The Technicolor Time Machine

“Just set up the shot, well be with you in a minute, Gino,” Barney said, turning back to his stars. Ruf had his arms folded, staring vacantly into space, looking very impressive indeed in the Viking outfit and blond beard. Slithey was leaning back in her safari chair while her wig was being combed, and she looked even more impressive with about twelve cubic feet of rounded flesh rising from the low-cut top of her dress.

“I’ll give it to you once more,” Barney said. “You’re in love and Ruf is leaving to go to battle and you may never see him again, so you are saying good-bye on the hill, passionately.”

“I thought I hated him?” Slithey said.

“That was yesterday,” Barney told her. “We’re not shooting in sequence, I explained this to you twice already this morning. Let me do it once more, briefly, and if I might have a small amount of your attention, too, Mr. Hawk. The picture opens when Thor, who is played by Ruf, comes with his Viking raiders to capture the farm on which you live, Slithey. You are Gudrid, the daughter of the house. In the battle all are killed by the Vikings except you, and Thor takes you as his prize. He wants you but you fight him because you hate him. But slowly he wins your heart until you fall in love with him. No sooner does this happen than he goes away on a Viking raid again and leaves you to wait for his return. That’s the scene we’re shooting now. He has left you, you run after him, you call to him, he rums and you come to him on the bill, right here. Is that clear…”

“Look,” Ruf said, pointing out to sea. “Here comes a ship.”

They all turned to look and, sure, enough, there was a Viking longship just clearing the headland and coming into the bay. The sail was furled, but the dragon’s head on the bow rose and fell as the oarsmen on each side hauled the ship through the water.

“Tomorrow!” Barney shouted. “Lyn, where are you? Didn’t you and Ottar arrange with this Finnboggi to bring his ship tomorrow?”

“They have a very loose sense of time,” Lyn said.

Barney hurled his hat to the ground and ran to the camera. “What about it, Gino?” he asked. “Is there a shot here? Anything you can get?”

Gino spun the turret to the big telescopic lens and jammed his face against the eyepiece. “Looks good,” he said, “a really nice shot.”

“Get it then, maybe we can salvage something from this.”

Ottar and the other northmen were running down the hill toward the house, nor did they stop when Barney shouted at them to keep out of the shot.

“What are they doing?” he asked, when they began to stream out, clutching weapons.

“I am sure I would not know,” Lyn told him. “Perhaps it is some custom of greeting I am not familiar with.”

Ottar and his men stood on the shore shouting and the men in the Viking ship shouted back.

“Get all this, Gino,” Barney ordered. “If it’s any good we can write it into the script.”

Under the thrust of the oars the longship ran up onto the beach, the dragon prow towering above the men waiting there. Almost before the ship had stopped moving the men aboard her had grabbed up the shields that were slung along the gunwales and jumped into the water. Like the men ashore, they also waved over their heads a varied collection of short swords and axes. The two groups met.

“How does it look?” Barney asked.

“Santa Maria!” Gino said. “They are killing each other.”

The clang of metal mingled with the hoarse cries as the men fought. No details could be made out of the turmoil by the watchers above—it was just a mass of struggling figures—until one man broke from the crowd and ran haltingly down the beach. He had been disarmed, he appeared to be wounded, and his antagonist was right behind him swinging an ax in wide circles. The chase was brief and the end was sudden. As the gap closed, the ax swooped down and the first man’s head jumped from his shoulders and bounded along the beach.

“They play for keeps…” Barney said in a choked voice.

“I do not think that this is Finnboggi and his men,” Lyn said. “I think this is a different ship that has arrived.”

Barney was a man of action, but not this kind of action. The sound of battle and the sight of the beheaded corpse and blood-drenched sand had a paralytic effect on him. What could he do? This was not his kind of world, his kind of affair. This was the kind of situation Tex or Dallas could handle. Where were they?

“The radio,” he said, belatedly remembering the transceiver slung over his shoulder; he thumbed it to life and hurriedly sent out a call for the stunt men.

“He’s seen us, he’s turning—he’s coming this way,” Gino shouted. “What a tremendous shot.”