, buzzing a few hundred feet over them but notcircling. It was heading for the abandoned tank, Marcia thought. Itwasn't looking for them here--

  But suddenly the rain came down in all its savage force again,blinding bounding off the rocks, pounding relentlessly.

  Overhead, the helicopter seemed to pause like a bird stricken inflight. The rotors whirled a silver shield against the rain, the greatdrops splattering off the shield.

  And the helicopter came down under the weight of the rain.

  * * * * *

  It landed a hundred and fifty yards from them down the beach andMarcia watched breathlessly while three men got out and looked at eachother and at the rain. The dawn light was still only a dim gray andMarcia could not see the men clearly, but abruptly a jagged spear oflightning blasted rock midway between where they were hiding and thehelicopter and in the after-glare through the wet and almost cracklingair, the men were very clear. And clearer still when other lightningcame down around them, ringing them in, it seemed, like a tent. Therewas now so much lightning it looked more like an aurora than anelectric storm.

  The dawn earth, before life, spending itself in fury....

  All at once Marcia was running down toward the edge of the water,where the helicopter was. She ran screaming and shouting but thethunder swallowed her puny voice. At every moment she expected AdamSlade to kill her, to merely stand up with the M-gun and shoot her,but he did not and perhaps her unconscious mind in the instant she hadfled had instinctively known he would not. For if Adam Slade killedher, he had no hostage. If he killed her and they found him, he wouldhave absolutely no chance.

  She turned and looked behind her. There was Slade, silhouetted againstthe lightning, running, covering the ground in huge strides, gainingon her. She did not look back again. The whole world was lightning andthunder and her legs striking earth under her, up and down, up anddown, pounding, running, fleeing, and the rain, Slade's ally, beatingher, buffeting her, exploding against her.

  She stumbled and fell but she was up and running again in a moment.Now Slade was very close. But the helicopter was close too. She didnot think the men there had seen them yet. She waved her arms andscreamed although she knew the screams would not be heard--and thenSlade was on her.

  They went down together and she knew she was frail and helpless beforehis great strength. He grabbed her, his hands, angry hands on herthroat--

  And lightning struck.

  It bounded and bounced off rock a dozen feet from them. It shook theearth and blasted the rock and pieces like shrapnel cluttered allaround them and struck them too and Marcia felt hot blood on her armand it was her own blood.

  But Slade had been momentarily stunned and she was running again. Awayfrom him.

  But away from the helicopter too. At first she did not realize thatbut when she did realize it, it was too late. If she doubled back now,she would rush into Slade's arms.

  She ran--into the sea.

  It was suddenly, unexpectedly calm. It merely eddied around herankles, as if waiting for something. The storm seemed to be waitingtoo, lightning holding back, the thunder stilled, even the rainhanging there in the black heavy sky, waiting....

  Slade came after her, stalking through the surf.

  A single bolt of lightning lanced down at them and a great engulfingroar lifted Marcia, carried her, stunned her, and then the rain pelteddown again and the sea was an angry sea and the air was superchargedwith ozone and another smell. Like seared flesh.

  Like seared flesh.

  She saw Adam Slade then. Slade was down in a foot of water, face down.He was not moving and the water lapped around him, over him. She wentto him, walking slowly.

  The men from the helicopter were there too. They had seen in thatfinal flash of lightning.

  "Are you all right, miss?" one of them shouted.

  "Yes. Slade?"
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  They turned him over. They looked at him. "Dead," one of them said.

  "Dead," she echoed. She would have collapsed, but they caught her.

  * * * * *

  Then the rain really came down, not as it had come before, which washard enough. It came in huge globes of water and each globe was as bigas your head and if it hit it could stun you.

  "Slade?" someone cried as the globes exploded violently in the surfaround them.

  "He's dead. He'll keep."

  And they went back to the helicopter with Marcia, to await the end ofthe storm there.

  When it was over, when the sky was not black but merely the color oflead, they returned down the beach for Slade's body.

  But Slade wasn't there.

  "But he was dead!" Marcia said incredulously.

  One of the men smiled. "He didn't go anyplace under his own power. Hewas dead, all right. The storm took his body out to sea, is all."

  They stood there for a moment,