It was only then that he turned to look back at the Time Bubble. He was thinking that Horn would be interested in his discovery of this tropical growth so far north.
His eyes blinked stupidly. He blinked again.
The Time Bubble's ugly ovoid of space-scarred metal was gone!
Several hours had passed since the space ship's uncanny disappearance. The Earthman was picking his way along a narrow game trail in the semi-twilight of the mighty forest that crowded close up to Lake Erie's shoreline.
Caution had impelled him to seek safety in the wilderness until the truth about the spacer's disappearance was revealed.
The trail cut across a rock-strewn highway, deeply-rutted by wheeled vehicles. Just across the way, half-hidden by a tangle of wild vines and brush, was a small log cabin. Smoke oozed slowly skyward from its mud-daubed stick chimney.
The odor of cooking meat sent Orth trotting hungrily across the road. He had forgotten any possible danger until an arrow hissed viciously past his ear. He dropped forward on his belly in a shallow depression soggy with dead leaves. A second arrow thwocked lightly through the gray-barked tangle of brush that his head was ramming into.
His fingers went to the flat pocket machine gun that all three scientists aboard the Time Bubble carried. This weapon, complete with ten thousand tiny explosive cartridges, and a compact kit of tools and essential equipment, they carried with them at all times when away from the space ship.
Behind a light gray shaft of scaly bark, a huge tree's bole, something red moved. His machine gun slapped a dozen needle-sized slugs at the half-seen target. The explosions splintered and ripped at the tree's thick trunk. The red thing leaped clear, yelling. Before Devin could stop his weapon, it stepped into several small incredibly bright explosions.