Short Fiction · Time Trap (2/2)

“Panic smote me as I turned, hip and thigh like a flat sword. But all I could see for an instant was a faint, moving radiance blending with the shadows, a kind of nebulous flowing in the darkness on the far side of the cave.

“My hand must have closed on my blaster, for I could feel the bite of cold metal against my palm. But there was something about the light that my will could not withstand. My arms seemed to freeze as I stared at it, and terrifying thoughts rushed into my brain.

“At first I experienced only a feeling of almost unbearable oppression. Then something in the glow seemed to reach out toward me and there was no sound in the cave but the beating of my heart.

“A ghastly something seemed to be watching me with a kind of fiendish triumph, as though the soul of a devil lurked in the depth of the light which could send out vampire tendrils, filmed with writhing menace.

“I couldn’t tear my eyes from the glow and the longer I stared the worse it got.

“The light seemed filled with an evil purpose. It writhed and changed shape as I stared at it, seeming to sweep out through the walls of the cave and back again with a pulsing greediness.

“Then, gradually, it ceased to blend with the shadows. It became stationary and transparent, hanging suspended in the murky air like a gigantic burning glass.

“As though in a dream-delirium I became slowly aware that a picture was forming within it. A valley swept into view, walled with high, saw-toothed mountain ranges.

“Deep in the weaving radiance I could see a tiny, plodding figure coming toward me across the valley.

“For an instant I thought I was looking at the far-off image of a human figure plodding over the plain. A figure clad in a heavy spacesuit, moving awkwardly⁠—as I had moved.

“Nearer it came and nearer, its reflection floating on ahead of it, bobbing about like a little ship.

“And then, suddenly, I saw that it was skimming the plain. It was balancing itself on flapping wings, sweeping across the plain without actually touching it, but so slowly that it appeared to be advancing with the plodding, awkward gait of a man.

“It swerved abruptly as I stared, made a full turn, and soared into the air. It flew straight toward me, its wings beating the air as though it were struggling against a furious uprush of wind.

“There was a sloping wall of light-dappled rock at the edge of the radiance, and for an instant the winged shape disappeared behind it. I didn’t see it descend.

“I saw only a shadow forming behind the rock, and swirling out from it. It came into view again abruptly, dragging its wings behind it, hobbling toward me over the ice.

“My spine congealed. The thing that had crossed the valley was a monstrous bird of prey. It was wearing a spacesuit, but no helmet, and I could see its vulture-like head bobbing about in the glow.

“It seemed to be in pain. It had halted at the edge of the glow, as if fearful of what lay beyond it, and suddenly as I stared it began furiously to pluck and tear at its breast with its taloned foreclaws.

“So frenzied were the creature’s exertions that the front of its spacesuit came away in shreds. The hideous creature had scales on its breast instead of feathers, and a pulsing, lizardlike throat⁠ ⁠… a throat which turned red as it continued to inflict cruel injuries on itself.

“The impression I got was one of agonized despair, of a creature trapped and cornered that could only escape by destroying itself. Again and again it slashed at its flesh, twisting about in the glow, its eyes brimming with agony.

“Then, suddenly, it was no longer alone. A little bird-lizard shape had materialized at its side and was going through the same grisly pantomime.

“As I blinked in stunned disbelief a third shape swam into view⁠—and a fourth. The eyes of the third shape were dull and opaque, like frosted glass, and the fourth shape was so atrophied that the scales on its breast seemed to overlap, squeezing out the flesh between them.

“Then, abruptly, the first shape began to grow transparent. It shriveled and glistened, and I could see its skeleton gleaming beneath the glassy transparency of its dissolving flesh.

“It vanished in a gush of gray light, so quickly that the air about it had a sucked-in look. Swiftly, terribly, the other shapes converged toward that swirling vacuum and were swallowed up, as though with their passing Time had collapsed in upon itself.

“That Time had collapsed I knew! For I am no fool. Long ago the alien inhabitant of another world had landed in that valley of all horror, and the living shuttlecock had split it up into time fragments, the better to destroy it.

“It wanted me to know that⁠—to realize that my time was short. So it had brought back a scene out of the past to unnerve me, and sap my will!

“Could I go on taking it? I hadn’t much time to think about it⁠—for the web was filling with another picture. A living shuttlecock, the old one had called it. So now it was weaving another picture for me on Time’s dissolving loom.

“It was a picture so hideous I could hardly bring myself to believe in it. It was a picture of still another me. But if the old one had seemed palsied, wretched, at the end of his endurance⁠—the face that stared out at me from the radiance was a thousandfold more so!

“It was a face that had lost itself in Time⁠—a face that was all sagging jowls and puckered brows, a toothless, yellowed caricature of a face.

“But it was my face still⁠—my face ravaged by a century’s decay!

“Looking at myself as I would be⁠—I suddenly had no longer any desire to live. A small, shrill voice shrieked within me that the monstrous, living shuttlecock desired just that⁠—that it was resorting to a devilish subterfuge!

“But I did not heed the voice. I just stood there, waiting to die, hoping that the end would come quickly.

“The blast was deafening! The sudden crash of it made a muffled booming in the thin air, and smashed against my eardrums like a trump of doom. The flare was blinding. The awful brightness of it lit up the cave like a hundred suns, and burned through my eyeballs into my brain.

“When the smoke cleared all I could see at first was a shattered something lying on the floor of the cave, all twisted and bent back on itself like a smoking heap of shattered glass.

“As I shook my big, dull head to clear it my boy-self lifted off his helmet and returned his blaster to the holster on his hip. His face was shining with triumph. The sweat was running off it and he was breathing heavily.

“But he spoke to me and his words were good to hear.

“ ‘We got him, pal!’

“He didn’t say ‘it’⁠—didn’t refer to the monstrous creature as something unspeakably alien.

“No⁠—why should he? To him it wasn’t a horror in the valley of the moon. It was something out of a nightmare and he knew he’d wake up safe in his own little bed at home.

“He was still thinking of me as his father⁠—in a nightmare. We’d been hunting jabberwocks together!

“And that lad was still in me⁠—a part of me! I tell you, it sobered me and made me feel ashamed.

“I was still feeling ashamed when both the boy and the old one vanished. Perhaps melted back would be a better way of putting it. For they did seem to dissolve and flow back, rush back, into me an instant before I found myself standing alone again⁠—in that valley that would never grow old!”

Charley had arisen and was standing by the fire. Suddenly he stooped and threw another log into the flames.

Far to the west the lights of the biggest spaceport on Earth blinked through the purple haze, and every time a ship took off, bound for the great outer planets, the desert would light up for miles.

But that light couldn’t hold a candle to the one that blazed in Charley’s eyes.