Time Traders

Ross Murdock wouldn’t have seemed formidable to any one glancing casually at him as he sat within the detention cell. He was a little above average height, but not enough to make him noticeable. His brown hair was cropped conservatively and there was nothing remarkable about his unlined boy’s face—unless one noted those light-gray eyes and caught the chilling, measuring expression that showed now and then for an instant in their depths.

He was neatly and inconspicuously dressed. In this first quarter of the twenty-first century his like was to be found on any street of the city ten floors below—to all outward appearances. But under the protective coloration Ross so assiduously cultivated was another person who could touch heights of encased and controlled fury which Ross himself did not understand. He was only just learning to use it as a weapon against a world he had always found hostile.

Ross was aware, though he gave no sign of it, that a guard was watching him. The cop on duty was an old hand—he probably expected some reaction other than passive acceptance from the prisoner, but he was not going to get it.

The law had Ross sewed up tight this time. Why didn’t they get about the business of shipping him off? Why had he had that afternoon session with the psychologist? Ross had been on the defensive then, and he hadn’t liked it. He had given to the other’s questions all the attention his shrewd mind could muster, but a faint, very faint, apprehension still clung to the memory of that meeting.

The door of the detention room opened. Ross did not turn his head, but the guard cleared his throat as if their hour of mutual silence had dried his vocal cords. “On your feet, Murdock! The judge wants to see you.”

Ross rose smoothly, with every muscle under fluid control. It never paid to talk back, to allow any sign of defiance to show. He would go through the motions as if he were a bad little boy who had realized his errors. The meek-and-mild act had paid off fine in Ross’s checkered past. So he faced the man seated behind the desk in the other room with an uncertain, diffident smile, standing with boyish awkwardness, respectfully waiting for the other to speak first. Judge Ord Rawle. It was his rotten luck to pull old Eagle Beak on his case. Well, he would simply have to take it when the old boy dished it out. Not that he had to remain stuck with it later . . .

“You have a bad record, young man.”

Ross allowed his smile to fade; his shoulders slumped. But under concealing lids his eyes showed an instant of cold defiance.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed in a voice carefully cultivated to shake convincingly about the edges. Then suddenly all Ross’s pleasure in the skill of his act was wiped away. Judge Rawle was not alone; that blasted skull thumper was sitting there, watching the prisoner with the same keenness he had shown the other day.

“A very bad record for the few years you have had to make it.” Eagle Beak was staring at him, too, but without the same look of penetration, luckily for Ross. “By rights, you should be turned over to the new Rehabilitation Service . . .”

Ross froze inside. That was the “treatment,” icy rumors of which had spread throughout his particular world. For the second time since he had entered the room his self-confidence was jarred. Then he clung with a degree of hope to the phrasing of that last sentence.

“Instead, I have been directed to offer you a choice, Murdock. One which I shall state—and on record—I do not in the least approve.”

Ross’s twinge of fear faded. If the judge didn’t like it, there must be something in it to the advantage of Ross Murdock. He’d grab it for sure!

“There is a government project in need of volunteers. It seems that you have tested out as possible material for this assignment. If you sign for it, the law will consider the time spent on it as part of your sentence. Thus you may aid the country which you have heretofore disgraced—”

“And if I refuse, I go to this rehabilitation. Is that right, sir?”

“I certainly consider you a fit candidate for rehabilitation. Your record—” He shuffled through the papers on his desk.

“I choose to volunteer for the project, sir.”

The judge snorted and pushed all the papers into a folder. He spoke to a third man who’d been waiting in the shadows. “Here then is your volunteer, Major.”

Ross bottled in his relief. He was over the first hump. And since his luck had held so far, he might be about to win all the way . . .

The man Judge Rawle called “Major” moved into the light. At first glance Ross, to his hidden annoyance, found himself uneasy. To face up to Eagle Beak was all part of the game. But somehow he sensed one did not play such games with this man.

“Thank you, your honor. We will be on our way at once, before the weather socks us in completely.”

Before he realized what was happening, Ross found himself walking meekly to the door. He considered trying to give the major the slip when they left the building, losing himself in a storm-darkened city, but they did not take the elevator downstairs. Instead, they climbed two or three flights up the emergency stairs. And to his humiliation Ross found himself panting and slowing, while the other man, who must have been a good dozen years his senior, showed no signs of discomfort.

They came out into the wind and snow on the roof, and the major flashed a torch toward a dark shadow waiting for them with rotating blades. A helicopter! For the first time Ross began to doubt the wisdom of his choice.

“Keep away from the tail rotors, Murdock!” The voice was impersonal enough, but that very impersonality got under one’s skin.

Bundled into the machine between the silent major and an equally quiet pilot in uniform, Ross was lifted over the city, whose ways he knew as well as he knew the lines on his own palm, into the unknown he was already beginning to regard dubiously. The lighted streets and buildings, their outlines softened by the soft wet snow, fell out of sight. Now they could mark the outer highways. Ross refused to ask any questions. He could take this silent treatment, he had taken a lot of tougher things in the past.

The patches of light disappeared, and the country opened out. The plane banked. Ross, with all the familiar landmarks of his world gone, could not have said if they were headed north or south. But moments later not even the thick curtain of snowflakes could blot out the pattern of red lights on the ground, and the helicopter settled down.

“Come on!”

For the second time Ross obeyed. He stood shivering, engulfed in a miniature blizzard. His clothing, protection enough in the city, did little good against the push of the wind. A hand gripped his upper arm, and he was drawn forward to a low building. A door banged and Ross and his companion came into a region of light and very welcome heat.

“Sit down—over there!”

Too bewildered to resent orders, Ross sat. There were other men in the room. One, wearing a queer suit of padded clothing, a bulbous helmet hooked over his arm, was reading a paper. The major crossed to speak to him and after they conferred for a moment, the major beckoned Ross with a crooked finger. Ross trailed the officer into an inner room lined with lockers.

From one of the lockers the major pulled a suit like the pilot’s, and began to measure it against Ross. “All right,” he snapped. “Climb into this! We haven’t all night.”

Ross climbed into the suit. As soon as he fastened the last zipper his companion jammed one of the domed helmets on his head. The pilot looked in the door. “We’d better scramble, Kelgarries, or we may be grounded for the duration.”

They hurried back to the flying field. If the helicopter had been a surprising mode of travel, this new machine was something straight out of the future—a needle-slim ship poised on fins, its sharp nose lifting vertically into the heavens. There was a scaffolding along one side, which the pilot scaled to enter the ship.

Unwillingly, Ross climbed the same ladder and found that he must wedge himself in on his back, his knees hunched up almost under his chin. To make it worse, cramped as those quarters were, he had to share them with the major. A transparent hood snapped down and clicked secure, sealing them in.

During his short lifetime Ross had often been afraid, bitterly afraid. He had fought to toughen his mind and body against such fears. But what he experienced now was no ordinary fear; it was panic so strong that it made him feel sick. To be shut in this small place with the knowledge that he had no control over his immediate future brought him face to face with every terror he had ever known, all of them combined into one horrible whole.

How long does a nightmare last? A moment? An hour? Ross could not time his. But at last the weight of a giant hand clamped down on his chest, and he fought for breath until the world exploded about him.

He came back to consciousness slowly. For a second he thought he was blind. Then he began to sort out one shade of grayish light from another. Finally, Ross became aware that he no longer rested on his back, but was slumped in a seat. The world about him was wrung with a vibration that beat in turn through his body.

Ross Murdock had remained at liberty as long as he had because he was able to analyze a situation quickly. Seldom in the past five years had he been at a loss to deal with any challenging person or action. Now he was aware that he was on the defensive and was being kept there. He stared into the dark and thought hard and furiously. He was convinced that everything that was happening to him this day was designed with only one end in view—to shake his self-confidence and make him pliable. Why?

Ross had an enduring belief in his own abilities and he also possessed a kind of shrewd understanding seldom granted to one so young. He knew that while Murdock was important to Murdock, he was none too important in the scheme of things as a whole. He had a record—a record so bad that Rawle might easily have thrown the book at him. But it differed in one important way from that of many of his fellows; until now he had been able to beat most of the raps. Ross believed this was largely because he had always worked alone and taken pains to plan a job in advance.

Why now had Ross Murdock become so important to someone that they would do all this to shake him? He was a volunteer—for what? To be a guinea pig for some bug they wanted to learn how to kill cheaply and easily? They’d been in a big hurry to push him off base. Using the silent treatment, this rushing around in planes, they were really working to keep him groggy. So, all right, he’d give them a groggy boy all set up for their job, whatever it was. Only, was his act good enough to fool the major? Ross had a hunch that it might not be, and that really hurt.

It was deep night now. Either they had flown out of the path of the storm or were above it. There were stars shining through the cover of the cockpit, but no moon.

Ross’s formal education was sketchy, but in his own fashion he had acquired a range of knowledge which would have surprised many of the authorities who had had to deal with him. All the wealth of a big city library had been his to explore, and he had spent much time there, soaking up facts in many odd branches of learning. Facts were very useful things. On at least three occasions assorted scraps of knowledge had preserved Ross’s freedom, once, perhaps his life.

Now he tried to fit together the scattered facts he knew about his present situation into some proper pattern. He was inside some new type of aircraft, a machine so advanced in design that it would not have been used for anything that was not an important mission. Which meant that Ross Murdock had become necessary to someone, somewhere. Knowing that fact should give him a slight edge in the future, and he might well need such an edge. He’d just have to wait, play dumb, and use his eyes and ears.

At the rate they were shooting along they ought to be out of the country in a couple of hours. Didn’t the Government have bases over half the world to keep the “cold peace”? Well, there was nothing for it. To be planted abroad someplace might interfere with plans for escape, but he’d handle that detail when he was forced to face it.

Then suddenly Ross was on his back once more, the giant hand digging into his chest and middle. This time there were no lights on the ground to guide them in. Ross had no intimation that they had reached their destination until they set down with a jar which snapped his teeth together.

The major wriggled out, and Ross was able to stretch his cramped body. But the other’s hand was already on his shoulder, urging him along. Ross crawled free and clung dizzily to a ladderlike disembarking structure.

Below there were no lights, only an expanse of open snow. Men were moving across that blank area, gathering at the foot of the ladder. Ross was hungry and very tired. If the major wanted to play games, he hoped that he’d wait until the next morning.

In the meantime he must learn where “here” was. If he had a chance to run, he wanted to know the surrounding territory. But that hand was on his arm, drawing him along toward a hillock of snow. Either the storm or men had done a very good cover-up job and when a door in the side of the snow opened, Ross knew the camouflage was intentional.

That was Ross’s introduction to the base, and after his arrival his view of the installation was extremely limited. One day was spent in undergoing the most searching physical he had ever experienced. And after the doctors had poked and pried he was faced by a series of other tests no one bothered to explain. Thereafter he was introduced to solitary, that is, confined to his own company in a cell-like room with a bunk that was more comfortable than it looked and an announcer in a corner of the ceiling. So far he had been told exactly nothing. And so far he had asked no questions, stubbornly keeping up his end of what he believed to be a tug of wills. At the moment, safely alone and lying flat on his bunk he eyed the announcer, a very dangerous young man and one who refused to yield an inch.

“Now hear this . . .” The voice transmitted through that grill was metallic, but its rasp held overtones of Kelgarries’ voice. Ross’s lips tightened. He had explored every inch of the walls and knew that there was no trace of the door which had admitted him. With only his bare hands to work with he could not break out, and his only clothes were the shirt, sturdy slacks, and a pair of soft-soled moccasins that they had given him.

“ . . . to identify . . .” droned the voice. Ross realized that he must have missed something, not that it mattered. He was almost determined not to play along any more.

There was a click, signifying that Kelgarries was through braying. But the customary silence did not close in again. Instead, Ross heard a clear, sweet trilling which he vaguely associated with a bird. His acquaintance with all feathered life was limited to city sparrows and plump park pigeons, neither of which raised their voices in song, but surely those sounds were bird notes. Ross glanced from the speaker in the ceiling to the opposite wall. What he saw there made him sit up, the instant response of an alerted fighter.

The wall was no longer there! Instead, a sharp slope of ground cut down from peaks where the dark green of fir trees ran close to the snow line. Patches of snow clung to the earth in sheltered places, and the scent of those trees was in Ross’s nostrils, real as the wind touching him with its chill.

He shivered as a loud, echoing howl sounded, the age-old warning of a wolf pack, hungry and a-hunt. Ross had never heard that call before, but his human heritage subconsciously recognized it for what it was—death on four feet. Similarly, he was able to identify the gray shadows slinking about the nearest trees, and his hands balled into fists as he looked wildly about for some weapon.

The bunk was under him and three of the four walls of the room enclosed him like a cave. But one of those gray skulkers had raised its head and was looking directly at him, its reddish eyes alight. Ross ripped the top blanket off the bunk with a half-formed idea of snapping it at the animal when it sprang.

Stiff-legged, the beast advanced, a guttural growl sounding deep in its throat. To Ross the animal, larger than any dog he had ever seen and twice as vicious, was a monster. He had the blanket ready before he realized that the wolf was not watching him after all: its attention was focused on a point out of his line of vision.

The wolf’s muzzle wrinkled in a snarl, revealing long yellow-white teeth. There was a singing twang. The animal leaped into the air, fell back, and rolled on the ground, biting despairingly at a shaft protruding from just behind its ribs. It howled again, and blood broke from its mouth.

Ross was beyond surprise now. He pulled himself together and got up, to walk steadily toward the dying wolf. And he wasn’t in the least amazed when his outstretched hands flattened against an unseen barrier. Slowly, he swept his hands right and left, sure that he was touching the wall of his cell. Yet his eyes told him he was on a mountain side, and every sight, sound, and smell was making it real to him.

Puzzled, he thought a moment and then, finding an explanation that satisfied him, he nodded once and went back to sit at ease on his bunk. This must be some superior form of TV that included odors, the illusion of wind, and other fancy touches to make it more vivid. The total effect was so convincing that Ross had to keep reminding himself that it was all just a picture.

The wolf was dead. Its pack mates had fled into the brush, but since the picture remained, Ross decided that the show was not yet over. He could still hear a click of sound, and he waited for the next bit of action. But the reason for his viewing it still eluded him.

A man came into view, crossing before Ross. He stooped to examine the dead wolf, catching it by the tail and hoisting its hindquarters off the ground. Comparing the beast’s size with the hunter’s, Ross saw that he had not been wrong in his estimation of the animal’s unusually large dimensions. The man shouted over his shoulder, his words distinct enough, but unintelligible to Ross.

The stranger was oddly dressed—too lightly dressed if one judged the climate by the frequent snow patches and the biting cold. A strip of coarse cloth, extending from his armpit to about four inches above the knee, was wound about his body and pulled in at the waist by a belt. The belt, far more ornate than the cumbersome wrapping, was made of many small chains linking metal plates. It supported a long dagger which hung straight in front. The man’s round blue cloak, now swept back on his shoulders to free his bare arms, was fastened by a large pin under his chin. His footgear, which extended above his calves, was made of animal hide, still bearing shaggy hair. He was beardless, though a shadowy line along his chin suggested that he had not shaved that particular day. A fur cap concealed most of his dark-brown hair.

Was he an Indian? No, for although his skin was tanned, it was as fair as Ross’s under that weathering. And his clothing did not resemble any Indian apparel Ross had ever seen.

In spite of his primitive trappings, the man had an aura of authority, of self-confidence, and competence, it was clear he was top dog in his own section of the world.

Another man, dressed much like the first, but with a rust-brown cloak, came along, pulling behind him two very reluctant donkeys. Their eyes rolled fearfully at sight of the dead wolf. Both animals wore packs lashed on their backs by ropes of twisted hide. A third man followed with another brace of donkeys. Finally, a fourth man, wearing skins for covering and with a mat of beard on his cheeks and chin, appeared. His uncovered head, a bush of uncombed flaxen hair, shone whitish. He knelt beside the dead beast, a knife with a dull-gray blade in his hand, and set skillfully to work skinning the wolf. Three more pairs of donkeys, all heavily laden, were led past the scene before he finished his task. Finally, he rolled the bloody skin into a bundle and gave the flayed body a kick before he ran lightly after the disappearing train of pack animals.

Ross, absorbed in the scene before him, wasn’t prepared for the sudden and complete darkness which blotted out not only the action but the light in his own room as well.

“What—?” His startled voice rang loudly, too loudly, for all sound had been wiped out with the light. The faint swish of the ventilating system, which he hadn’t noticed until it had disappeared, was also missing. A trace of the same panic he had known in the cockpit of the aircraft tingled along his nerves. But this time he could meet the unknown with action.

Ross slowly moved through the dark, his hands outstretched before him to avoid the wall. He was determined that he would discover the hidden door, escape from this dark cell . . .

There! His palm struck flat against a smooth surface. He swept out his hand—and suddenly it passed over emptiness. Ross explored by touch. There was a door and now it was open. For a moment he hesitated, nagged by fear that if he stepped through he would be out on the hillside with the wolves.

“That’s stupid!” Again he spoke aloud. And, just because he did feel uneasy, he moved. All the frustrations of the past hours built up in him a raging desire to do something—anything—just so long as it was what he wanted to do and not at another’s orders.

Nevertheless, Ross continued to move slowly, for the space beyond that open door was as deep and dark as the room he left. To squeeze along one wall, using an outstretched arm as a guide, was the best procedure, he decided.

A few feet farther on, his shoulder slipped from the surface and he half tumbled into another open door. But there was the wall again, and he clung to it thankfully. Another door . . . Ross paused, trying to catch some faint sound, the slightest hint that he was not alone in this blindman’s maze. But without even air currents to stir it, the blackness itself took on a solidity which encased him as a congealing jelly.

The wall ended. Ross kept his left hand on it, flailed out with his right, and felt his nails scrape across another surface. The space separating the two surfaces was wider than any doorway. Was it a cross-corridor? As he was about to make a wider arm sweep, he heard a sound. He was not alone.

Ross went back to the wall. Flattening himself against the wall, Ross tried to control the volume of his own breathing in order to catch the slightest whisper of the other noise. He discovered that lack of sight confuses the ear. He could not identify those clicks, that wisp of fluttering sound that might be air displaced by the opening of another door.

Finally, he detected something moving at floor level. Someone or something must be creeping, not walking, toward him. Ross pushed back around the corner. It never occurred to him to challenge the crawler. An encounter in the dark could be dangerous. Who was his fellow explorer?

The sound of crawling was not steady. Long pauses convinced Ross that each rest was punctuated by heavy breathing as if the crawler was finding progress an exhausting effort. He fought the picture that persisted in his imagination—that of a wolf snuffling down the blacked-out hall. Caution suggested a quick retreat, but Ross’s urge to rebellion held him where he was, crouching, straining to see what crept toward him.

Suddenly, blinding light blazed forth. Ross covered his dazzled eyes. And he heard a cry of despair from near floor level. The light that normally filled hall and room was steady again. Ross found himself standing at the juncture of two corridors—he was absurdly pleased to have deduced that correctly—and the crawler—?

A man—at least the figure was a two-legged, two-armed manlike form—was lying several yards away. But the body was so wrapped in bandages and the head so totally muffled, that it lacked all identity.

One of the mittened hands stirred, raising the body slightly so it could squirm forward an inch or so. Before Ross could move, a man ran into the corridor from the far end. It was Major Kelgarries. Ross licked his lips as the major went down on his knees beside the creature on the floor.

“Hardy! Hardy!” That voice, which carried the snap of command whenever it addressed Ross, was now warmly human. “Hardy, man!” The major’s hands were on the bandaged body, lifting it, easing the head and shoulders back against his arm. “It’s all right, Hardy. You’re back—safe. This is the base, Hardy.” He spoke slowly, soothingly, as if comforting a frightened child.

Those mittened paws which had beat feebly in the air fell onto the bandage-wreathed chest. “Back—safe—” The voice croaked rustily behind the face mask.

“Back, safe,” the major assured him.

“Dark—dark all around again—” protested the croak.

“Just a power failure, man. Everything’s all right now. We’ll get you into bed.”

The mitten pawed again until it touched Kelgarries’ arm. It flexed a little as if the hand under it was trying to grip.

“Safe—?”

“You bet you are!” The major’s tone carried reassurance. Kelgarries looked up at Ross as if he knew the other had been there all the time.

“Murdock, get down to the end room. Call Dr. Farrell!”

“Yes, sir!” The “sir” came so automatically that Ross had already reached the end room before he realized he had used it.

Nobody explained matters to Ross Murdock. The bandaged Hardy was carried away by the doctor and two attendants. The major walked beside the stretcher, still holding one of the mittened hands in his. Ross hesitated, sure he wasn’t supposed to follow, but not prepared to explore farther or return to his own room. The sight of Hardy, whoever he might be, had radically changed Ross’s perception of the project he had too speedily volunteered to join.

That what they did here was important, Ross had never doubted. That it was dangerous, he had already suspected. But his awareness had been abstract until Hardy came crawling through the dark. From the first, Ross had nursed vague plans for escape; now he knew he must get out of this place lest he end up a twin for Hardy.

“Murdock?”

Startled by the soundless approach, Ross whirled around, ready to use his fists if need be. But he did not face the major or any of the other taciturn officers that he recognized.

The newcomer’s sun-browned skin and dark hair stood out sharply against the pale wall and contrasted with the vivid blue of his eyes.

Expressionless, the dark stranger stood quietly, his arms hanging loosely by his sides. He studied Ross, as if the younger man was some problem he had been assigned to solve. When he spoke, his voice was a flat monotone devoid of feeling.

“I am Ashe.” He introduced himself baldly; he might have been saying “This is a table and that is a chair.”

Ross’s quick temper took spark from the other’s indifference. “All right—so you’re Ashe!” He strove to make a challenge of it. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

But the other did not rise to the bait. He shrugged. “For the time being we have been partnered—”

“Partnered for what?” demanded Ross, controlling his temper.

“We work in pairs here. The machine sorts us . . .” he answered and consulted his wrist watch. “Mess call soon.”

Ashe had already turned away, and Ross could not stand the other’s lack of interest. Although Murdock refused to ask questions of the major or any others on that side of the fence, surely he could get some information from a fellow “volunteer.”

“What is this place, anyway?” he asked.

The other glanced back over his shoulder. “Operation Retrograde.”

Ross swallowed his anger. “Okay, but what do they do here? Listen, I just saw a fellow who’d been banged up as if he’d been in a concrete mixer, creeping along this hall. What sort of work do they do here? And what do we have to do?”

To his amazement Ashe smiled, at least his lips quirked faintly. “Hardy got under your skin, eh? Well, we do have our failures. They are as few as it’s humanly possible to make, and they give us every advantage that can be worked out for us—”

“Failures at what?”

“Operation Retrograde.”

Somewhere down the hall a buzzer whirred softly.

“That’s mess call. And I’m hungry, even if you’re not.” Ashe walked away as if Ross Murdock had ceased to exist.

But Ross Murdock did exist. As he trailed along behind Ashe he determined that he was going to continue to exist, in one piece and unharmed, Operation Retrograde or no Operation Retrograde. And he was going to pry a few enlightening answers out of somebody very soon.

To his surprise he found Ashe waiting for him at the door of a room from which came the sound of voices and a subdued clatter of trays and tableware.

“Not many in tonight,” Ashe commented in a take-it-or-leave-it tone. “It’s been a busy week.”

The room was sparsely occupied. Five tables were empty, while the men gathered at the remaining two. Ross counted ten men, either already eating or coming back from a serving hatch with well-filled trays. All of them were dressed in slacks, shirt, and moccasins like himself—the outfit seemed to be a sort of undress uniform—and six of them were ordinary looking. The other four differed so radically that Ross could barely conceal his amazement.

Since their fellows accepted them without comment, Ross stole glances at them as he waited behind Ashe for a tray. One pair were clearly Oriental; they were small, lean men with thin brackets of long black mustaches on either side of their mobile mouths. Yet they spoke his own language with the facility of the native born. In addition to the mustaches, each wore a blue tattoo mark on the forehead and on the backs of their hands.

The second duo were even more fantastic. The huge rugged men wore their flaxen hair in braids long enough to swing across their powerful shoulders, a fashion unlike any Ross had ever seen

“Gordon!” One of the braided giants swung half-way around from the table to halt Ashe as he came down the aisle with his tray. “When did you get back? And where is Sanford?”

One of the Orientals laid down the spoon with which he had been vigorously stirring his coffee and asked with real concern, “Another loss?”

Ashe shook his head. “Just reassignment. Sandy’s holding down Outpost Gog and doing well.” He grinned and his face came to life with an expression of impish humor Ross would not have believed possible. “He’ll end up with a million or two if he doesn’t watch out. He takes to trade as if he were born with a beaker in his fist.”

The Oriental laughed and then glanced at Ross. “Your new partner, Ashe?”

Some of the animation disappeared from Ashe’s brown face; he was noncommittal again. “Temporary assignment. This is Murdock.” The introduction was flat enough to daunt Ross. “Hodaki, Feng,” he introduced the two Easterners with a nod as he put down his tray. “Jansen, Van Wyke.” That accounted for the blonds.

“Ashe!” A man arose at the other table and came to stand beside theirs. Thin, with a dark, narrow face and restless eyes, he was much younger than the others, younger and not so well controlled. He might answer questions if there was something in it for him, Ross decided, and pushed the thought away.

“Well, Kurt?” Ashe’s recognition was as dampening as it could be, and Ross’s estimation of the younger man went up a fraction when the snub appeared to have no effect upon him.

“Did you hear about Hardy?”

Feng looked as if he were about to speak, and Van Wyke frowned. Ashe made a deliberate process of chewing and swallowing before he replied. “Naturally.” His tone reduced whatever had happened to Hardy to a matter-of-fact proceeding far removed from Kurt’s implied melodrama.

“He’s smashed up . . . kaput . . .” Kurt’s accent, slight in the beginning, was thickening. “Tortured . . .”

Ashe regarded him levelly. “You aren’t on Hardy’s run, are you?”

Still Kurt refused to be quashed. “Of course, I’m not! You know the run I am in training for. But that is not saying that such can not happen as well on my run, or yours, or yours!” He pointed a stabbing finger at Feng and then at the blond men.

“You can fall out of bed and break your neck, too, if your number comes up that way,” observed Jansen. “Go cry on Millaird’s shoulder if it hurts you that much. You were told the score at your briefing. You know why you were picked, and what might happen . . .”

Ross caught a faint glance aimed at him by Ashe. He was still totally in the dark, but he would not try to pry any information from this crowd. Maybe part of their training was this hush-hush business. He would wait and see, until he could get Kurt aside and do a little pumping. Meanwhile he ate stolidly and tried to cover up his interest in the conversation.

“Then you are going to keep on saying ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ to every order here—?”

Hodaki slammed his tattooed hand on the table. “Why this foolishness, Kurt? You well know how and why we are picked for runs. Hardy had the deck stacked against him through no fault of the project. That has happened before; it will happen again—”

“Which is what I have been saying! Do you wish it to happen to you? Pretty games those tribesmen on your run play with their prisoners, do they not?”

“Oh, shut up!” Jansen got to his feet. Since he loomed at least five inches above Kurt and probably could have broken him in two over one massive knee, his order commanded attention. “If you have any complaints, go make them to Millaird. And, little man”—he poked a massive forefinger into Kurt’s chest—“wait until you make that first run of yours before you sound off so loudly. No one is sent out without every advance, and Hardy was unlucky. That’s that. We got him back, and that was lucky for him. He’d be the first to tell you so.” He stretched. “I’m for a game—Ashe? Hodaki?”

“Always so energetic,” murmured Ashe, but he nodded as did the small Oriental.

Feng smiled at Ross. “Always these three try to beat each other, and so far all the contests are draws. But we hope . . . yes, we have hopes . . .”

So Ross had no chance to speak to Kurt. Instead, he was drawn into the knot of men who, having finished their meal, entered a small arena with a half circle of spectator seats at one side and a space for contestants at the other. What followed absorbed Ross as completely as the earlier scene of the wolf killing. This too was a fight, but not a physical struggle. All three contenders were not only unlike in body, but as Ross speedily came to understand, they were also unlike in their mental approach to any problem.

They seated themselves crosslegged at the three points of a triangle. Then Ashe looked from the tall blond to the small Oriental. “Territory?” he asked crisply.

“Inland plains!” That came almost in chorus, and each man, looking at his opponent, began to laugh.

Ashe himself chuckled. “Trying to be smart tonight, boys?” he inquired. “All right, plains it is.”

He brought his hand down on the floor before him, and to Ross’s astonishment the area around the players darkened and the floor became a stretch of miniature countryside. Grassy plains rippled under the wind of a fair day.

“Red!”

“Blue!”

“Yellow!”

The choices came quickly from the dusk masking the players. And upon those orders points of the designated color came into being as small lights.

“Red—caravan!” Ross recognized Jansen’s boom.

“Blue—raiders!” Hodaki’s choice was only an instant behind.

“Yellow—unknown factor.”

Ross was sure that sigh came from Jansen. “Is the unknown factor a natural phenomenon?”

“No—tribe on the march.”

“Ah!” Hodaki was considering that. Ross could picture his shrug.

The game began. Ross knew of computer games and had heard of chess, of war games played with miniature armies or ships, and of board games which demanded a quick wit and a trained memory. This game, however, was all those combined, and more. As his imagination came to life, the moving points of light were transformed into perfect simulations of the raiders, the merchants’ caravan, the tribe on the march. There was ingenious deployment, a battle, a retreat, a small victory here, to be followed by a bigger defeat there. The game might have gone on for hours. The men about him muttered, taking sides and arguing heatedly in voices low enough not to drown out the moves called by the players. Ross was thrilled when the red traders avoided a very cleverly laid ambush, and indignant when the tribe was forced to withdraw or the caravan lost points. It was the most fascinating game he had ever seen, and he realized that the three men ordering these moves were all masters of strategy. Their respective skills checkmated each other so equally that an outright win was far away.

Then Jansen laughed, and the red line of the caravan gathered in a tight knot. “Camped at a spring,” he announced, “but with plenty of sentries out.” Red sparks showed briefly beyond that center core. “And they’ll have to stay there for all of me. We could keep this up till doomsday, and nobody would crack.”

“No”—Hodaki contradicted him—“someday one of you will make a little mistake and then—”

“And then whatever bully boys you’re running will clobber us?” asked Jansen. “That’ll be the day! Anyway, truce for now.”

“Granted!”

The lights of the arena went on and the plains vanished into a dark, tiled floor. “Any time you want a return engagement it’ll be fine with me,” said Ashe, getting up.

Jansen grinned. “Put that off for a month or so, Gordon. We push into time tomorrow. Take care of yourselves, you two. I don’t want to have to break in another set of players when I come back.”

Ross, finding it difficult to shake off the illusion which had held him entranced, felt a slight touch on his shoulder and glanced up. Kurt stood behind him, apparently intent upon Jansen and Hodaki as they argued over some point of the game.

“See you tonight.” The boy’s lips hardly moved, a trick Ross knew from his own past. Yes, he would see Kurt tonight, or whenever he could. He was going to learn what it was this odd company seemed determined to keep as their own private secret.

Ross stood cautiously against the wall of his darkened room, his head turned toward the slightly open door. A slight shuffling sound had awakened him, and he was now poised like a cat before her spring. But he did not hurl himself at the figure now easing the door farther open. He waited until the visitor was approaching the bunk before he slid along the wall, closing the door and putting his shoulders against it.

“What’s the pitch?” Ross demanded in a whisper.

There was a ragged breath, maybe two, then a little laugh out of the dark. “You are ready?” The visitor’s accent left no doubt as to his identity. Kurt was paying him the promised visit.

“Did you think that I wouldn’t be?”

“No.” The dim figure sat without invitation on the edge of the bunk. “I would not be here otherwise, Murdock. You are plenty . . . have plenty on the ball. You see, I have heard things about you. Like me, you were tricked into this game. Tell me, is it not true that you saw Hardy tonight.”

“You hear a lot, don’t you?” Ross was noncommittal.

“I hear, I see, I learn more than these big mouths, like the major with his do’s and don’ts. That I can tell you! You see Hardy. Do you want to be a Hardy?”

“Is there any danger of that?”

“Danger!” Kurt snorted. “Danger—you have not yet known the meaning of danger, little man. Not until now. I ask you again, do you want to end like Hardy? They have not yet looped you in with all their big talk. That is why I came here tonight. If you know what is good for you, Murdock, you will make a break before they tape you—”

“Tape me?”

Kurt’s laugh was full of anger, not amusement. “Oh, yes. They have many tricks here. They are big brains, eggheads, all of them with their favorite gadgets. They put you through a machine to get you registered on tape. Then, my boy, you cannot get outside the base without ringing all the alarms! Neat, eh? So if you want to make a break, you must try it before they tape you.”

Ross did not trust Kurt, but he was listening to him attentively. The other’s argument sounded convincing to one whose general ignorance of science led him to believe that all kinds of weird inventions were entirely possible and probable—usually in some dim future, but perhaps today.

“They must have you taped,” Ross pointed out.

Kurt laughed again, but this time he was amused. “They believe that they have. Only they are not as smart as they believe, the major and the rest, including Millaird! No, I have a fighting chance to get out of this place, only I cannot do it alone. That is why I have been waiting for them to bring in a new guy I could get to before they had him pinned down for good. You are tough, Murdock. I saw your record, and I’m betting that you did not come here with the intention of staying. So—here is your chance to go along with one who knows the ropes. You will not have such a good one again.”

The longer Kurt talked, the more convincing he was. Ross lost a few of his suspicions. It was true that he had come prepared to run at the first possible opportunity, and if Kurt had everything planned, so much the better. Of course, it was possible that Kurt was a stool pigeon, leading him on as a test. But that was a chance Ross would have to take.

“Look here, Murdock, maybe you think it’s easy to break out of here. Do you know where we are, boy? We’re near enough to the North Pole as makes no difference! Are you going to leg it back some hundreds of miles through thick ice and snow? A nice jaunt if you make it. I do not think that you can—not without plans and a partner who knows what he is about.”

“And how do we go? Steal one of those planes? I’m not a pilot—are you?”

“They have other things besides planes here. This place is strictly hush-hush. Even the aircraft do not set down too often for fear they will be tracked. Where have you been, boy? Don’t you know the Russians are circling around up here? These fellows watch for Russian activity, and the Russians watch them. They play it under the table on both sides. We get our supplies overland by cats—”

“Cats?”

“Snow sleds, like tractors,” the other answered impatiently. “Our stuff is dumped miles to the south, and the cats go down once a month to bring it back. There’s no trick to driving a cat, and they tear off the miles—”

“How many miles to the south?” asked Ross skeptically. Granted Kurt was speaking the truth, travel over an arctic wilderness in a stolen machine was risky, to say the least. Ross had only a very vague idea of the polar regions, but he was sure that they could easily swallow up the unwary forever.

“Maybe only a hundred or so, boy. But I have more than one plan, and I’m willing to risk my neck. Do you think I intend to start out blind?”

There was that, of course. Ross had early sized up his visitor as one who was first of all interested in his own welfare. He wouldn’t risk his neck without a definite plan in mind.

“Well, what do you say, Murdock? Are you with me or not?”

“I’ll take some time to chew it over—”

“Time is what you do not have, boy. Tomorrow they will tape you. Then—no over the wall for you.”

“Suppose you tell me your trick for fooling the tape,” Ross countered.

“That I cannot do, seeing as how it lies in the way my brain is put together. Do you think I can break open my skull and hand you a piece of what is inside? No, you jump with me tonight or else I must wait to grab the next one who lands here.”

Kurt stood up. His last words were spoken matter-of-factly, and Ross believed he meant exactly what he said. But Ross hesitated. He wanted to try for freedom, a desire fed by his suspicions of what was going on here. He neither liked nor trusted Kurt. But he thought he understood him—better than he understood Ashe or the others. Also, with Kurt he was sure he could hold his own; it would be the kind of struggle he had experienced before.

“Tonight . . .” he repeated slowly.

“Yes, tonight!” There was new eagerness in Kurt’s voice, for he sensed that the other was wavering. “I have been preparing for a long time, but there must be two of us. We have to take turns driving the cat. There can be no rest until we are far to the south. I tell you it will be easy. There are food caches arranged along the route for emergencies. I have a map marked to show where they are. Are you coming?”

When Ross did not answer at once the other moved closer to him.

“Remember Hardy? He was not the first, and he will not be the last. They use us up fast here. That is why they brought you so quickly. I tell you, it is better to take your chance with me than on a run.”

“And what is a run?”

“So they have not briefed you? Well, a run is a little jaunt back into history—not nice comfortable history such as you learned out of a book when you were a little kid. No, you are dropped back into some savage time before history—”

“That’s impossible!”

“Yes? You saw those two big blond boys tonight, did you not? Why do you suppose they sport those braids? Because they are taking a little trip into the time when he-men wore braids, and carried axes big enough to crack a man open! And Hodaki and his partner . . . Ever hear of the Tartars? Maybe you have not, but once they nearly overran most of Europe.”

Ross swallowed. He now knew where he had seen braids pictured on warriors—the Vikings! And Tartars, yes, that movie about someone named Khan, Genghis Khan! But to return into the past was impossible.

Yet, he remembered the images he had watched today with the wolf slayer and the shaggy-haired man who wore skins. Neither of these was of his own world! Could Kurt be telling the truth? Ross’s vivid memory of the scene he had witnessed made Kurt’s story more convincing.

“Suppose you get sent back to a time where they do not like strangers,” Kurt continued. “Then you are in for it. That is what happened to Hardy. And it is not good—not good at all!”

“But why?”

Kurt snorted. “That they do not tell you until just before you take your first run. I do not want to know why. But I do know that I am not going to be sent into any wilderness where a savage may run a spear through me just to prove something or other for Major John Kelgarries, or for Millaird either. I will try my plan first.”

The urgency in Kurt’s protest carried Ross past the wavering point. He, too, would try the cat. He was only familiar with this time and world; he had no desire to be sent into another one.

Once Ross had made his decision, Kurt hurried him into action. Kurt’s knowledge of the secret procedures at the base proved excellent. Twice they were halted by locked doors, but only momentarily, for Kurt had a tiny gadget, concealed in the palm of his hand, which had only to be held over a latch to open it.

There was enough light in the corridors to give them easy passage, but the rooms were dark, and twice Kurt had to lead Ross by the hand, avoiding furniture or installations with the sureness of one who had practiced that same route often. Murdock’s opinion of his companion’s ability notched upward during that tour. He began to believe that he was really in luck to have found such a partner.

In the last room, Ross willingly followed Kurt’s orders to put on the fur clothing Kurt passed to him. The fit was not exact, but he assumed that Kurt had chosen as well as possible. A final door opened, and they stepped out into the polar night of winter. Kurt’s mittened hand grasped Ross’s, pulling him along. Together, they pushed back the door of a hangar shed to get at their escape vehicle.

The cat was new to him, but Ross was given no time to study it. Kurt shoved him into the cockpit and tossed him a pair of night vision goggles.

A plastic hatch locked down over them and the engine came to life under Kurt’s urging. The cat must be traveling at its best pace, Ross thought. Yet the moonlit crawl which took them away from the mounded snow covering the base seemed hardly better than the pace of a man afoot.

For a short time Kurt headed straight away from the starting point, but Ross soon heard him counting slowly to himself as if he were timing something. At the count of twenty the cat swung to the right and made a wide half circle which was copied at the next count of twenty by a similar sweep in the opposite direction. After this pattern had been repeated for six turns, Ross found it difficult to guess whether they had ever returned to their first course. When Kurt stopped counting he asked, “Why the dance pattern?”

“Would you rather be scattered in little pieces all over the landscape?” the other snapped. “The base doesn’t need fences two miles high to keep us in, or others out; they take other precautions. You should thank fortune we got through that first mine field without blowing up.”

Ross swallowed, but he refused to let Kurt know that he was rattled. “So it isn’t as easy to get away as you said?”

“Shut up!” Kurt began counting again, and Ross had some cold apprehensive moments in which to reflect upon the folly of quick decisions. He wondered bleakly why he had not thought things through before he leaped.

Again they sketched a weaving pattern in the snow, but this time the arcs formed acute angles. Ross glanced now and then at the intent man at the wheel. How had Kurt managed to memorize this route? His urge to escape the base must certainly be a strong one.

Back and forth they crawled, gaining only a few yards in each of those angled strikes to right or left.

“Good thing cats carry extra fuel,” Kurt commented during one of the intervals between mine fields. “We’d run out otherwise.”

Ross fought down the impulse to shiver. Luckily, Kurt was now back to a straight track, with no more weaving.

“We are out!” Kurt said with exultation. But he added no more reassurance.

The cat crawled on. To Ross’s eyes there was no trail to follow, no guideposts in the darkness, yet Kurt steered ahead with confidence. A little later he pulled to a stop and said to Ross, “We have to drive turn and turn about—your turn.”

Ross was dubious. “Well, I can drive a car—but this—”

“Is foolproof.” Kurt caught him up. “The worst was getting through the mine fields, and we are out of that now. See here—” his hand made a shadow on the lighted instrument panel, “this will keep you straight. If you can steer a car, you can steer this. Watch!” He started up again and once more he swung the cat to the left.

A light on the panel began to blink at a rate which increased rapidly as they veered farther away from their original course.

“See? You keep that light steady, and you are on course. If it begins to blink, you cast about until it steadies again. Simple enough for a baby. Take over and see.”

It was hard to change places in the sealed cabin of the cat, but they succeeded, and Ross took the wheel gingerly. Following Kurt’s directions, he started ahead, his eyes focused on the light rather than the dark expanse before him. And after a few minutes of strain he caught the hang of it. As Kurt had promised, it was very simple. After watching him for a while, his instructor gave a grunt of satisfaction and settled down for a nap.

Once the first excitement of driving the cat wore off, the operation tended to become monotonous. Ross caught himself yawning, but he kept at his post with dogged stubbornness. This had been Kurt’s game all the way through—so far—and he was certainly not going to resign his first chance to show that he could be of use also. If there had only been some break in the eternal snow, some passing light or goal to be seen ahead, it would not have been so bad. Finally, every now and then, Ross had to jiggle off course just enough so that the warning blink of light would alert him and keep him from falling asleep. He was unaware that Kurt had awakened during one of those maneuvers until the other spoke. “Your own private alarm clock, Murdock? Okay, I do not quarrel with anyone who uses his head. But you had better get some shut-eye, or we will not keep rolling.”

Ross was too tired to protest. They changed places, and he curled up as best he could on his small share of the seat. Only now that he was free to sleep, he realized he no longer wanted to. Kurt must have thought Ross had fallen asleep, for after perhaps two miles of steady grinding along, he moved cautiously behind the wheel. Ross saw by the trace of light from the instrument panel that his companion was digging into the breast of his parka to bring out a small object which he held against the wheel of the cat with one hand, while with the other he tapped out an irregular rhythm.

To Ross the action made no sense. But he did not miss the other’s sigh of relief as he restored his treasure to hiding once more, as if some difficult task was now behind him. Shortly afterward the cat ground to a stop, and Ross sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What’s the matter? Engine trouble?”

Kurt had folded his arms across the wheel. “No. It is just that we are to wait here—”

“Wait? For what? Kelgarries to come along and pick us up?”

Kurt laughed. “The major? How I wish that he would arrive presently. What a surprise he would receive! Not two little mice to be put back into their cages, but the tiger cat, all claws and fangs!”

Ross sat up straighter. This now had the bad smell of a frame, a frame with himself planted right in the middle. He figured out the possibilities and came up with an answer which would smear Ross Murdock all over any map. If Kurt were waiting to meet friends out here, they could only be one kind.

For most of his short life Ross had been engaged in a private war against the restrictions imposed upon him by laws to which something within him would not conform. And he had, during those same years filled with attacks, retreats, and strategic maneuvering, formulated a code by which to play his dangerous game. He had not murdered, and he would never follow the path Kurt took. To one who was supremely impatient of restraint, the methods and aims of Kurt’s employers were not only impossibly fantastic and illogical—they were to be opposed to the last ounce of any man’s energy.

“Your friends late?” He tried to sound casual.

“Not yet, and if you now plan to play the hero, Murdock, think better of it!” Kurt’s tone held the crack of an order—that note Ross had so much disliked in the major’s voice. “This is an operation which has been most carefully planned and upon which a great deal depends. No one shall spoil it for us now—”

“The Russians planted you on the project, eh?” Ross wanted to keep the other talking to give himself a chance to think. And this was one time he had to think, clearly and fast.

“There is no need for me to tell you the sad tale of my life, Murdock. And you would doubtless find much of it boring. If you wish to continue to live—for a while, at least—you will remain quiet and do as you are told.”

Kurt must be armed, for he would not be so confident unless he had a weapon he could now turn on Ross. On the other hand, if what Ross guessed were true, this was the time to play the hero—when there was only Kurt to handle. Better to be a dead hero than a live captive in the hands of Kurt’s dear friends across the pole.

Without warning, Ross threw his body to the left, striving to pin Kurt against the driver’s side of the cabin. His hands clawed at the fur ruff bordering the other’s hood, trying for a throat hold. Perhaps Kurt’s over-confidence betrayed him and left him open to a surprise attack. He struggled hard to bring up his arm, but both his weight and Ross’s held him tight. Ross caught at his wrist, noticing a gleam of metal.

They threshed about, hampered by the bulkiness of the fur clothing. Ross wondered fleetingly why the other had not made sure of him earlier. As it was he fought with all his might to keep Kurt immobile, to try and knock him out with a lucky blow.

In the end Kurt aided his own defeat. When Ross relaxed somewhat, the other pushed against him, only to have Ross flinch to one side. Kurt could not stop himself, and his head cracked against the wheel of the cat. He went limp.

Ross made the most of the next few moments. He brought his belt from under his parka, twisting it around Kurt’s wrists with no gentleness. Then he wriggled about, changing places with the unconscious man.

He had no idea of where to go, but he was sure he was going to get away—at the cat’s top speed—from that point. And with that in mind and only a limited knowledge of how to manage the machine, Ross started up and turned in a wide circle until he was sure the cat was headed in the opposite direction.

The light which had guided them was still on. Would reversing its process take him back to the base? Lost in the immensity of the frozen wilderness, he made the only choice possible and gunned the cat again.

Once again Ross sat waiting for others to decide his future. He was as outwardly composed as he had been in Judge Rawle’s chambers, but inwardly he was far more apprehensive. Out in the wilderness of the polar night he had had no chance for escape. Heading away from Kurt’s rendezvous, Ross had run straight into the search party from the base. He had seen in action that mechanical hound that Kurt had said they would put on the fugitive’s trail—the thing which would have gone on hunting them until its metal rusted away. Kurt’s boasted immunity to that tracker had not been as good as he had believed, though it had won them a start.

Ross did not know just how much it might count in his favor that he had been on his way back, with Kurt a prisoner in the cat. As his waiting hours wore on he began to think it might mean very little indeed. This time there was no show on the wall of his cell, nothing but time to think—too much of that—and no pleasant things to think about.

But he had learned one valuable lesson on that cold expedition. Kelgarries and the others at the base were the most formidable opponents he had ever met, and all the balance of luck and equipment lay on their side of the scales. Ross was now convinced that there could be no escape from this base. He had been impressed by Kurt’s preparations, knowing that some of them were far beyond anything he himself could have devised. He did not doubt that Kurt had come here fully prepared with every ingenious device the Russians could supply.

At least Kurt’s friends had had a rude welcome when they did arrive at the meeting place. Kelgarries had heard Ross out and then had sent ahead a team. Before Ross’s party had reached the base there had been a blast which split the arctic night wide open. And Kurt, conscious by then, had shown his only sign of emotion when he realized what it meant.

The door to Ross’s cell room clicked, and he swung his feet to the floor, sitting up on his bunk to face his future. This time he made no attempt to put on an act. He was not in the least sorry he had tried to get away. Had Kurt been on the level, it would have been a bright play. That Kurt was not, was just plain bad luck.

Kelgarries and Ashe entered, and at the sight of Ashe the taut feeling in Ross’s middle loosened a bit. The major might come by himself to pass sentence, but he would not bring Ashe along if the sentence was a really harsh one.

“You got off to a bad start here, Murdock.” The major sat down on the edge of the wall shelf which doubled as a table. “You’re going to have a second chance, so consider yourself lucky. We know you aren’t another plant of our enemies, a fact that saves your neck. Do you have anything to add to your story?”

“No, sir.” He was not adding that “sir” to curry any favor; it came naturally when one answered Kelgarries.

“But you have some questions?”

Ross met that with the truth. “A lot of them.”

“Why don’t you ask them?”

Ross smiled thinly, an expression far removed and years older than his bashful boy’s grin when playing shy. “A wise guy doesn’t spill his ignorance. He uses his eyes and ears and keeps his trap shut—”

“And goes off half cocked as a result . . .” the major added. “I don’t think you would have enjoyed the company of Kurt’s paymaster.”

“I didn’t know about him then—not when I left here.”

“Yes, and when you discovered the truth, you took steps. Why?” For the first time there was a trace of feeling in the major’s voice.

“Because I don’t like the set-up on his side of the fence.”

“That single fact has saved your neck this time, Murdock. Step out of line once more, and nothing will help you. But just so we won’t have to worry about that, suppose you ask a few of those questions.”

“How much of what Kurt fed me is the truth?” Ross blurted out. “I mean all the stuff about shooting back in time.”

“All of it.” The major said it so quietly that it carried complete conviction.

“But why—how—?”

“You have us on the spot, Murdock. Because of your little expedition, we have to tell you more now than we tell any of our men before the final briefing. Listen, and forget all of it except what applies to the job at hand.

“Once Greater Russia emerged from the wreckage of the old Soviet Union and started gobbling up its neighbors, joint space ventures were out of the question. But they didn’t start a new space race either. Not that we’ve sent men to the moon ourselves—” the major’s voice tightened “—in more years than I care to count. So why weren’t they interested in taking the high ground?”

Ross stared back blankly. Did “high ground” mean space?

“Any discovery in science comes about by steps. It can be traced through those steps by another scientist. But suppose you were confronted by a result which apparently had been produced without any preliminaries. What would you guess had happened?”

Ross stared at the major. Although he didn’t see what all this had to do with time-jumping, he sensed that Kelgarries was waiting for a serious answer, that somehow Ross would be judged by his reply.

“Either that the steps were kept strictly secret,” he said slowly, “or that the result didn’t rightfully belong to the man who said he discovered it.”

For the first time the major regarded him with approval. “Suppose this discovery was vital to your life—what would you do?”

“Try to find the source!”

“There you have it! Within the past five years our friends across the way have come up with three such discoveries. One we were able to trace, duplicate, and use, with a few refinements of our own. The other two remain rootless; yet they are linked with the first. We are now attempting to solve that problem, and the time grows late. For some reason, though the Russians now have their super, super gadgets, they are not yet ready to use them. Sometimes the things work, and sometimes they fail. Everything points to the fact that the Russians are now experimenting with discoveries which are not actually their own—”

“Where did they get them? From another world?” Ross’s imagination came to life. Had a successful space voyage been kept secret? Had contact been made with another intelligent race?

“In a way it’s another world, but the world of time—not space. Seven years ago we got a man out of Moscow. He was almost dead, but he lived long enough to tape some amazing data, so wild it was almost dismissed as the ravings of delirium. But we didn’t dare disregard any hints from the other side. So the recording was turned over to our scientists, who proved it had a core of truth.

“Time travel has been written about in fiction; it has been discussed otherwise as an impossibility. Then we discover that the Russians have it working—”

“You mean, they go into the future and bring back machines to use now.”

The major shook his head. “Not the future, the past.”

Was this an elaborate joke? Somewhat heatedly Ross snapped out the answer to that. “Look, here, I know I haven’t your education, but I do know that the farther back you go into history the simpler things are. We ride in cars; only a hundred years ago men drove horses. We have guns; go back a little and you’ll find them waving swords and shooting guys with bows and arrows—those that don’t wear tin plate on them to stop being punctured—”

“Only they were, after all,” commented Ashe. “Look at Agincourt, m’lad, and remember what arrows did to the French knights in armor.”

Ross disregarded the interruption. “Anyway,” he stuck doggedly to his point—“the farther back you go, the simpler things are. How are the Russians going to find anything in history we can’t beat today?”

“That is a point which has baffled us for several years now,” the major returned. “Only it is not how they are going to find it, but where. Because somewhere in the past of this world they have contacted a civilization able to produce weapons and ideas so advanced as to baffle our experts. We have to find that source and either mine it ourselves or close it off. As yet we’re still trying to find it.”

Ross shook his head. “It must be a long way back. Those guys who discover tombs and dig up old cities—couldn’t they give you some hints? Wouldn’t a civilization like that have left something we could find today?”

“It depends,” Ashe remarked, “upon the type of civilization. The Egyptians built in stone, grandly. They used tools and weapons of copper, bronze, and stone, and they were considerate enough to operate in a dry climate which preserved relics well. The cities of the Fertile Crescent built in mudbrick and used stone, copper, and bronze tools. They also chose a portion of the world where climate was a factor in keeping their memory green.

“The Greeks built in stone, wrote their books, kept their history to bequeath it to their successors, and so did the Romans. And on this side of the ocean the Incas, the Mayas, the unknown races before them, and the Aztecs of Mexico all built in stone and worked in metal. And stone and metal survive. But what if there had been an early people who used plastics and brittle alloys, who had no desire to build permanent buildings, whose tools and artifacts were meant to wear out quickly, perhaps for economic reasons? What would they leave us—considering, perhaps, that an ice age had intervened between their time and ours, with glaciers to grind into dust what little they did possess?

“There is evidence that the poles of our world have changed and that this northern region was once close to being tropical. Any catastrophe violent enough to bring about a switch in the poles of this planet might well have wiped out all traces of a civilization, no matter how superior. We have good reason to believe that such a people must have existed, but we must find them.”

“And Ashe is a convert from the skeptics—” the major slipped down from his perch on the wall shelf— “he is an archaeologist, one of your tomb discoverers, and knows what he is talking about. We must do our hunting in time earlier than the first pyramid, earlier than the first group of farmers who settled by the Tigris River. But we have to let the enemy guide us to it. That’s where you come in.”

“Why me?”

“That is a question which our psychologists are still trying to answer, my young friend. It seems that the majority of the people of several nations linked together in this project have become too civilized. The reactions of most men to given sets of circumstances have become set in such regular patterns that they cannot break that conditioning, or if personal danger forces them to change those patterns, they are afterward so adrift they cannot function at their highest potential. Teach a man to kill, as in war, and then you have to recondition him later.

“But during these same wars we also develop another type. He is the born commando, the secret agent, the expendable man who lives on action. There are not many of this kind, and they are potent weapons. In peacetime that particular collection of emotions, nerve, and skills becomes a menace to the very society he has fought to preserve during a war. In a peaceful environment he becomes a criminal or a misfit.

“The men we send out from here to explore the past are not only given the best training we can possibly supply for them, but they are all of the type once heralded as the frontiersman. History is sentimental about that type—when he is safely dead—but the present finds him difficult to live with. Our time agents are misfits in the modern world because their inherited abilities are born out of season now. They must be young enough and possess a certain brand of intelligence to take the stiff training and to adapt, and they must pass our tests. Do you understand?”

Ross nodded. “You want crooks because they are crooks?”

“No, not because they are crooks, but because they are misfits in their time and place. Don’t, I beg of you, Murdock, think that we are operating a penal institution here. You would never have been recruited if you hadn’t tested out to suit us. But the man who may be labeled murderer in his own period might rank as a hero in another, an extreme example, but true. When we train a man he not only can survive in the period to which he is sent, but he can also pass as a native born in that era—”

“What about Hardy?”

The major gazed into space. “No operation is foolproof. We have never said that we don’t run into trouble or that there is no danger. We have to deal with both natives of different times, and if we are lucky and hit a hot run, with the Russians. They suspect that we are casting about, hunting their trail. They managed to plant Kurt Vogel on us. He had an almost perfect cover and conditioning. Now you have it straight, Murdock. You satisfy our tests, and you’ll be given a chance to say yes or no before your first run. If you say no and refuse duty, it means you must become an exile and stay here. No man who has gone through our training can return to normal life; there is too much chance of his being picked up and sweated by the opposition.”

“Never?”

The major shrugged. “This may be a long-term operation. We hope not, but there is no way of telling now. You will be in exile until we either find what we want or fail entirely. That is the last card I have to lay on the table.” He stretched. “You’re slated for training tomorrow. Think it over. Then let us know your answer when the time comes. Meanwhile, you are to be teamed with Ashe, who will see to putting you through the course.”

It was a big hunk to swallow, but once down, Ross found it digestible. The training opened up a whole new world to him. Judo and wrestling were easy enough to absorb, and he thoroughly enjoyed the workouts. But the patient hours of archery practice, the strict instruction in the use of a long-bladed bronze dagger were more demanding. Mastering one new language and then another, intensive drill in unfamiliar social customs, memorizing of strict taboos and ethics was difficult. Ross learned to keep records in knots on hide thongs and was inducted into the art of primitive bargaining and trade. He came to understand the worth of a cross-shaped tin ingot compared to a string of amber beads and some well-cured white furs. He now understood why he had been shown a traders’ caravan during that first encounter with the purpose behind Operation Retrograde.

During the training days his feeling toward Ashe changed. A man could not work so closely with another and continue to resent his attitude; either he blew up entirely, or he learned to adjust. His awe at Ashe’s vast amount of practical knowledge, freely offered to serve his own blundering ignorance, created a respect which might have become friendship, had Ashe ever relaxed his own shield of impersonal efficiency. Ross did not try to breach the barrier between them mainly because he was sure that the reason for it was the fact that he was a “volunteer.” It gave him an odd new feeling that he avoided analyzing. He had always had a kind of pride in his record; now he had begun to wish sometimes that it was a record of a different type.

Men came and went. Hodaki and his partner disappeared, as did Jansen and his. One lost track of time within that underground warren which was the base. Ross gradually discovered that the whole establishment covered a large island under an external crust of ice and snow. There were laboratories, a well-appointed hospital, armories which stocked weapons usually seen only in museums, but which here were free of any signs of age, and ready for use. There were libraries with mile upon mile of tape recordings as well as films. Ross could not understand everything he heard and saw, but he soaked up all he could so that once or twice, when drifting off to sleep at night, he thought of himself as a sponge which had nearly reached its total limit of absorption.

He learned to wear naturally the clumsy kilt-tunic he had seen on the wolf slayer, to shave with practiced assurance, using a leaf-shaped bronze razor, to eat strange food until he relished the taste. Making lesson time serve a double duty, he lay under sunlamps while listening to tape recordings, until his skin darkened to a weathered hue approaching Ashe’s. There was always talk to listen to, important talk which he was afraid to miss.

“Bronze.” Ashe weighed a dagger in his hand one day. Its hilt, made of dark horn studded with an intricate pattern of tiny golden nail heads, had a gleam not unlike that of the blade. “Do you know, Murdock, that bronze can be tougher than steel? If it wasn’t that iron is so much more plentiful and easier to work, we might never have come out of the Bronze Age? Iron is cheaper and easier found, and when the first smith learned to work it, an end came to one way of life, a beginning to another.

“Yes, bronze is important to us here, and so are the men who worked it. Smiths were sacred in the old days. We know that they made a secret of their trade which overrode the bounds of district, tribe, and race. A smith was welcome in any village, his person safe on the road. In fact, the roads themselves were under the protection of the gods; there was peace on them for all wayfarers. The land was wide then, and it was empty. The tribes were few and small, and there was plenty of room for the hunter, the farmer, the trader. Life was not such a scramble of man against man, but rather of man against nature—”

“No wars?” asked Ross. “Then why the bow-and-dagger drill?”

“Wars were small affairs, disputes between family clans or tribes. As for the bow, there were formidable things in the forests—giant animals, wolves, wild boars—”

“Cave bears?”

Ashe sighed with weary patience. “Get it through your head, Murdock, that history is much longer than you seem to think. Cave bears and the use of bronze weapons do not overlap. No, you will have to go back maybe several thousand years earlier and then hunt your bear with a flint-tipped spear in your hand if you are fool enough to try it.”

“Or take a rifle with you.” Ross made a suggestion he had longed to voice for some time.

Ashe rounded on him swiftly, and Ross knew him well enough to realize that he was seriously displeased.

“That is just what you don’t do, Murdock, not from this base, as you well know by now. You take no weapon from here which is not designed for the period in which your run lies. Just as you do not become embroiled while on that run in any action which might influence the course of history.”

Ross went on polishing the blade he held. “What would happen if somebody did break that rule?”

Ashe put down the dagger he had been playing with. “We don’t know—we just don’t know. So far we have operated in the fringe territory, keeping away from any district with a history which we can trace accurately. Maybe some day—” his eyes were on a wall of weapon racks he plainly did not see— “maybe some day we can stand and watch the rise of the pyramids, witness the march of Alexander’s armies . . . But not yet. We stay away from history, and we are sure that the Russians are doing the same. It has become the old problem once presented by nuclear bombs. Nobody wants to upset the balance and take the consequences. Let us find their outpost and we’ll withdraw our men from all the other runs at once.”

“What makes everyone so sure that they have an outpost somewhere? Couldn’t they be working right at the main source, sir?”

“They could, but for some reason they are not. As for how we know that much, it’s information received.” Ashe smiled thinly. “No, the source is much farther back in time than their halfway post. But if we find that, then we can trail them. So we plant men in suitable eras and hope for the best. That’s a good weapon you have there, Murdock. Are you willing to wear it in earnest?”

The inflection in that question caught Ross’s full attention. His gray eyes met those blue ones. This was it—at long last.

“Right away?”

Ashe picked up a belt of bronze plates strung together with chains, a twin to that Ross had seen worn by the wolf slayer. He held it out to the younger man. “You take your trial run any time—tomorrow.”

Ross drew a deeper breath. “Where—to when?”

“An island which will later be Britain. When? About two thousand B.C. Beaker traders were beginning to open their stations there. This is your graduation exercise, Murdock.”

Ross fitted the blade he had been polishing into the wooden sheath on the belt. “If you say I can do it, I’m willing to try.”

He caught that glance Ashe shot at him, but he could not read its meaning. Annoyance? Impatience? He was still puzzling over it when the other turned abruptly and left him alone.

Ross might have said yes, but that didn’t mean that he was to be shipped off at once to early Britain. Ashe’s “tomorrow” proved to be several days later. The cover was that of a Beaker trader, and Ross’s impersonation was checked again and again by experts, making sure that the last detail was correct and that no suspicion of a tribesman, no mistake on Ross’s part would betray him.

The Beaker people were an excellent choice for infiltration. They were not a closely knit clan; suspicious of strangers and alert to any deviation from the norm, as more race-conscious tribes might be. For they lived by trade, leaving to Ross’s own time the mark of their far-flung influence in the beakers found in graves scattered in clusters from the Rhineland to Spain, and from the Balkans to Britain.

They did not depend only upon the taboo of the trade road for their safety, for the Beakermen were master bowmen. A roving people, they pushed into new territory to establish posts, living amicably among peoples with far different customs—the Downs farmers, horse herders, shore-side fisherfolk.

With Ashe, Ross passed a last inspection. Their hair had not grown long enough to require braiding, but they did have enough to hold it back from their faces with hide headbands. The kilt-tunics of coarse material, duplicating samples brought from the past, were harsh to the skin and poorly fitting. But the workmanship of their link-and-plate bronze belts, the sleek bow guards strapped to their wrists, and the bows themselves approached fine art. Ashe’s round cloak was the blue of a master trader, and he wore wealth in a necklace of polished wolf’s teeth alternating with amber beads. Ross’s more modest position in the tribe was indicated not only by his red-brown cloak, but by the fact that his personal jewelry consisted only of a copper bracelet and a cloak pin with a jet head.

He had no idea how the time transition was to be made, nor how one might step from the polar regions of the Western Hemisphere to the island of Britain lying off the Eastern. And it was a complicated business as he discovered.

The transition itself was a fairly simple, though disturbing, process. One walked a short corridor and stood for an instant on a plate while the light centered there curled about in a solid core, shutting one off from floor and wall. Ross gasped for breath as the air was sucked out of his lungs. He experienced a moment of deathly nausea with a sense of being lost in nothingness. Then he breathed again and looked through the dying wall of light to where Ashe waited.

Quick and easy as the trip through time had been, the journey to Britain was something else. There could be only one transfer point if the secret was to be preserved. But men from that point must be moved swiftly and secretly to their appointed stations. Ross, knowing the strict rules concerning the transportation of objects from one time to another, wondered how that travel could be effected. After all, they could not spend months, or even years, getting across continents and seas.

The answer was ingenious. Three days after they had stepped through the barrier of time at the outpost, Ross and Ashe balanced on the rounded back of a whale. It was a whale which would deceive anyone who did not test its hide with a harpoon, and whalers with harpoons large enough to trouble such a monster were yet well in the future.

Ashe slid a dugout into the water, and Ross climbed into that unsteady craft, holding it against the side of the disguised sub until his partner joined him. The day, misty and drizzling, made the shore they aimed for a half-seen line across the water. With a shiver born of more than cold, Ross dipped his paddle and helped Ashe send their crude boat toward that half-hidden strip of land.

There was no real dawn; the sky lightened somewhat, but the drizzle continued. Green patches showed among the winter-denuded trees back from the beach, but the countryside facing them gave an impression of untamed wilderness. Ross knew from his briefing that the whole of Britain was as yet only sparsely settled. The first wave of hunter-fishers to establish villages had been joined by other invaders who built massive tombs and practiced an elaborate religion. Small village-forts had been linked from hill to hill by trackways. These were “factories,” which turned out in bulk such fine flint weapons and tools that a thriving industry was in full operation, not yet superseded by the metal the Beaker merchants imported. Bronze was still so rare and costly that only the head man of a village could hope to own one of the long daggers. Even the arrowheads in Ross’s quiver were chipped of flint.

They drew the dugout well up onto the shore and ran it into a shallow depression in the bank, heaping stones and brush about for its concealment. Then Ashe intently surveyed the surrounding country, seeking a landmark.

“Inland from here . . .” Ashe used the language of the Beakermen, and Ross knew that from now on he must not only live as a trader, but also think as one. All other memories must be buried under the false one he had learned; he must be interested in the present rate of exchange and the chance for profit. The two men were on their way to Outpost Gog, where Ashe’s first partner, the redoubtable Sanford, was playing his role so well.

The rain squished in their hide boots, made sodden burdens of their cloaks, plastered their woven caps to their thickly matted hair. Yet Ashe bore steadily on across the land with the certainty of one following a marked trail. His self-confidence was rewarded within the first half mile when they came out upon one of the link trackways, its beaten surface testifying to constant use.

Here Ashe turned eastward, stepping up the pace to a ground-covering trot. The peace of the road held—at least by day. By night only the most hardened and desperate outlaws would brave the harmful spirits who roved in the dark.

All the lore that had been pounded into him at the base began to make sense to Ross as he followed his guide, sniffing strange wet smells from the brush, the trees, and the damp earth; piecing together in his mind what he had been taught and what he now saw for himself, until it made a tight pattern.

The track they were following sloped slightly upward, and a change in the wind brought to them a sour odor, blanking out all normal scents. Ashe halted so suddenly that Ross almost plowed into him. But he was alerted by the older man’s attitude.

Something had been burned! Ross drew in a deep lungful of the smell and then wished that he had not. It was wood—burned wood—and something else. Since this was not possibly normal, he was prepared for the way Ashe melted into cover in the brush.

They worked their way, sometimes crawling on their bellies, through the wet stands of dead grass, taking full advantage of all cover. They crouched at the top of the hill while Ashe parted the prickly branches of an evergreen bush to make a window.

The black patch left by the fire, which had come from a ruin above, had spread downhill on the opposite side of the valley. Charred posts still stood like lone teeth in a skull to mark what must have once been one of the stockade walls of a post. But all they now guarded was a desolation from which came that overpowering stench.

“Our post?” Ross asked in a whisper.

Ashe nodded. He was studying the scene with an intent absorption which, Ross knew, would impress every important detail upon his mind. That the place had been burned was clear from the first. But why and by whom was a problem vital to the two lurking in the brush.

It took them almost an hour to cross the valley—an hour of hiding, casting about, searching. They had made a complete circle of the destroyed post and Ashe stood in the shadow of a copse, rubbing clots of mud from his hands and frowning up at the charred posts.

“They weren’t rushed. Or, if they were, the attacker covered their trail afterward—” Ross ventured.

The older man shook his head. “Tribesmen would not have muddled a trail if they had won. No, this was no regular attack. There have been no signs of a war party coming or leaving.”

“Then what?” demanded Ross.

“Lightning for one thing—and we’d better hope it was that. Or—” Ashe’s blue eyes were as cold and bleak as the countryside about them.

“Or—?” Ross dared to prompt him.

“Or we have made contact with the Russians in the wrong way!”

Ross’s hand instinctively went to the dagger at his belt. Little help a dagger would be in an unequal struggle like this! They were only two in the thin web of men strung out through centuries of time with orders to seek out that which did not fit properly into the pattern of the past: to locate the enemy wherever in history or prehistory he had gone to earth. Had the Russians been searching, too, and was this first disaster their victory?

The time traders had their evidence when they at last ventured into what had been the heart of Outpost Gog. Ross, inexperienced as he was in such matters, could not mistake the signs of the explosion. There was a crater on the crown of the hill, and Ashe stood apart from it, eyeing the fragments about them—scorched wood, blackened stone.

“The Russians?”

“It must have been. This damage was done by explosives.”

It was clear why Outpost Gog could not report the disaster. The attack had destroyed their one link with the post on this time level; the concealed communicator had gone up with the blast.

“Eleven—” Ashe’s finger tapped on the ornate buckle of his wide belt. “We have about ten days to stick it out,” he added, “and it seems we may be able to use them to better advantage than just letting you learn how it feels to walk about some four thousand years before you were born. We have to find out—if we can—what happened here and why!”

Ross gazed at the mess. “Dig?” he asked.

“Some digging is indicated.”

So they dug. Finally, black with charcoal smudges and sick with the evidence of death they had chanced upon, they collapsed on the cleanest spot they could find.

“They must have hit at night,” Ashe said slowly. “Only at that time would they find everyone here. Men don’t trust a night filled with ghosts, and our agents conform to local custom as usual. All of the post people could be erased with one bomb at night.”

All except two of them had been true Beaker traders, including women and children. No Beaker trading post was large, and this one was unusually small. The attacker had wiped out some twenty people, eighteen of them innocent victims.

“How long ago?” Ross wanted to know.

“Maybe two days. And this attack came without any warning, or Sandy would have sent a message. He had no suspicions at all; his last reports were all routine, which means that if they were on to him—and they must have been, judging by the results—he was not even aware of it.”

“What do we do now?”

Ashe looked at him. “We wash—no—” he corrected himself— “we don’t! We go to Nodren’s village. We are frightened, grief-stricken. We have found our kinsmen dead under strange circumstances. We ask questions of one to whom I am known as an inhabitant of this post.”

So, covered with dirt, they walked along the trackway toward the neighboring village with a weariness they did not have to counterfeit.

The dog sighted or perhaps scented them first. It was a rough-coated beast, showing its fangs with a wolflike ferocity. But it was smaller than a wolf, and it barked between its warning snarls. Ashe brought his bow from beneath the shelter of his cloak and held it ready.

“Ho, one comes to speak with Nodren—Nodren of the Hill!”

Only the dog snapped and snarled. Ashe rubbed his forearm across his face, the gesture of a weary and heartsick man, smearing the ash and grime into an awesome mask.

“Who speaks to Nodren—?” There was a different twist to the pronunciation of some words, but Ross was able to understand.

“One who has hunted with him and feasted with him. The one who gave into his hand the friendship of the ever-sharp knife. It is Assha of the traders.”

“Go far from us, man of ill luck. You who are hunted by the evil spirits.” The last was a shrill cry.

Ashe remained where he was, facing into the bushes which hid the tribesman.

“Who speaks for Nodren yet not with the voice of Nodren?” he demanded. “This is Assha who asks. We have drunk blood together and faced the white wolf and the wild boar in their fury. Nodren lets not others speak for him, for Nodren is a man and a chief!”

“And you are cursed!” A stone flew through the air, striking a rain pool and spattering mud on Ashe’s boots. “Go and take your evil with you!”

“Is it from the hand of Nodren or Nodren’s young men that doom came upon those of my blood? Have war arrows passed between the place of the traders and the town of Nodren? Is that why you hide in the shadows so that I, Assha, cannot look upon the face of one who speaks boldly and throws stones?”

“No war arrows between us, traders. We do not provoke the spirits of the hills. No fire comes from the sky at night to eat us up with a noise of many thunders. Lurgha speaks in such thunders; Lurgha’s hand smites with such fire. You have the wrath of Lurgha upon you, trader! Keep away from us lest Lurgha’s wrath fall upon us also.”

Lurgha was the local storm god, Ross recalled. The sound of thunder and fire coming out of the sky at night—the bomb! Perhaps the very method of attack on the post would defeat Ashe’s attempt to learn anything from these neighbors. The superstitions of the people would lead them to shun both the site of the post and Ashe himself as cursed and taboo.

“If the Wrath of Lurgha had struck at Assha, would Assha still live to walk upon this road?” Ashe prodded the ground with the tip of his bowstave. “Yet Assha walks, as you see him; Assha talks, as you hear him. It is ridiculous to answer him with the nonsense of little children—”

“Spirits so walk and talk to unlucky men,” retorted the man in hiding. “It may be the spirit of Assha who does so now—”

Ashe made a sudden leap. After a flurry of action behind the bush screen, he reappeared, dragging into the gray light of the rainy day a wriggling captive, whom he dumped without ceremony onto the beaten earth of the road.

The man was bearded, wearing his thick mop of black hair in a round topknot secured by a hide loop. His skin tunic, now in considerable disarray, was held in place with a woven, tasseled belt.

“Ho, so it is Lal of the Quick Tongue who speaks so loudly of spirits and the Wrath of Lurgha!” Ashe studied his captive. “Now, Lal, since you speak for Nodren—which I believe will greatly surprise him—you will continue to tell me of this Wrath of Lurgha from the night skies and what has happened to Sanfra, who was my brother, and those others of my kin. I am Assha, and you know of the wrath of Assha and how it ate up Twist-tooth, the outlaw, when he came in with his evil men. The Wrath of Lurgha is hot, but so too is the wrath of Assha.” Ashe contorted his face in such a way that Lal squirmed and looked away. When the tribesman spoke, all his former bluster had gone.

“Assha knows that I am his dog. Let him not turn upon me his swift-cutting big knife, nor the arrows from his lightning bow. It was the Wrath of Lurgha which smote the place on the hill, first the thunder of his fist meeting the earth, and then the fire which he breathed upon those whom he would slay—”

“And this you saw with your own eyes, Lal?”

The shaggy head shook an emphatic negative. “Assha knows that Lal is no chief who can stand and look upon the wonders of Lurgha’s might and keep his eyes in his head. Nodren himself saw this wonder—”

“And if Lurgha came in the night, when all men keep to their homes and leave the outer world to the restless spirits, how did Nodren see his coming?”

Lal crouched lower to the ground, his eyes darting to the bushes and the freedom they promised, then back to Ashe’s firmly planted boots.

“I am not a chief, Assha. How could I know in what way or for what reason Nodren saw the coming of Lurgha—?”

“Fool!” A second voice, that of a woman, spat the word from the brush which fringed the roadway. “Speak to Assha with a straight tongue. If he is a spirit, he will know that you do not tell him the truth. And if he has been spared by Lurgha . . .” She showed her wonderment with a hiss of indrawn breath.

So urged, Lal mumbled sullenly, “It is said that there came a message for one to witness the Wrath of Lurgha in its descent upon the outlanders so that Nodren and the men of Nodren would truly know that the traders were cursed, and should be put to the spear should they come here again—”

“This message—how was it brought? Did the voice of Lurgha sound in Nodren’s ear alone, or came it by the tongue of some man?”

“Ahee!” Lal lay flat on the ground, his hands over his ears.

“Lal is a fool and fears his own shadow as it skips before him on a sunny day!” Out of the bushes stepped a young woman, obviously of some importance in her own group. Walking with a proud stride, her eyes boldly met Ashe’s. A shining disk hung about her neck on a thong, and another decorated the woven belt of her cloth tunic. Her hair was bound in a thread net fastened with jet pins.

“I greet Cassca, who is the First Sower.” There was a formal note in Ashe’s voice. “But why should Cassca hide from Assha?”

“There has been death on your hill, Assha—” she sniffed— “you smell of it now—Lurgha’s death. Those who come from that hill may well be some who no longer walk in their bodies.” Cassca placed her fingers momentarily on Ashe’s outstretched palm before she nodded. “No spirit are you, Assha, for all know that a spirit is solid to the eye, but not to the touch. So it would seem that you were not burned up by Lurgha, after all.”

“This matter of a message from Lurgha—” he prompted.

“It came out of the empty air in the hearing not only of Nodren, but also of Hangor, Effar, and myself, Cassca. For we stood at that time near the Old Place . . .” She made a curious gesture with the fingers of her right hand. “It will soon be the time of sowing, and though Lurgha brings sun and rain to feed the grain, yet it is in the Great Mother that the seed lies. Upon her business only women may go into the Inner Circle.” She gestured again. “But as we met to make the first sacrifice there came music out of the air such as we have never heard, voices singing like birds in a strange tongue.” Her face assumed an awesome expression. “Afterward a voice said that Lurgha was angered with the hill of the men-from-afar and that in the night he would send his Wrath against them, and that Nodren must witness this thing so that he could see what Lurgha did to those he would punish. So it was done by Nodren. And there was a sound in the air—”

“What kind of a sound?” Ashe asked quietly.

“Nodren said it was a hum and there was the dark shadow of Lurgha’s bird between him and the stars. Then came the smiting of the hill with thunder and lightning, and Nodren fled, for the Wrath of Lurgha is a fearsome thing. Now do the people go to the Great Mother’s Place with many fine offerings that she may stand between them and that Wrath.”

“Assha thanks Cassca, who is the handmaiden of the Great Mother. May the sowing prosper and the reaping be good this year!” Ashe said finally, ignoring Lal, who still groveled on the road.

“You go from this place, Assha?” she asked. “For though I stand under the protecting hand of the Mother and so do not fear, yet there are others who will raise their spears against you for the honor of Lurgha.”

“We go, and again thanks be to you, Cassca.”

He turned back the way they had come, and Ross fell in beside him as the woman watched them out of sight.

“That bird of Lurgha’s—” said Ross, once they were out of sight of Cassca and Lal, “could it have been a plane?”

“Sounds like it,” snapped his companion. “If the Russians have done their work efficiently—and there’s no reason to suppose otherwise—then there is no use in contacting either Dorhta’s town or Munga’s. The same announcement concerning the Wrath of Lurgha was probably made there—to their good purpose, not ours.”

“Cassca didn’t seem to be overly impressed with Lurgha’s curse, not as much as the man was.”

“She is the closest thing to a priestess that this tribe knows, and she serves a goddess older and more powerful than Lurgha—the Mother Earth, the Great Mother, goddess of fertility and growth. Nodren’s people believe that unless Cassca performs her mysteries and sows part of the first field in the spring there won’t be any harvest. Consequently, she is secure in her office and doesn’t fear the Wrath of Lurgha too much. These people are now changing from one type of worship to another, but some of Cassca’s beliefs will persist clear down to our day, taking on the coating of ‘magic’ and a lot of other enameling along the way.”

Ashe had been talking the way a man talks to cover furious thinking. Now he paused again and turned toward the sea. “We have to stick it out somewhere until the sub comes to pick us up. We’ll need shelter.”

“Will the tribesmen come after us?”

“They may well. Let the right men get to talking up a holy extermination of those upon whom the Wrath of Lurgha has fallen and we could be in for plenty of trouble. Some of those men are trained hunters and trackers, and the Russians may have planted an agent to report the return of anyone to our post. Just now we’re about the most important time travelers out, for we know the Russians have appeared on this line. They must have a large post here, too, or they couldn’t have sent a plane on that raid. You can’t build a time transport large enough to take through a considerable amount of material. Everything used by us in this age has to be assembled on this side, and the use of all machines is limited to where they can not be seen by any natives. Luckily large sections of this world are mostly wilderness and unpopulated in the areas where we operate the base posts. So if the Russians have a plane, it was put together here, and that means a big post somewhere.” Again Ashe was thinking aloud as he pushed ahead of Ross into the fringes of a wood. “Sandy and I scouted this territory pretty well last spring. There is a cave about half a mile to the west; it will shelter us for tonight.”

Ashe’s plans would probably have been easily accomplished if the cave had been unoccupied. Without incident they came down into a hollow through which trickled a small stream, thinly edged with ice along its banks. Under Ashe’s direction Ross collected an armload of firewood. He was no woodsman and his prolonged exposure to the chilling drizzle made him eager for even the very rough shelter of a cave, so eager that he plunged forward carelessly. His foot came down on a slippery patch of mud, sending him sprawling on his face. There was a growl, and a white bulk rushed him. The cloak, rucked up about his throat and shoulders, then saved his life, for only stout cloth was caught between those fangs.

With a startled cry, Ross rolled as he might have to escape a man’s attack, struggling to unsheathe his dagger. A white-hot flash of pain scored his upper arm. The breath was driven out of him as a fight raged over his prone body. He heard grunts, snarls, and was severely pummeled. Then he was free as the bodies broke away. Shaken, he got to his knees. A short distance away the fight was still in progress. He saw Ashe straddle the body of a huge white wolf, his legs clamped about the animal’s haunches, his hooked arm under the beast’s head, forcing it up and back while his dagger rose and sank twice in the underparts of the heaving body.

Ross held his own weapon ready. He leaped from a half crouch, and his dagger sank cleanly home behind the short ribs. One of their blows must have reached the animal’s heart. With an almost human cry the wolf stiffened convulsively. Then it was still. Ashe squatted near it, methodically driving his dagger into the moist soil to clean the blade.

A red rivulet trickled down his thigh where the lower edge of his kilt-tunic had been ripped up to the link belt. Although breathing hard, he remained as composed as always. “These sometimes hunt in pairs at this season,” he observed. “Be ready with your bow—”

Ross strung his with the cord he had been keeping dry within the breast folds of his tunic. He fitted an arrow to the string, grateful to be a passable marksman. The slash on his arm smarted in protest as he moved, and he noted that Ashe did not try to get up.

“A bad one?” Ross indicated the blood now thickening into a stream along Ashe’s thigh.

Ashe pulled away the torn tunic and exposed a nasty looking gash on the outside of his hip. He pressed his palm against the gaping wound and motioned Ross to scout ahead. “See if the cave is clear. We can’t do anything until we know that.”

Reluctantly Ross followed the stream until he found the cave, a snug-looking place with an overhang to keep it dry. The reek of a lair hung about its mouth. He chose a stone from the stream, chucked it into the dark opening, and waited. The stone rattled as it struck an inner wall, but there was no other sound. A second stone from a different angle followed the first, with the same results. Ross was now certain that the cave was unoccupied. Once they were inside with a fire going at the entrance, they could hope to keep intruders out. A little heartened, he cast about a bit upstream and then turned back to where he had left Ashe.

“No male?” the other greeted him. “This is a female, and she was close to whelping—” He nudged the white wolf with his toe. His hands held a pad of rags against his hip, and his face was shaded with pain.

“Nothing in the cave anyway. Let’s see about this . . .” Ross laid aside the bow and kneeled to examine Ashe’s thigh wound. His own slash was more of a smarting graze, but this tear was deep and ugly.

“Second plate—belt—” Ashe got the words out between set teeth, and Ross clicked open the hidden recess in the other’s bronze belt to bring out a small packet. Ashe made a wry face as he swallowed three of the pills within. Ross mashed another pill onto the bandage he prepared, and when the last cumbersome fold was secured Ashe relaxed.

“Let us hope that works,” he commented a little bleakly. “Now come here where I can get my hands on you and let me see your scratch. Animal bites can be a nasty business.”

Bandaged in turn, with the bitterness of an antibiotic pill on his tongue, Ross helped Ashe limp upstream to the cave. He left the older man outside while he cleaned up the floor of the cave and then made his companion as comfortable as he could on a bed of bracken. The fire Ross had longed for was built. They stripped off their sodden clothing and hung it to dry. Ross wrapped a bird he had shot in clay and tucked it under the hot coals to be roasted.

They’d had their share of bad luck, he thought, but they were now undercover, had a fire, and food. His arm ached, sharp pain shooting from fingers to elbow when he moved it. Though Ashe made no complaint, Ross gauged that the older man’s discomfort was far worse than his own, and he carefully hid all signs of his own twinges.

They ate the bird with their fingers. Ross savored each greasy bit, licking his hands clean afterward while Ashe lay back on the improvised bed, his face gaunt in the half light of the fire.

“We are about five miles from the sea here. There is no way of raising our base now that Sandy’s installation is gone. I’ll have to lay up, since I can’t risk any more loss of blood. And you’re not too good in the woods—”

Ross accepted that valuation with a new humbleness. He was only too well aware that if it had not been for Ashe, he and not the white wolf would have died down in the valley. Yet a strange shyness kept him from trying to put his thanks into words. The only kind of amends he could make for the other’s hurt was to provide hands, feet, and strength for the man who did know what to do and how to do it.

“We’ll have to hunt—” he ventured.

“Deer,” Ashe caught him up. “But the marsh at the mouth of this stream provides a better hunting ground than inland. If the wolf laired here very long, she has already frightened away any game. It isn’t the matter of food which bothers me—”

“It is being tied up here,” Ross filled in for him with some daring. “But look here, I’ll take orders. This is your territory, and I’m green at the game. You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it the best that I can.” He glanced up to find Ashe surveying him intently, but as usual there was no readable expression on the other’s brown face.

“The first thing to do is get the wolf’s hide,” Ashe said briskly. “Then bury the carcass. You’d better drag it up here to work on it. If her mate is hanging around, he might try to jump you.”

Why Ashe should think it necessary to acquire the wolf skin puzzled Ross, but he asked no questions. The skinning took four times as long and was far from being the neat job the shock-haired man of the record tape had accomplished. Ross had to wash himself off in the stream before piling stones over the corpse in temporary burial. When he pulled his bloody burden back to the cave, Ashe lay with his eyes closed. Ross thankfully sat on his own pile of bracken and tried not to notice the throbbing ache in his arm.

He must have fallen asleep, for when he roused it was to see Ashe crawl over to mend the dying fire from their store of wood. Ross, angry at himself, beat the other to the task.

“Get back,” he said roughly. “This is my job. I didn’t mean to fail.”

Surprisingly, Ashe settled back without a word, leaving Ross to sit by the fire, a fire he was very glad to have a moment or so later when a wailing howl sounded down-wind. If this was not the white wolf’s mate, then it was another of her kin who prowled the upper reaches of the small valley.

The next day, having provided Ashe with a supply of firewood, Ross went to try his luck in the marsh. The thick drizzle which had hung over the land the day before was gone, and he faced a clear, bright morning, though the breeze had an icy snap. But it was a good morning to be alive and out in the open, and Ross’s spirits rose.

He tried to put to use all the woodlore he had learned at the base. But the classroom was one thing, the field quite another. He was uncomfortably certain that Ashe would not have found his showing very good.

The marsh was a series of pools between rank growths of leafless willows and coarse tufts of grass, with hillocks of firmer soil rising like islands. Ross, approaching with caution, was glad of it, for from one of those hillocks arose a trail of white smoke, and he saw a black blot which was probably a rude hut. Why one should choose to live in the midst of such country he could not guess, though it might be merely the temporary camp of some hunter.

Ross also saw thousands of birds feeding greedily on the dried seed of the marsh grasses, paddling in the pools, and setting up a clamor to drive a man mad. They did not seem in the least disturbed by that distant camper.

Ross had reason to be proud of his marksmanship that morning. He had in his quiver perhaps half a dozen of the lighter shafts made for shooting birds. In place of the finely chipped and wickedly barbed flint points used for heavier game, these were tipped with needle-sharp, light bone heads. He had a string of four birds looped together by their feet within almost as many minutes. For the flocks rose in their first alarm only to settle again to feast.

The he knocked over a hare—a fat giant of its race—that stared at him brazenly from a tussock. The hare kicked back into a pool in its death struggle, however, and Ross was forced to leave cover to retrieve its body. But he was alert and he stood up, dagger out and ready, to greet the man who parted the bushes to watch him.

For a long minute gray eyes stared into brown ones, and then Ross noted the other’s bedraggled and tattered dress. The kilt-tunic smudged with mud, scorched and charred along one edge, was styled like his own. The fellow wore his hair fastened back with a band, unlike the topknot of the local tribesman.

Ross, his dagger still ready, broke the silence first. “I am a believer in the fire and the fashioned metal, the climbing sun, and the moving water.” He repeated the recognition speech of the Beakermen.

“The fire warms by the grace of Tulden, the metal is fashioned by the mystery of the smith, the sun climbs without our aid, and who can stop the water from running?” The stranger’s voice was hoarse. Now that Ross had time to examine him more closely he saw the dark bruise on his exposed shoulder, the raw red mark of a burn running across the man’s broad chest. He dared to test his surmise concerning the other.

“I am the kin of Assha. We returned to the hill—”

“Ashe!”

Not “Assha” but “Ashe!” Ross, though sure of that pronunciation, was still cautious. “You are from the hill place, where Lurgha smote with thunder and fire?”

The man slid his long legs across the log which had been his shelter. The burn across his chest was not his only brand, for Ross noticed another red stripe, puffed and fiery looking, which swelled the calf of one leg. The man studied Ross closely, and then his fingers moved in a sign which to the uninitiated native might have been one for the warding off of evil, but which to Ross was the “thumbs up” of his own age.

“Sanford?”

At that name the man shook his head. “McNeil,” he named himself. “Where is Ashe?”

He might really be what he seemed, but on the other hand, he could be a Russian spy. Ross had not forgotten Kurt. “What happened?” he parried one question with another.

“Bomb. The Russians must have spotted us, and we didn’t have a chance. We weren’t expecting any trouble. I’d been down to see about a missing pack donkey and was about halfway back up the hill when she hit. When I came to I was all the way down the hill with part of the fort on top of me. The rest . . . Well, you saw the place, didn’t you?”

Ross nodded. “What are you doing here?”

McNeil spread his hands in a tired little gesture. “I tried to talk to Nodren, but they stoned me away. I knew that Ashe was coming through and hoped to reach him when he hit the beach, but I was too late. Then I figured he would pass here to make contact with the sub, so I was waiting it out until I saw you. Where is Ashe?”

It all sounded logical enough. Still, with Ashe injured, Ross was taking no chances. He pushed his dagger back into its sheath and picked up the hare. “Stay here,” he told McNeil, “I’ll be back—”

“But—wait! Where’s Ashe, you young fool? We have to get together.”

Ross went on. He was sure that the stranger was in no shape to race after him, and he would lay a muddled trail before he returned to the cave valley. If this man was a Russian plant, he would have to reckon with one who had already met Kurt Vogel.

The laying of that muddled trail took time. It was past midday when Ross came back to Ashe, who was sitting up by the mouth of the cave at the fire, using his dagger to fashion a crutch out of a length of sapling. He surveyed Ross’s burden with approval, but lost interest in the promise of food as soon as the other reported his meeting in the marsh.

“McNeil—chap with brown hair, light brown eyes, a right eyebrow which quirks up toward his hairline when he smiles?”

“Brown hair and eyes, okay—and he didn’t smile any.”

“Chip broken off a front tooth—upper right?”

Ross shut his eyes to visualize the stranger. Yes, there had been a small break on a front tooth. He nodded.

“That’s McNeil. Not that you didn’t do right not to bring him here without being sure. What made you so watchful? Kurt?”

Again Ross nodded. “And what you said about the Russians’ planting someone here to wait for us.”

Ashe scratched the bristles on his chin. “Never underrate them—we don’t dare do that. But the man you met is McNeil, and we’d better get him here. Can you bring him?”

“I think he’s able to get about, in spite of that leg. From his story he’s been stirring around.”

Ashe bit absent-mindedly into a piece of hare and swore mildly when he burned his tongue. “Odd that Cassca didn’t tell us about him. Unless she thought there was no use causing trouble by admitting they had driven him away. You going now?”

Ross moved around the fire. “Might as well. He didn’t look too comfortable. And I’ll bet he’s hungry.”

He took the direct route back to the marsh, but this time no thread of smoke spiraled into the air. Ross hesitated. That shelter on the small island was surely the place where McNeil had holed up. Should he try to work his way out to it now? Or had something happened to the man while he was gone?

Again that sixth sense of impending disaster, which is perhaps bred into some men, alerted Ross. Why he turned suddenly and backed against a bushy willow, he could not have explained. However, because he did so the loop of hide rope meant for his throat hit his shoulder harmlessly. It fell to the ground, and he stamped one boot down on it. Then it was the work of seconds to grasp it and give it a quick jerk. The surprised man who held the other end was brought sprawling into the open.

Ross had seen that round face before. “Lal of the town of Nodren.” He found words to greet the ropeman even as his knee came up against the fellow’s jaw, jarring Lal so that he dropped a flint knife. Ross kicked it into the willows. “What do you hunt here, Lal?”

“Traders!” The voice was weak, but it held anger.

The tribesman did not try to struggle against Ross’s hold, and Ross, gripping him by the nape of the neck, moved through a screen of brush to a hollow. Luckily there was no water cupped there, for McNeil lay in the bottom of that dip, his arms tied tightly behind him and his ankles lashed together with no thought for the pain of his burned leg.

Ross whirled the rope which had been meant to bring him down around Lal. He lashed the tribesman’s arms tight to his body before he knelt to cut loose his fellow time traveler. Lal now huddled against the far wall of the hollow, fear in every line of his small body. So apparent was this fear that, far from feeling satisfaction, Ross felt increasingly uneasy.

“What is this all about?” he asked McNeil as he stripped off his bonds and helped him up.

McNeil massaged his wrists, took a step or two, and grimaced with pain. “Our friend seeks to be an obedient servant of Lurgha.”

Ross picked up his bow. “The tribe is out to hunt us?”

“Lurgha has ordered—out of thin air again—that any traders who escaped are to be brought in and introduced to him personally at the sacrifice for the enrichments of the fields!”

The old, old gift of blood and life at the spring sowing. Ross recalled grisly details from his cram lessons. Any wandering stranger or enemy tribesman taken in a raid before that day would meet such a fate. On unlucky years when people were not available a deer or wolf might serve. But the best sacrifice of all was a man. So Lurgha had decreed—from the air—that traders were his meat? What of Ashe? Let any hunter from the village track him down.

“We have to move fast,” Ross told McNeil as he took up the rope which made a leading cord for Lal. Ashe would want to question the tribesman about this second order from Lurgha.

Impatient as Ross was, he had to mend his pace to accommodate McNeil. The man from the hill post was close to the end of his strength. He had started off bravely enough, but now he wavered. Ross sent Lal ahead with a sharp push, ordering him to stay there, while he went to McNeil’s aid. It was well into the afternoon before they came up the stream and saw the fire before the cave.

“Macna!” Ashe hailed Ross’s companion with the native version of his name. “And Lal. But what do you here, Lal of Nodren’s town?”

“Mischief.” Ross helped McNeil within the cave and to the pile of brush which was his own bed. “He was hunting traders as a present for Lurgha.”

“So—” Ashe turned upon the tribesman— “and by whose word did you go hunting my kinsman, Lal? Was it Nodren’s? Has he forgotten the blood bond between us? For it was in the name of Lurgha himself that that bond was made—”

“Aaaah—” The tribesman squatted down against the wall where Ross had shoved him. Unable to hide his head in his arms, he brought his face down upon his knees so that only his shaggy topknot of hair was exposed. Ross realized, with stupefaction, that the little man was crying like a child, his hunched shoulders rising and falling with the force of his sobs.

“Aaaah—” he wailed.

“Be quiet!” Ashe shook him, but not too harshly. “Have you yet felt the bite of my sharp knife? Has an arrow holed your skin? You are alive, and you could be dead. Show that you are glad you live and continue to breathe by telling us what you know, Lal.”

The woman Cassca had displayed a measure of intelligence and ease at their meeting upon the road. But it was very plain that Lal was of different stuff, a simple man in whose head few ideas could find house room at one time. And to him the present was all terror. Little by little they dragged the story out of him.

Lal was poor, so poor that he had never dared dream of owning for himself some of the precious things the hill traders displayed to the wealthy of Nodren’s town. But he was also a follower of the Great Mother’s, rather than one who made sacrifices to Lurgha. Lurgha was the god for warriors and great men; he was too high to concern himself with such as Lal.

So when Nodren reported the end of the hill post under the storm fist of Lurgha, Lal had been impressed only to a point. He was still convinced it was none of his concern, and instead he began thinking of the treasures which might lie hidden in the destroyed buildings. It occurred to him that Lurgha’s Wrath had been laid upon the men who had owned them, but perhaps it would not stretch to the fine things themselves. So he had gone secretly to the hill to explore.

What he had seen there had utterly converted him to a belief in the fury of Lurgha and he had been frightened out of his simple wits, fleeing without making the search he had intended. But Lurgha had seen him there, had read his impious thoughts . . .

At that point Ashe interrupted the stream of Lal’s story. How had Lurgha seen Lal?

Because—Lal shuddered, began to cry again, and spoke the next few sentences haltingly—that very morning when he had gone out to hunt wild fowl in the marshes Lurgha had spoken to him, to Lal, who was less than a flea creeping upon a worn out fur rug.

And how had Lurgha spoken? Ashe’s voice was softer, gentle.

Out of the air, even as he had spoken to Nodren, who was a chief. He said that he had seen Lal in the hill post, and so Lal was his meat. But not yet would he eat him, not if Lal served him in other ways. And he, Lal, had lain flat on the ground before the bodiless voice of Lurgha and had sworn that he would serve Lurgha to the end of his life.

Then Lurgha had told him to hunt down one of the evil traders who was hiding in the marshes, and bind him with ropes. Then he was to call the men of the village and together they would carry the prisoner to the hill where Lurgha had loosed his wrath and leave him there. Later they might return and take what they found there and use it to bless the fields at sowing time, and all would be well with Nodren’s village. And Lal had sworn that he would do as Lurgha bade, but now he could not. So Lurgha would eat him up—he was a man without hope.

“Yet,” Ashe said even more gently, “have you not served the Great Mother all these years, giving to her a portion of the first fruits even when the yield of your one field was small?”

Lal stared at him, his woebegone face still smeared with tears. It took a second or two for the question to penetrate his fear-clouded mind. Then he nodded timidly.

“Has she not dealt with you well in return, Lal? You are a poor man, that is true, but you are not gaunt of belly, even though this is the thin season when men fast before coming of the new harvest. The Great Mother watches over her own. And it is she who has brought you to us now. For this I say to you, Lal, and I, Assha of the traders, speak with a straight tongue. The Lurgha who struck our post, who spoke to you from the air, means you no good—”

“Aaaah!” wailed Lal. “So do I know, Assha. He is of the night and the wandering spirits of the dark!”

“Just so. Thus he is no kin to the Mother, for she is of the light and of good things, of the new grain, and the newborn lambs for your flocks, of the maids who wed with men and bring forth sons to lift their fathers’ spears, daughters to spin by the hearth and sow the yellow grain in the furrows. Lurgha’s quarrel lies with us, Lal, not with Nodren nor with you. And we take upon us that quarrel.” He limped into the outer air where the shadows of evening were beginning to creep across the ground.

“Hear me, Lurgha,” he called into the coming night, “I am Assha of the traders, and upon myself I take your hate. Not upon Lal, nor upon Nodren, nor upon the people who live in Nodren’s town, shall your wrath lie. Thus do I say it!”

Ross, noticing that Ashe concealed from Lal a wave of his hand, was prepared for some display meant to impress the tribesman. It came in a spectacular burst of green fire beyond the stream. Lal wailed again, but when that fire was followed by no other manifestation he ventured to raise his head once more.

“You have seen how Lurgha answered me, Lal. Toward me only will his wrath be turned. Now—” Ashe limped back and dragged out the white wolf skin, dropping it before Lal— “this you will give to Cassca that she may make a curtain for the Mother’s home. See, it is white and so rare that the Mother will be pleased with such a fine gift. And you will tell her all that has chanced and how you believe in her powers over the powers of Lurgha, and the Mother will be well pleased with you. But you shall say nothing to the men of the village, for this quarrel is between Lurgha and Assha now and not for the meddling of others.”

He unfastened the rope which bound Lal’s arms. Lal reached out a hand to the wolf skin, his eyes filled with wonderment. “This is a fine thing you give me, Assha, and the Mother will be pleased, for in many years she has not had such a curtain for her secret place. Also, I am but a little man; the quarrels of great ones are not for me. Since Lurgha has accepted your words, this is none of my affair. Yet I will not go back to the village for a while—with your permission, Assha. For I am a man of loose and wagging tongue and oftentimes I speak what I do not really wish to say. So if I am asked questions, I answer. If I am not there to be asked such questions, I cannot answer.”

McNeil laughed and Ashe smiled. “Well enough, Lal. Perhaps you are a wiser man than you think. But also I do not believe you should stay here.”

The tribesman was already nodding. “That do I say, too, Assha. You are now facing the Wrath of Lurgha, and with that I wish no part. So I shall go into the marsh for a while. There are birds and hares to hunt, and I shall work upon this fine skin so that when I take it to the Mother it shall indeed be a gift worth her smiles. Now, Assha, if it pleases you, I would go before the night comes.”

“Go with good fortune, Lal.” Ashe stood apart while the tribesman ducked his head in a shy, awkward farewell to the others and pattered out into the valley.

“What if they pick him up?” McNeil asked wearily.

“I don’t think they can,” Ashe returned. “And what would you do—keep him here? If we tried that, he’d scheme to escape and try to turn the tables on us. Now he’ll keep away from Nodren’s village and out of sight for the time being. Lal’s not too bright in some ways, but he’s a good hunter. If he has reason for hiding out, it’ll take a better hunter to track him. At least we know now that the Russians are afraid they did not make a clean sweep here. What happened, McNeil?”

While he was telling his story in more detail both Ashe and Ross worked on his burns, making him comfortable. Then Ashe sat back as Ross prepared food.

“How did they spot the post?” McNeil rubbed his chin and frowned at the fire.

“Only way I can guess is that they picked up our post signal and pinpointed the source. That means they must have been hunting us for some time.”

“No strangers about lately?”

McNeil shook his head. “Our cover wasn’t broken that way. Sanford was a wonder. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn he was born one of the Beaker folk. He had a network of informants running all the way from here into Brittany. Amazing how he was able to work without arousing any suspicions. I suppose his being a member of the smiths’ guild was a big help. He could pick up a lot of news from any village where there was one at work. And I tell you,” McNeil propped himself up on his elbow to exclaim more vehemently— “there wasn’t a whisper of trouble from here clear across the channel and pretty far to the north. We were already sure the south was clean before we ever took cover as Beakers, especially since their clans are thick in Spain.”

Ashe chewed a broiled wing reflectively. “The permanent Russian base with the transport has to be somewhere within the bounds of the territory they hold in our own time.”

“They could plant it in Siberia and laugh at us,” McNeil exploded. “No hope of getting in there—”

“No.” Ashe threw the stripped bone into the fire and licked grease from his fingers. “Then they would be faced with the old problem of distance. If what they are exploiting lay within their modern boundaries, we would never have tumbled to the thing in the first place. What the Russians want must lie outside their twenty-first century holdings, a slender point in our favor. Therefore they will plant their shift point as close to it as they can. Our transportation problem is more difficult than theirs will ever be.

“You know why we chose the arctic for our base; it lies in a section of the world never populated by other than roving hunters. But I’ll wager anything you want to name that their point is somewhere in Europe where they have people to contend with. If they are using a plane, they can’t risk its being seen—”

“I don’t see why not,” Ross broke in. “These people couldn’t possibly know what it was—Lurgha’s bird—magic—”

Ashe shook his head. “They must have the interference-with-history worry as much as we have. Anything of our own time has to be hidden or disguised in such a way that the native who may stumble upon it will never know it is manmade. Our sub is a whale to all appearances. Possibly their plane is a bird, but neither can bear too close an examination. We don’t know what could result from a leak of real knowledge in this or any primitive time . . . how it might change history—”

“But,” Ross advanced what he believed to be the best argument against that reasoning, “suppose I handed Lal a gun and taught him to use it. He couldn’t duplicate the weapon—the technology required lies so far beyond his age. These people couldn’t reproduce such a thing.”

“True enough. On the other hand, don’t belittle the ingenuity of the smiths or the native intelligence of men in any era. These tribesmen might not be able to reproduce your gun, but it would set them thinking along new lines. We might find that they would think our time right out of being. No, we dare not play tricks with the past. That is the same situation we faced immediately after the discovery of the atom bomb. Everybody raced to produce that new weapon and then sat around and shivered for fear we’d be crazy enough to use it on each other.

“The Russians have made new discoveries which we have to match, or we will go under. But back in time we have to be careful, both of us, or perhaps destroy the world we do live in.”

“What do we do now?” McNeil wanted to know.

“Murdock and I came here only for a trial run. It’s his test. The sub is to call for us about nine days from now.”

“So if we sit tight—if we can sit tight—” McNeil lay down again— “they will take us out. Meanwhile we have nine days.”

They spent three more days in the cave. McNeil was on his feet and impatient to leave before Ashe was able to hobble well enough to travel. Though Ross and McNeil took turns at hunting and guard duty, they saw no signs that the tribesmen were tracking them. Apparently Lal had done as he promised, withdrawing to the marsh and hiding there apart from his people.

In the gray of pre-dawn on the fourth day Ashe wakened Ross. Their fire had been buried with earth, and already the cave seemed bleak. They ate venison roasted the night before and went out into the chill of a fog. A little way down the valley McNeil joined them out of the mist from his guard post. Keeping their pace to one which favored Ashe’s healing wound, they made their way inland in the direction of the track linking the villages.

Crossing that road they continued northward, the land beginning to rise under them. Far away they heard the blatting of sheep, the bark of a dog. In the fog, Ross stumbled in a shallow ditch beyond which lay a stubbled field. Ashe paused to look about him, his nostrils expanding as if he were a hound smelling out their trail.

The three went on, crossing a whole series of small, irregular fields. Ross was sure that the yield from any of these cleared strips must be scanty. The fog was thickening. Ashe pressed the pace, using his hand-made crutch carefully. He gave an audible sigh of relief when they were faced at last by two stone monoliths rising like pillars. A third stone lay across them, forming a rude arch through which they saw a narrow valley running back into the hills.

Through the fog Ross could sense the eerie strangeness of the valley beyond that massive gate. He would have denied that he was superstitious. He had merely studied these tribal beliefs as lessons; he had not accepted them. Yet now, if he had been alone, he would have avoided that place and turned aside from the valley. That which waited within was not for him. To his secret relief Ashe paused by the arch to wait.

The older man gestured the other two into cover. Ross obeyed willingly, though the dank drops of condensing fog dripped on his cloak and wet his face as he brushed against prickly-leafed shrubs. Here were walls of evergreen plants and dwarfed pines almost as if this tunnel of year-round greenery had been planted with some purpose in mind. Once his companions had concealed themselves, Ashe called, shrill but sweetly, with a bird’s rising notes. Three times he made that sound before a figure moved in the fog, the rough gray-white of its long cloak melting in the wisps of mist.

Down that green tunnel, out of the heart of the valley, the other came, a loop of cloak concealing the entire figure. It halted right in back of the arch and Ashe, making a gesture to the others to stay where they were, faced the muffled stranger.

“Hands and feet of the Mother, she who sows what may be reaped—”

“Outland stranger who is under the Wrath of Lurgha,” the other mocked him in the voice of Cassca. “What do you want, outlander, that you dare to come here where no man may enter?”

“That which you know. For on the night when Lurgha came you also saw—”

Ross heard the hiss of a sharply drawn breath. “How knew you that, outlander?”

“Because you serve the Mother and you are jealous for her and her service. If Lurgha is a mighty god, you wanted to see his acts with your own eyes.”

When she finally answered, there was anger as well as frustration in her voice. “And you know of my shame then, Assha. For Lurgha came—on a bird he came, and he did even as he said he would. So now the village will make offerings to Lurgha and beg his favor, and the Mother will no more have those to harken to her words and offer her the first fruits of—”

“But from whence came this bird which was Lurgha, can you tell me that, she who waits upon the Mother?”

“What difference does it make from what direction Lurgha came? That does not add nor take from his power.” Cassca moved beneath the arch. “Or does it in some strange way, Assha?”

“Perhaps it does. Only tell me.”

She turned slowly and pointed over her right shoulder. “From that way he came, Assha. Well did I watch, knowing that I was the Mother’s and that even Lurgha’s thunderbolts could not eat me up. Does knowing that make Lurgha smaller in your eyes, Assha? When he has eaten up all that is yours and your kin with it?”

“Perhaps,” Assha repeated. “I do not think Lurgha will come so again.”

She shrugged, and the heavy cloak flapped. “That shall be as it shall be, Assha. Now go, for it is not good that any man come hither.”

Cassca paced back into the heart of the green tunnel, and Ross and McNeil came out of concealment. McNeil faced in the direction she had pointed. “Northeast—” he commented thoughtfully, “the Baltic lies in that quarter.”

“. . . And that is about all.” Ten days later Ashe, a dressing on his leg and a few of the pain lines smoothed from his face, sat on a bunk in the arctic time post nursing a mug of coffee in his hands and smiling, a little crookedly, at Nelson Millaird.

Millaird, Kelgarries, Dr. Webb, all the top brass of the project had not only come through the transfer point to meet the three from Britain but were now crammed into the room, nearly pushing Ross and McNeil through the wall. Because this was it! What they had hunted for months—years—now lay almost within their grasp.

Only Millaird, the director, did not seem so confident. A big man with a bushy thatch of coarse graying hair and a heavy, fleshy face, he did not look like a brain. Yet Ross had been on the roster long enough to know that it was Millaird’s thick and hairy hands that gathered all the loose threads of Operation Retrograde and deftly wove them into a workable pattern. Now the director leaned back in a chair which was too small for his bulk, chewing thoughtfully on a toothpick.

“So we have the first whiff of a trail,” he commented without elation.

“A pretty strong lead!” Kelgarries broke in. Too excited to sit still, the major stood with his back against the door, as alert as if he were about to turn and face the enemy. “The Russians wouldn’t have moved against Gog if they did not consider it a menace to them. Their big base must be in this time sector!”

“A big base,” Millaird corrected. “The one we are after, no. And right now they may be switching times. Do you think they will sit here and wait for us to show up in force?” But Millaird’s tone, intended to deflate, had no effect on the major.

“And just how long would it take them to dismantle a big base?” that officer countered. “At least a month. If we shoot a team in there in a hurry—”

Millaird folded his huge hands over his barrel-shaped body and laughed, without a trace of humor. “Just where do we send that team, Kelgarries? Northeast of a coastal point in Britain is a rather vague direction, to say the least. Not,” he spoke to Ashe now, “that you didn’t do all you could, Ashe. And you, McNeil, nothing to add?”

“No, sir. They jumped us out of the blue when Sandy thought he had every possible line tapped, every safeguard working. I don’t know how they caught on to us, unless they located our beam to this post. If so, they must have been deliberately hunting us for some time, because we only used the beam as scheduled—”

“The Russians have patience and brains and probably some more of their surprise gadgets to help them. We have the patience and the brains, but not the gadgets. And time is against us. Get anything out of this, Webb?” Millaird asked the hitherto silent third member of his ruling committee.

The quiet man adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, a flattish nose which did not support them very well. “Just another point to add to our surmises. I would say that they are located somewhere near the Baltic Sea. There are old trade routes there, and in our own time it is a territory closed to us. Their installation may be close to the Finnish border. They could disguise their modern station under half a dozen covers; that is a strange country.”

Millaird’s hands unfolded and he produced a notebook and pen from a shirt pocket. “Won’t hurt to stir up some of our present-day intelligence agents. They might just come up with a useful hint. So you’d say the Baltic. But that’s a big slice of country.”

Webb nodded. “We have one advantage—the old trade routes. In the Beaker period they are pretty well marked. The major one into that section was established for the amber trade. The country is forested, but not so heavily as it was in an earlier period. The native tribes are mostly roving hunters, and fishermen along the coast. But they have had contact with traders.” He shoved his glasses back into place with a nervous gesture. “The Russians may run into trouble themselves there at this time—”

“How?” Kelgarries demanded.

“Invasion of the ax people. If they have not yet arrived, they are due very soon. They formed one of the big waves of migratory people, who flooded the country, settled there. Eventually they became the Norse or Celtic stock. We don’t know whether they stamped out the natives tribes they found there or assimilated them.”

“That might be a nice point to have settled more definitely,” McNeil commented. “It could mean the difference between getting your skull split and continuing to breathe.”

“I don’t think they would tangle with the traders. Evidence found today suggests that the Beaker folk simply went on about their business in spite of a change in customers,” Webb returned.

“Unless they were pushed into violence.” Ashe handed his empty mug to Ross. “Don’t forget Lurgha’s Wrath. From now on our enemies might take a very dim view of any Beaker trade posts near their property.”

Webb shook his head slowly. “A wholesale attack on Beaker establishments would constitute a shift in history. The Russians won’t dare that, not just on general suspicion. Remember, they are not any more eager to tinker with history than we are. No, they will watch for us. We will have to stop communication by radio—”

“We can’t!” snapped Millaird vehemently. “We can cut it down, but I won’t send the boys out without some means of quick communication. You lab boys see what you can turn out in the way of talk boxes that they can’t snoop. Time!” He drummed on his knee with his thick fingers. “It all comes back to a question of time.”

“Which we do not have,” Ashe observed in his usual quiet voice. “If the Russians are afraid they have been spotted, they must be dismantling their post right now, working around the clock. We’ll never again have such a good chance to nail them. We must move now.”

Millaird’s lids drooped almost shut; he might have been napping. Kelgarries stirred restlessly by the door, and Webb’s round face had settled into what looked like permanent lines of disapproval.

“Doc,” Millaird spoke over his shoulder to the fourth man of his following, “what is your report?”

“Ashe must be under treatment for at least five days. McNeil’s burns aren’t too bad, and Murdock’s slash is almost healed.”

“Five days—” Millaird droned, and then flashed a glance at the major. “Personnel. We’re tied down without any useful personnel. Who in processing could be switched without tangling them up entirely?”

“No one. I can recall Jansen and Van Wyke. These ax people might be a good cover for them.” The momentary light in Kelgarries’ eyes faded. “No, we have no proper briefing and can’t get it until the tribe does appear on the map. I won’t send any men in cold. Their blunders would not only endanger them but might menace the whole project.”

“So that leaves us with you three,” Millaird said. “We’ll recall what men we can and brief them again as fast as possible. But you know how long that will take. In the meantime—”

Ashe spoke directly to Webb. “You can’t pinpoint the region closer than just the Baltic?”

“We can do this much,” the other answered him slowly, and with obvious reluctance. “We can send the sub cruising offshore there for the next five days. If there is any radio activity—any communication—we should be able to trace the beams. It all depends upon whether the Russians have any parties operating from their post. Flimsy—”

“But something!” Kelgarries seized upon it with the relief of one who needed action.

“And they will be waiting for just such a move on our part,” Webb continued deliberately.

“All right, so they’ll be watching!” the major said, about to lose his temper, “but it is about the only move we can make to back up the boys when they do go in.”

He whipped around the door and was gone. Webb got up slowly. “I will work over the maps again,” he told Ashe. “We haven’t scouted that area lately, and we don’t dare send a reconnaissance plane over it now. Any trip in will be a stab in the dark.”

“When you have only one road, you take it,” Ashe replied. “I’ll be glad to see anything you can show me, Miles.”

If Ross had believed that his pre-trial-run cramming had been a rigorous business, he was soon to laugh at that estimation. Since the burden of the next jump would rest on only three of them—Ashe, McNeil, and himself—they were plunged into a whirlwind of instruction, until Ross, dazed and too tired to sleep on the third night, believed that he was more completely bewildered than indoctrinated. He said as much sourly to McNeil.

“Base has pulled back three other teams,” McNeil replied. “But the men have to go to school again, and they won’t be ready to come on for maybe three, four weeks. To change runs means unlearning stuff as well as learning it—”

“What about new men?”

“Don’t think Kelgarries isn’t out now beating the bushes for some! Only, we have to be fitted to the physical type we are supposed to represent. For instance, set a small, dark-headed pugnose among your Norse sea rovers, and he’s going to be noticed—maybe remembered too well. We can’t afford to take that chance. So Kelgarries had to discover men who not only look the part but are also temperamentally fitted for this job. You can’t plant a fellow who thinks as a seaman—not a seaman, you understand, but one whose mind works in that pattern—among a wandering tribe of cattle herders. The protection for the man and the project lies in his being fitted into the right spot at the right time.”

Ross had never really thought of that point before. Now he realized that he and Ashe and McNeil were of a common mold. All about the same height, they shared brown hair and light eyes—Ashe’s blue, his own gray and McNeil’s hazel—and they were of similar build, small-boned, lean, and quick-moving. He had not seen any of the true Beakermen except on the films. But now, recalling those, he could see that the three time traders were of the same general physical type as the far-roving people they used as a cover.

It was on the morning of the fifth day while the three were studying a map Webb had produced that Kelgarries, followed at his own weighty pace by Millaird, burst in upon them.

“We have it! This time we have the luck! The Russians slipped. Oh, how they slipped!”

Webb watched the major, a thin little smile pulling at his pursed mouth. “Miracles sometimes do happen,” he remarked. “I suppose the sub has a fix for us.”

Kelgarries passed over the flimsy strip of paper he had been waving as a banner of triumph. Webb read the notation on it and bent over the map, making a mark with one of those needle-sharp pencils which seemed to grow in his breast pocket, ready for use. Then he made a second mark.

“Well, it narrows it a bit,” he conceded. Ashe looked in turn and laughed.

“I would like to hear your definition of ‘narrow’ sometime, Miles. Remember we have to cover this on foot, and a difference of twenty miles can mean a lot.”

“That mark is quite a bit in from the sea.” McNeil offered his own protest when he saw the marking. “We don’t know that country—”

Webb shoved his glasses back for the hundredth time that morning. “I suppose we could consider this critical, condition red,” he said in such a dubious tone that he might have been begging someone to protest his statement. But no one did. Millaird was busy with the map.

“I think we do, Miles!” He looked to Ashe. “You’ll parachute in. The packs with which you will be equipped are special stuff. Once you have them off, sprinkle them with a powder Miles will provide and in ten minutes there won’t be enough of them left for anyone to identify. We haven’t but a dozen of these, and we can’t throw them away except in a crisis. Find the base and rig up the detector. Your fix in this time will be easy—but it is the other end of the line we must have. Until you locate that, stick to the job. Don’t communicate with us until you have it!”

“There is the possibility,” Ashe pointed out, “the Russians may have more than one intermediate post. They probably have played it smart and set up a series of them to spoil a direct trace, as each would lead only to another farther back in time—”

“All right. If that proves true, just get us the next one back,” Millaird returned. “From that we can trace them along if we must send in some of the boys wearing dinosaur skins later. We have to find their primary base, and if that hunt goes the hard way, well, we do it the hard way.”

“How did you get the fix?” McNeil asked.

“One of their field parties ran into trouble and yelled for help.”

“Did they get it?”

The major grinned. “What do you think? You know the rules—and the ones the Russians play by are twice as tough on their own men.”

“What kind of trouble?” Ashe wanted to know.

“Some kind of a local religious dispute. We do our best with their code, but we’re not a hundred percent perfect in reading it, I gather they were playing with a local god and got their fingers burned.”

“Lurgha again, eh?” Ashe smiled.

“Foolish,” Webb said impatiently. “That is a silly thing to do. You were almost over the edge of prudence yourself, Gordon, with that Lurgha business. Using the Great Mother was a ticklish thing to try and you were lucky to get out of it so easily.”

“Once was enough,” Ashe agreed. “Though using it may have saved our lives. But I assure you I am not starting a holy war or setting up as a prophet.”

Ross had been taught something of map reading, but mentally he could not make what he saw on paper resemble the countryside. A few landmarks, if there were any outstanding ones, were all he could hope to impress upon his memory until he was actually on the ground.

Landing there according to Millaird’s instruction was another experience he would not have chosen of his own accord. To jump was a matter of timing, and in the dark with a measure of rain thrown in, the action was anything but pleasant. Leaving the plane in a blind, follow-the-leader fashion, Ross found the descent into darkness one of the worst trials he had yet faced. But he did not make too bad a landing in the small parklike expanse they had chosen for their target.

Ross pulled loose his harness and chute, dragging them to what he judged to be the center of the clearing. Hearing a plaintive bray from the air, he dodged as one of the two pack donkeys sent to join them landed and began to kick at its trappings. The animals they had chosen were the most docile available and they had been given sedation before the jump so that now, feeling Ross’s hands, the donkey stood quietly while Ross stripped it of its hanging straps.

“Rossa—” The sound of his Beaker name called through the dark brought Ross facing in the other direction.

“Here, and I have one of the donkeys.”

“And I the other!” That was McNeil.

Their eyes adjusted to a gloom which was not as thick as it would be in the forest and they worked fast. Then they dragged the parachutes together in a heap. The rain would, Webb had assured them, add to the rapid destruction wrought by the chemical he had provided. Ashe shook it over the pile, and there was a faint greenish glow. Then they moved away to the woodland and made camp for the balance of the night.

So much of their whole exploit depended upon luck, and this small part had been successful. Unless some agent had been stationed to watch for their arrival Ross believed they could not be spotted.

The rest of their plan was elastic. Posing as traders who had come to open a new station, they were to stay near a river which drained a lake and then angled southward to the distant sea. They knew this section was only sparsely settled by small tribes, hardly larger than family clans. These people were generations behind the developmental level of the villages of Britain—roving hunters who followed the sweep of game north or south with the seasons.

Along the seashore the fishermen had established more permanent holdings which were slowly becoming towns. There were perhaps a few hardy pioneer farmers on the southern fringes of the district, but the principle reason traders came to this region was to get amber and furs. The Beaker people dealt in both.

Now as the three sheltered under the wide branches of a towering pine Ashe fumbled with a pack and brought out the “beaker” which was the identifying mark of his adopted people. He measured into it a portion of the sour, stimulating drink which the traders introduced wherever they went. The cup passed from hand to hand, its taste unpleasant on the tongue, but comfortingly warm to one’s middle.

They took turns keeping the watch until the gray of false dawn became the clearer light of morning. After breakfasting on flat cakes of meal, they packed the donkeys, using the same knots and cross lashing which were the mark of real Beaker traders. Their bows protected from dampness under their cloaks, they set out to find the river and their path southward.

Ashe led, Ross towed the donkeys, and McNeil brought up the rear. In the absence of a path they had to set a ragged course, keeping to the edge of the clearing until they saw the end of the lake.

“Woodsmoke,” Ashe commented when they had completed two thirds of their journey. Ross sniffed and was able to smell it too. Nodding to Ashe, McNeil oozed into nothingness between the trees with an ease Murdock envied. As they waited for him to return, Ross became conscious of another life about them, one busy with its own concerns, which were in no way those of human beings, except that food and shelter were to be reckoned among them.

In Britain, Ross had known there were others of his kind about, but this was different. Here, he could have easily believed that he was the first man to walk this way.

A squirrel ran out on a tree limb and surveyed the two men with curious beady eyes, then clung head down on the tree trunk to see them better. One of the donkeys tossed its head, and the squirrel was gone with a flit of its tail. Although it was quiet, there was a hum underneath the surface which Ross tried to analyze, to identify the many small sounds which went into its making.

Perhaps because he was trying so hard, he noted the faint noise. His hand touched Ashe’s arm and a slight movement of his head indicated the direction of the sound. Then, as fluidly as he had melted into the woods, McNeil returned. “Company,” he said in a soft voice.

“What kind?”

“Tribesmen, but wilder than any I’ve seen, even on the tapes. We are certainly out on the fringes now. These people look about cave level. I don’t think they’ve ever heard of traders.”

“How many?”

“Three, maybe four families. Most of the males must be out hunting, but there’re about ten children and six or seven women. I don’t think they’ve had good luck lately by the look of them.”

“Maybe their luck and ours are going to run together,” Ashe said, motioning Ross forward with the donkeys. “We will circle about them to the river and then try bartering later. But I do want to establish contact.”

“Not to be too hopeful but—” McNeil rubbed his arm across his hot face— “so far, so good.” After kicking from his path some of the branches Ross had lopped from the trees they had been felling, he went to help his companion roll another small log up to a shelter which was no longer temporary. If there had been any eyes other than the woodland hunters’ to spy upon them, they would have seen only the usual procedure of the Beaker traders, busily constructing one of their posts.

That they were being watched by the hunters, all three were certain. That there might be other spies in the forest, they had to assume for their own safety. They might prowl at night, but in the daytime all of the time agents kept within the bounds of the roles they were acting.

Barter with the head men of the hunting clan had brought those shy people into the camp of the strangers who had such wonders to exchange for tanned deer hides and better furs. The news of the traders’ arrival spread quickly during the short time they had been here, so that two other clans had sent men to watch the proceedings.

With the trade came news which the agents sifted and studied. Each of them had a list of questions to insert into their conversations with the tribesmen if and when that was possible. Although they did not share a common speech with the forest men, signs were informative and certain nouns could be quickly learned. In the meantime Ashe became friendly with the nearest and first of the clan groups they discovered, going hunting with the men as an excuse to penetrate the unknown section they must quarter in their search for the Russian base.

Ross drank river water and mopped his own hot face. “If the Russians aren’t traders,” he mused aloud, “what is their cover?”

McNeil shrugged. “A hunting tribe—fishermen—”

“Where would they get the women and children?”

“The same way they get their men—recruit them in our own time. Or in the way lots of tribes grew during periods of stress.”

Ross set down the water jug. “You mean, kill off the men, take over their families?” This was a cold-bloodedness he found sickening. Although he had always prided himself on his toughness, several times during his training at the project he had been confronted by things which shook his belief in his own strong stomach and nerve.

“It has been done,” McNeil remarked bleakly, “hundreds of times by invaders. In this setup—small family clans, widely scattered—that move would be very easy.”

“They would have to pose as farmers, not hunters,” Ross pointed out. “They couldn’t move a base around with them.”

“All right, so they set up a farming village. Oh, I see what you mean—there isn’t any village around here. Yet they are here, maybe underground.”

How right their guesses were they learned that night when Ashe returned, a deer’s haunch on his shoulder. Ross knew him well enough by now to sense his preoccupation. “You found something?”

“A new set of ghosts,” Ashe replied with a strange little smile.

“Ghosts!” McNeil pounced upon that. “The Russians like to play the supernatural angle, don’t they? First the voice of Lurgha and now ghosts. What do these ghosts do?”

“They inhabit a bit of hilly territory southeast of here, a stretch taboo for all hunters. We were following a bison track until the beast headed for the ghost country. Then Ulffa called us off in a hurry. It seems that the hunter who goes in there after his quarry never reappears, or if he does, it’s in a damaged condition, blown upon by ghosts and burned to death! That’s one point.”

He sat down by the fire and stretched his arms wearily. “The second is a little more disturbing for us. A Beaker camp about twenty miles south of here, as far as I can judge, was exterminated just a week ago. The message was passed to me because I was thought to be a kinsman of the slain—”

McNeil sat up. “Done because they were hunting us?”

“Might well be. On the other hand, the affair may have been just one of general precaution.”

“The ghosts did it?” Ross wanted to know.

“I asked that. No, it seems that strange tribesmen overran it at night.”

“At night?” McNeil whistled.

“Just so.” Ashe’s tone was dry. “The tribes do not fight that way. Either someone slipped up in his briefing, or the Russians are overconfident and don’t care about the rules. But it was the work of tribesmen, or their counterfeits. There is also a nasty rumor speeding about that the ghosts do not relish traders and that they might protest intrusions of such with penalties all around—”

“Like the Wrath of Lurgha,” supplied Ross.

“There is a certain repetition in this which rouses the suspicious mind,” Ashe agreed.

“I’d say no more hunting expeditions for the present,” McNeil said. “It is too easy to mistake a friend for a deer and weep over his grave afterward.”

“That is a thought which entered my mind several times this afternoon,” Ashe agreed. “These people are deceptively simple on the surface, but their minds do not work along the same patterns as ours. We try to outwit them, but it takes only one slip to make it fatal. In the meantime, I think we’d better make this place a little more snug, and it might be well to post sentries as unobtrusively as possible.”

“How about faking some signs of a ruined camp and heading into the blue ourselves?” McNeil asked. “We could strike for the ghost mountains, traveling by night, and Ulffa’s crowd would think we were finished off.”

“An idea to keep in mind. The point against it would be the missing bodies. It seems that the tribesmen who raided the Beaker camp left some very distasteful evidence of what happened to the camp’s personnel. And those we can’t produce to cover our trail.”

McNeil was not yet convinced. “We might be able to fake something along that line, too—”

“We may not have to fake anything,” Ross cut in softly. He was standing close to the edge of the clearing where they were building their hut, his hand on one of the saplings in the palisade they had set up so laboriously that day. Ashe was beside him in an instant.

“What is it?”

Ross’s hours of listening to the sounds of the wilderness were his measuring gauge now. “That bird has never called from inland before. It is the blue one we’ve seen fishing for frogs along the river.”

Ashe, not even glancing at the forest, went for the water jug. “Get your trail supplies,” he ordered.

Their leather pouches which held enough rations to keep them going were always at hand. McNeil gathered them from behind the fur curtain fronting their half-finished cabin. Again the bird called, its cry piercing and covering a long distance. Ross could understand why a careless man would select it for the signal. He crossed the clearing to the donkeys’ shelter, slashing through their nose halters. Probably the patient little beasts would swiftly fall victims to some forest prowlers, but at least they would have their chance to escape.

McNeil, his cloak slung about him to conceal the ration bags, picked up the leather bucket as if he were merely going down to the river for water, and came to join Ross. They believed that they were carrying it off well, that the camp must appear normal to any lurkers in the woods. But either they had made some slip or the enemy was impatient. An arrow sped out of the night to flash across the fire, and Ashe escaped death only because he had leaned forward to feed the flames. His arm swung out and sent the water in the jar hissing onto the blaze as he himself rolled in the other direction.

Ross plunged for the brush with McNeil. Lying flat on the half-frozen ground, they started to work their way to the river bank where the open area would make surprise less possible.

“Ashe?” he whispered and felt McNeil’s warm breath on his cheek as he replied:

“He’ll make it the other way! He’s the best we have for this sort of job.”

They made a worm’s progress, twice lying still, with dagger in hand, while they listened to a faint rustle which betrayed the passing of one of the attackers. Both times Ross was tempted to rise and try to cut off the stranger, but he fought down the impulse. He had learned self-control that would have been impossible a few months earlier.

The glimmer of the river was pale through the clumps of bushes which sometimes grew into the flood. In this country winter still clung tenaciously in shadowy places with cups of leftover snow, and there was a bite in the wind and water. Ross rose to his knees with an involuntary gasp as a scream cut through the night. He jerked around toward the camp, only to feel McNeil’s hand clamp on his forearm.

“That was a donkey,” whispered McNeil urgently. “Come on, let’s go down to that ford we discovered!”

They turned south, daring now to trot, half bent to the ground. The river was swollen with spring floods which were only now beginning to subside, but two days earlier they had noticed a sandbar at one spot. By crossing that shelf across the bed, they might hope to put water between them and the unknown enemy tonight. It would give them a breathing space, even though Ross privately shrank from the thought of plowing into the stream. He had seen good-sized trees swirling along in the current only yesterday. And to make such a dash in the dark . . .

From McNeil’s throat burst a startling sound which Ross had last heard in Britain—the questing howl of a hunting wolf. The cry was answered seconds later from downstream.

“Ashe!”

They worked their way along the edge of the water with continued care, until they came upon Ashe at last, so much a part of his background that Ross started when the lump he had taken for a bush hunched forward to join them. Together they made the river crossing and turned south again to head for the mountains.

It was then that disaster struck.

Ross heard no birdcall warning this time. Though he was on guard, he never sensed the approach of the man who struck him down from behind. One moment he had been trailing McNeil and Ashe; the next moment was black nothingness.

He was aware of a throb of pain which carried throughout his body and then localized in his head. Forcing open his eyes, the dazzle of light was like a spear point striking directly into his head, intensifying his pain to agony. He brought his hand up to his face and felt stickiness there.

“Assha—” He believed he called that aloud, but he did not even hear his own voice. They were in a valley; a wolf had attacked him out of the bushes. Wolf? No, the wolf was dead, but then it came alive again to howl on a river bank.

Ross forced his eyes open once more, enduring the pain of beams he recognized as sunshine. He turned his head to avoid the glare. It was hard to focus, but he fought to steady himself. There was some reason why it was necessary to move, to get away. But away from what and where? When Ross tried to think he could only see muddled pictures which had no connection.

Then a moving object crossed his very narrow field of vision, passing between him and a thing he knew was a tree trunk. A four-footed creature with a red tongue hanging from its jaws. It came toward him stiff-legged, growling low in its throat, and sniffed at his body before barking in short excited bursts of sound.

The noise hurt his head so much that Ross closed his eyes. Then a shock of icy liquid thrown into his face aroused him to make a feeble protest and he saw, hanging over him in a strange upside-down way, a bearded face which he knew came from the past.

Hands were laid on him. The roughness with which he was moved sent Ross spiraling back into the dark once more. When he aroused for the second time it was night and the pain in his head was dulled. He put out his hands and discovered that he lay on a pile of fur robes, and was covered by one.

“Assha—” Again he tried that name. But it was not Assha who came in answer to his feeble call. The woman who knelt beside him with a horn cup in her hand had neatly braided hair in which gray strands showed silver by firelight. Ross knew he had seen her before, but again where and when eluded him. She slipped a sturdy arm under his head and raised him while the world whirled about. The edge of the horn cup was pressed to his lips, and he drank bitter stuff which burned in his throat and lit a fire in his insides. Then he was left to himself once again and in spite of his pain and bewilderment he slept.

How many days he lay in the camp of Ulffa, tended by the chief’s head wife, Ross found it hard to reckon. It was Frigga who had argued the tribe into caring for a man they believed almost dead when they found him, and who nursed Ross back to life with knowledge acquired through half a hundred exchanges between those wise women who were the doctors and priestesses of these roaming peoples.

Why Frigga had bothered with the injured stranger at all Ross learned when he was able to sit up and marshal his bewildered thoughts into some sort of order. The matriarch of the tribe thirsted for knowledge. That same urge which had led her to certain experiments with herbs, had made her consider Ross a challenge to her healing skill. When she knew that he would live she determined to learn from him all he had to give.

Ulffa and the men of the tribe might have eyed the metal weapons of the traders with awe and avid desire, but Frigga wanted more than trade goods. She wanted the secret of the making of such cloth as the strangers wore, everything she could learn of their lives and the lands through which they had come. She plied Ross with endless questions which he answered as best he could, for he lay in an odd dream state where only the present had any reality. The past was dim and far away, and while he was now and then dimly aware that he had something to do, he forgot it easily.

The chief and his men prowled the half-built station after the attackers had withdrawn, bringing back with them a handful of loot—a bronze razor, two skinning knives, some fishhooks, a length of cloth which Frigga appropriated. Ross eyed this spoil indifferently, making no claim upon it. His interest in everything about him was often blanked out by headaches which kept him limp on his bed, uncaring and stupid for hours or even full days.

He gathered that the tribe had been living in fear of an attack from the same raiders who had wiped out the trading post. But at last their scouts returned with the information that the enemy had gone south.

There was one change of which Ross was not aware but which might have startled both Ashe and McNeil. Ross Murdock had indeed died under that blow which had left him unconscious beside the river. The young man whom Frigga had drawn back to sense and a slow recovery was Rossa of the Beaker people. The same Rossa nursed a hot desire for vengeance against those who had struck him down and captured his kinsmen, a feeling which the family tribe who had rescued him could well understand.

There was the same old urgency pushing him to try his strength now, to keep to his feet even when they were unsteady. His bow was gone, but Ross spent hours fashioning another, and he traded his copper bracelet for the best dozen arrows in Ulffa’s camp. The jet pin from his cloak he presented to Frigga with all his gratitude.

Now that his strength was coming back he could not rest easy in the camp. He was ready to leave, even though the gashes on his head were still tender to the touch. Ulffa indulgently planned a hunt southward, and Rossa took the trail with the tribesmen.

He broke with the clan hunters when they turned aside at the beginning of the taboo land. Ross, his own mind submerged and taken over by his Beaker cover, hesitated too. Yet he could not give up, and the others left him there, his eyes on the forbidden heights, unhappy and tormented by more than the headaches which still came and went with painful regularity. In the mountains lay what he sought—a hidden something within his brain told him that over and over—but the mountains were taboo, and he should not venture into them.

How long he might have hesitated there if he had not come upon the trail, Ross did not know. But on the day after the hunters of Ulffa’s clan left, a glint of sunlight striking between two trees pointed out a woodsman’s blaze on a third tree trunk. The two halves of Ross’s memory clicked together for an instant as he examined that cut. He knew that it marked a trace and he pushed on, hunting a second cut and then a third. Convinced that these would lead him into the unknown territory, Ross’s desire to explore overcame the grafted superstitions of his briefing.

There were other signs that this was an often-traveled route: a spring cleared of leaves and walled with stone, a couple of steps cut in the turf on a steep slope. Ross moved warily, alert to any sound. He might not be an expert woodsman, but he was learning fast, perhaps the faster because his false memories now supplanted the real ones.

That night he built no fire, crawling instead into the heart of a rotted log to sleep, awakening once to the call of a wolf and another time at the distant crash of a dead tree yielding to the wind.

In the morning he was about to climb back to the trail he had prudently left the night before when he saw five bearded, fur-clad men resembling Ulffa’s people. Ross hugged the earth and watched them pass out of sight before he followed.

All that day he wove up-and-down a trail behind the small band, sometimes catching sight of them as they topped a rise well ahead or stopped to eat. It was late afternoon when he crept cautiously to the top of a ridge and gazed down into a valley.

There was a town in that valley, sturdy houses of logs behind a stockade. He had seen towns vaguely like it before, yet it had a dreamlike quality as if it were not as real as it appeared.

Ross rested his chin on his arms and watched that town and the people moving in it. Some were fur-clad hunters, but others dressed quite differently. He started up with a little cry at the sight of one of the men who had walked so swiftly from one house to the next; surely he was a Beaker trader!

His unease grew stronger with every moment he watched, but it was the oddness he sensed in that town which bothered him and not any warning that he, himself, was in danger. He had gotten to his knees to see better when out of nowhere a rope sang through the air, settling about his chest with a vicious jerk which not only drove the air from his lungs but pinioned his arms tight to his body.

Having been cuffed and battered into submission more quickly than would have been possible three weeks earlier, Murdock now stood sullenly surveying the man, who, though he dressed like a Beaker trader, persisted in using a language Ross did not know.

“We do not play as children here.” At last the man spoke words Ross could understand. “You will answer me or else others shall ask the questions, and less gently. I say to you now—who are you and from where do you come?”

For a moment Ross glowered across the table at him, his inbred antagonism to authority aroused by that contemptuous demand, but then common sense cautioned. His initial introduction to this village had left him bruised and with one of his headaches. There was no reason to let them beat him until he was in no shape to make a break for freedom when and if there was an opportunity.

“I am Rossa of the traders,” he returned, eyeing the man with a carefully measured stare. “I came into this land in search of my kinsman who were taken by raiders in the night.”

The man, who sat on a stool by the table, smiled slowly. Again he spoke in the strange tongue, and Ross merely stared stolidly back. His words were short and explosive sounding, and the man’s smile faded; his annoyance grew as he continued to speak.

One of Ross’s two guards ventured to interrupt, using the Beaker language. “From where did you come?” He was a quiet-faced, slender man, not like his brutish companion, who had roped Murdock from behind and had been able to subdue Ross in short order.

“I came to this land from the south,” Ross answered, “after the manner of my people. This is a new land with furs and the golden tears of the sun to be gathered and bartered. The traders move in peace, and their hands are raised against no man. Yet in the darkness there came those who would slay without profit, for what reason I know not.”

The quiet man continued the questioning and Ross answered fully with details of the past of one Rossa, a Beaker merchant. Yes, he was from the south. His father was Gurdi, who had a trading post in the warm lands along the big river. This was Rossa’s first trip to open new territory. He had come with his father’s blood brother, Assha, who was a noted far voyager, and it was an honor to be chosen as donkey-leader for such a one as Assha. With Assha had been Macna, one who was also a far trader, though not as noted as Assha.

Of a certainty, Assha was of his own race! Ross blinked at that question. One need only to look upon him to know that he was of trader blood and no uncivilized woodsrunner. How long had he known Assha? Ross shrugged. Assha had come to his father’s post the winter before and had stayed with them through the cold season. Gurdi and Assha had mingled blood after he pulled Gurdi free from the river in flood. Assha had lost his boat and trade goods in that rescue, so Gurdi had made good his loss this year. Detail by detail he gave the story. In spite of the fact that he provided these details glibly, sure that they were true, Ross continued to be haunted by an odd feeling that he was indeed reciting a tale of some adventure which had happened long ago and to someone else. Perhaps that pain in his head made him think of these events as very colorless and far away.

“It would seem”—the quiet man turned to the one behind the table— “that this is indeed one Rossa, a Beaker trader.”

But the man looked impatient, angry. He made a sign to the other guard, who turned Ross around roughly and shoved him toward the door. Once again the leader gave an order in his own language, adding a few words more with a stinging snap that might have been a threat or a warning.

Ross was thrust into a small room with a hard floor and not even a skin rug to serve as a bed. Since the quiet man had ordered the removal of the ropes from Ross’s arms, he leaned against the wall, rubbing the pain of returning circulation away from his wrists and trying to understand what had happened to him and where he was. Having spied upon it from the heights, he knew it wasn’t an ordinary trading station, and he wanted to know what they did here. Also, somewhere in this village he hoped to find Assha and Macna.

At the end of the day his captors opened the door only long enough to push inside a bowl and a small jug. He felt for those in the dusk, dipping his fingers into a lukewarm mush of meal and drinking the water from the jug avidly. His headache dulled, and from experience Ross knew that this bout was almost over. If he slept, he would waken with a clearer mind and no pain. Knowing he was very tired, he took the precaution of curling up directly in front of the door so that no one could enter without arousing him.

It was still dark when he awoke with a curious urgency remaining from a dream he could not remember. Ross sat up, flexing his arms and shoulders to combat the stiffness which had come with his cramped sleep. He could not rid himself of a feeling that there was something to be done and that time was his enemy.

Assha! Gratefully he seized on that. He must find Assha and Macna. Surely the three of them could find a way to get out of this village. That was what was so important!

He had been handled none too gently, and they were holding him a prisoner. But Ross believed that this was not the worst which could happen to him here, and he must be free before the worst did come. The question was, How could he escape? His bow and dagger were gone, and he did not even have his long cloak pin for a weapon, since he had given that to Frigga.

Running his hands over his body, Ross inventoried what remained of his clothing and possessions. He unfastened the bronze chain-belt still buckled in his kilt tunic, swinging the length speculatively in one hand. A masterpiece of craftsmanship, it consisted of patterned plates linked together with a series of five finely wrought chains and a front buckle in the form of a lion’s head, its protruding tongue serving as a hook to support a dagger sheath. Its weight made it a weapon of sorts, which if added to the element of surprise might free him.

By rights they would be expecting him to produce some opposition, however. It was well known that only the best fighters, the shrewdest minds, followed the traders’ roads. It was a proud thing to be a trader in the wilderness, a thought that warmed Ross now as he waited in the dark for what luck Ba-Bal of the Bright Horns would send. Were he ever to return to Gurdi’s post, Ba-Bal, whose boat rode across the sky from dawn to dusk, would have a fine ox, jars of the first brewing, and sweet-smelling amber laid upon his altar.

Ross had patience which he had learned from the mixed heritage of his two parts, the real and the false graft. He could wait as he had waited many times before—quietly with outward ease—for the right moment to come. It came now with sharply ringing footsteps that halted before his cell door.

Silently as a hunting cat, Ross flung himself from behind the door to a wall, where he would be hidden from the newcomer for that necessary instant or two. If his attack was to be successful, it must occur inside the room. He heard the sound of a bar being slid out of its brackets, and he poised himself, the belt rippling from his right hand.

The door was opening inward, and a man stood silhouetted against the outer light. He muttered, looking toward the corner where Ross had thrown his single garment in a roll to suggest a man curled in slumber. The man in the doorway took the bait, coming forward far enough for Ross to send the door slamming shut as he himself sprang with the belt aimed for the other’s head.

There was a startled cry, cut off in the middle as the belt plates met flesh and bone. Luck was with him! Ross caught up his kilt and belted it around him after a hurried examination of the body now lying at his feet. He didn’t think the man was dead, but at any rate he was unconscious. Ross stripped off the man’s cloak, located his dagger, freed it from the belt hook and snapped it on his own.

Then inch by inch Ross edged open the door, peering through the crack. As far as he could see, the hall was empty, so he jerked the portal open. Dagger in hand he sprang out, ready for attack. He closed the door, slipping the bar back into its brackets. If the man inside revived and pounded for attention, his own friends might think it was Ross and delay investigating.

But the escape from the cell was the easiest part of what he planned to do, as Ross well knew. To find Assha and Macna in this maze of rooms occupied by the enemy would be far more difficult. Although he had no idea in which of the village buildings they might be confined, this one was the largest and seemed to be the headquarters of the chief men, so it might also serve as a prison.

Light came from a torch in a bracket halfway down the hall. The wood burned smokily, giving off a resinous odor, and the glow gave Ross enough light. He slipped along as close to the wall as he could, ready to freeze at the slightest sound. But this portion of the building seemed deserted, for he saw or heard no one. He tried the only two doors opening out of the hall, but they were secured on the other side. Then he came to a bend in the corridor, and stopped short, hearing a murmur of low voices.

If he had used a hunter’s tricks of silent tread and watchfulness before, Ross was doubly on guard now as he wriggled to a point which enabled him to see beyond that turn. Mere luck prevented him from giving himself away a moment later.

Assha! Assha, alive, well, apparently under no restraint, was just turning away from the same quiet man who had had a part in Ross’s interrogation. That was surely Assha’s brown hair, his familiar tilt of the head convinced Ross, though he could not see the man’s face. The quiet man went down the hall, leaving Assha before a door. As he passed through it Ross sped forward and followed him inside.

Assha had crossed the bare room and was standing on a glowing plate in the floor. Ross, aroused to desperate action by some fear he did not understand, leaped after him. His left hand fell upon Assha’s shoulder, turning the man half around as Ross, too, stepped upon the patch of luminescence.

Murdock had only an instant to realize that he was staring into the face of an astonished stranger. His hands flashed up in an edgewise blow which caught the other on the side of the throat, and then the world came apart about them. There was a churning, whirling nausea which gripped and bent Ross almost double across the crumpled body of his victim. He held his head lest it be torn from his shoulders by the spinning thing which seemed based behind his eyes.

The sickness lasted only a moment, and some buried part of Ross’s mind accepted it as a phenomenon he had experienced before. He came out of it gasping, to focus his attention once more on the man at his feet.

The stranger was still breathing. Ross stooped to drag him from the plate and began binding and gagging him with lengths torn from his kilt. Only when his captive was secure did he begin looking about him curiously.

The room was bare of any furnishings and now, as he glanced at the floor, Ross saw that the plate had lost its glow. The Beaker trader Rossa rubbed sweating palms on his kilt and thought fleetingly of forest ghosts and other mysteries. Not that the traders bowed to those ghosts which were the plague of lesser men and tribes, but anything which suddenly appeared and disappeared without any logical explanation, needed thinking on. Murdock pulled the prisoner, who was now reviving, to the far end of the room and then went back to the plate with the persistence of a man who refused to treat with ghosts and wanted something to explain the unexplainable. Though he rubbed his hands across the smooth surface of the plate, it did not light up again.

His captive having writhed himself half out of the corner of the room, Ross debated the wisdom of another silencing—say a tap on the skull with the heavy hilt of his dagger. Deciding against it because he might need a guide, he freed the victim’s ankle bonds and pulled him to his feet, holding the dagger ready where the man could see it. Were there any more surprises to be encountered in this place, Assha’s double would test them first.

The door did not lead to the same corridor, or even the same kind of corridor Ross had passed through moments earlier. Instead they entered a short passage with walls of some smooth stuff. It had almost the sheen of polished metal and was sleek and cold to the touch. In fact, the whole place was chill, chill as river water in the spring.

Still herding the prisoner before him, Ross came to the nearest door and looked within, to be faced by incomprehensible frames of metal rods and boxes. Rossa of the traders marveled and stared, but again, he realized that what he saw was not altogether strange. Part of one wall was a board on which small lights flashed and died, to flash again in winks of bright color. A mysterious object made of wire and disks hung across the back of a nearby chair.

The bound man lurched for the chair and fell, rolling toward the wall. Ross pushed him on until he was hidden behind one of the metal boxes. Then he made the rounds of the room, touching nothing, but studying what he could not understand. Puffs of warm air came in through grills near the floor, but the room was as chilly as the hall outside.

Meanwhile the lights on the board had become more active, flashing on and off in complex patterns. Ross now heard a buzzing, as if a swarm of angry insects were gathered for an attack. Crouching beside his captive, Ross watched the lights, trying to discover the source of the sound.

The buzz grew shriller, almost demanding. Ross heard the tramp of heavy footgear in the corridor, and a man entered the room, crossing purposefully to the chair. He sat down and drew the wire-and-disk frame over his head. His hands moved under the lights, but Ross could not guess what he was doing.

The captive at Murdock’s side tried to stir, but Ross’s hand pinned him quiet. The shrill noise which had originally summoned the man at the lights was interrupted by a sharp pattern of long-and-short sounds, and his hands flew even more quickly while Ross took in every detail of the other’s clothing and equipment. He was neither a shaggy tribesman nor a trader. He wore a dull-green outer garment cut in one piece to cover his arms and legs as well as his body, and his hair was so short that his round skull might have been shaved. Ross rubbed the back of his wrist across his eyes, experiencing again that dim other memory. Odd as this man looked, Murdock had seen his like before somewhere, yet the background had not been Gurdi’s post on the southern river. Where and when had he, Rossa, ever been with such strange beings? And why could he not remember it all more clearly?

Boots sounded once more in the hall, and another figure strode in. This one wore furs, but he, too, was no woods hunter, Ross realized as he studied the newcomer in detail. The loose overshirt of thick fur with its hood thrown back, the high boots, and all the rest were not of any primitive fashioning. And the man had four eyes! One pair were placed normally on either side of his nose, and the other two, black-rimmed and murky, were set above on his forehead.

The fur-clad man tapped the one seated at the board. He freed his head partially from the wire cage so that they could talk together in a strange language while lights continued to flash and the buzzing died away. Ross’s captive wriggled with renewed vigor and at last thrashed free a foot to kick at one of the metal installations. The resulting clang brought both men around. The one at the board tore his head cage off as he jumped to his feet, while the other brought out a gun.

Gun? One little fraction of Ross’s mind wondered at his recognition of that black thing and of the danger it promised, even as he prepared for battle. He pushed his captive across the path of the man in fur and threw himself in the other direction. There was a blast to make a torment in his head as he hurled toward the door.

So intent was Ross upon escape that he did not glance behind but skidded out on his hands and knees, thus fortunately presenting a poor target to the third man coming down the hall. Ross’s shoulder hit the newcomer at thigh level, and they tangled in a struggling mass which saved Ross’s life as the others burst out behind them.