Island in the Sea of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

there were on dry land looked to be the result of old forest fires. Under his numbness Cofflin thought how beautiful it was, with an unhuman comeliness that made Yosemite look like a cultivated garden.
    “Well,” he said, “I think you were right, miss.” Rosenthal nodded and sneezed into her Kleenex.
    Walker pointed. “There.”
    A stretch of shingle beach edged a seaside clearing where a creek ran into the sea. In it were a score or so of shelters made by bending saplings into U-shapes, and then covering the sides with bark and brush, like Stone Age versions of Quonset huts. Fires trickled smoke, and human figures pointed upward. When the plane came lower overhead they scattered like drops of mercury on dry ice; a few pushed big log canoes into the water and paddled frantically away along the shore. Lower, and they could see a woman turn back, scoop up a crying infant, and scuttle for the edge of the woods with the child in her arms.
    “Can you take us down there, Andy?”
    “Sure,” the pilot said. “Water’s calm, and that looks like a sloping surface—I should be able to ground the floats.”
    The seaplane turned into the wind and sank. There was a skip . . . skip . . . skip sensation as the floats touched; the airplane surged forward, then sank back to a slightly noseup position as Toffler turned it toward the shore. Cofflin cracked the door and looked down.
    “Sand and gravel . . . getting shallow, any minute now . . .”
    Toffler killed the engine and the plane coasted forward. The aluminum of the floats touched bottom; they slewed about slightly and stopped. Cofflin picked up his shotgun and stepped down, onto the float and then into knee-deep water. He wiped his brow.
    “Hot for March,” he said, looking inland.
    Walker followed him, using his binoculars again. “Can’t see any of the . . . Indians, I suppose. Looks like they’ve cleared out.”
    “Wouldn’t you?” Toffler asked. “Let’s get the plane secured. We need to stake down some lines.”
    The men occupied themselves. Rosenthal took some items from her backpack and fiddled with them. “You’re right, Chief Cofflin. It’s eighty Fahrenheit.” That was unusual for Massachusetts in early spring. “And look at the trees, the other vegetation.”
    Cofflin straightened up and did. “Season’s pretty far along,” he said. “But how do we know it’s March?”
    “I worked on my calculations,” she said. “It’s March, all right. Early spring, at least, but I’m morally certain it’s the same day, down to the hour, that it, ah, would have been. Sunrise was at exactly the right time.” She paused. “The climate may well be in a warmer phase.”
    Cofflin nodded, feeling his stomach twist with a sensation that was becoming unpleasantly familiar; sheer whirling disorientation, as if the ground kept vanishing from beneath his feet. He clicked off half a dozen pictures of the shore, then handed the camera to the astronomer.
    “Let’s take a look. Andy, you take the left; Lieutenant Walker, you’re right; I’m point; and Ms. Rosenthal, you keep behind me, and get plenty of pictures.”
    “Why?” she said, with a flicker of spirit, and a sneeze.
    “Because you’re not armed,” he replied, glad to see the stunned depression leaving her face.
    The air was not only warm, it was fresh like nothing he’d ever smelled. Closer to the huts it wasn’t as pleasant; evidently whoever lived there had never heard of latrines. From the look of it they kept dogs, too. The primitive wickiups were even cruder than they’d looked at a distance; inside were hides and furs, bedding made of spruce branches and grass. All around was a scattering of tools made of bone, stone, horn, and wood, and shallow lughandled soapstone dishes. Hide stretchers, fire-carved bowls, wooden racks lashed together with thongs that held drying fish . . . He picked up a flint scraper somebody had abandoned beside a raw deerhide. Not a museum piece, he realized