Gibraltar Falls tp-3 Read online

  He ought to have rested for several days, but feared that his manner would betray him. A stimulant pill must serve in place of nature.

  He ought to have checked out a tractor unit, not smuggled it into the locker on his vehicle.

  When he took the hopper forth, a Patrolman who saw asked where he was bound. “For a ride,” Nomura answered. The other nodded sympathetically. He might not suspect that a love had been lost, but the loss of a comrade was bad enough. Nomura was careful to get well over the northern horizon before he swung toward the seafall.

  Right and left, it reached further than he could see. Here, more than halfway down that cliff of green glass, the very curve of the planet hid its ends from him. Then as he entered the spume clouds, whiteness enfolded him, roiling and stinging.

  His face shield stayed clear, but vision was ragged, upward along immensity. The helmet warded his hearing but could not stave off the storm which rattled his teeth and heart and skeleton. Winds whirled and smote, the carrier staggered, he must fight for every inch of control.

  And to find the exact second—

  Back and forth he leaped across time, reset the verniers, reflicked the main switch, glimpsed himself vague in the mists, and peered through them toward heaven: over and over, until abruptly he was then.

  Twin gleams far above… He saw the one strike and go under, go down, while the other darted around until soon it ran away. Its rider had not seen him, where he lurked in the chill salt mists. His presence was not on any damned record.

  He darted forward. Yet patience was upon him. He could cruise for a long piece of lifespan if need be, seeking the trice which would be his. The fear of death, even the knowing that she might be dead when he found her, were like half-remembered dreams. The elemental powers had taken him. He was a will that flew.

  He hovered within a yard of the water. Gusts tried to cast him into its grip, as they had done to her. He was ready for them, danced free, returned to peer—returned through time as well as space, so that a score of him searched along the fall in that span of seconds when Feliz might be alive.

  He paid his other selves no heed. They were merely stages he had gone through or must still go through.

  THERE!

  The dim dark shape tumbled past him, beneath the flood, on its way to destruction. He spun a control. A tractor beam locked onto the other machine. His reeled and went after it, unable to pull such a mass free of such a might.

  The tide nearly had him when help came. Two vehicles, three, four, all straining together, they hauled Feliz’s loose. She sagged horribly limp in her saddle harness. He didn’t go to her at once. First he went back those few blinks in time, and back, and back, to be her rescuer and his own.

  When finally they were alone among fogs and furies, she freed and in his arms, he would have burnt a hole through the sky to get shore where he could care for her. But she stirred, her eyes blinked open, after a minute she smiled at him. Then he wept. Beside them, the ocean roared onward.

  The sunset to which Nomura had leaped ahead was not on anybody’s record either. It turned the land golden. The falls must be afire with it. Their song resounded beneath the evening star.

  Feliz propped pillows against headboard, sat straighter in the bed where she was resting, and told Everard: “If you lay charges against him, that he broke regulations or whatever male stupidity you are thinking of, I’ll also quit your bloody Patrol.”

  “Oh, no.” The big man lifted a palm as if to fend off attack. “Please. You misunderstand. I only meant to say, we’re in a slightly awkward position.”

  “How?” Nomura demanded, from the chair in which he sat and held Feliz’ hand. “I wasn’t under any orders not to attempt this, was I? All right, agents are supposed to safeguard their own lives if possible, as being valuable to the corps. Well, doesn’t it follow that the salvaging of a life is worthwhile too?”

  “Yes. Sure.” Everard paced the floor. It thudded beneath his boots, above the drumbeat of the flood. “Nobody quarrels with success, even in a much tighter organization than ours. In fact, Tom, the initiative you showed today makes your future prospects look good, believe me.” A grin went lopsided around his pipestem. “As for an old soldier like myself, it’ll be forgiven that I was too ready to give up.” A flick of somberness: “I’ve seen so many lost beyond hope.”

  He stopped in his treading, confronted them both, and stated: “But we cannot have loose ends. The fact is, her unit does not list Feliz a Rach as returning, ever.”

  Their clasps tightened on each other.

  Everard gave him and her a smile—haunted, nevertheless a smile—before he continued: “Don’t get scared, though. Tom, earlier you wondered why we, we ordinary humans at least, don’t keep closer track of our people. Now do you see the reason?

  “Feliz a Rach never checked back into her original base. She may have visited her former home, of course, but we don’t ask officially what agents do on their furloughs.” He drew breath. “As for the rest of her career, if she should want to transfer to a different headquarters and adopt a different name, why, any officer of sufficient rank could approve that. Me, for example.

  “We operate loose in the Patrol. We dare not do otherwise.”

  Nomura understood, and shivered.

  Feliz recalled him to the ordinary world. “But who might I become?” she wondered.

  He pounced on the cue. “Well,” he said, half in laughter and half in thunder, “how about Mrs. Thomas Nomura?”

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