Quest Beyond Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

had to cling to, he decided, was that the world made sense. Everything these people told him made no sense. Therefore they must be mad or lying to him.
    It all must have a rational explanation. They must be a sect of second generation hippies who had decided to live in a kind of barbarism, he decided. They had developed their own religion, their own customs. If the property they lived on was big enough, they would probably never get bothered by the neighbours. Particularly if they had lions roaming free around the place.
    The so-called Wanderers could just be people who did not get on with the others in the commune. That could happen fairly easily, he thought. Particularly if they were all like Fergus.
    He was convinced. He was not in some post-nuclear-holocaust future. He was in the present, in 1985, with a mother living in Sydney who was going to be scared witless by this time at his not having shown up for dinner. Probably the police were out looking for him in the water at the base of the cliffs. His mates would have thought he had crashed into the water without their seeing.
    He could envisage the scene: the Water Police launch criss-crossing the area, police divers down . . . and then nightfall, and the search abandoned, and the police on his mother’s doorstep telling her that her son was missing. Not to give up hope, but . . .
    He looked around the great hall. Apart from the cracking of a log in the fire, all was silent. Slowly, he eased up until he was sitting, and slipped from under the sheepskin blanket. He put on his sneakers, and headed for the door. By the door was his hang-glider still bundled up, but he thought he might have to run for it, and its weight would slow him down. Reluctantly, he left it behind.
    Slowly he opened the door enough for him to get out into the night. Slowly he eased it shut. He crept away from the house. The moon was up. It was nearly full, and gave more light than he would have liked.
    He moved swiftly across the open space on the landward side of the house, passing the standing stone with its vacant eye. For a moment, as he passed it, the hair lifted on the back of his neck. He did not like that stone. He would not like to sleep beneath it.
    It was not until Mike moved from the clearing round the house and into the shelter of the first line of trees that he remembered the lions.
    For one moment he almost went back. He stood there, wavering, trying to remember everything he knew about the habits of lions.
    As far as he could remember, they hunted by day. He held onto that thought like a security blanket, and turned his steps away from the house.
    He had been moving through the bush for perhaps ten minutes when he first became aware of the noise behind him.
    At first, it was somewhat comforting. It was the deep sound of a hound baying. It made him think of a neighbour’s basset hound. This sound was deeper but it had the same quality. He must be close to houses if there were pet dogs so near.
    Then the one hound’s voice was joined by others.
    And then they were getting nearer.
    The image in his mind changed from the friendly old over-fed basset hound who lived next door, to that of a film he had once seen, where big hounds had flowed like a yelping wave in pursuit of a stag.
    Mike was suddenly very afraid. He had heard of packs of domestic dogs which ran wild at night and hunted.
    And the sounds were getting closer.
    He was frozen to the spot. It was not until he heard the drumming of a horse’s hooves blending with the baying of hounds that his fear overcame his paralysis, and he turned and fled.
    As he ran, the sounds of the hounds and the horse receded for a time, and the sounds of his own footfalls and breathing became louder. He was running in a straight line, heading for the fence he believed with all his heart must be ahead of him. Across such a fence must be the normal world of motorcars and freeways and hamburger bars and movies and friends and family.
    Mike did not even