Read Online Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online Page A

hard as they could. Edward was working harder than he had on the St. George, but exhaustion fell away. He laughed as he worked his oar and shouted out the stroke to the others in the boat. And he heard other laughs float across the green sea. The men racing to be first ashore weren’t racing because they had to but because they wanted to, and it made all the difference in the world.
    Sand and mud grated under the boat’s keel. Edward sprang out into ankle-deep water. “Mine!” he shouted, throwing his arms wide. “Mine!”
    He thought he was the first man on the beach. If he was, though, he wasn’t by much. Other skippers and fishermen stepped out onto the shores of Atlantis. Little gray and brown shorebirds skittered along at the edge of the advancing and retreating waves, pausing now and again to peck at something or other. They left their tiny hentracks behind to be washed away by the next incoming surge.
    Richard set a hand on his father’s shoulder. “We’re here again,” he said.
    â€œWe are. By God, we are,” Edward Radcliffe agreed. “We’re here again, and this time we’re not going to leave.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” said one of the fishermen who’d rowed the boat ashore. “We aren’t going back to the St. George ?”
    Edward laughed. “We’ll go back, Alf. But we’ll go back to get what we need to set up a new town here. It may be a while before we go back to England.” I wonder if I’ll ever go back. I wonder if I’ll want to, he thought, and then, I suppose I’ll have to, one of these days. It’s not the same as wanting to.
    Alf nodded; he might not be bright, but he was willing. “Well, that’s all right, then,” he said. “That’s what I came for, that is.”

    The biggest adventure was getting the horses and cattle off the cogs and onto the land ahead. Some skippers solved it with brutal simplicity by pushing the animals over the side and making them swim. Others ran their lightly laden cogs aground at low tide and lowered gangplanks so the beasts could descend. When the water rose, it lifted the fishing boats and let the skippers move them out to sea again.
    â€œWhere are these honkers you kept telling me about?” Nell demanded as soon as she came ashore. She bent to wring out the dripping hem of her skirt, giving Edward a glimpse of a still-shapely ankle.
    â€œWell, I don’t know just where they are,” he admitted. “I expect we’ll see them sooner or later, though—sooner, unless I miss my guess. We saw a good many when we were here before.” Remembering what else they’d seen before, he raised his voice to a carrying shout: “Watch the sky! The eagles here are huge, and they have no fear of men—they think we’re prey.”
    Those little shorebirds had darted between—sometimes even over—men’s feet, too. In England or France, they would have kept their distance. It seemed they’d never met men before, and didn’t know such creatures were dangerous.
    And that was only a tiny strangeness among so many larger ones. The plants were the same curious mixture of conifers, ferns, and those barrel-trunked plants with the leaves that shot up from the top of the barrel. The honkers—even if absent at the moment—were like nothing Edward or anyone else had seen before. And the red-breasted thrushes acted like blackbirds but looked more like oversized robins. And all this within an hour’s walk of the shore!—for no one, yet, had dared venture farther inland.
    Some of the first things the newcomers made were salt pans at the edge of the ocean, to trap the seawater and let it evaporate, leaving salt behind. What they got would not be anywhere near so fine as the pure white flower of salt bought in Le Croisic. Right this minute, though, Edward worried more about quantity than quality. He wanted to