Quest Beyond Time by Tony Morphett Page A

the heaps themselves, and the way they looked as if the earth itself was bulging out of its clothes in various places.
    Now he wondered whether they had come upon an old mining settlement. They were travelling by moonlight when they came upon a landscape of grass-covered heaps and hillocks. They were both exhausted. They had slept in a boat and then had had the day in the forest, and the desperate race against the setting sun. They had not been able to camp near the forest for fear that the Yobbies might somehow survive their encounter with the Forest People and come back looking for the people who had arranged it.
    So they had pressed on, and now they had come by moonlight into this strange bulging landscape.
    They each felt safe there, and each knew the other felt safe, so they put down the hang-glider and dropped down with their backs on the slope of one of the hillocks.
    ‘I’m beat!’ Mike said, and breathed the clean night air.
    ‘We have to steal a horse,’ said Katrin.
    Mike found himself agreeing wholeheartedly. ‘Why not?’ he said and threw his arms wide. Then, ‘Ow!’ he exclaimed. He had hit his knuckles against something very hard. It was something which, moreover, gave off a hollow note like the sound of banging a steel oil drum. He brought his hand back and sucked at his skinned knuckles. He was about to say something to Katrin about it, when he heard a voice from inside the hillock.
    ‘Who knocks!’ The voice was deep. It rang like a bass drum.
    Mike looked at Katrin, though he knew it was not she who had spoken.
    ‘Who knocks!’ The voice came from inside the hillock again, but this time it seemed closer. It appeared to be coming from just where Mike had skinned his knuckles. He sat up and looked at the place.
    There was a door in the hill.
    A round steel door.
    Before Mike could comment, the door flew open and an extraordinary little figure bounded out. It was a man about four feet tall, wearing armour and brandishing a sword. The sword was about the size of Katrin’s shortsword but looked full-size in the little man’s hand. Although he was short, he was very broad. He had big broad hands and feet, and a broad blazing red beard thrust out from under his helmet.
    ‘Answer or die!’ the little man boomed.
    Mike was really too tired to argue, and anyway, he had been threatened with death so often that day that he was quite getting used to the prospect. ‘If you must know . . . Mike knocks.’
    ‘Mike?’ the little man roared in tones of great scorn. ‘Is that a name or the sound of a dog’s belch?’ He turned his attention to Katrin. ‘What’s that tartan, girl? Can’t see in this light.’
    ‘Murray,’ she said.
    ‘Murray.’ The little man sheathed his sword. ‘I’ve made some very fine swords for the Murrays. Name’s Woodcat. You’d better come in to dinner.’
    As abruptly as he had leaped from the door, he turned and clanked inside. Mike and Katrin stood. Mike looked doubtfully at the hang-glider. ‘If the Little People live here, it’s safe,’ Katrin told him, and led the way through the circular doorway.
    The first thing Mike saw when he entered Woodcat’s underground house was the wall of a skyscraper.
    It was unmistakable for anything else. They were inside the hill, and yet there, facing them was a skyscraper wall. The aluminium cladding was polished to a high sheen, and the windows were intact. In this one moment Mike realized fully what changes there had been since the time he came from. What he had thought were hillocks outside must be the covered tops of buildings: skyscrapers covered by earth in the five hundred years since he was born. He was again torn by a desolate emptiness inside, by a longing to see father, mother and friends, all dead now for half a thousand years.
    He stood facing the wall of the buried building. The windows were curtained from the other side, in most cases obscuring the view. One curtain was, however, pulled back and Mike could see