Children of the Gates Read Online Free PDF Page B

the lake. When it was what seemed to Nick a safe distance away they hurried on.
    But this closer sight of the deer presented another puzzle. Surely these gray animals were larger than those of Nick’s own world, differing in size as they did in color. He wished he knew more, could get enough hints to answer some of his questions, if those might be answered at all.
    They moved on, around the curve in the lake. Yes, there was the opening to Deep Run. So this place did follow the general pattern of their own world. And the smoke rose near the mouth of the Run. Nick felt some return of satisfaction at being proved right on one point of geography. But his triumph was speedily dashed.
    “Stand where you are, chums!”

3

    Lung broke into a wild barking, facing the bush screen from behind which that order had come. Nick halted, though Linda took a step or two as if the plunging of the now aroused Peke pulled her ahead.
    Nick touched her arm with one hand, with the other he steadied the bike.
    “Who are you?” he demanded of the bush and was inwardly glad his voice was so even and controlled. Ted—Ben? Some other who had preceded them into this alien world?
    There was a moment of silence, so prolonged that Nick wondered if the challenger had faded into deeper cover, tricking them into a halt while he withdrew. But why would anyone be so elusive? The stranger in hiding could certainly see they were harmless.
    Then the bushes parted and a man came into the open. He was very ordinary looking, a little shorter than Nick, but broader of shoulder, his bulk of body enhanced by the garment he wore, a coverall. Perched on his head was a helmet rather like a inverted basin, and he had on thick boots.
    His face was round and there was a thick brush of moustache, grayish red, half hiding his mouth. In one hand he carried—
    A slingshot!
    Viewing that, Nick could have laughed, except there was something in the stranger’s attitude that did not permit such a reaction to his childish weapon. And there was a very faint stir of memory deep in Nick’s mind. Somewhere, sometime, he had seen a man wearing just such clothing. But where and when?
    As yet the newcomer had given no answer to Nick’s question. Instead he eyed them narrowly. Lung, straining to the very end of his leash, was sniffing, his barking having subsided, sniffing as if to set this stranger’s scent deep in his catalog of such odors.
    If the stranger intended to overawe them with such a beginning, Nick refused to yield.
    “I asked,” he said, “who are you?”
    “And I heard you, chum. I ain’t lost the use of m’ ears, not yet. I’m Sam Stroud, Warden of Harkaway Place, if it’s anything to you. Which I’m laying odds, it ain’t. There’s just the two of you?”
    He watched them closely, almost as if he expected them to be the van of a larger party. Linda broke in:
    “Warden! Nick, he’s dressed like an air raid warden—one of those in the picture about the Battle of Britain they showed in our history course.”
    English! That explained his accent. But what was an Englishman in the uniform of a service over forty years in the past doing here? Nick did not want to accept the suggestion the discovery brought.
    “Is she right?” He added a second question to the first. “You are that kind of warden?”
    “That’s so. Supposin’, m’lad, you speak up now. Who are you? An’ this young lady here?”
    “She’s Linda Durant and I’m Nick Shaw. We’re—we’re Americans.”
    Stroud raised a thick hand and rubbed his jaw. “Well, now—Americans, hey? Caught right in your own country?”
    “Yes. We were just heading for a lake—like this lake—then suddenly we were here. Where is here?”
    Stroud made a sound that might have been intended for a bark of laughter, except there was very little humor in it.
    “Now that’s a question, Shaw, which nobody seems able to answer. The Vicar, he’s got one or two ideas—pretty wide they are—but we’ve never