Time Traders

Ross fought grimly, his hands and feet moving in blows he was not conscious of planning. His opponent was no easy match and at last Ross was flattened, in spite of his desperate efforts. He was whirled over, his arms jerked behind him, and cold metal rings snapped about his wrists. Then he was rolled back, to lie blinking up at his enemies.

All three men gathered over him, barking questions which he could not understand. One of them disappeared and returned with Ross’s former captive, his mouth a straight line and a light in his eyes Ross understood far better than words.

“You are the trader prisoner?” The man who looked like Assha leaned over Murdock, patches of red on his tanned skin where the gag and wrist bonds had been.

“I am Rossa, son of Gurdi, of the traders,” Ross returned, meeting what he read in the other’s expression with a ready defiance. “I was a prisoner, yes. But you did not keep me one for long then, nor shall you now.”

The man’s thin upper lip lifted. “You have done yourself ill, my young friend. We have a better prison here for you, one from which you shall not escape.”

He spoke to the other men, and there was the ring of an order in his voice. They pulled Ross to his feet, pushing him ahead of them. During the short march Ross took note of things he could not identify in the rooms through which they passed. Men called questions and at last they paused long enough, Ross firmly in the hold of the fur-clad guard, for the other two to put on similar garments.

Ross had lost his cloak in the fight, but no fur shirt was given him. He shivered more and more as the chill which clung to that warren of rooms and halls bit into his half-clad body. He was certain of only one thing about this place: he could not possibly be in the crude buildings of the valley village. However, he was unable to guess where he was or how he had come there.

Finally, they went down a narrow room filled with bulky metal objects of bright scarlet or violet that gleamed weirdly and were equipped with rods ringed with all the colors of the rainbow. Here was a round door, and when one of the guards used both hands to tug it open, the cold that swept in was a frigid breath that burned as it touched bare skin.

The nearly opaque, dirty white walls of the tunnel were made of solid ice. Dark objects showed dimly through them here and there. A black wire hooked overhead and hung at regular intervals with lights did nothing to break the glacial cold about them.

Ross shuddered. Every breath he drew stung in his lungs. His bare shoulders and arms and the exposed section of thigh between kilt and boot grew numb. He could only move on stiffly, pushed ahead by his guards when he faltered. He guessed that were he to lose his footing here and surrender to the cold, he would forfeit the battle—and his life.

He had no way of measuring the length of the boring through the solid ice, but they were at last fronted by another opening, raggedly knocked out as if with an ax. They emerged from it into the wildest scene Ross had ever seen. Of course, he was familiar with ice and snow, but here was a world surrendered utterly to the brutal force of winter. It was a still, dead white-gray world in which nothing moved save the wind which curled the drifts.

Sunlight dazzled on the ice crest. The guards covered their eyes with the murky lenses they had worn pushed up on their foreheads within the shelter. Despite smarting eyes, Ross kept his gaze centered on his feet. He was given no time to look about. A rope was produced, a loop of it flipped in a noose about his throat, and he was towed along like a leashed dog. Before them was a path worn in the snow, not only by the passing of booted feet, but with more deeply scored marks as if heavy objects had been sledded there. Ross slipped and stumbled in the ruts, fearing to fall lest he be dragged. The numbness of his body reached into his head, he was dizzy, the world about him misting over now and again with a haze which arose from the long stretches of unbroken snow fields.

Tripping in a rut, he went down upon one knee, his flesh too numbed now to feel the additional cold of the snow, snow so hard that its crust delivered a knife’s cut. Unemotionally, he watched a thin line of red trickle in a sluggish drop or two down the blue skin of his leg. The rope jerked him forward, and Ross scrambled awkwardly until one of his captors hooked a fur mitten in his belt and heaved him to his feet once more.

The purpose of that trek through the snow was obscure to Ross. In fact, he no longer cared, save that a hard rebel core deep inside him would not let him give up as long as his legs could move and he had a scrap of conscious will left in him. It was more difficult to walk now. He skidded and went down twice more. Then, the last time he slipped, he sledded past the man who led him, sliding down the slope of a glass-slick slope. He lay at the foot, unable to get up. Through the haze and deadening blanket of the cold he knew that he was being pulled about, shaken, generally mishandled; but this time he could not respond. Someone snapped open the rings about his wrists.

There was a call, echoing eerily across the ice. The fumbling about his body changed to a tugging and once more he was sent rolling down the slope. But the rope was not gone from his throat, and his arms were free. This time when he brought up hard against an obstruction he was not followed.

Ross’s conscious mind—that portion of him that was Rossa, the trader—was content to lie there, to yield to the lethargy born of the frigid world about him. But the subconscious Ross Murdock of the Project prodded at him. He had always had a certain cold hatred which could crystallize into a spur. Once it had been hatred of circumstances and authority; now it became hatred for those who had led him into this wilderness with the purpose, as he knew now, of leaving him to freeze and die.

Ross pulled his hands under him. Though there was no feeling in them, they obeyed his will clumsily. He levered himself up and looked around. He lay in a narrow crevicelike cut, partly walled in by earth so frozen as to resemble steel. Crusted over it in long streaks from above were tongues of ice. To remain here was to serve his captors’ purpose.

Ross inched his way to his feet. This opening, which was intended as his grave, was not so deep as the men had thought in their hurry to be rid of him. He believed that he could climb out if he could make his body answer to his determination.

Somehow Ross made that supreme effort and came again to the rutted path from which they had tumbled him. Even if he could, there was no sense in going along that rutted trail, for it led back to the ice-encased building from which he had been brought. They had thrust him out to die; they would not take him in.

But a road so well marked must have some goal, and in hopes that he might find shelter at the other end, Ross turned to the left. The trace continued down the slope. Now the towering walls of ice and snow were broken by rocky teeth as if they had bitten deep upon this land, only to be gnawed in return. Rounding one of those rock fangs, Ross looked at a stretch of level ground. Snow lay here, but the beaten-down trail led straight through it to the rounded side of a huge globe half buried in the ground, a globe of dark material which could only be man-made.

Ross was past caution. He must get to warmth and shelter or he was done for, and he knew it. Wavering and weaving, he went on, his attention fixed on the door ahead—a closed oval door. With a sob of exhausted effort, Ross threw himself against it. The barrier gave, letting him fall forward into a queer glimmering radiance of bluish light.

The light rousing him because it promised more, he crawled on past another door which was flattened back against the inner wall. It was like making one’s way down a tube. Ross paused, pressing his lifeless hands against his bare chest under the edge of his tunic, suddenly realizing that there was warmth here. His breath did not puff out in frosty streamers before him, nor did the air sear his lungs when he ventured to draw in more than shallow gulps.

With that realization a measure of animal caution returned to him. To remain where he was, just inside the entrance, was to court disaster. He must find a hiding place before he collapsed, for he sensed he was very near the end of his ability to struggle. Hope had given him a flash of false strength, the impetus to move, and he must make the most of that gift.

His path ended at a wide ladder, coiling in slow curves into gloom below and shadows above. He sensed that he was in a building of some size. He was afraid to go down, for even looking in that direction almost finished his sense of balance, so he climbed up.

Step by step, Ross made that painful journey, passing levels from which three or four hallways ran out like the radii of a spider’s web. He was close to the end of his endurance when he heard a sound, echoed, magnified, from below. It was someone moving. He dragged his body into the fourth level where the light was very faint, hoping to crawl far enough into one of the passages to remain unseen from the stair. But he had gone only part-way down his chosen road when he collapsed, panting, and fell back against the wall. His hands pawed vainly against that sleek surface. He was falling through it!

Ross had a second, perhaps two, of stupefied wonder. Lying on a soft surface, he was enfolded by a warmth which eased his bruised and frozen body. There was a sharp prick in his thigh, another in his arm, and the world was a hazy dream until he finally slept in the depths of exhaustion.

There were dreams, detailed ones, and Ross stirred uneasily as his sleep thinned to waking. He lay with his eyes closed, fitting together odd bits of—dreams? No, he was certain that they were memories. Rossa of the Beaker traders and Ross Murdock of the project were again fused into one and the same person. How it had happened he did not know, but it was true.

Opening his eyes, he noticed a curved ceiling of soft blue which misted at the edges into gray. The restful color acted on his troubled, waking mind like a soothing word. For the first time since he had been struck down in the night his headache was gone. He raised his hand to explore that old hurt near his hairline that had been so tender only yesterday that it could not bear pressure. There remained only a thin, rough line like a long-healed scar, that was all.

Ross lifted his head to look about him. His body lay supported in a cradlelike arrangement of metal, almost entirely immersed in a red gelatinous substance with a clean, aromatic odor. Just as he was no longer cold, neither was he hungry. He felt as fit as he ever had in his life. Sitting up in the cradle, he stroked the jelly away from his shoulders and chest. It fell from him cleanly, leaving no trace of grease or dampness on his skin.

There were other fixtures in the small cylinderlike chamber besides that odd bed in which he had lain. Two bucketshaped seats were placed at the narrow fore part of the room and before those seats was a system of controls he could not comprehend.

As Ross swung his feet to the floor there was a click from the side. This drew him around, ready for trouble. But the noise had been caused by the opening of a door into a small cupboard. Inside the cupboard lay a fat package. Obviously this was an invitation to investigate the offering.

The package contained a much folded article of fabric, compressed and sealed in a transparent bag which he fumbled twice before he succeeded in releasing its fastening. Ross shook out a garment of material such as he had never seen before. Its sheen and satin-smooth surface suggested metal, but its stuff was as supple as fine silk. Color rippled across it with every twist and turn he gave to the length—dark blue fading to pale violet, accented with wavering streaks of vivid and startling green.

Ross experimented with a row of small, brilliant-green studs which made a transverse line from the right shoulder to the left hip, and they came apart. As he climbed into the suit the stuff modeled to his body in a tight but perfect fit. Across the shoulders were bands of green to match the studs, and the stockinglike tights were soled with a thick substance which formed a cushion for his feet.

He pressed the studs together, felt them lock, and then stood smoothing that strange, beautiful fabric, unable to account for either it or his surroundings. His head was clear; he could remember every detail of his flight up to the time he had fallen through the wall. And he was certain that he had passed through not only one, but two, of the Russian time posts. Could this be the third? If so, was he still a captive? Why would they leave him to freeze in the open country one moment and then treat him this way later?

He could not connect the ice-encased building from which the Russians had taken him with this one. At the sound of another soft noise Ross glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the cradle of jelly, from which he had emerged, close in upon itself until its bulk was a third of its former size. Compact as a box, it folded up against the wall.

Ross, his cushioned feet making no sound, advanced to the bucket-chairs. But lowering his body into one of them for a better look at what vaguely resembled the control of a helicopter—like the one in which he had taken the first stage of his fantastic journey across space and time—he did not find it comfortable. He realized that it had not been constructed to accommodate a body shaped precisely like his own.

A body like his own . . . That jelly bath or bed or whatever it was . . . The clothing which adapted so skillfully to his measurements . . .

Ross leaned forward to study the devices on the control board, confirming his suspicions. He had made the final jump of them all! He was now in some building of that alien race upon whose existence Millaird and Kelgarries had staked the entire project. This was the source, or one of the sources, from which the Russians were getting the knowledge which fitted no modern pattern.

A world encased in ice and a building with strange machinery. This thing—a cylinder with a pilot’s seat and a set of controls. Was it an alien place? But the jelly bath—and the rest of it . . . Had his presence activated that cupboard to supply him with clothing? And what had become of the tunic he was wearing when he entered?

Ross got up to search the chamber. The bed-bath was folded against the wall, but there was no sign of his Beaker clothing, his belt, the hide boots. He could not understand his own state of well being, the lack of hunger and thirst.

There were two possible explanations for it all. One was that the aliens still lived here and for some reason had come to his aid. The other was that he stood in a place where robot machinery worked, though those who had set it up were no longer there. It was difficult to separate his memory of the half-buried globe he had seen from his sickness of that moment. Yet he knew that he had climbed and crawled through emptiness, neither seeing nor hearing any other life. Now Ross restlessly paced up and down, seeking the door through which he must have come, but there was not even a line to betray such an opening.

“I want out,” he said aloud, standing in the center of the cramped room, his fists planted on his hips, his eyes still searching for the vanished door. He had tapped, he had pushed, he had tried every possible way to find it. If he could only remember how he had come in! But all he could recall was leaning against a wall which moved inward and allowed him to fall. But where had he fallen? Into that jelly bath?

Ross, stung by a sudden idea, glanced at the ceiling. It was low enough so that by standing on tiptoes he could drum his fingers on its surface. Now he moved to the place directly above where the cradle had swung before it had folded itself away.

Rapping and poking, his efforts were rewarded at last. The blue curve gave under his assault. He pushed now, rising on his toes, though in that position he could exert little pressure. Then as if some faulty catch had been released, the ceiling swung up so that he lost his footing and would have fallen had he not caught the back of one of the bucket-seats.

He jumped and by hooking his hands over the edge of the opening, was able to work his way up and out, to face a small line of light. His fingers worked at that, and he opened a second door, entering a familiar corridor.

Holding the door open, Ross looked back, his eyes widening at what he saw. For it was plain now that he had just climbed out of a machine with the unmistakable outline of a snub-nosed rocket. The small flyer—or a jet, or whatever it was—had been fitted into a pocket in the side of the big structure as a ship into a berth, and it must have been set there to shoot from that enclosing chamber like a bullet shot from a rifle barrel. But why?

Ross’s imagination jumped from fact to theory. The torpedo craft could be a plane. All right, he had been in bad shape when he fell into it by chance and the bed machine had caught him as if it had been created for just such a duty. What kind of a small plane would be equipped with a restorative apparatus? Only one intended to handle emergencies, to transport badly injured living things who had to leave the building in a hurry.

In other words, a lifeboat!

But why would a building need a lifeboat? That would only be standard equipment for a ship. Ross stepped into the corridor and stared about him with open and incredulous wonder. Could this be some form of ship, grounded here, deserted and derelict, and now being plundered by the Russians? The facts fitted! They fitted so well with all he had been able to discover that Ross was sure he was right. But he determined to prove it beyond all doubt.

He closed the door leading to the lifeboat berth, but not so securely that he could not open it again. That was too good a hiding place. On his cushioned feet he padded back to the stairway, and he stood there listening. Far below were sounds, a rasp of metal against metal, a low murmur of muted voices. But from above there was nothing, so he would explore above before he ventured into that other danger zone.

Ross climbed, passing two more levels, to come out into a vast room with a curving roof which must fill the whole crown of the globe. Here was such a wealth of machines, controls, things he could not understand that he stood bewildered, content for the moment merely to look. There were—he counted slowly—five control boards like those he had seen in the small escape ship. Each of these was faced by two or three of the bucket-seats, only these swung in webbing. He put his hand on one, and it bobbed elastically.

The control boards were so complicated that the one in the lifeboat might have been a child’s toy in comparison. The air in the ship had been good; in the lifeboat it had held the pleasant odor of the jelly; but here Ross sniffed a faint but persistent hint of corruption, of an old stench.

He left the vantage point by the stairs and paced between the control boards and their empty swinging seats. This was the main control room, of that he was certain. From this point all the vast bulk beneath him had been set in motion, sailed here and there. Had it been on the sea, or through the air? The globe shape suggested an air-borne craft. But a civilization so advanced as this would surely have left some remains. Ross was willing to believe that he could be much farther back in time than 2000 B.C., but he was still sure that traces of those who could build a thing like this would have existed in the twenty-first century A.D.

Maybe that was how the Russians had found this. Something they had turned up within their country—say, in Siberia, or some of the forgotten corners of Central Asia—had been a clue.

Having had little schooling other than the intensive cramming at the base and his own informal education, the idea of the race who had created this ship overawed Ross more than he would admit. If the project could find this, turn it over to the guys who knew about such things . . . But that was just what they were striving for, and he was the only project man to have found the prize. Somehow, someway, he had to get back—out of this half-buried ship and its icebound world—back to where he could find his own people. Maybe the job was impossible, but he had to try. His survival was considered impossible by the men who had thrown him into the crevice, but here he was. Thanks to the men who had built this ship, he was alive and well.

Ross sat down in one of the uncomfortable seats to think and thus avoided immediate disaster, for he was hidden from the stairs on which sounded the tap of boots. A climber, maybe two, were on their way up, and there was no other exit from the control cabin.

Ross dropped from the web-slung chair to the floor and made himself as small as possible under the platform at the front of the cabin. Here, where there was a smaller control board and two seats placed closely together, the odd, unpleasant odor clung. It became stronger to Ross’s senses as he waited tensely for the climbers to appear. Though he had searched, there was nothing in sight even faintly resembling a weapon. In a last desperate bid for freedom he crept back to the stairwell.

He had been taught a blow during his training period, one which required a precise delivery and, he had been warned, was often fatal. He would use it now. The climber was very close. A cropped head arose through the floor opening. Ross struck. He knew as his hand chopped against the folds of a fur hood that he had failed.

But the impetus of that unexpected blow saved him after all. With a choked cry the man disappeared, crashing down upon the one following him. A scream and shouts were heard from below, and a shot ripped up the well as Ross scrambled away from it. He might have delayed the final battle, but they had him cornered. He faced that fact bleakly. They need only sit below and let nature take its course. His session in the lifeboat had restored his strength, but a man could not live forever without food and water.

However, he had bought himself a bit of time which must be put to work. Turning to examine the seats, Ross discovered that they could be unhooked from their webbing swings. Freeing all of them, he dragged their weight to the stairwell and jammed them together to make a barricade. It could not hold long against any determined push from below, but, he hoped, it would deflect bullets if some sharp-shooter tried to wing him by ricochet. Every so often there was the crash of a shot and some shouting, but Ross was not going to be drawn out of cover by that.

He paced around the control cabin, still hunting for a weapon. The symbols on the levers and buttons were meaningless to him. They made him feel frustrated because he imagined that among that countless array were some that might help him out of the trap if he could only guess their use.

Once more he stood by the platform thinking. This was the point from which the ship had been launched—in the air or on some now frozen sea. These control boards must have given the ship’s master the means not only of propelling the vast bulk, but of unloading and loading cargo, lighting, heating, ventilation, and perhaps defense! Of course, every control might be dead now, but he remembered that in the lifeboat the machines had worked and fulfilled expertly the duty for which they had been constructed.

The only step remaining was to try his luck. Having made his decision, Ross simply shut his eyes as he had in a very short and almost forgotten childhood, turned around three times, and pointed. Then he looked to see where luck had directed him.

His finger indicated a board before which there had been three seats, and he crossed to it slowly, knowing that once he touched the controls he might inaugurate a chain of events he could not stop. The crash of a shot underlined the fact that he had no other recourse.

Since the symbols meant nothing, Ross concentrated on the shapes of the various devices and chose one which vaguely resembled the type of light switch he had always known. Since it was up, he pressed it down, counting to twenty slowly as he waited for a reaction. Below the switch was an oval button marked with two wiggles and a double dot in red. Ross snapped it level with the panel, and when it did not snap back, he felt somehow encouraged. When the two levers flanking that button did not push in or move up and down, Ross pulled them out without even waiting to count off.

This time he had results! A cracking of noise with a singsong rhythm, the volume of which, low at first, arose to a drone filled the cabin. Ross, deafened by the din, twisted first one lever and then the other until he had brought the sound to a less piercing howl. But he needed action, not just noise; he moved from behind the first chair to the next one. Here were five oval buttons, marked in the same vivid green as that which trimmed his clothing—two wiggles, a dot, a double bar, a pair of entwined circles, and a crosshatch.

Why make a choice? Recklessness bubbled up and Ross pushed all the buttons in rapid succession. The results were, in a measure, spectacular. Out of the top of the control board rose a triangle of screen which steadied and stood firm while across it played a rippling wave of color. Meanwhile the singsong became a squawk of angry protest.

Well, he had something, even if he didn’t know what it was! And he had also proved that the ship was alive. However, Ross wanted more than a squawk of exasperation, which was exactly what the noise had become. It almost sounded, Ross decided as he listened, as if he were being expertly chewed out in another language. Yes, he wanted more than a series of squawks and a fanciful display of light waves on a screen.

At the section of board before the third and last seat there was less choice—only two switches. As Ross flicked up the first, the pattern on the screen dwindled into a brown color streaked with cream in which there was a suggestion of a picture. Suppose one didn’t put the switch all the way up? Ross examined the slot in which the bar moved and now noted a series of tiny point marks along it. Selective? It would not do any harm to see. First he hurried back to the plug of chairs he had jammed into the stairwell. The squawks were now coming only at intervals, and Ross could hear nothing to suggest that his barrier was being forced.

He returned to the lever and moved it back two notches, standing open-mouthed at the immediate result. The cream-and-brown streaks were making a picture! Moving another notch down caused the picture to skitter back and forth on the screen. With memories of TV tuning to guide him, Ross brought the other lever down to a matching position, and the dim and shadowy images leaped into clear and complete focus. But the color was still brown, not the black and white he had expected.

And he was now looking into a face! Ross swallowed, his hand grasping one of the strings of chair webbing for support. Perhaps because in some ways it did resemble his own, that face was more preposterously nonhuman. The visage on the screen was sharply triangular with a small, sharply pointed chin and a jaw line running at an angle from a broad upper face. The skin was dark, covered largely with a soft and silky down, out of which hooked a curved and shining nose set between two large round eyes. On top of that astonishing head the down rose to a peak not unlike a cockatoo’s crest. Yet there was no mistaking the intelligence in those eyes, nor the other’s amazement at sight of Ross. They might have been staring at each other through a window.

Squawk . . . squeek . . . squawk . . . The creature in the mirror—on the vision plate—or outside the window—moved its absurdly small mouth in time to those sounds. Ross swallowed again and automatically made answer.

“Hello.” His voice was a weak whistle, and perhaps it did not reach the furry-faced one, for he continued his questions, if questions they were. Meanwhile Ross, over his first stupefaction, tried to see something of the creature’s surroundings. Though the objects were slightly out of focus, he was sure he recognized fittings similar to those about him. He must be in communication with another ship of the same type and one which was not deserted!

Furry-face had turned his head away to squawk rapidly over his shoulder, a shoulder which was crossed by a belt or sash with an elaborate pattern. Then he got up from his seat and stood aside to make room for the one he had summoned.

If Furry-face had been a startling surprise, Ross was now to have another. The man who now faced him on the screen was totally different. His skin registered as pale—cream-colored—and his face was far more human in shape, though it was hairless as was the smooth dome of his skull. When one became accustomed to that egg slickness, the stranger was not bad-looking, and he was wearing a suit which matched the one Ross had taken from the lifeboat.

This one did not attempt to speak. Instead, he took a long and measuring stare at Ross, his eyes growing colder and less friendly with every second of that examination. Ross had resented Kelgarries back at the project, but the major could not match Baldy for the sheer weight of ominousness he could pack into a look.

Ross might have been startled by Furry-face, but now his stubborn streak arose to meet this implied challenge. He found himself breathing hard and glaring back with an intensity which he hoped would communicate to Baldy that he would not have everything his own way if he proposed to tangle with Ross.

His preoccupation with the stranger on the screen betrayed Ross into the hands of those from below. He heard their attack on the barricade too late. By the time he turned around, the plug of seats was heaved up and a gun was pointing at his middle. His hands went up in small reluctant jerks as that threat held him where he was. Two of the fur-clad Russians climbed into the control chamber.

Ross recognized the leader as Ashe’s double, the man he had followed across time. He blinked for just an instant as he faced Ross and then shouted an order at his companion. The other spun Murdock around, bringing his hands down behind him to clamp his wrists together. Once again Ross fronted the screen and saw Baldy watching the whole scene with an expression suggesting that he had been shocked out of his complacent superiority.

“Ah . . .” Ross’s captors were staring at the screen and the unearthly man there. Then one flung himself at the control panel. His hands whipped back and forth, restoring to utter silence both screen and room.

“What are you?” The man who might have been Ashe spoke slowly in the Beaker tongue, drilling Ross with his stare as if by the force of his will alone he could pull the truth out of his prisoner.

“What do you think I am?” Ross countered. He was wearing the uniform of Baldy, and he had clearly established contact with the time owners of this ship. Let that worry the Russian!

But they did not try to answer him. At a signal he was led to the stair. To descend that ladder with his hands behind him was almost impossible, and they had to pause at the next level to unclasp the handcuffs and let him go free. Carefully keeping a gun on him, they hurried along, trying to push the pace while Ross delayed all he could. He realized that in his recognition of the power of the gun back in the control chamber, his surrender to its threat, he had betrayed his real origin. So he must continue to confuse the trail to the project in every possible way left to him. He was sure that this time they would not leave him in the first convenient crevice.

He knew he was right when they covered him with a fur parka at the entrance to the ship, once more manacling his hands and dropping a noose on him as a leash.

So, they were taking him back to their post here. Well, in the post was the time transporter which could return him to his own kind. It would be, it must be possible to get to that! He gave his captors no more trouble but trudged, outwardly dispirited, along the rutted way through the snow up the slope and out of the valley.

He did manage to catch a good look at the globe-ship. More than half of it, he judged, was below the surface of the ground. To be so buried it must either have lain there a long time or, if it were an air vessel, crashed hard enough to dig itself that partial grave. Yet Ross had established contact with another ship like it, and neither of the creatures he had seen were human, at least not in any way he knew.

Ross chewed on that as he walked. He believed that those with him were looting the ship of its cargo, and by its size, that cargo must be a large one. But cargo from where? Made by what hands, what kind of hands? Enroute to what port? And how had the Russians located the ship in the first place? There were plenty of questions and very few answers. Ross clung to the hope that somehow he had endangered the Russians’ job here by activating the communication system of the derelict and calling the attention of its probable owners to its fate.

He also believed that the owners might take steps to regain their property. Baldy had impressed him deeply during those few moments of silent appraisal, and he knew he would not like to be on the receiving end of any retaliation from the other. Well, now he had only one chance, to keep the Russians guessing as long as he could and hope for some turn of fate which would allow him to try for the time transport. How the plate operated he did not know, but he had been transferred here from the Beaker age and if he could return to that time, escape might be possible. He had only to reach the river and follow it down to the sea where the sub was to make rendezvous at intervals. The odds were overwhelmingly against him, and Ross knew it. But there was no reason, he decided, to lie down and roll over dead to please the Russians.

As they approached the post Ross realized how much skill had gone into its construction. It looked as if they were merely coming up to the outer edge of a glacier tongue. Had it not been for the track in the snow, there would have been no reason to suspect that the ice covered anything. Ross was shoved through the white-walled tunnel to the building beyond.

He was hurried through the chain of rooms to a door and thrust through, his hands still fastened. It was dark in the cubby and colder than it had been outside. Ross stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was several moments after the door had slammed shut that he caught a faint thud, a dull and hollow sound.

“Who is here?” he used the Beaker speech, determining to keep to the rags of his cover, which probably was a cover no longer. There was no reply, but after a pause that distant beat began again. Ross stepped cautiously forward, and by the simple method of running fullface into the walls, discovered that he was in a bare cell. Discovering that the noise lay behind the left-hand wall, he stood with his ear flat against it, listening. The sound did not have the regular rhythm of a machine in use—there were odd pauses between some blows, other came in a quick rain. It was as if someone were digging!

Were the Russians engaged in enlarging their icebound headquarters? Having listened for a considerable time, Ross doubted that, for the sound was too irregular. It seemed almost as if the longer pauses were used to check on the result of labor—was it to note the extent of the excavation or the continued preservation of secrecy?

Ross slipped down along the wall, his shoulders still resting against it, and rested with his head twisted so he could hear the tapping. Meanwhile he flexed his wrists inside the hoops which confined them, and folding his hands as small as possible, tried to slip them through the rings. All he did was chafe his skin raw to no advantage. They had not taken off his parka, and in spite of the chill about him, he was too warm. Only that part of his body covered by the suit he had taken from the ship was comfortable; he could almost believe that it possessed some built-in temperature control mechanism.

With no hope of relief Ross rubbed his hands back and forth against the wall, scraping the hoops on his wrists. The distant pounding had ceased, and this time the pause lengthened into so long a period that Ross fell asleep. His head fell forward on his chest, with his raw wrists still pushed against the surface behind him.

He was hungry when he awoke, and that hunger sparked his rebellion into flame. Awkwardly he got to his feet and lurched along to the door through which he had been thrown, where he proceeded to kick at the barrier. The cushiony stuff forming the soles of his tights muffled most of the force of those blows, but some noise was heard outside, for the door opened and Ross faced one of the guards.

“Food! I want to eat!” He put into the Beaker language all the resentment boiling in him.

The fellow ignoring him, reached in a long arm, and nearly tossing the prisoner off balance, dragged him out of the cell. Ross was marched into another room to face what appeared to be a tribunal. Two of the men there he knew—Ashe’s double and the quiet man who had questioned him back in the other time station. The third, clearly one of greater authority, regarded Ross bleakly.

“Who are you?” the quiet man asked.

“Rossa, son of Gurdi. And I would eat before I make talk with you. I have not done any wrong that you should treat me as a barbarian who has stolen salt from the trading post—”

“You are an agent,” the leader corrected him dispassionately, “of whom, you will tell us in due time. But first you shall speak of the ship, of what you found there, and why you meddled with the controls . . . Wait a moment before you refuse, my young friend.” He raised his hand from his lap, and once again Ross faced an automatic. “Ah, I see that you know what I hold—odd knowledge for an innocent Bronze Age trader. And please have no doubts about my hesitation to use this. I shall not kill you now,” the man continued, “but there are certain wounds which supply a maximum of pain and little serious damage. Remove his parka, Kirschov.”

Once more Ross was unmanacled, the fur stripped from him. His questioner carefully studied the suit he wore under it. “Now you will tell us exactly what we wish to hear.”

There was a confidence in that statement which chilled Ross; Major Kelgarries had displayed its like. Ashe had it in another degree, and certainly it had been present in Baldy. There was no doubt that the speaker meant exactly what he said. He had at his command methods that would wring from his captive the full sum of what he wanted. And there would be no consideration for that captive during the process.

His implied threat struck as cold as the glacial air, and Ross tried to meet it with an outward show of uncracked defenses. He decided to pick and choose from his information, feeding them scraps to stave off the inevitable. Hope dies very hard, and Ross having been pushed into corners long before his work at the project, had had considerable training in verbal fencing with hostile authority. He would volunteer nothing . . . Let it be pulled from him reluctant word by word! He would spin it out as long as he could and hope that time might fight for him.

“You are an agent . . .”

Ross accepted this statement as one he could neither affirm nor deny.

“You came to spy under the cover of a barbarian trader,” smoothly, without pause, the man changed language in mid-sentence, slipping from the Beaker speech into English.

But long experience in meeting danger with an expression of incomprehension was Ross’s weapon now. He stared somewhat stupidly at his interrogator with that bewildered, boyish look he had so long cultivated to bemuse enemies in his past.

Whether he could have held out long against the other’s skill—for Ross possessed no illusions concerning the type of examiner he now faced—he was never to know. What happened next saved for Ross a measure of self-esteem.

A distant boom thundered. Underneath and around them the floor, walls, and ceiling of the room moved as if they had been pried from their setting of ice and were being rolled about by the exploring thumb and forefinger of some impatient giant.

Ross swayed against a guard, was shoved back, and bounced against the wall as the man shouted words Ross could not understand. A determined roar from the leader brought a semblance of order, but it was plain that they had not been expecting this. Ross was hustled out of the room back to his cell. His guards were opening the cell door when a second shock was felt and he was thrust into safekeeping with no ceremony.

He half crouched against the questionable security of the wall, waiting through two more twisting earth waves, both of which were accompanied or preceded by dull sounds. Bombing! That last wrench was really bad. Ross found himself lying on the floor, feeling tremors rippling along the earth. His stomach knotted convulsively with a fear unlike any he had known before. It was as if the world had been jerked from under him.

But that last explosion—if it was an explosion—appeared to be the end. Ross sat up gingerly after several long moments during which no more shocks moved the floor and walls. A line of light marked the door, showing cracks where none had previously existed. Ross, not yet ready to try standing erect, was crawling toward it on his hands and knees when a sharp noise behind him brought him to a halt.

Darkness disoriented him, but he was certain that the scrape of metal against metal sounded from the far side of the wall. He crawled back and put his ear to the surface. Now he heard not only that scraping, but an undercurrent of clicks, chippings . . .

Under his exploring hands the surface remained as smooth as ever, however. Then suddenly, about a foot from his head, there sounded a rip of metal. The wall was being holed from the other side! Ross caught a weak flicker of light, and moving in it was the point of a tool pushing at the smooth surface of the wall. It broke away with a brittle sound, and a hand holding a light reached through the aperture.

Ross wondered if he should catch that wrist, but the hope that the digger might just possibly be an ally kept him motionless. After the hand with the light whipped back beyond the wall, a wide section gave away and a hunched figure crawled through, followed by a second. In the limited glow he saw the first tunneler clearly enough.

“Assha!”

Ross was unprepared for what followed his cry. The lean brown man moved with a panther’s striking speed, and Ross was forced back. A hand like a steel ring on his throat choked the breath away from his bursting lungs. The other’s muscular body held him flat in spite of his struggles. The light of a small flash glowed inches beyond his eyes as he fought to fill his lungs. Then the hand on his throat was gone and he gasped, a little dizzy.

“Murdock! What are you doing—?” Ashe’s clipped voice was muffled by another sudden explosion. This time the earth tremors not only hurled them from their feet, but seemed to run along the walls and across the ceiling. Ross, burying his face in the crook of his arm, could not rid himself of the fear that the building was being slowly twisted into scrap. When the shock was over he raised his head.

“What’s going on?” he heard McNeil ask.

“Attack.” That was Ashe. “But why, and by whom—don’t ask me! You are a prisoner, I suppose, Murdock?”

“Yes, sir.” Ross was glad that his voice sounded normal enough.

He heard someone sigh and guessed it was McNeil. “Another digging party.” There was tired disgust in that.

“I don’t understand,” Ross appealed to that section of the dark where Ashe had been. “Have you been here all the time? Are you trying to dig your way out? I don’t see how you can cut out of this glacier that we’re parked under—”

“Glacier!” Ashe’s exclamation was as explosive as the tremors. “So we’re inside a glacier! That explains it. Yes, we’ve been here—”

“On ice!” McNeil commented and then laughed. “Glacier—ice—that’s right, isn’t it?”

“We’re collaborating,” Ashe continued. “Supplying our dear friends with a lot of information they already have and some flights of fancy they never dreamed about. However, they didn’t know we had a few surprise packets of our own strewn about. It’s amazing what the boys back at the project can pack away in a belt, or between layers of hide in a boot. So we’ve been engaged in some research of our own—”

“But I didn’t have any escape gadgets.” Ross was struck by the unfairness of that.

“No,” Ashe agreed, his voice even and cold, “they are not entrusted to first-run men. You might slip up and use them at the wrong moment. However, you appear to have done fairly well . . .”

The heat of Ross’s rising anger was chilled by the noise which cracked over their heads, ground to them through the walls, flattened and threatened them. He had thought those first shocks were the end of this ice burrow and the world; he knew that this one was.

And the silence that followed was as threatening in its way as the clamor had been. Then there was a shout, a shriek. The space of light near the cell door was widening as that barrier, broken from its lock, swung open slowly. The fear of being trapped sent the men in that direction.

“Out!”

Before Ross could respond, they were stopped by the crackling sound of automatic weapons firing. Somewhere in this warren a fight was in progress.

Ross, remembering the arrogant face of the bald ship’s officer, wondered if this was not an attack in force—the aliens against the looting Russians. If so, would the ship people distinguish between those found here. He feared not.

The room outside was clear, but not for long. As they lay watching, two men backed in, then whirled to stare at each other. A voice roared from beyond as if ordering them back to some post. One of them took a step forward in reluctant obedience, but the other grabbed his arm and pulled him away. They turned to run, and an automatic cracked.

The man nearest Ross gave a queer little cough, folded forward to his knees, and sprawled on his face. His companion stared at him wildly for an instant, and then skidded into the passage beyond, escaping by inches a shot which clipped the door as he lunged through it.

No one followed, for outside there was a crescendo of noise—shouting, cries of pain, an unidentifiable hissing. Ashe darted into the room, taking cover by the body. Then he came back, the fellow’s gun in his hand, and with a jerk of his head summoned the other two. He motioned them on in a direction away from the sounds of battle.

“I don’t get all this,” McNeil commented as they reached the next passage. “What’s going on? Mutiny? Or have our boys gotten through?”

“It must be the ship people,” Ross answered.

“What ship?” Ashe caught him up swiftly.

“The big one the Russians have been looting—”

“Ship?” echoed McNeil. “And where did you get that rig?” In the bright light it was easy to see Ross’s alien dress. McNeil fingered the elastic material wonderingly.

“From the ship,” Ross returned impatiently. “But if the ship people are attacking, I don’t think they will notice any difference between us and the Russians . . .”

There was a burst of ear-splitting sound. For the third time Ross was thrown from his feet. This time the burrow lights flickered, dimmed, and went out.

“Oh, fine,” commented McNeil bitterly out of the dark. “I never did care for blindman’s buff.”

“The transfer plate—” Ross clung to his own plan of escape— “if we can reach that—”

The light which had served Ashe and McNeil in their tunneling clicked on. Since the earth shocks appeared to be over for a while, they moved forward, with Ashe in the lead and McNeil bringing up the rear. Ross hoped Ashe knew the way. The sound of fighting had died out, so one side or the other must have gained the victory. They might have only a few moments left to pass undetected.

Ross’s sense of direction was fairly acute, but he could not have gone so unerringly to what he sought as Ashe did. Only he did not lead them to the room with the glowing plate, and Ross stifled a protest as they came instead to a small record room.

On a table were three spools of tape which Ashe caught up avidly, thrusting two in the front of his baggy tunic, passing the third to McNeil. Then he sped about trying the cupboards on the walls, but all were locked. His hand falling from the last latch, Ashe came back to the door where Ross waited.

“To the plate!” Ross urged.

Ashe surveyed the cupboards once more regretfully. “If we could have just ten minutes here—”

McNeil snorted. “Listen, you may yearn to be the filling in an ice sandwich, but I don’t! Another shock and we’ll be buried so deep even a drill couldn’t find us. The kid is right. Let’s get out now. If we still can.”

Once more Ashe took the lead and they wove through ghostly rooms to what must have been the heart of the post—the transfer point. To Ross’s unvoiced relief, the plate was glowing. He had feared that when the lights blew out the transfer plate might also have been affected. He jumped for the plate.

Neither Ashe nor McNeil wasted time in joining him there. As they clung together there was a cry from behind them, underlined by a shot. Ross, feeling Ashe sag against him, caught him in his arms. By the reflected glow of the plate he saw the Russian commander of the post. Behind him, his hairless face hanging oddly bodiless in the gloom, was the alien. Were those two now allies? Before Ross could be sure that he had really seen them, the wracking of space time caught him and the rest of the room faded away.

“ . . . free. Get a move on!”

Ross glanced across Ashe’s bowed shoulders to McNeil’s excited face. The other was pulling at Ashe, who was only half-conscious. A stream of blood from a hole in his bare shoulder soaked the upper edge of his Beaker tunic, but as they steadied him between them, he gained some measure of awareness and moved his feet as they pulled him off the plate.

Well, they were free if only for a few seconds, and there was no reception committee waiting for them. Ross gave thanks silently for those two small favors. But if they were now returned to the Bronze Age village, they were still in enemy territory. With Ashe wounded, the odds against them were so high it was almost hopeless.

Working hurriedly with strips torn from McNeil’s kilt, they managed to stop the flow of blood from Ashe’s wound. Although he was still groggy, he was fighting, driven by the fear which whipped them all—time was one of their foremost enemies. Armed with Ashe’s gun, Ross kept watch on the transfer plate, ready to shoot at anything appearing there.

“That will have to do!” Ashe pulled free from McNeil. “We must move.” He hesitated, and then pulling the spools of tape from his bloodstained tunic, passed them to McNeil. “You’d better carry these.”

“All right,” the other answered almost absently.

“Move!” The force of that order from Ashe sent them into the corridor beyond. “The plate . . .” But the plate remained clear. And Ross noted that they must have returned to the proper time, for the walls about them were the logs and stone of the village he remembered.

“Someone coming through?”

“Should be—soon.”

They fled, the hide boots of the other two making only the faintest whisper of sound, Ross’s foam-soled feet none at all. He could not have found the door to the outer world, but again Ashe guided them, and only once did they have to seek cover. At last they faced a barred door. Ashe leaned against the wall, McNeil supporting him, as Ross pulled the locking beam free. They let themselves out into the night.

“Which way?” McNeil asked.

To Ross’s surprise Ashe did not turn to the gate in the outer stockade. Instead he gestured at the mountain wall in the opposite direction. “They’ll expect us to try for the valley pass. So we had better go up the slope there.”

“That has the look of a tough climb,” ventured McNeil.

Ashe stirred. “When it becomes too tough for me”—his voice was dry— “I shall say so, never fear.”

He started out with some of his old ease of movement, but his companions closed in on either side, ready to offer aid. Ross often wondered later if they could have won free of the village by their own efforts that night. He was sure their resolution would have been equal to the attempt, but their escape would have depended upon a fabulous run of luck such as men seldom encounter.

They had just reached a pool of shadow beside a small hut two buildings away from the one they had fled, when the fireworks began. As if on signal the three fugitives threw themselves flat. From the roof of the building at the center of the village a pencil of brilliant-green light pointed straight up into the sky, and around that spear of radiance the roof sprouted tongues of more natural red-and-yellow flames. Figures shot from doors as the fire lapped down the peak of the roof.

“Now!” In spite of the rising clamor, Ashe’s voice carried to his two companions.

The three sprinted for the palisade, mingling with bewildered men who ran out of the other cabins. The waves of fire washed on, providing light, too much light. Ashe and McNeil could pass as part of the crowd, but Ross’s unusual clothing might be easily noticed.

Others were running for the wall. Ross and McNeil boosted Ashe to the top, saw him over in safety. McNeil followed. Ross was just reaching to draw himself up when he was enveloped in a beam of light.

A high, screeching call, unlike any shout he had heard, split the clamor. Frantically Ross tried for a hold, knowing that he was presenting a perfect target for those behind. He gained the top of the stockade, looked down into a black block of shadow, not knowing whether Ashe and McNeil were waiting for him or had gone ahead. Hearing that strange cry again, Ross leaped blindly out into the darkness.

He landed badly, hitting hard enough to bruise, but thanks to the skill he had learned for parachuting, he broke no bones. He got to his feet and blundered on in the general direction of the mountain Ashe had picked as their goal. There were others coming over the wall of the village and moving through the shadows, so he dared not call out for fear of alerting the enemy.

The village had been set in the widest part of the valley. Behind its stockade the open ground narrowed swiftly, like the point of a funnel, and all fugitives from the settlement had to pass through that channel to escape. Ross’s worst fear was that he had lost contact with Ashe and McNeil, and that he would never be able to pick up their trail in the wilderness ahead.

Thankful for the dark suit he wore which was protective covering in the night, he twice ducked into the brush to allow parties of refugees to pass him. Hearing them speak the guttural clicking speech he had learned from Ulffa’s people, Ross deduced that they were innocent of the village’s real purpose. These people were convinced they had been attacked by night demons. Perhaps there had only been a handful of Russians in that hidden retreat.

Pulling himself up a hard slope, Ross paused to catch his breath and looked back. He was not too surprised to see figures moving leisurely about the village examining the cabins, perhaps in search of the inhabitants. Each of those searchers was clad in a form-fitting suit that matched his own, and their bulbous hairless heads gleamed white in the firelight. Ross was astonished to see that they passed straight through the wall of flame, apparently unconcerned and unsinged by the heat.

The human beings trapped in the town wailed and ran, or lay and beat their heads and hands on the ground, helpless before the invaders. Each captive was dragged back to a knot of aliens near the main building. Some were hurled out again into the dark, unharmed; a few others were retained. A sorting of prisoners was plainly in progress. There was no question that the ship people had followed through into this time, and that they had their own arrangements for the Russians.

Ross had no desire to learn the particulars. He started climbing again, finding the pass at last. Beyond, the ground fell away again. Ross went forward into the full darkness of the night with a vast surge of thankfulness.

Finally, he stopped simply because he was too weary and hungry to keep on his feet without stumbling. A fall in the dark on these heights could be costly. Ross discovered a small hollow behind a stunted tree and crept into it as best he could, his heart laboring against his ribs, a hot stab of pain cutting into his side with every breath he drew.

He awoke all at once with the snap of a fighting man who is ever alert to danger. A hand lay warm and hard over his mouth, and above it his eyes met McNeil’s. When he saw that Ross was awake McNeil withdrew his hand. The morning sunlight was warm about them. Moving clumsily because of his stiff, bruised body, Ross crawled out of the hollow. He looked around, but McNeil stood there alone. “Ashe?” Ross questioned him.

McNeil, showing a haggard face covered with several days’ growth of rusty-brown beard, nodded his head toward the slope. Fumbling inside his kilt, he brought out something clenched in his fist and offered it to Ross. The latter held out his palm and McNeil covered it with a handful of coarse-ground grain. Just to look at the stuff made Ross long for a drink, but he mouthed it and chewed, getting up to follow McNeil down into the tree-grown lower slopes.

“It’s not good.” McNeil spoke jerkily, using Beaker speech. “Ashe is out of his head some of the time. That hole in his shoulder is worse than we thought it was, and there’s always the threat of infection. This whole wood is full of people flushed out of that blasted village! Most of them—all I’ve seen—are natives. But they have it firmly planted in their minds now that there are devils after them. If they see you wearing that suit—”

“I know, and I’d strip if I could,” Ross agreed. “But I’ll have to get other clothing first; I can’t run bare in this cold.”

“That might be safer,” McNeil growled. “I don’t know just what happened back there, but it certainly must have been plenty!”

Ross swallowed a very dry mouthful of grain and then stopped to scoop up some leftover snow in the shadow of a tree root. It was not as refreshing as a real drink, but it helped. “You said Ashe is out of his head. What do we do for him, and what are your plans?”

“We have to reach the river, somehow. It drains to the sea, and at its mouth we are supposed to make contact with the sub.”

The proposal sounded impossible to Ross, but so many impossible things had happened lately he was willing to go along with the idea—as long as he could. Gathering up more snow, he stuffed it into his mouth before he followed the already disappearing McNeil.

“. . . That’s my half of it. The rest of it you know.” Ross held his hands close to the small fire sheltered in the pit he had helped dig and flexed his cold-numbed fingers in the warmth.

From across the handful of flames Ashe’s eyes, too bright in a fever-flushed face, watching him demandingly. The fugitives had taken cover in an angle where the massed remains of an old avalanche provided a cave-pocket. McNeil was off scouting in the gray drizzle of the day, and their escape from the village was now some forty-eight hours behind them.

“So the crackpots were right, after all. They only had their times mixed.” Ashe shifted on the bed of brush and leaves they had raked together for his comfort.

“I don’t understand—”

“Flying saucers,” Ashe returned with an odd little laugh. “It was a wild possibility, but it was on the books from the start. This certainly will make Kelgarries turn red—”

“Flying saucers?”

Ashe must be out of his head from the fever, Ross supposed. He wondered what he should do if Ashe tried to get up and walk away. He could not tackle a man with a bad hole in his shoulder, nor was he certain he could wrestle Ashe down in a real fight.

“That globe-ship was never built on this world. Use your head, Murdock. Think about your furry-faced friend and the baldy with him. Did either look like normal humans to you?”

“But—a spaceship!” It was something that had so long been laughed to scorn. When men had failed to go farther into space after the initial excitement of the moon landings, space flight had become a matter for jeers. On the other hand, there was the evidence collected by his own eyes and ears. The services of the lifeboat had been techniques outside of his experience.

“This was insinuated once”—Ashe was lying flat now, gazing speculatively up at the projection of logs and earth which made them a partial roof— “along with a lot of other bright ideas, by a gentleman named Charles Fort, who took a lot of pleasure in pricking what he considered to be vastly over-inflated scientific pomposity. He gathered together four book loads of reported incidents of unexplainable happenings which he dared the scientists of his day to explain. And one of his bright suggestions was that such phenomena as the vast artificial earthworks found in Ohio and Indiana were originally thrown up by space castaways to serve as SOS signals—an intriguing idea. We know that example was wrong, but others might not be.”

“But if such spaceships were wrecked on this world, I still don’t see why we didn’t find traces of them in our own time.”

“Because that wreck you explored was bedded in a glacial era. Do you have any idea how long ago that was, counting from our own time? There were at least three glacial periods—and we don’t know in which one the Russians went visiting. That age began about a million years before we were born, and the last of the ice ebbed out of New York State some thirty-eight thousand years ago, boy. That was the early Stone Age, reckoning it by the scale of human development, with an extremely thin population of the first real types of man clinging to a few warmer fringes of wilderness.

“Climate changes, geographical changes, all altered the face of our continents. There was a sea in Kansas; England was part of Europe. So, even though as many as fifty such ships were lost here, they could all have been ground to bits by the ice flow, buried miles deep in quakes, or rusted away generations before the first true homo sapiens arrived to wonder at them. Certainly there couldn’t be too many such wrecks to be found. What do you think this planet was, a flypaper to attract them?”

“But if ships crashed here once, why didn’t they later when men were better able to understand them?” Ross countered.

“For several reasons—all of them possible and able to be fitted into the fabric of history as we know it on this world. Civilizations rise, exist, and fall, each taking with it into the limbo of forgotten things some of the discoveries which made it great.

“The Sumerians once had a well-traveled trade route to India. Bronze Age traders opened up roads down into Africa. The Romans knew China. Then came an end to each of these empires, and those trade routes were forgotten. To our European ancestors of the Middle Ages, China was almost a legend, and the fact that Chinese fleets had successfully sailed to East Africa was unknown. Suppose our space voyagers represented some star-born confederacy or empire which lived, rose to its highest point, and fell again into planet-bound barbarism all before the first of our species painted pictures on a cave wall?

“Or take it that this world was an unlucky reef on which too many ships and cargoes were lost, so that our whole solar system was posted, and skippers of star ships thereafter avoided it? Or they might even have had some rule that when a planet developed a primitive race of its own, it was to be left strictly alone until it discovered space flight for itself.”

“Yes.” Every one of Ashe’s suppositions made good sense, and Ross was able to believe them. It was easier to think that both Furry-face and Baldy were inhabitants of another world than to think their kind existed on this planet before his own species was born. “But how did the Russians locate that ship?”

“Unless the information is on the tapes we were able to bring along, we shall probably never know,” Ashe said drowsily. “I might make one guess—the Russians have been making an all-out effort for three hundred years to open up Siberia. In some sections of that huge country there have been great climatic changes almost overnight in the far past. Mammoths have been discovered frozen in the ice with half-digested plants in their stomach. It’s as if the beasts were given some deep-freeze treatment instantaneously. If in their excavations the Russians came across the remains of a spaceship, remains well enough preserved for them to realize what they had discovered, they might start questing back in time to find a better one intact at an earlier date. That theory fits everything we know now.”

“But why would the aliens attack the Russians now?”

“No ship’s officers ever thought gently of pirates.” Ashe’s eyes closed.

There were questions, a flood of them, that Ross wanted to ask. He smoothed the fabric on his arm, that stuff which clung so tightly to his skin yet kept him warm without any need for more covering. If Ashe were right, on what world, what kind of world, had that material been woven, and how far had it been brought that he could wear it now?

Suddenly McNeil slid into their shelter and dropped two hares at the edge of the fire.

“How goes it?” he said, as Ross began to clean them.

“Reasonably well,” Ashe, his eyes still closed, replied to that before Ross could. “How far are we from the river? And do we have company?”

“About five miles—if we had wings.” McNeil answered in a dry tone. “And we have company all right, lots of it!”

That brought Ashe up, leaning forward on his good elbow. “What kind?”

“Not from the village.” McNeil frowned at the fire which he fed with economic handfuls of sticks. “Something’s happening on the side of the mountains. It looks as if there’s a mass migration in progress. I counted five family clans on their way west—all in just this one morning.”

“The village refugees’ stories about devils might send them packing,” Ashe mused.

“Maybe.” But McNeil did not sound convinced. “The sooner we head downstream, the better. And I hope the boys will have that sub waiting where they promised. We do possess one thing in our favor—the spring floods are subsiding.”

“And the high water should have left plenty of raft material.” Ashe lay back again. “We’ll make those five miles tomorrow.”

McNeil stirred uneasily and Ross, having cleaned and spitted the hares, swung them over the flames to broil. “Five miles in this country,” the younger man observed, “is a pretty good day’s march”—he did not add as he wanted to—“for a well man.”

“I will make it,” Ashe promised, and both listeners knew that as long as his body would obey him he meant to keep that promise. They also knew the futility of argument.

Ashe proved to be a prophet to be honored on two counts. They did make the trek to the river the next day, and there was a wealth of raft material marking the high-water level of the spring flood. The migrations NcNeil had reported were still in progress, and the three men hid twice to watch the passing of small family clans. Once a respectably sized tribe, including wounded men, marched across their route, seeking a ford at the river.

“They’ve been badly mauled,” McNeil whispered as they watched the people huddle along the water’s edge while scouts cast upstream and down, searching for a ford. When they returned with the news that there was no ford to be found, the tribesmen then sullenly went to work with flint axes and knives to make rafts.

“Pressure—they are on the run.” Ashe rested his chin on his good forearm and studied the busy scene. “These are not from the village. Notice the dress and the red paint on their faces. They’re not like Ulffa’s kin either. I wouldn’t say they were local at all.”

“Reminds me of something I saw once—animals running before a forest fire. They can’t all be looking for new hunting territory,” McNeil returned.

“Russians sweeping them out,” Ross suggested. “Or could the ship people—?”

Ashe started to shake his head and then winced. “I wonder . . .” The crease between his level brows deepened. “The ax people!” His voice was still a whisper, but it carried a note of triumph as if he had fitted some stubborn jigsaw piece into its proper place.

“Ax people?”

“Invasion of another people from the east. They turned up in prehistory about this period. Remember, Webb spoke of them. They used axes for weapons and tamed horses.”

“Tartars”—McNeil was puzzled— “This far west?”

“Not Tartars, no. You needn’t expect those to come boiling out of middle Asia for some thousands of years yet. We don’t know too much about the ax people, save that they moved west from the interior plains. Eventually they crossed to Britain; perhaps they were the ancestors of the Celts who loved horses too. But in their time they were a tidal wave.”

“The sooner we head downstream, the better.” McNeil stirred restlessly, but they knew that they must keep to cover until the tribesmen below were gone. So they lay in hiding another night, witnessing on the next morning the arrival of a smaller party of the red-painted men, again with wounded among them. At the coming of this rear guard the activity on the river bank rose close to frenzy.

The three men out of time were doubly uneasy. It was not enough for them to merely cross the river. They had to build a raft which would be water-worthy enough to take them downstream—to the sea if they were lucky. And to build such a sturdy raft would take time, time they did not have now.

In fact, McNeil waited only until the last tribal raft was out of bow shot before he plunged down to the shore, Ross at his heels. Since they lacked even the stone tools of the tribesmen, they were at a disadvantage, and Ross found he was hands and feet for Ashe, working under the other’s close direction. Before night closed in they had a good beginning and two sets of blistered hands, as well as aching backs.

When it was too dark to work any longer, Ashe pointed back over the track they had followed. Marking the mountain pass was a light. It looked like fire, and if it was, it must be a big one for them to be able to sight it across this distance.

“Camp?” McNeil wondered.

“Must be,” Ashe agreed. “Those who built that blaze are in such numbers that they don’t have to take precautions.”

“Will they be here by tomorrow?”

“Their scouts might, but this is early spring, and forage can’t have been too good on the march. If I were the chief of that tribe, I’d turn aside into the meadow land we skirted yesterday and let the herds graze for a day, maybe more. On the other hand, if they need water—”

“They will come straight ahead!” McNeil finished grimly. “And we can’t be here when they arrive.”

Ross stretched, grimacing at the twinge of pain in his shoulders. His hands smarted and throbbed, and this was just the beginning of their task. If Ashe had been fit, they might have trusted to logs for support and swum downstream to hunt a safer place for their shipbuilding project. But he knew that Ashe could not stand such an effort.

Ross slept that night mainly because his body was too exhausted to let him lie awake and worry. Roused in the earliest dawn by McNeil, they both crawled down to the water’s edge and struggled to bind stubbornly resisting saplings together with cords twisted from bark. They reinforced them at crucial points with some strings torn from their kilts, and strips of rabbit hide saved from their kills of the past few days. They worked with hunger gnawing at them, having no time now to hunt. When the sun was well westward they had a clumsy craft which floated sluggishly. Whether it would answer to either pole or improvised paddle, they could not know until they tried it.

Ashe, his face flushed and his skin hot to the touch, crawled on board and lay in the middle, on the thin heap of bedding they had put there for him. He eagerly drank the water they carried to him in cupped hands and gave a little sigh of relief as Ross wiped his face with wet grass, muttering something about Kelgarries which neither of his companions understood.

McNeil shoved off and the bobbing craft spun around dizzily as the current pulled it free from the shore. They made a brave start, but luck deserted them before they had gotten out of sight of the spot where they embarked.

Striving to keep them in mid-current, McNeil poled furiously, but there were too many rocks and snagged trees with them, and coming up fast was a full-sized tree. Twice its mat of branches caught on some snag, holding it back, and Ross breathed a little more freely, but it soon tore free again and rolled on, as menacing as a battering ram.

“Get closer to shore!” Ross shouted the warning. Those great, twisted roots seemed aimed straight at the raft, and he was sure if that mass struck them fairly, they would not have a chance. He dug in with his own pole, but his hasty push did not meet bottom; the stake in his hands plunged into some pothole in the hidden river bed. He heard McNeil cry out as he toppled into the water, gasping as the murky liquid flooded his mouth, choking him.

Half dazed by the shock, Ross struck out instinctively. The training at the base had included swimming, but to fight water in a pool under controlled conditions was far different from fighting death in a river of icy water when one had already swallowed a sizable quantity of that flood.

Ross had a half glimpse of a dark shadow. Was it the edge of the raft? He caught at it desperately, skinning his hands on rough bark, dragged on by it. The tree! He blinked his eyes to clear them of water, to try to see. But he could not pull his exhausted body high enough out of the water to see past the screen of roots; he could only cling to the small safety he had won and hope that he could rejoin the raft somewhere downstream.

After what seemed like a very long time he wedged one arm between two water-washed roots, sure that the support would hold his head above the surface. The chill of the stream struck at his hands and head, but the protection of the alien clothing was still effective, and the rest of his body was not cold. He was simply too tired to wrest himself free and trust again to the haphazard chance of making shore through the gathering dusk.

Suddenly a shock jarred his body and strained the arm he had thrust among the roots, wringing a cry out of him. He swung around and brushed footing under the water; the tree had caught on a shore snag. Pulling loose from the roots, he floundered on his hands and knees, falling afoul of a mass of reeds whose roots were covered with stale-smelling mud. Like a wounded animal he dragged himself through the ooze to higher land, coming out upon an open meadow flooded with moonlight.

For a while he lay there, his cold, sore hands under him, plastered with mud and too tired to move. The sound of a sharp barking aroused him—an imperative, summoning bark, neither belonging to a wolf nor a hunting fox. He listened to it dully and then, through the ground upon which he lay, Ross felt as well as heard the pounding of hoofs.

Hoofs—horses! Horses from over the hills—horses which might mean danger. His mind seemed as dull and numb as his hands, and it took quite a long time for him to fully realize the menace horses might bring.

Getting up, Ross noticed a winged shape sweeping across the disk of the moon like a silent dart. There was a single despairing squeak out of the grass about a hundred feet away, and the winged shape arose again with its prey. Then the barking sound once more—eager, excited barking.

Ross crouched back on his heels and saw a smoky brand of light moving along the edge of the meadow where the band of trees began. Could it be a herd guard? Ross knew he had to head back toward the river, but he had to force himself on the path, for he did not know whether he dared enter the stream again. But what would happen if they hunted him with the dog? Confused memories of how water spoiled scent spurred him on.

Having reached the rising bank he had climbed so laboriously before, Ross miscalculated and tumbled back, rolling down into the mud of the reed bed. Mechanically he wiped the slime from his face. The tree was still anchored there; by some freak the current had rammed its rooted end up on a sand spit.

Above in the meadow the barking sounded very close and now it was answered by a second canine belling. Ross wormed his way back through the reeds to the patch of water between the tree and the bank. His few poor efforts at escape were almost half-consciously taken; he was too tired to really care now.

Soon he saw a four-footed shape running along the top of the bank, giving tongue. It was then joined by a larger and even more vocal companion. The dogs drew even with Ross, who wondered dully if the animals could sight him in the shadows below, or whether they only scented his presence. He had been able, he would have climbed over the log and taken his chances in the open water, but now he could only lie where he was—the tangle of roots between him and the bank serving as a screen, which would be little enough protection when men came with torches.

Ross was mistaken, however, for his worm’s progress across the reed bed had liberally besmeared his dark clothing and masked the skin of his face and hands, giving him better cover than any he could have wittingly devised. Though he felt naked and defenseless, the men who trailed the hounds to the river bank, thrusting out the torch over the edge to light the sand spit, saw nothing but the trunk of the tree wedged against a mound of mud.

Rose heard a confused murmur of voices broken by the clamor of the dogs. Then the torch was raised out of line of his dazzled eyes. He saw one of the indistinct figures above cuff away a dog and move off, calling the hounds after it. Reluctantly, still barking, the animals went. Ross, with a little sob, subsided limply in the uncomfortable net of roots, still undiscovered.

It was such a small thing, a tag of ragged stuff looped about a length of splintered sapling. Ross climbed stiffly over the welter of drift caught on the sand spit and pulled it loose, recognizing the string even before he touched it. That square knot was of McNeil’s tying. As Murdock sat down weakly in the sand and mud, nervously fingering the twisted cord, he stared vacantly at the river. His last small hope died. The raft must have broken up, and neither Ashe nor McNeil could have survived the ultimate disaster.

Ross Murdock was alone, marooned in a time which was not his own, with little promise of escape. That one thought blanked out his mind with its own darkness. What was the use of getting up again, or trying to find food for his empty stomach, or warmth and shelter?

He had always prided himself on being able to go it alone, had thought himself secure in that calculated loneliness. Now that belief had been washed away in the river along with most of the will power which had kept him going these past days. Before, there had always been some goal, no matter how remote. Now, he had nothing. Even if he managed to reach the mouth of the river, he had no idea of where or how to summon the sub from the overseas post. All three of the time travelers might already have been written off the rolls, since they had not reported in.

Ross pulled the rag free from the sapling and wreathed it in a tight bracelet about his grimed wrist for some unexplainable reason. Worn and tired, he tried to think ahead. There was no chance of contacting Ulffa’s tribe again. Along with all the other woodland hunters they must have fled before the advance of the horsemen. No, there was no reason to go back, and why make the effort to advance?

The sun was hot. This was one of those spring days which foretell the ripeness of summer. Insects buzzed in the reed banks where a green sheen showed. Birds wheeled and circled in the sky. Some flock was disturbed, their cries reaching Ross in hoarse calls of warning.

He was still plastered with patches of dried mud and slime, the reek of it thick in his nostrils. Now Ross brushed at a splotch on his knee, picking loose flakes to expose the alien cloth of his suit underneath, seemingly unbefouled. All at once it became necessary to be clean again at least.

Ross waded into the stream, stooping to splash the brown water over his body and then rubbing away the resulting mud. In the sunlight the fabric had a brilliant glow, as if it not only drew the light but reflected it. Wading farther out into the water, he began to swim, not with any goal in view, but because it was easier than crawling back to land once more.

Using the downstream current to supplement his skill, he watched both banks. He could not really hope to see either the raft or indications that its passengers had won to shore, but somewhere deep inside him he had not yet accepted defeat.

The effort of swimming broke through that fog of inertia which had held him since he had awakened that morning. With a somewhat healthier interest in life Ross came ashore again on an arm of a bay or inlet angling back into the land. Here the banks of the river were well above his head, and believing that he was well sheltered, he stripped, hanging his suit in the sunlight and letting the unusual heat of the day soothe his body.

A raw fish, cornered in the shallows and scooped out, furnished one of the best meals he had ever tasted. He had reached for the suit draped over a willow limb when the first and only warning that his fortunes had once again changed came, swiftly, silently, and with deadly promise.

One moment the willows had moved gently in the breeze, and then a spear suddenly set them all quivering. Ross clutching the suit to him with a frantic grab, skidded about in the sand, going to one knee in his haste.

He found himself completely at the mercy of the two men standing on the bank well above him. Unlike Ulffa’s people or the Beaker traders, they were very tall, with heavy braids of light, sun-bleached hair swinging forward on their wide chests. Their leather tunics hung to mid-thigh above leggings which were bound to their limbs with painted straps. Cuff bracelets of copper ringed their forearms, and necklaces of animal teeth and beads displayed their personal wealth. Ross could not remember having seen their like on any of the briefing tapes at the base.

One spear had been a warning, but a second was held ready, so Ross made the age-old signal of surrender, reluctantly dropping his suit and raising his hands palm out and shoulder high.

“Friend?” Ross asked in the Beaker tongue. The traders ranged far, and perhaps there was a chance they had had contact with this tribe.

The spear twirled and the younger stranger effortlessly leaped down the bank. He paddled over to Ross to pick up the suit he had dropped and held it up while he made some comment to his companion. He seemed fascinated by the fabric, pulling and smoothing it between his hands. Ross wondered if there was a chance of trading it for his own freedom.

Both men were armed, not only with the long-bladed daggers favored by the Beaker folk, but also with axes. When Ross made a slight effort to lower his hands the man before him reached to his belt ax, growling what was plainly a warning. Ross blinked, realizing that they might well knock him out and leave him behind, taking the suit with them.

Finally, they decided in favor of including him in their loot. Throwing the suit over one arm, the stranger caught Ross by the shoulder and pushed him forward roughly. The pebbled beach was painful to Ross’s feet, and the breeze which whipped about him as he reached the top of the bank reminded him only too forcibly of his ordeal in the glacial world.

Murdock was tempted to dash out on the point of the bank and dive into the river, but it was already too late. The man who was holding the spear had moved behind him, and Ross’s wrist, held in a vise grip at the small of his back, kept him prisoner as he was pushed on into the meadow. There three shaggy horses grazed, their nose ropes gathered into the hands of a third man.

A sharp stone half buried in the ground changed the pattern of the day. Ross’s heel scraped against it, and the resulting pain triggered his rebellion into explosion. He threw himself backward, his bruised heel sliding between the feet of his captor, bringing them both to the ground with himself on top. The other expelled air from his lungs in a grunt of surprise, and Ross whipped over, one hand grasping the hilt of the tribesman’s dagger while the other, free of that prisoning wristlock, chopped at the fellow’s throat.

Dagger out and ready, Ross faced the men in a half crouch as he had been drilled. They stared at him in open-mouthed amazement, then too late the spears went up. Ross placed the point of his looted weapon at the throat of the now quiet man by whom he knelt, and he spoke the language he had learned from Ulffa’s people.

“You strike—this one dies.”

They must have read the determined purpose in his eyes, for slowly, reluctantly, the spears went down. Having gained so much of a victory, Ross dared more. “Take—” he motioned to the waiting horses— “take and go!”

For a moment he thought that this time they would meet his challenge, but he continued to hold the dagger above the brown throat of the man who was now moaning faintly. His threat continued to register, for the other man shrugged the suit from his arm, left it lying on the ground, and retreated. Holding the nose rope of his horse, he mounted, waved the herder up also, and both of them rode slowly away.

The prisoner was slowly coming around, so Ross only had time to pull on the suit; he had not even fastened the breast studs before those blue eyes opened. A sunburned hand flashed to a belt, but the dagger and ax which had once hung there were now in Ross’s possession. He watched the tribesman carefully as he finished dressing.

“What you do?” The words were in the speech of the forest people, distorted by a new accent.

“You go—” Ross pointed to the third horse the others had left behind— “I go—” he indicated the river—“I take these”—he patted the dagger and the ax. The other scowled.

“Not good . . .”

Ross laughed, a little hysterically. “Not good you,” he agreed, “good—me!”

To his surprise the tribesman’s stiff face relaxed, and the fellow barked a laugh. He sat up, rubbing at his throat, a big grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“You hunter?” The man pointed northeast to the woodlands fringing the hills.

Ross shook his head. “Trader, me.”

“Trader,” the other repeated. Then he tapped one of the wide metal cuffs at his wrist. “Trade—this?”

“That. More things.”

“Where?”

Ross pointed downstream. “By bitter water—trade there.”

The man appeared puzzled. “Why you here?”

“Ride river water, like you ride,” he said, pointing to the horse. “Ride on trees—many trees tied together. Trees break apart—I come here.”

The conception of a raft voyage apparently got across, for the tribesman was nodding. Getting to his feet, he walked across to take up the nose rope of the waiting horse. “You come camp—Foscar. Foscar chief. He like you show trick how you take Tulka, make him sleep—hold his ax, knife.”

Ross hesitated. This Tulka seemed friendly now, but would that friendliness last? He shook his head. “I go to bitter water. My chief there.”

Tulka was scowling again. “You speak crooked words—your chief there!” He pointed eastward with a dramatic stretch of the arm. “You chief speak Foscar. Say he give much these—” he touched his copper cuffs—“good knives, axes—get you back.”

Ross stared at him without understanding. Ashe? Ashe in this Foscar’s camp offering a reward for him? But how could that be?

“How you know my chief?”

Tulka laughed, this time derisively. “You wear shining skin—your chief wear shiny skin. He say find other shiny skin—give many good things to man who bring you back.”

Shiny skin! The suit from the alien ship! Was it the ship people? Ross remembered the light on him as he climbed out of the Red village. He must have been sighted by one of the spacemen. But why were they searching for him, alerting the natives in an effort to scoop him up? What made Ross Murdock so important that they must have him? He only knew that he was not going to be taken if he could help it, that he had no desire to meet this “chief” who had offered treasure for his capture.

“You will come!” Tulka went into action, his mount flashing forward almost in a running leap at Ross, who stumbled back when horse and rider loomed over him. He swung up the ax, but it was a weapon with which he had no training, too heavy for him.

His blow met only thin air as the shoulder of the mount hit him. Ross went down, avoiding by less than a finger’s breadth the thud of an unshod hoof against his skull. Then the rider landed on him, crushing him flat. A fist connected with his jaw, and for Ross the sun went out.

He found himself hanging across a support which moved with a rocking gait, whose pounding hurt his head, keeping him half dazed. Ross tried to move, but he realized that his arms were behind his back, fastened wrist to wrist, and a warm weight centered in the small of his spine to hold him face down on a horse. He could do nothing except endure the discomfort as best he could and hope for a speedy end to the gallop.

Over his head passed the cackle of speech. He caught short glimpses of another horse matching pace to the one that carried him. Then they swept into a noisy place where the shouting of many men made a din. The horse stopped. Ross was pulled from its back and dropped to the trodden dust, to lie blinking up dizzily, trying to focus on the scene about him.

They had arrived at the camp of the horsemen, whose hide tents served as a backdrop for the fair long-haired giants and the tall women hovering about to view the captive. The circle about him then broke, and men stood aside for a newcomer. Ross had been impressed with the size of his original captors, but this one was their master. Lying on the ground at the chieftain’s feet, Ross felt like a small and helpless child.

Foscar, if Foscar this was, looked strong as a bear. Heavy muscles rippled across his arms and shoulders as he leaned over to inspect Tulka’s prize. Ross glared up at him, that same hot rage which had led to his attack on Tulka now urging him to the only defiance he had left—words.

“Look well, Foscar. Free me, and I would do more than look at you,” he said in the speech of the woods hunters.

Foscar’s blue eyes widened and he lowered a fist which could have swallowed in its grasp both of Ross’s hands. Linking those great fingers in the stuff of the suit he drew the captive to his feet, with no sign that his act had required any effort. Even standing, Ross was a good eight inches shorter than the chieftain. Yet he put up his chin and eyed the other squarely, without giving ground.

“So—yet still my hands are tied.” He put into that all the taunting inflection he could summon. His reception by Tulka had given him one faint clue to the character of these people; they might be brought to acknowledge the worth of one who stood up to them.

“Child—” The fist shifted from its grip on the fabric covering Ross’s chest to his shoulder, and now under its compulsion Ross swayed back and forth.

“Child?” From somewhere Ross raised that short laugh. “Ask Tulka. I be no child, Foscar. Tulka’s ax, Tulka’s knife—they were in my hand. A horse Tulka had to use to bring me down.”

Foscar regarded him intently and then grinned. “Sharp tongue,” he commented. “Tulka lost knife—ax? So! Ennar,” he called over his shoulder, and one of the men stepped out a pace beyond his fellows.

He was shorter and much younger than his chief, with a boy’s rangy slimness and an open, good-looking face. His eyes shone on Foscar, bright with eager excitement. Like the other tribesmen he was armed with belt dagger and ax, and since he wore two necklaces and both cuff bracelets and upper armlets as did Foscar, Ross thought he might be a relative of the older man.

“Child!” Foscar clapped his hand on Ross’s shoulder and then withdrew the hold. “Child!” He indicated Ennar, who reddened. “You take from Ennar ax, knife,” Foscar ordered, “as you took from Tulka.” He made a sign, and someone cut the thongs about Ross’s wrists.

Ross rubbed one numbed hand against the other, setting his jaw. Foscar had stung his young follower with that contemptuous “child,” so the boy would be eager to match all his skill against the prisoner. This would not be as easy as his taking Tulka by surprise. But if he refused, Foscar might well order him killed out of hand. He had chosen to be defiant; he would have to do his best.

“Take—ax, knife—” Foscar stepped back, waving at his men to open out a ring encircling the two young men.

Ross felt a little sick as he watched Ennar’s hand go to the haft of the ax. Nothing had been said about Ennar’s not using his weapons in defense, but Ross noted that there was some sense of sportsmanship in the tribesmen after all. It was Tulka who pushed to the chief’s side and said something which made Foscar roar bull-voiced at his youthful companion.

Ennar’s hand came away from the ax hilt as if that polished wood were white-hot, and he transferred his discomfiture to Ross as the other understood. Ennar had to win now for his own pride’s sake, and Ross felt he had to win for his life. They circled warily, Ross watching his opponent’s eyes rather than those half-closed hands held at waist level.

Back at the base he had been matched with Ashe, and before Ashe with the tough-bodied, skilled, and merciless trainers in unarmed combat. He had had beaten into his bruised flesh knowledge of holds and blows intended to save his skin in just such an encounter. But then he had been well-fed, alert, prepared. He had not been knocked silly and then transported for miles slung across a horse after days of exposure and hard usage. It remained to be learned—was Ross Murdock as tough as he always thought himself to be? Tough or not, he was in this until he won—or dropped.

Comments from the crowd aroused Ennar to the first definite action. He charged, stooping low in a wrestler’s stance, but Ross squatted even lower. One hand flicked to the churned dust of the ground and snapped up again, sending a cloud of grit into the tribesman’s face. Then their bodies met with a shock, and Ennar sailed over Ross’s shoulder to skid along the earth.

Had Ross been fresh, the contest would have ended there and then in his favor. But when he tried to whirl and throw himself on his opponent he was too slow. Ennar was not waiting to be pinned flat, and it was Ross’s turn to be caught at a disadvantage.

A hand shot out to catch his leg just above the ankle, and once again Ross obeyed his teaching, falling easily at that pull, to land across his opponent. Ennar, disconcerted by the too-quick success of his attack, was unprepared for this. Ross rolled, trying to escape steel-fingered hands, his own chopping out in edgewise blows, striving to serve Ennar as he had Tulka.

He had to take a lot of punishment, though he managed to elude the powerful bear’s hug in which he knew the other was laboring to engulf him, a hold which would speedily crush him into submission. Clinging to the methods he had been taught, he fought on. Only now he knew, with a growing panic, that his best was not good enough. He was too spent to make an end. Unless he had some piece of great good luck, he could only delay his own defeat.

Fingers clawed viciously at his eyes, and Ross did what he had never thought to do in any fight—he snapped wolfishly, his teeth closing on flesh as he brought up his knee and drove it home into the body wriggling on his. There was a gasp of hot breath in his face as Ross called upon the last few rags of his strength, tearing loose from the other’s slackened hold. He scrambled to one knee. Ennar was also on his knees, crouching like a four-legged beast ready to spring. Ross risked everything on a last gamble. Clasping his hands together, he raised them as high as he could and brought them down on the nape of the other’s neck. Ennar sprawled forward facedown in the dust where seconds later Ross joined him.

Murdock lay on his back, gazing up at the laced hides which stretched to make the tent roofing. Having been battered just enough to feel all one aching bruise, Ross had lost interest in the future. Only the present mattered, and it was a dark one. He might have fought Ennar to a standstill, but in the eyes of the horsemen he had also been beaten, and he had not impressed them as he had hoped. That he still lived was a minor wonder, but he deduced that he continued to breathe only because they wanted to trade him for the reward offered by the aliens from out of time. It was not a pleasant prospect to contemplate.

His wrists were lashed over his head to a peg driven deeply into the ground; his ankles were bound to another. He could turn his head from side to side, but any further movement was impossible. He ate only bits of food dropped into his mouth by a dirty-fingered slave, a cowed hunter captured from a tribe overwhelmed in the migration of the horsemen.

“Ho—taker of axes!” A toe jarred his ribs, and Ross bit back the grunt of pain which answered that rude bid for his attention. He saw in the dim light Ennar’s face and was savagely glad to note the discolorations about the right eye and along the jaw line, the signatures left by his own skinned knuckles.

“Ho—warrior!” Ross returned hoarsely, trying to lade that title with all the scorn he could summon.

Ennar’s hand, holding a knife, swung into his limited range of vision. “To clip a sharp tongue is a good thing!” The young tribesman grinned as he knelt down beside the helpless prisoner.

Ross knew a thrill of fear worse than any pain. Ennar might be about to do just what he hinted! Instead, the knife swung up and Ross felt sawing at the cords about his wrists. He endured the pain in the raw gouges the bands had cut in his flesh with gratitude that it was not mutilation which had brought Ennar to him. He knew that his arms were free, but to draw them down from over his head was almost more than he could do, and he lay quiet as Ennar loosed his feet.

“Up!”

Without Ennar’s hands pulling at him, Ross could not have reached his feet. Nor did he stay erect once he had been raised, crashing forward on his face as the other let him go, hot anger eating at him because of his own helplessness.

In the end, Ennar summoned two slaves who dragged Ross into the open where a council assembled about a fire. A debate was in progress, sometimes so heated that the speakers fingered their knife or ax hilts when they shouted their arguments. Ross could not understand their language, but he was certain that he was the subject under discussion. Foscar had the deciding vote but had not yet given the nod to either side.

Ross sat where the slaves had dumped him, rubbing his smarting wrists, so deathly weary in mind and beaten in body that he was not really interested in the fate they were planning for him. He was content merely to be free of his bonds. It was a small favor, but one he savored dully.

He did not know how long the debate lasted, but at length Ennar came to stand over him with a message. “Your chief—he give many good things for you. Foscar take you to him.”

“My chief is not here,” Ross repeated wearily, making a protest he knew they would not heed. “My chief sits by the bitter water and waits. He will be angry if I do not come. Let Foscar fear his anger—”

Ennar laughed. “You run from your chief. He will be happy with Foscar when you lie again under his hand. You will not like that—I think it so!”

“I think so, too,” Ross agreed silently.

He spent the rest of that night lying between the watchful Ennar and another guard, though they had the humanity not to bind him again. In the morning he was allowed to feed himself, and he fished chunks of venison out of a stew with his unwashed fingers. But in spite of the messiness, it was the best food he had eaten in days.

The trip, however, was anything but comfortable. He was mounted on one of the shaggy horses, a rope run under the animal’s belly to loop one foot to the other. Fortunately, his hands were bound so he was able to grasp the coarse, wiry mane and keep his seat after a fashion. The nose rope of his mount was passed to Tulka, and Ennar rode beside him with only half an eye for the path of his own horse and the balance of his attention for the prisoner.

They headed northwest, with the hills as a green-and-white goal against the morning sky. Though Ross’s sense of direction was not too acute, he was certain that they were making for the general vicinity of the hidden village, which he believed the ship people had destroyed. He tried to discover how contact had been made between the aliens and the horsemen.

“How find other chief?” he asked Ennar.

The young man tossed one of his braids back across his shoulder and turned his head to face Ross squarely. “Your chief come our camp. Talk with Foscar—two—four sleeps ago.”

“How talk with Foscar? With hunter talk?”

For the first time Ennar did not appear altogether certain. He scowled and then snapped, “He talk—Foscar, us. We hear right words—not woods creeper talk. He speak to us good.”

Ross was puzzled. How could the alien out of time speak the proper language of a primitive tribe some thousands of years removed from his own era? Were the ship people also familiar with time travel? Did they have their own stations of transfer? Yet their fury with the Russians had been hot. He was mystified.

“This chief—he look like me?”

Again Ennar appeared at a loss. “He wear covering, like you.”

“But was he like me?” persisted Ross. He didn’t know what he was trying to learn. But it seemed important at that moment to press home to at least one of the tribesmen that he was different from the man who had put a price on his head and to whom he was to be sold.

“Not like!” Tulka spoke over his shoulder. “You look like hunter people—hair, eyes— Strange chief no hair on head, eyes not like—”

“You saw him too?” Ross demanded eagerly.

“I saw. I ride to camp—they come so. Stand on rock, call to Foscar. Make magic with fire—it jump up!” He pointed his arm stiffly at a bush before them on the trail. “They point little, little spear—fire come out of the ground and burn. They say burn our camp if we do not give them man. We say—not have man. Then they say many good things for us if we find and bring man—”

“But they are not my people,” Ross cut in. “You see, I have hair, I am not like them. They are bad—”

“Maybe you taken in war by them—chief’s slave.” Ennar had a reply to that which was logical according to the customs of his own tribe. “They want slave back—it is so.”

“My people strong too, much magic,” Ross pushed. “Take me to bitter water and they pay much—more than stranger chief!”

Both tribesmen were amused. “Where bitter water?” asked Tulka.

Ross jerked his head to the west. “Some sleeps away—”

“Some sleeps!” repeated Ennar jeeringly. “We ride some sleeps, maybe many sleeps where we know not the trails—maybe no people there, maybe no bitter water—all things you say with split tongue so that we not give you back to master. We go this way not even one sleep—find chief, get good things. Why we do hard thing when we can do easy?”

What argument could Ross offer in rebuttal to the simple logic of his captors? For a moment he raged inwardly at his own helplessness. But long ago he had learned that giving way to hot fury was not good unless one did it deliberately to impress, and then only when one had the upper hand. Now Ross had no hand at all.

For the most part they kept to the open, whereas Ross and the other two agents had skulked in wooded areas on their flight through this same territory. So they approached the hills from a different angle, and though he tried, Ross could pick out no familiar landmarks. If by some miracle he was able to free himself from his captors, he could only head due west and hope to strike the river.

At midday their party made camp in a grove of trees by a spring. The weather was as unseasonably warm as it had been the day before. Flies, brought out of cold-weather hiding, attacked the stamping horses and crawled over Ross. He tried to keep them off with swing of his bound hands, for their bites drew blood.

Having been tumbled from his mount, he remained fastened to a tree with a noose about his neck while the horsemen built a fire and broiled strips of deer meat.

It would seem that Foscar was in no hurry to get on, since after they had eaten, the men continued to lounge at ease, some even dropping off to sleep. When Ross counted faces he learned that Tulka and another had both disappeared, possibly to contact and warn the aliens they were coming.

It was midafternoon before the scouts reappeared, as unobtrusively as they had gone. They went before Foscar with a report which brought the chief over to Ross. “We go. Your chief waits—”

Ross raised his swollen, bitter face and made his usual protest. “Not my chief!”

Foscar shrugged. “He say so. He give good things to get you back under his hand. So—he your chief!”

Once again Ross was boosted on his mount, and bound. But this time the party split into two groups as they rode off. He was with Ennar again, just behind Foscar, with two other guards bringing up the rear. The rest of the men, leading their mounts, melted into the trees. Ross watched that quiet withdrawal thoughtfully. It argued that Foscar did not trust those he was about to do business with, that he was taking certain precautions of his own. Only Ross could not see how that distrust, which might be only ordinary prudence on Foscar’s part, could be any sort of advantage for him.

They rode at a pace hardly above a walk into a small open meadow narrowing at the east. Then for the first time Ross was able to place himself. They were at the entrance to the valley of the village, about a mile away from the narrow throat above which Ross had lain to spy and had been captured, for he had come from the north over the spurs of rising ridges.

Ross’s horse was pulled up as Foscar drove his heels into the ribs of his own mount, sending it at a brisker pace toward the neck of the valley. There was a blot of blue there—more than one of the aliens were waiting. Ross caught his lip between his teeth and bit down on it hard. He had stood up to the Russians, to Foscar’s tribesmen, but he shrank from meeting those strangers. He feared that the worst the men of his own species could do would be only a pale shadow to the treatment he might meet at their hands.

Foscar was now a toy man astride a toy horse. He halted his galloping mount to sit facing the handful of strangers. Ross counted four of them. They seemed to be talking, though there was still a good distance separating the mounted man and the blue suits.

Minutes passed before Foscar’s arm raised in a wave to summon the party guarding Ross. Ennar kicked his horse to a trot, towing Ross’s mount behind, the other two men thudding along more discreetly. Ross noted that they were both armed with spears which they carried to the fore as they rode.

They were perhaps three quarters of the way to join Foscar, and Ross could see plainly the bald heads of the aliens as their faces turned in his direction. Then the strangers struck. One of them raised a weapon shaped similarly to the automatic pistol Ross knew, except that it was longer in the barrel.

Ross did not know why he cried out, except that Foscar had only an ax and dagger which were both still sheathed at his belt. The chief sat very still, and then his horse gave a swift sidewise swerve as if in fright. Foscar collapsed, limp, bonelessly, to the trodden turf, to lie unmoving face down.

Ennar whooped, a cry combining defiance and despair in one. He reined up with enough violence to set his horse rearing. Then, dropping his hold on the leading rope of Ross’s mount, he whirled and set off in a wild dash for the trees to the left. A spear lanced across Ross’s shoulder, ripping at the blue fabric, but his horse whirled to follow the other, taking him out of danger of a second thrust. Having lost his opportunity, the man who had wielded the spear dashed by at Ennar’s back.

Ross clung to the mane with both hands. His greatest fear was that he might slip from the saddle pad and since he was tied by his feet, lie unprotected and helpless under those dashing hoofs. Somehow he managed to cling to the horse’s neck, his face whipped by the rough mane as the animal pounded on. Had Ross been able to grasp the dangling rope, he might have had a faint chance of controlling that run, but as it was he could only hold fast and hope.

He had only broken glimpses of what lay ahead. Then a brilliant fire, as vivid as the flames which had eaten up the Russian village, burst from the ground a few yards ahead, sending the horse wild. There was more fire and the horse changed course through the rising smoke. Ross realized that the aliens were trying to cut him off from the thin safety of the woodlands. Why they didn’t just shoot him as they had Foscar he could not understand.

The smoke of the burning grass was thick, cutting between him and the woods. Might it also provide a curtain behind which he could hope to escape both parties? The fire was sending the horse back toward the waiting ship people. Ross could hear a confused shouting in the smoke. Then his mount miscalculated, and a tongue of red licked too close. The animal screamed, dashing on blindly straight between two of the blazes and away from the blue-clad men.

Ross coughed, almost choking. His eyes watered as the stench of singed hair thickened the smoke. But he had been carried out of the fire circle and was shooting back into the meadow-land. Mount and unwilling rider were well away from the upper end of that cleared space when another horse cut in from the left, matching speed to the uncontrolled animal to which Ross clung. It was one of the tribesmen riding easily.

The trick worked, for the wild race slowed to a gallop. The other rider, in a feat of horsemanship at which Ross marveled, leaned from his seat to catch the dangling nose rope, bringing the runaway against his own steady steed. Ross shaken, still coughing from the smoke and unable to sit upright, held to the mane. The gallop slowed to a rocking pace and finally came to a halt. Both horses stood blowing, white-foam patches on their chests and their riders’ legs.

Having made his capture, the tribesman seemed indifferent to Ross, looking back instead at the wide curtain of grass smoke, frowning as he studied the swift spread of the fire. Muttering to himself, he pulled the lead rope and brought Ross’s horse to follow in the direction from which Ennar had brought the captive less than a half hour earlier.

Ross tried to think. The unexpected death of their chief might well mean his own, should the tribe’s desire for vengeance now be aroused. On the other hand, there was a faint chance that he could now better persuade them that he was indeed of another clan and that to aid him would be to work against a common enemy.

But it was hard to plan clearly, though wits alone could save him now. The parley which had ended with Foscar’s murder had bought Ross a small measure of time. He was still a captive, although of the tribesmen and not the unearthly strangers. Perhaps to the ship people these primitives scarcely counted higher than the forest animals.

Ross did not try to talk to his present guard, who towed him under the western sun of late afternoon. They halted at last in that same small grove where they had rested at noon. The tribesman fastened the mounts and then inspected the animal Ross had ridden. With a grunt he loosened the prisoner and spilled him unceremoniously on the ground while he examined the horse. Ross levered himself up to see the burn mark across the horse’s hide where the fire had blistered the skin.

Thick handfuls of mud from the side of the spring were brought and plastered over the seared strip. Then, having rubbed down both animals with twists of grass, the man came over to Ross, pushed him back to the ground, and studied his left leg.

Ross understood. By rights, his thigh should also have been scorched where the flame had hit, yet he felt no pain. Now as the tribesman examined him for a burn, he could not see even the faintest discoloration of the strange fabric. He remembered how the aliens had strolled unconcerned through the burning village. As the suit had insulated him against the cold of the ice, it seemed that it had also protected him against the fire, for which he was duly thankful. His escape from injury was a puzzle to the tribesman, who, failing to find any trace of burn on him, left Ross alone and went to sit well away from his prisoner as if he feared him.

They did not have long to wait. One by one, those who had ridden in Foscar’s company gathered at the grove. The very last to come were Ennar and Tulka, carrying the body of their chief. The faces of both men were smeared with dust and when the others sighted the body they, too, rubbed dust into their cheeks, reciting a string of words and going one by one to touch the dead chieftain’s right hand.

Ennar, resigning his burden to the others, slid from his tired horse and stood for a long moment, his head bowed. Then he gazed straight at Ross and came across the tiny clearing to stand over the man of a later time. The boyishness which had been a part of him when he had fought at Foscar’s command was gone. His eyes were merciless as he leaned down to speak, shaping each word with slow care so that Ross could understand the promise—that frightful promise:

“Woods rat, Foscar goes to his burial fire. And he shall take a slave with him to serve him beyond the sky—a slave to run at his voice, to shake when he thunders. Slave-dog, you shall run for Foscar beyond the sky, and he shall have you forever to walk upon as a man walks upon the earth. I, Ennar, swear that Foscar shall be sent to the chiefs in the sky in all honor. And that you, dog-one, shall lie at his feet in that going!”

He did not touch Ross, but there was no doubt in Ross’s mind that he meant every word he spoke.

The preparations for Foscar’s funeral went on through the night. A wooden structure, made up of tied fagots dragged in from the woodland, grew taller beyond the big tribal camp. The constant crooning wail of the women in the tents was enough to drive a man to the edge of madness. Ross had been left under guard where he could watch it all, a refinement of torture which he would earlier have believed too subtle for Ennar. Though the older men carried minor commands among the horsemen, because Ennar was the closest of blood kin among the adult males, he was in charge of the coming ceremony.

The pick of the horse herd, a roan stallion, was brought in to be picketed near Ross as sacrifice number two, and two of the hounds were in turn leashed close by. Foscar, his best weapons to hand and a red cloak lapped about him, lay waiting on a bier. Near-by squatted the tribal wizard, shaking his thunder rattle and alternately chanting and shrieking. This wild activity might have been a scene lifted directly from some tape stored at the project base. It was very difficult for Ross to remember that this was reality, that he was to be one of the main actors in the coming event, with no timely aid from Operation Retrograde to snatch him to safety.

Sometime during that nightmare he slept, his weariness of body overcoming him. He awoke, dazed, to find a hand clutching his mop of hair, pulling his head up.

“You sleep—you do not fear, Foscar’s dog-one?”

Groggily Ross blinked up. Fear? Sure, he was afraid. Fear, he realized with a clarity such as he had seldom experienced before, had always stalked beside him, slept in his bed. But he had never surrendered to it, and he would not now if he could help it.

“I do not fear!” He threw that creed into Ennar’s face in one hot boast. He would not fear!

“We shall see if you speak so loudly when the fire bites you!” The other spat, yet in that oath there was a reluctant recognition of Ross’s courage.

“When the fire bites . . .” That sang in Ross’s head. There was something else—if he could only remember! Up to that moment he had kept a poor little shadow of hope. It is always impossible—he again felt that strange clarity of mind—for a man to face his own death honestly. A man always continues to believe to the last moment of his life that something will intervene to save him.

The men led the horse to the mound of fagots which was now crowned with Foscar’s bier. The stallion went quietly, until a tall tribesman struck true with an ax, and the animal fell. The hounds were also killed and laid at their dead master’s feet.

But Ross was not to fare so easily. The wizard danced about him, a hideous figure in a beast mask, a curled fringe of dried snakeskins swaying from his belt. Shaking his rattle, he squawked like an angry cat as they pulled Ross to the stacked wood.

Fire—there was something about fire—if he could only remember! Ross stumbled and nearly fell across one leg of the dead horse they were propping into place. Then he remembered that tongue of flame in the meadow grass which had burned the horse but not the rider. His hands and his head would have no protection, but the rest of his body was covered with the flame-resistant fabric of the alien suit. Could he do it? There was such a slight chance, and they were already pushing him onto the mound, his hands tied. Ennar stooped, and bound his ankles, securing him to the brush.

So fastened, they left him. The tribe ringed around the pyre at a safe distance, Ennar and five other men approaching from different directions, torches aflame. Ross watched those blazing knots thrust into the brush and heard the crackle of the fire. With hard and measuring eyes he studied the flash of flame from dried brush to seasoned wood.

A tongue of yellow-red flame licked up at him. Ross hardly dared to breathe as it wreathed about his foot, his hide fetters smoldering. The insulation of the suit did not cut all the heat, but it allowed him to stay put for the few seconds he needed to make his escape spectacular.

The flame had eaten through his foot bonds, and yet the burning sensation on his feet and legs was no greater than it would have been from the direct rays of a bright summer sun. Ross moistened his lips with his tongue. The impact of heat on his hands and face was different. He leaned down, held his wrists to the flame, taking in stoical silence the burns which freed him.

Then, as the fire curled up so that he seemed to stand in a frame of writhing red banners, Ross leaped through that curtain, protecting his bowed head with his arms as best he could. But to the onlookers it seemed he passed unhurt through the heart of a roaring fire.

Keeping his footing, he stood facing that part of the tribal ring directly before him. A cry rose and a blazing torch flew through the air and struck his hip. Although he felt the force of the blow, the burning bits of the head merely slid down his thigh and leg, leaving no mark on the smooth blue fabric.

“Ahhh!”

Now the wizard capered before him, shaking his rattle to make a deafening din. Ross struck out, slapping the sorcerer out of his path. He stooped to pick up the smoldering brand which had been thrown at him. Whirling it about his head, though every movement was torture to his scorched hands, he set it flaming once more. Holding it in front of him as a weapon, he stalked directly at the men and women before him.

The torch was a poor enough defense against spears and axes, but Ross did not care—he put into this last gamble all the determination he could summon. Nor did he realize what a figure he presented to the tribesmen. A man who had crossed a curtain of fire without apparent hurt, who appeared to bathe in tongues of flame without harm, and who now called upon fire in turn as a weapon, was no man but a demon!

The wall of people wavered and broke. Women screamed and ran; men shouted. But no one threw a spear or struck with an ax. Ross walked on, a man possessed, looking neither to the right or left. He was in the camp now, stalking toward the fire burning before Foscar’s tent. He did not turn aside for that either, but holding the torch high, strode through the heart of the flames, risking further burns for the sake of insuring his ultimate safety.

The tribesmen melted away as he approached the last line of tents, with the open land beyond. The horses of the herd, which had been driven to this side to avoid the funeral pyre, were shifting nervously. The scent of burning was making them uneasy.

Once more Ross whirled the dying torch about his head. Recalling how the aliens had sent his horse mad, he tossed it behind him into the grass between the tents and the herd. The tinder-dry stuff caught immediately. Now if the men tried to ride after him, they would have trouble.

Without hindrance he walked across the meadow at the same even pace, never turning to look behind. His hands were two separate worlds of smarting pain; his hair and eyebrows were singed, and a finger of burn ran along the angle of his jaw. But he was free, and he did not believe that Foscar’s men would be in any haste to pursue him. Somewhere before him lay the river, the river which ran to the sea. Ross walked on in the sunny morning while behind him black smoke raised a dark beacon to the sky.

Afterward he guessed that he must have been light-headed for several days, remembering little save the pain in his hands and the fact that it was necessary to keep moving. Once he fell to his knees and buried both hands in the cool, moist earth where a thread of stream trickled from a pool. The muck eased a little of the agony while he drank with a fever thirst.

Ross seemed to move through a haze which lifted at intervals during which he noted his surroundings, was able to recall a little of what lay behind him, and to keep to the correct route. However, the gaps of time in between were forever lost to him. He stumbled along the banks of a river and fronted a bear fishing. The massive beast rose on its hind legs and growled, but Ross walked by it uncaring, unmenaced by the puzzled animal.

Sometimes he slept through the dark periods which marked the nights, or he stumbled along under the moon, nursing his hands against his breast, whimpering a little when his foot slipped and the jar of that mishap ran through his body. Once he heard singing, only to realize that it was himself who croaked a melody which would be popular thousands of years later in the world through which he wandered. But always Ross knew that he must go on, using that thick stream of running water as a guide to his final goal, the sea.

After a long while those spaces of mental clarity grew longer, appearing closer together. He dug small shelled things from under stones along the river and ate them avidly. Once he clubbed a rabbit and feasted. He sucked birds’ eggs from a nest hidden among some reeds—just enough to keep his gaunt body going, though his gray eyes were now set in a death’s-head of a face.

Ross did not know just when he realized that he was again being hunted. It started with an uneasiness different from his previous fever-bred hallucinations. This was an inner pulling, a growing compulsion to turn and retrace his way back toward the hills to meet something, or someone, waiting for him on the backward path.

But Ross kept on, fearing sleep now and fighting it. For once he had lain down to rest and had wakened on his feet, heading back as if that compulsion had the power to take over his body when his waking will was off guard.

So he rested, but dared not sleep. The desire constantly tore at his will, striving to take over his weakened body and draw it back. Against all reason he believed that it was the aliens who were trying to control him. Ross did not even venture to guess why they were so determined to get him. If there were tribesmen on his trail as well, he did not know, but he was sure that this was now purely a duel of wills.

As the banks of the river were giving way to marshes, he had to wade through mud and water, detouring the boggy sections. Great clouds of birds whirled and shrieked their protests at his coming. Sleek water animals paddled and poked curious heads out of the water as this two-legged thing walked mechanically through their green land. Always that pull was with him, until Ross was more aware of fighting it than of traveling.

Why did they want him to return? Why did they not follow him? Were they afraid to venture too far from where they had come through the transfer? Yet the unseen rope tugging at him grew no thinner as he put more distance between himself and the valley. Ross could understand neither their motives nor their methods, but he could continue to fight.

The bog was endless. He found an island and lashed himself with his suit belt to the single willow which grew there, knowing that he must have sleep, or he could not hope to last through the next day. Then he slept, only to waken cold, shaking, and afraid. Shoulder deep in a pool, he was aware that in his sleep he must have opened the belt buckle and freed himself. Only the mishap of falling into the water had brought him around to sanity.

Somehow he got back to the tree, rehooked the buckle and twisted the belt around the branches so that he was sure he could not work it free until daybreak. He lapsed into a deepening doze, and awoke, still safely anchored, at the morning cries of the birds. Ross considered the suit as he untangled the belt. Could the strange clothing be the tie by which the aliens held to him? If he were to strip, leaving the garment behind, would he be safe?

He tried to force open the studs across his chest, but they would not yield to the slight pressure which was all his seared fingers could exert, and when he pulled at the fabric, he was unable to tear it. So, still wearing the livery of the off-world men, Ross continued on his way, hardly caring where he went or how. The mud plastered on him by his frequent falls was some protection against the swarm of insect life his passing stirred into attack. However, he was able to endure a swollen face and slitted eyes, being far more conscious of the wrenching feeling within him than the misery of his body.

The character of the marsh began to change once more. The river was splitting into a dozen smaller streams spreading like a fan. Looking down at this from one of the marsh hillocks, Ross knew a faint surge of relief. Such a place had been on the map Ashe had made him memorize. He was close to the sea at last. For the moment that was enough.

A salt-sharpened wind cut at him with the force of a fist in the face. In the absence of sunlight the leaden clouds spread winterlike gloom across the countryside. To the constant sound of birdcalls Ross tramped heavily through small pools, forcing a path through tangles of marsh grass. He stole eggs from nests, sucking his nourishment eagerly with no dislike for the fishy flavor, and drinking from brackish ponds.

Suddenly Ross halted, at first thinking that the continuous roll of sound he heard was thunder. Yet the clouds overhead were massed no more than previously and he saw no sign of lightning. Continuing on, he realized that the mysterious sound was the pounding of surf—he was near the sea!

Willing his body to run, he reeled forward at a trot, pitting all his energy against the incessant pull from behind. His feet skidded out of marsh mud and into sand. Ahead of him were dark rocks surrounded by the white lace of spray.

Ross headed straight toward that spray until he stood knee-deep in the curling, foam-edged water and felt its tug on his body almost as strong as that other tug upon his mind. He knelt, letting the salt water sting to life every cut, every burn, sputtering as it filled his mouth and nostrils, washing from him the slime of the bog lands. It was cold and bitter, but it was the sea! He had made it!

Ross Murdock staggered back and sat down suddenly in the sand. Glancing about, he saw that his refuge was a rough triangle between two of the small river arms, littered with the debris of the spring floods. Although there was plenty of material for a fire, he had no means of kindling a flame, having lost the flint all Beaker traders carried for such a purpose.

This was the sea, and against all odds he had reached it. He lay back, his self-confidence restored to the point where he dared once more to consider the future. He watched the swooping flight of gulls drawing patterns under the clouds above. For the moment he wanted nothing more than to lie here and rest.

But he did not surrender to this first demand of his overdriven body for long. Hungry and cold, sure that a storm was coming, he knew he had to build a fire—a fire on shore could provide him with the means of signaling the sub. Hardly knowing why—because one part of the coastline was as good as another—Ross began to walk again, threading a path in and out among the rocky outcrops.

So he found it, a hollow between two such windbreaks within which was a blackened circle of small stones holding charred wood, with some empty shells piled near-by. Here was unmistakable evidence of a camp! Ross plunged forward, thrusting a hand impetuously into the black mass of the dead fire. To his astonishment, he touched warmth!

Hardly daring to disturb those precious bits of charcoal, he dug around them, then carefully blew into what appeared to be dead ashes. There was an answering glow! He could not have just imagined it.

From a pile of wood that had been left behind, Ross snatched a small twig, poking it at the coal after he had rubbed it into a brush on the rough rock. He watched, all one ache of hope. The twig caught!

With his stiff fingers so clumsy, he had to be very careful, but Ross had learned patience in a hard school. Bit by bit he fed that tiny blaze until he had a real fire. Then, leaning back against the rock, he watched it.

It was now obvious that the placement of the original fire had been chosen with care, for the outcrops gave it wind shelter. They also provided a dark backdrop, partially hiding the flames on the landward side but undoubtedly making them more visible from the sea. The site seemed just right for a signal fire—but to what?

Ross’s hands shook slightly as he fed the blaze. It was only too clear why anyone would make a signal on this shore. McNeil—or perhaps both he and Ashe—had survived the breakup of the raft, after all. They had reached this point—abandoned no earlier than this morning, judging by the life remaining in the coals—and put up the signal. Then, just as arranged, they had been collected by the sub, by now on its way back to the hidden North American post. There was no hope of any pickup for him now. Just as he had believed them dead after he had found that rag on the sapling, so they must have thought him finished after his fall in the river. He was just a few hours too late!

Ross folded his arms across his hunched knees and rested his head on them. There was no possible way he could ever reach the post or his own kind—ever again. Thousands of miles lay between him and the temporary installation in this time.

He was so sunk in his own complete despair that he was long unaware of finally being free of the pressure to turn back which had so long haunted him. But as he roused to feed the fire he got to wondering. Had those who hunted him given up the chase? Since he had lost his own race with time, he did not really care. What did it matter?

The pile of wood was getting low, but he decided that did not matter either. Even so, Ross got to his feet, moving over to the drifts of storm wrack to gather more. Why should he stay here by a useless beacon? But somehow he could not force himself to move on, as futile as his vigil seemed.

Dragging the sun-bleached limbs of long-dead trees to his half shelter, he piled them up, working until he laughed at the barricade he had built. “A siege!” For the first time in days he spoke aloud. “I might be ready for a siege . . .” He pulled over another branch, added it to his pile, and kneeled down once more by the flames.

There were fisherfolk to be found along this coast, and tomorrow when he was rested he would strike south and try to find one of their primitive villages. Traders would be coming into this territory now that the Russian-inspired raiders were gone. If he could contact them . . .

But that spark of interest in the future died almost as soon as it was born. To be a Beaker trader as an agent for the project was one thing, to live the role for the rest of his life was something else.

Ross stood by his fire, staring out to sea for a sign he knew he would never see again as long as he lived. Then, sharp as a spear between his shoulder blades, the attack came.

The blow was not physical, but came instead as a tearing, red pain in his head, a pressure so terrible he could not move. He knew instantly that behind him now lurked the ultimate danger.

Ross fought to break that hold, to turn his head, to face the peril which crept upon him now. Unlike anything he had ever met before in his short lifetime, it could only have come from some alien source. This strange encounter was a battle of will against will! The same rebellion against authority which had ruled his boyhood, which had pushed him into the orbit of the project, stiffened him to meet this attack.

He was going to turn his head; he was going to see who stood there. He was! Inch by inch, Ross’s head came around, though sweat stung his seared and bitten flesh, and every breath was an effort. He caught a half glimpse of the beach behind the rocks, and the stretch of sand was empty. Overhead the birds were gone—as if they had never existed. Or, as if they had been swept away by some impatient fighter, who wanted no distractions from the purpose at hand.

Having successfully turned his head, Ross decided to turn his body. His left hand went out, slowly, as if it moved some great weight. His palm gritted painfully on the rock and he savored that pain, for it pierced through the dead blanket of compulsion that was being used against him. Deliberately he ground his blistered skin against the stone, concentrating on the sharp torment in his hand as the agony shot up his arm. While he focused his attention on the physical pain, he could feel the pressure against him weaken. Summoning all his strength, Ross swung around in a movement which was only a shadow of his former feline grace.

The beach was still empty, except for the piles of driftwood, the rocks, and the other things he had originally found there. Yet he knew that something was waiting to pounce. Having discovered that for him pain was a defense weapon, he had that one resource. If they took him, it would be after besting him in a fight.

Even as he made this decision, Ross was conscious of a curious weakening of the force bent upon him. It was as if his opponents had been surprised, either at his simple actions of the past few seconds or at his determination. Ross leaped upon that surprise, adding it to his stock of unseen weapons.

He leaned forward, still grinding his torn hand against the rock as a steadying influence, took up a length of dried wood, and thrust its end into the fire. Having once used fire to save himself, he was ready and willing to do it again, although at the same time, another part of him shrank from what he intended.

Holding his improvised torch breast-high, Ross stared across it, searching the land for the faintest sign of his enemies. In spite of the fire and the light he held before him, the dusk prevented him from seeing too far. Behind him the crash of the surf could have covered the noise of a marching army.

“Come and get me!”

He whirled his brand into bursting life and then hurled it straight into the drift among the dunes. He was grabbing for a second brand almost before the blazing head of the first had fallen into the twisted, bleached roots of a dead tree.

He stood tense, a second torch now kindled in his hand. The sharp vise of another’s will which had nipped him so tightly a moment ago was easing, slowly disappearing as water might trickle away. Yet he could not believe that this small act of defiance had so daunted his unseen opponent as to make him give up the struggle this easily. It was more likely the pause of a wrestler seeking for a deadlier grip.

The brand in his hand—Ross’s second line of defense—was a weapon he was loath to use, but would use if he were forced to it. He kept his hand mercilessly flat against the rock as a reminder and a spur.

Fire twisted and crackled among the driftwood where the first torch had lodged, providing a flickering light yards from where he stood. He was grateful for it in the gloom of the gathering storm. If they would only come to open war before the rain struck . . .

Ross sheltered his torch with his body as spray, driven inward from the sea, spattered his shoulders and his back. If it rained, he would lose what small advantage the fire gave him, but then he would find some other way to meet them. They would neither break him nor take him, even if he had to wade into the sea and swim out into the lash of the cold northern waves until he could not move his tired limbs any longer.

Once again that steel-edge will struck at Ross, probing his stubbornness, assaulting his mind. He whirled the torch, brought the scorching breath of the flame across the hand resting on the rock. Unable to control his own cry of protest, he was not sure he had the fortitude to repeat such an act.

He had won again! The pressure had fallen away in a flick, almost as if some current had been snapped off. Through the red curtain of his torment Ross sensed a surprise and disbelief. He was unaware that in this bizarre duel he was using both a power of will and a depth of perception he had never known he possessed. Because of his daring, he had shaken his opponents as no physical attack could have affected them.

“Come and get me!” He shouted again at the barren shoreline where the fire ate at the drift and nothing stirred, yet something very much alive and conscious lay hidden. This time there was more than simple challenge in Ross’s demand—there was a note of triumph.

The spray whipped by him, striking at his fire, at the brand he held. Let the sea water put both out! He would find another way of fighting. He was certain of that, and he sensed that those out there knew it too and were troubled.

The fire was being driven by the wind along the crisscross lines of bone-white wood left high on the beach, forming a wall of flame between him and the interior. Not that the barrier would keep out whatever lurked there.

Again Ross leaned against the rock, studying the length of beach. Had he been wrong in thinking that they were within the range of his voice? The power they had used might carry over a great distance.

“Yahhhh—” Instead of a demand, he now voiced a taunting cry, screaming his defiance. Some wild madness had been transmitted to him by the winds, the roaring sea, his own pain. Ready to face the worst they could send against him, he tried to hurl that thought back at them as they had struck with their united will at him. No answer came to his challenge, no rise to counter-attack.

Moving away from the rock, Ross began to walk forward toward the burning drift, his torch ready in his hand. “I am here!” he shouted into the wind. “Come out—face me!”

It was then that he saw those who had tracked him. Two tall thin figures, wearing dark clothes, were standing quietly watching him, their eyes dark holes in the white ovals of their faces.

Ross halted. Though they were separated by yards of sand and rock and a burning barrier, he could feel the force they wielded. The nature of that force had changed, however. Once it had struck with a vigorous spear point; now it formed a shield of protection. Ross could not break through that shield, and they dared not drop it. A stalemate existed between them in this strange battle, the like of which Ross’s world had not known before.

He watched those expressionless white faces, trying to find some reply to the deadlock. There flashed into his mind the certainty that while he lived and moved, and they lived and moved, this struggle, this unending pursuit, would continue. For some mysterious reason they wanted to have him under their control, but that was never going to happen if they all had to remain here on this strip of water-washed sand until they starved to death! Ross tried to drive that thought across to them.

“Murrrrdock!” That croaking cry borne out of the sea by the wind might almost have come from the bill of a sea bird.

“Murrrrdock!”

Ross spun around. Visibility had been drastically curtailed by the lowering clouds and the dashing spray, but he could see a round dark thing bobbing on the waves. A sub? A raft?

Sensing a movement behind him, Ross wheeled about as one of the alien figures leaped the blazing drift, heedless of the flames, and ran light-footedly toward him in what could only be an all-out attempt at capture. The man had ready a weapon like the one that had felled Foscar. Ross threw himself at his opponent in a reckless dive, falling on him with a smashing impact.

In Ross’s grasp the alien’s body was fragile, but he moved fluidly as Murdock fought to break his grip on the hand weapon and pin him to the sand. Ross was too intent upon his own part of the struggle to heed the sounds of a shot over his head and a thin, wailing cry. He slammed his opponent’s hand against a stone, and the white face, inches away from his own, twisted silently with pain.

Fumbling for a better hold, Ross was sent rolling. He came down on his left hand with a force which brought tears to his eyes and stopped him just long enough for the other to regain his feet.

The blue-suited man sprinted back to the body of his fellow where it lay by the drift. He slung his unconscious comrade over the barrier with more ease than Ross would have believed possible and vaulted the barrier after him. Ross, half crouched on the sand, felt unusually light and empty. The strange tie between him and the strangers had been severed.

“Murdock!”

A rubber raft rode in on the waves, two men aboard it. Ross got up, pulling at the studs of his suit with his right hand. He could believe in what he saw now—the sub had not left, after all. The two men running toward him through the dusk were of his own kind.

“Murdock!”

It did not seem at all strange that Kelgarries reached him first. Ross, caught up in this dream, appealed to the major for aid with the studs. If the strangers from the ship did trace him by the suit, they were not going to follow the sub back to the post and serve the project as they had the Russians.

“Got—to—get—this—off—” He pulled the words out one by one, tugging frantically at the stubborn studs. “They can trace this and follow us—”

Kelgarries needed no better explanation. Ripping loose the fastenings, he pulled the clinging fabric from Ross, sending him reeling with pain as he pulled the left sleeve down the younger man’s arm.

The wind and spray were ice on his body as they dragged him down to the raft, bundling him aboard. He did not at all remember their arrival on board the sub. He was lying in the vibrating heart of the undersea ship when he opened his eyes to see Kelgarries regarding him intently. Ashe, a coat of bandage about his shoulder and chest, lay on a neighboring bunk. McNeil stood watching a medical corpsman lay out supplies.

“He needs a shot,” the medic was saying as Ross blinked at the major.

“You left the suit—back there?” Ross demanded.

“We did. What’s this about them tracing you by it? Who was tracing you?”

“Men from the space ship. That’s the only way they could have trailed me down the river.” He was finding it difficult to talk, and the protesting medic kept waving a needle in his direction, but somehow in bursts of half-finished sentences Ross got out his story—Foscar’s death, his own escape from the chief’s funeral pyre, and the weird duel of wills back on the beach. Even as he poured it out he thought how unlikely most of it must sound. Yet Kelgarries appeared to accept every word, and there was no expression of disbelief on Ashe’s face.

“So that’s how you got those burns,” said the major slowly when Ross had finished his story. “Deliberately searing your hand in the fire to break their hold—” He crashed his fist against the wall of the tiny cabin and then, when Ross winced at the jar, he hurriedly uncurled those fingers to press Ross’s shoulder with a surprisingly warm and gentle touch. “Put him to sleep,” he ordered the medic. “He deserves about a month of it, I should judge. I think he has brought us a bigger slice of the future than we had hoped for . . .”

Ross felt the prick of the needle and then nothing more. Even when he was carried ashore at the post and later when he was transported into his proper time, he did not awaken. He drifted into a dreamy state in which he ate and drowsed, unable to care about anything beyond his own bunk.

But there came a day when he did care, sitting up to demand food with a great deal of his old self-assertion. The doctor looked him over, permitting him to get out of bed and try out his legs. They were exceedingly uncooperative at first, and Ross was glad he had tried to move only from his bunk to a waiting chair.

“Visitors welcome?”

Ross looked up eagerly and then smiled, somewhat hesitatingly, at Ashe. The older man wore his arm in a sling but otherwise seemed his usual imperturbable self.

“Ashe, tell me what happened. Are we back at the main base? What about the Russians? We weren’t traced by the ship people, were we?”

Ashe laughed. “Did Doc just wind you up, Ross? Yes, this is home, sweet home. As for the rest—well, it is a long story, and we are still picking up pieces of it here and there.”

Ross pointed to the bunk in invitation. “Can you tell me what we know?” He was still somewhat at a loss, his old secret awe of Ashe tempering his outward show of eagerness. Ross still feared one of those snubs the other so well knew how to give. But Ashe did come in and sit down, none of his old formality now in evidence.

“You have been a surprise package, Murdock.” His observation had some of the ring of the old Ashe, but there was no withdrawal behind the words. “Rather a busy lad, weren’t you, after you were bumped off into that river?”

Ross’s reply was a grimace. “You heard all about that!” He had no time for his own adventures, already receding into a past which made them both dim and unimportant. “What happened to you—and to the project—and—”

“One thing at a time, and don’t rush your fences.” Ashe surveyed him with an odd intentness which Ross could not understand. He continued to explain in his “instructor” voice. “We made it down the river—how, don’t ask me. That was something of a ‘project’ in itself,” he laughed. “The raft came apart piece by piece, and we waded most of the last couple of miles, I think. I’m none too clear on the details; you’ll have to get those out of McNeil, who was still among those present then. Other than that, we cannot compete with your adventures. We built a signal fire and sat by it toasting our shins for a few days, until the sub came to collect us—”

“And took you off.” Ross experienced a fleeting return of that hollow feeling he had known on the shore when the still-warm coals of the signal fire had told him the story of his too-late arrival.

“And took us off. But Kelgarries agreed to spin out our waiting period for another twenty-four hours, in case you did manage to survive that toss you took into the river. Then we sighted your spectacular display of fireworks on the beach, and the rest was easy.”

“The ship people didn’t trace us back to the post?”

“Not that we know of. Anyway, we’ve closed down the post on that time level. You might be interested in a very peculiar tale our modern agents have picked up, floating over and under the border. A blast went off in the Baltic region of this time, wiping some installation clean off the map. The Russians have kept quiet as to the nature of the explosion and the exact place where it occurred. But we can pinpoint it.”

“The aliens followed them all the way up to our time!”—Ross half rose from the chair—“But why? And why did they trail me?”

“That we can only guess. But I don’t believe that they were moved by any private vengeance for the looting of their derelict. There is some more compelling reason why they don’t want us to find or use anything from one of their cargoes—”

“But they were in power thousands of years ago. Maybe they and their worlds are gone now. Why should things we do today matter to them?”

“Well, it does matter, and in some very important way. And we have to learn that reason.”

“How?” Ross looked down at his left hand, encased in a mitten of bandage under which he very gingerly tried to stretch a finger. Maybe he should have been eager to welcome another meeting with the ship people, but in all honesty, he had to admit that he was not. He glanced up, sure that Ashe had read his hesitation and scorned him for it. But there was no sign that the other man had noticed.

“By doing some looting of our own,” Ashe answered.

“Those tapes we brought back are going to be a big help. More than one derelict was located. We were right in our first surmise that the Russians first discovered the remains of one in Siberia, but it was in no condition to be explored. They already had the basic idea of the time traveler, so they applied it to hunting down other ships, with several way stops to throw people like us off the scent. So they found an intact ship, and then several others. At least three are on this side of the Atlantic where they couldn’t get at them very well. Those we can deal with now—”

“Won’t the aliens be waiting for us to try that?”

“As far as we can discover they don’t know where any of these ships crashed. Either there were no survivors, or passengers and crew took off in lifeboats while they were still in space. They might never have known of the Russians’ activities if you hadn’t triggered that communicator on the derelict.”

Ross was reduced to a small boy who badly needed an alibi for some piece of juvenile mischief. “I didn’t mean to.” That excuse sounded so feeble that he laughed, only to see Ashe grinning back at him.

“Seeing as how your action also put a very effective spike in the opposition’s wheel, you are freely forgiven. Anyway, you have also provided us with a pretty good idea of what we may be up against with the aliens, and we’ll be prepared for that next time.”

“Then there will be a next time?”

“We are calling in all time agents, concentrating our forces in the right period. Yes, there will be a next time. We have to learn just what they are trying so hard to protect.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Space!” Ashe spoke the word softly as if he relished the promise it held.

“Space?”

“That ship you explored was a derelict from a galactic fleet, but it was a ship and it used the principle of space flight. Do you understand now? In these lost ships lies the secret which will make us free of all the stars! We must claim it.”

“Can we—?”

“Can we?” Ashe was laughing at Ross again with his eyes, though his face remained sober. “Then you still want to be counted in on this game?”

Ross looked down again at his bandaged hand and remembered swiftly so many things—the coast of Britain on a misty morning, the excitement of prowling the alien ship, the fight with Ennar, even the long nightmare of his flight down the river, and lastly, the exultation he had tasted when he had faced the alien and had locked wills—to hold steady. He knew that he could not, would not, give up what he had found here in the service of the project as long as it was in his power.

“Yes.” It was a very simple answer, but when his eyes met Ashe’s, Ross knew that it would serve better than any solemn oath.

Hot—it sure was stacking up to be a hot one today.

He’d better check on the spring in the brakes before the sun really boiled up the country ahead. That was the only water in this whole frying pan of baking rock—or was it?

Travis Fox hitched forward in his saddle. He studied the pinkish yellow of the desert strip between him and that distant line of green juniper against the buff of sagebrush which marked the cuts of the brakes. This was a barren land, forbidding to anyone unused to its harshness.

It was also a land frozen into one color-streaked mold of unchanging rock and earth. In that it was probably now rare upon the rider’s planet. Elsewhere around the world deserts had been flooded with sea water purified of salt. Ordered farms beat ancient sand dunes into dim memories. Mankind was fast breaking free of the whims of weather or climate. Yet here the free desert remained unaltered because the nation within which it lay could afford to leave land undeveloped.

Someday this, too, would be swept away, taking with it the heritage of such as Travis Fox. For five hundred years, or maybe a thousand now—no one could rightly say when the first Apaches had come questing into this territory—they had dominated these canyons and sand wastes, valleys and mesas. His tough, desert-born breed could travel, fight, and live off bleakness no other race dared face without supplies from outside. His ancestors had waged war for almost four centuries across this country. And now the survivors wrested a living from the region with the same determination.

That spring in the brakes . . . Travis’ brown fingers began to count off seasons in taps on his saddle horn. Nineteen . . . twenty . . . This was the twentieth year after the last big dry, and if Chato was right, that meant the water which should be there was due to fail. And the old man had already been correct in his prediction of an unusually arid summer this year.

If Travis rode straight there and found the spring dry, he’d lose most of the day. And time was precious. They had to move the breeding stock to a sure water supply. On the other hand, if he cut back into the Canyon of the Hohokam on a hunch and was wrong—then his brother Whelan would have every right to call him a fool. Whelan stubbornly refused to follow the Old Ones’ knowledge. And in that his brother was himself a fool.

Travis laughed softly. The White-eyes—deliberately he used the old warrior’s term for a traditional enemy, saying it aloud, “Pinda-lick-o-yi”—the White-eyes didn’t know everything. And a few of them were willing to admit it once in a while.

Then he laughed again, this time at himself and his own thoughts. Scratch the rancher—and the Apache was right under the surface of his sun-dried hide. But there was a bitter note in that second laugh. Travis booted his pinto into a lope with more force than was necessary. He didn’t care to follow the trail of those particular thoughts. He’d make for the place of the Hohokam and he’d be Apache for today. Nothing would spoil that as his other dreams had been spoiled.

Whelan thought that if an Apache lived like the White-eyes, and set aside all the old things, then he would prosper like the White-eyes. To Whelan there was nothing good in the past. Even to consider the Old Ones, what they did and why they did it, was a foolish waste of time. Travis bit again on disappointment, to find it as fresh and bad-tasting as it had been a year earlier.

The pinto threaded a way between boulders along a dried stream bed. Odd that a land now so arid could carry so many signs of past water. There were miles of irrigation ditches used by the Old Ones, marking off sun-baked pans of open land which had not known the touch of moisture for centuries. Travis urged his mount up a sharp slope and headed west, feeling the heat bore into his back through the faded shirt fabric.

He doubted if Whelan knew the Canyon of the Hohokam. That was one of the things from the old days, a story preserved by such as Chato. And there were now two kinds of Apache—Chato and Whelan. Chato denied the existence of the White-eyes, living his own life behind a shutter which he dropped between him and the outside world of the whites. And Whelan denied the existence of the Apache, striving to be all white.

Once Travis had seen a third way, that of blending the white man’s learning with Apache lore. He thought he had discovered those who agreed with him. But it had all gone, as quickly as a drop of water poured upon a rock would vanish here. Now he tended to agree with Chato. Knowing that, Chato had freely given him information Whelan did not have, about Whelan’s own range land.

Chato’s father—again Travis counted, fingertip against saddle horn—why, Chato’s father would be a hundred and twenty years old if he were alive today! And his grandfather had been born in the Hohokam’s valley while his family were hiding from the U.S. Cavalry.

Chato had guided Travis to the lost canyon when he was so small he could barely grip a horse’s barrel with his short legs. And he had returned there again and again through the years. The houses of the Hohokam had intrigued him, and the spring there never failed. There were piñons with nuts to be gathered in season, and some stunted fruit trees still yielding a measure of fruit. Once it had been a garden; now it was a hidden oasis.

Travis was working his way into the maze of canyons which held the forgotten trail of the Old Ones when he heard an unfamiliar hum. Instinctively he drew rein, knowing that he was concealed by the shadow of a cliff, and glanced skyward.

“ ’Copter!” he said aloud in sheer surprise. The ageless desert country had claimed him so thoroughly during the past few hours that sighting a modern mode of travel came as a shock.

Could it be Whelan, checking up on him? Travis’ mouth tightened. But when he had left the ranch house at sunup, Bill Redhorse, Chato’s grandson, had been tinkering with the engine of the ranch bus. Anyway, Whelan couldn’t waste fuel on desert coasting. With the big war scare on again, rationing had tightened up and a man kept his ’copter for emergencies, using horses again for daily work.

The war scare . . . Travis thought about it as he watched the strange machine out of sight. Ever since he could remember there had been snapping and snarling in the news. Little scrimmages bursting out, smoldering, talk and more talk. Then, some months back, something odd had happened in Europe—a big blast set off in the north. Though the Russians had clamped down their tight screen of secrecy, rumor said that some kind of new bomb had gone wrong. All this might be leading up to an out-and-out break between East and West.

The government must believe that. They’d tightened up regulations all along the line and slapped on additional fuel rationing. Tension filled the air and whispers of trouble to come.

Out here it was easy enough to shove all that stuff out of one’s mind. The desert silenced the bickering of men. These cliffs had stood the same before the brown-skinned men of his race had trickled down from the north. They would probably be standing when the White-eyes blasted both white and brown men out of it again.

The sight of the ’copter had triggered memories Travis did not like. He continued to wonder, as the machine disappeared in the direction he himself was following, what its mission was here.

He did not sight it again, so it must not be carrying a local rancher. If the pilot had been hunting strays, he would circle. Prospectors? But there had been no news of a government expedition, and no one else had been permitted to prospect for years.

Travis located the entrance of the hidden canyon and studied the ground as he rode. There was no sign that anyone had passed that way for a long time. He clicked his tongue and the horse quickened pace. They had gone about two miles along that snaking path when Travis brought his mount to a halt.

A puff of breeze tickling his nose had warned him. This was no desert wind laden with heat and grit, for it carried the scent of juniper and pine. The pinto nickered and mouthed its bit—water ahead. But the land before them was not empty of men.

Travis swung out of the saddle, taking his rifle with him. Unless the terrain had altered in the past year, there was a good cover on the lip of the hidden canyon’s entrance. Without being seen, he would be able to survey the camp whose smells of wood smoke, coffee, frying bacon were now reaching him.

The ascent to his chosen spy post was easy. From below the pine scent rose, heavier now, drawn out by the sun’s rays. Small, busy birds twittered about their own concerns. There was a cup of green lying there, around a spring-fed pool which mirrored the hot blue of the sky. Between that water and the vast shallow cave holding the city of the Old Ones, stood the ’copter. A man was tending a cooking fire while another had gone to the pool for water.

Travis did not believe they were ranchers. But they wore sturdy outdoor clothing and moved about the business of camping with assurance. He began to inventory what he could see of their supplies and equipment.

The ’copter was a late model. And in the shade offered by a small stand of trees he could make out bedrolls. But he did not sight any digging tools or other indication that this was a prospecting team. Then the man walked back from the pool, set his filled bucket down by the fire. He dropped cross-legged before a big package and unwrapped its canvas covering. Travis watched him uncover what had to be a portable communicator of advanced design.

The operator was patiently inching up the antenna rod, when Travis heard the pinto nicker. Age-old instinct brought him around, still on his knees, with rifle ready. But he found himself fronting another weapon aimed directly and mercilessly at his middle.

The oddly designed barrel did not waver. Above it gray eyes watched him with a chill detachment worse than any vocal threat. Travis Fox considered himself a worthy descendant of the toughest warriors this stretch of country had ever seen. Yet he knew that neither he nor any of his kind had ever faced a man quite like this one. This man was young, no older than himself. Subtle menace did not altogether fit with his slender body or calm, boyish face.

“Drop it!” The intruder expected no resistance.

Travis obeyed, allowing the rifle to slip from his hands and slide across his leg to the gravel.

“On your feet. Make it snappy. Down there . . .” The gentle voice and even tone of the orders oddly increased the menace Travis sensed.

The Apache stood up, turned downslope and walked forward with his hands up. He did not know what he had stumbled on, but that it was important—and dangerous—Travis did not doubt.

The man cooking and the man at the com set both sat back on their heels, calmly surveying Travis as he advanced. To his eyes they were little different from the white ranchers he knew in the district. Yet the cook . . . ?

Travis studied him in puzzlement, certain that he had seen the man or his likeness before under very different circumstances.

“Where did you flush this one, Ross?” asked the man at the com.

“Lying up on the ridge, getting an eyeful,” Travis’ captor replied.

The cook stood up, wiped his hands on a cloth, and started toward them. Eldest of the three strangers, his skin was deeply tanned, his eyes a startlingly bright blue against that brown. He radiated authority which did not suit his present employment but which marked him, for Travis, as the leader of the party. The Apache guessed his own reception would depend upon this man’s reaction. Only why did some faint twist of memory persist in outlining the cook’s head with a black square?

Since the stranger seemed to be in no hurry to ask questions, Travis met him eye to eye, drawing on his own brand of patience. There was danger in this man, too, the same controlled force his younger companion had revealed when trapping the Apache on the heights.

“Apache.” It was a statement, rather than a question. And it raised Travis’ estimation of the stranger. There were few men nowadays who would or could distinguish Apache from Hopi, Navajo, or Ute in one brief glance.

“Rancher?” That was a question this time and Travis gave it a truthful answer. He sensed that using evasive tactics with this particular White-eye would only lead to his own disadvantage.

“Rider for the Double A.”

The man by the com unit had unrolled a map. He ran a forefinger along a wavy mark and nodded, not at Travis, but to the interrogator.

“Nearest range to the east. But he can’t be hunting strays this far into the desert.”

“Good water.” The other nodded at the pool. “The Old Ones used it.”

Obliquely that was another inquiry. And Travis found himself replying to it.

“The Old Ones knew. Not those only.” With his chin he pointed to the ruins in the great shallow cave. “But the People in turn. Never dry, even in bad years.”

“And this is a bad year.” The stranger rubbed his hand along his jaw, his blue eyes still holding Travis’. “A complication we didn’t foresee. So Double A runs a herd in here in dry years, son?”

Against his will, Travis found himself replying with the exact truth. “Not yet. Few of the riders know of it now. Not many care to listen to the stories of the old men.” He was still puzzling over the teasing memory of seeing this man’s lean face before. That black border about it—a frame! A picture frame! And the picture had hung over Dr. Morgan’s desk at the university.

“But you do . . .” There came another of those measuring stares like the one which had stripped away his rancher’s clothing to display the Apache underneath. Now those eyes were trying to sort out the thoughts in his head, thoughts of Dr. Morgan’s study. This man’s picture had hung there, but with a stepped pyramid behind him.

“It is so.” Absently he used another speech pattern as he tried to remember more.

“The problem is, buster”—the man by the com unit stood up, spoke lazily—“just what are we going to do with you now? How about it, Ashe? Does he go in cold storage—maybe up there?” He jerked a thumb at the ruins.

Ashe! Dr. Gordon Ashe! He’d put a name to the stranger at last. And with the name came a reason for the man’s presence there. Ashe was an archaeologist. Only Travis did not have to look at the com unit or at the camp to guess that this was no expedition to hunt ancient relics. He had had firsthand knowledge of those. What were Dr. Ashe and his companions really doing in the Canyon of the Old Ones?

“You can put your hands down, son,” Dr. Ashe said. “And you can make it easy for yourself if you agree to stay here peaceably for a time.”

“For how long?” countered Travis.

“That depends,” Ashe hedged.

“I left my horse up there. He needs water.”

“Bring the horse down, Ross.”

Travis turned his head. The young man holstered his strange-looking weapon and climbed upslope, to reappear shortly leading the pinto. Travis unsaddled his mount and turned the animal loose. He returned to find Ashe awaiting him.

“So not many people know of this place?”

Travis shrugged. “One other man on the Double A—he is very old. His grandfather was born here, long ago when the Apaches were fighting the army. Nobody else is interested any more.”

“Then there was never any digging done in the ruins?”

“A little—once.”

“By whom?”

Travis pushed back his hat. “Me.” His answer was short and hostile.

“Oh?” Ashe produced a package of cigarettes, offered them. Travis took one without thinking.

“You came here for a dig?” he counter-questioned.

“In a manner of speaking.” But when Ashe glanced at the cliff house, Travis thought it was as if he saw something far more interesting behind or beyond those crumbling blocks of sun-dried brick.

“I thought your main interest was pre-Mayan, Dr. Ashe.” Travis squatted on his heels, brought out a smoldering twig from the fire to light his smoke, and was inwardly satisfied to note that he had startled the archaeologist with that observation.

“You know me!” He made a challenge of the words.

Travis shook his head. “I know Doctor Prentiss Morgan.”

“So that’s it! You’re one of his bright boys!”

“No.” That was short, a bitten-off warning not to probe. And the other man must have been sensitive enough to understand at once, for he asked no other question.

“Chow ready, Ashe?” asked the man with the com. Behind him the youngster Ashe called “Ross” came to the fire, reached out for the frying pan. Travis stared at his hand. The flesh was seamed with scars. Once before the Apache had seen healed wounds like those—from a deep and painful burn. He looked away hurriedly as the other apportioned food onto plates, and he got his own lunch from his saddlebags.

They ate in oddly companionable silence. The first tension of their meeting eased from the range rider. His interest in these men, his desire to know more about them and what they were doing here, dampened his annoyance at the way he had been captured. That young Ross was a slick tracker. He had to be experienced to trap Travis so neatly. The Apache longed for a closer look at the other’s weapon. It was not a conventional revolver. Wearing it ready for use said that they expected attack—from whom?

The longer Travis studied the three men he sensed a distinction between Ashe and Ross on one hand and Grant, the com operator on the other. Ashe and Ross were alike in more than their heavy tans, their silent walk, their keen watchfulness. As Travis watched them go through the natural business of eating and policing camp, the surer he was that they had not come to this place to explore cliff ruins. They had to be engaged in some more serious—and perhaps deadly action.

He asked no questions, content to let the others now make the first move. It was the com unit which broke the peace of the small camp. A warning cackle brought its tender on the run. He snapped on earphones and relayed a message.

“Procedure has to be stepped up. They’ll start bringing the stuff in tonight!”

“Well?” Ross’s glance swept over Travis, settled on Ashe.

“Anybody know you were coming here?” the older man asked the range rider.

“I came out to check the springs. If I don’t return to the ranch within a reasonable time, they’ll hunt me up, yes.” Travis saw no reason to enlarge upon that with two other bits of information. One, that Whelan would not be unduly alarmed if he did not return within twenty-four hours, and the other, that he was supposed to be in the brakes to the south.

“You say that you know Prentiss Morgan—how well?”

“I was in one of his classes at the U—for a while.”

“Your name?”

“Fox. Travis Fox.”

The com operator cut in, again consulting his map. “The Double A belongs to a Fox—”

“My brother. But I work for him, that’s all.”

“Grant”—Ashe turned now to the com man—“mark this top priority and send it to Kelgarries. Ask him to check Fox—all the way.”

“We can ship him out when the first load comes in, chief. They’ll store him at headquarters as long as you want,” Ross offered, as if Travis had ceased to be a person and was merely an annoying problem.

Ashe shook his head. “Look here, Fox, we don’t want to make it hard for you. It’s pure bad luck that you trailed in here today. Frankly, we can’t afford to attract any attention to our activities at present. But if you’ll give me your word not to try and go over the hill, we’ll leave it at that for the present.”

The last thing Travis wanted to do was leave. His curiosity was thoroughly aroused. He had no intention of going unless they removed him bodily. And that, he promised himself silently, would take a lot of doing.

“It’s a deal.”

But Ashe was already on another track. “You say you did some digging over there. What did you uncover?”

“The usual stuff—pottery, a few arrowheads. These mountain ruins are filled with such things.”

“What did you expect, chief?” Ross asked.

“Well, there was a slim chance,” the other returned ambiguously. “This climate preserves. We’ve found baskets, fabrics, fragile things lasting—”

“I’ll take the bones and baskets—in place of some other things.” Ross held his scarred hand against his chest. He rubbed its seamed flesh with the other, as if soothing a wound that still ached. “Better get out the lights if the boys are going to drop in tonight.”

The pinto continued to graze in the center of the meadow while Ross and Ashe paced out two lines and spaced small plastic canisters at intervals. Travis, watching, guessed they were marking a landing site. But it was twice the size needed by a ’copter such as the one now standing beyond. Then Ashe settled with his back against a tree, reading a bulging notebook, while Ross brought out a roll of felt and opened it.

What he uncovered was a set of five stone points, beautifully fashioned, too long to be arrowheads. Travis recognized their distinctive shape by the pattern of their flaked edges! Far better workmanship than the later productions of his own people, yet much older. He had held their like in his hands, admired the artistry of the forgotten weapon maker who had patiently chipped them into being. Folsom points! They were intended to head the throwing spears of men who went up against mammoth, giant bison, cave bear, and Alaskan lion.

“Folsom man here?” He saw Ross glance toward him, Ashe’s attention lift from the notebook.

Ross picked up the last point in that row, held it out to Travis. He took it carefully. The head was perfect, fine. He turned it over between his fingers and then paused—not sure of what he knew, or why.

“Fake.”

Yet was it? He had handled Folsom points and some, in spite of their great age, had been as perfectly preserved as this one. Only—this did not feel right. He could give no better reason for his judgment than that.

“What makes you think so?” Ashe wanted to know.

“That one was certified by Stefferds.” Ross took up the second point from the line. But Travis, instead of being confounded by that certification from the authority on prehistoric American remains, remained sure of his own appraisal.

“Not the right feel to it.”

Ashe nodded to Ross, who picked up the third stone head, offering it in exchange for the one Travis still held. The new point was, to all examination by eye, a copy of the first. Yet, as he ran a forefinger along the fine serrations of the flaked edge, Travis knew that this was the real thing, and he said so.

“Well, well.” Ross studied his store of points. “Something new had been added,” he informed the empty space before him.

“It’s been done before,” Ashe said. “Give him your gun.”

For a moment it seemed as if Ross might refuse. He frowned as he drew the weapon. The Apache, putting down the Folsom point with care, took the weapon and examined it closely. Though it looked much like a revolver, Travis noted enough differences to set it totally apart. He sighted it at a tree trunk and found that when held correctly for firing, the grip was not altogether comfortable. The hand for which it had been fashioned was not quite like his own.

Another difference grew in his mind the longer he held the weapon. He did not like that odd sensation . . .

Travis laid the gun down beside the flint point, staring at them with astonished eyes. From both of them he had gained a common impression of age—a wide expanse of time separating him from the makers of those two very dissimilar weapons. For the Folsom point that feeling was correct. But how could the gun give him the same answer? He had come to rely on that peculiar unnamed sense of his. Its apparent failure now was disconcerting.

“How old is the gun?” asked Ashe.

“It can’t be—” Travis protested. “I won’t believe that it is as old—or older—than the spearhead!”

“Brother”—Ross regarded him with an odd expression—“you can call ’em!” He reholstered the gun. “So now we have a time guesser, chief.”

“Such a gift is not too uncommon,” Ashe commented absently. “I’ve seen it in operation before.”

“But a gun can’t be that old!” Travis still objected. Ross’s left eyebrow raised in a sardonic arc as he gave a half-smile.

“That’s all you know about it, brother,” he observed. “New recruit?” That was addressed to Ashe. The latter was frowning, but at Ross’s inquiry he smiled with a warmth that for a second or two made Travis uncomfortable. It so patently advertised that those two were a long-established team, shutting him outside.

“Don’t rush things, boy.” Ashe stood up and went over to the com unit. “Any news from the front?”

“Cackle-cackle, yacketty-yak,” snorted the operator. “Soon as I tune out one band interference, we hit another. Someday maybe they’ll make these gadgets so they’ll operate without overloading a guy’s eardrums. No, nothing for us yet.”

Travis wanted to ask questions, a lot of them. But he was also sure that most would receive evasive answers. He tried to fit the gun into the rest of his jigsaw of surmises, hints, and guesses, and found it wouldn’t. But he forgot that when Ashe sat down once more and began to talk archaeologist’s shop. At first Travis only listened, but soon he was being drawn more and more into answering, into giving opinions and once or twice daring to contradict the other. Apache lore, cliff ruins, Folsom man—Ashe’s conversation ranged widely. It was only after Travis had been led to talking freely with the pent-up eagerness of one who has been denied expression for too long, that he understood the other man must have been testing his knowledge.

“Sounds rugged, the way they lived then,” Ross observed at the conclusion of Travis’ story of the use of their present camp site by Apache holdouts in the old days.

“That, from you, is good,” Grant laughed. He snapped on his earphones once more as the com came to life. With one hand he steadied a pad on his knee and copied the message.

Travis studied the shadows on the cliffs. It was close to sundown now, and he was growing impatient. This was like being in a theater waiting for the curtain to go up—or lying in wait for trouble to come pounding around some bend.

Ashe took the scribbled page from Grant, checked it against more scribbles in his notebook. Ross was chewing on a long stem of grass, outwardly relaxed and almost sleepy. Yet Travis suspected that if he were to make a wrong move, Ross would come alert in an instant.

“You know this country must have been popping once,” Ross commented lazily. “That looks like a regular apartment house over there—with maybe a hundred, two hundred people living in it. How did they live, anyway? This is a small valley.”

“There’s another valley to the northwest with irrigation ditches still marked,” Travis replied. “And they hunted—turkey, deer, antelope, even buffalo—if they were lucky.”

“Now if a man had some way to look back into history he could learn a lot—”

“You mean by using Vis-Tex?” Travis asked with careful casualness, and had the satisfaction of seeing the other’s calm crack. Then he laughed, with an edge on his humor. “We Indians don’t wear blankets or feathers in our hair any more, and some of us read and watch TV, and actually go to school. But the Vis-Tex I saw in action wasn’t too successful.” He decided on a guess. “Planning to test a new model here?”

“In a way—yes.”

Travis had not expected a serious answer like that. And it had come from Ashe, plainly to the surprise of Ross. But his assent opened startling possibilities.

The Vis-Tex process for photographing the past from radiation echoes had been under development for more than twenty years. The process had been perfected to the stage where objects would appear on films exposed a week after they had disappeared from a given point. And Travis had been present on one occasion when an experimental Vis-Tex had been demonstrated by Dr. Morgan. But if they did have a new model which could produce a real reach back into history—! He drew a deep breath and stared at the cave-enclosed ruins before him. What would it mean to see the past again! Then he grinned.

“A lot of history will have to be rewritten in a hurry if you have one that works.”

“Not history as we know it.” Ashe drew out cigarettes and passed them. “Son, you’re a part of this now, whether or no. We can’t afford to let you go, the situation is too critical. So—you’ll be offered a chance to enlist.”

“In what?” countered Travis warily.

“In Project Folsom One.” Ashe lit his cigarette. “Headquarters checked you out all along the line. I’m inclined to think that providence had a hand in your turning up here today. It all fits.”

“Too well?” There was a frown line between Ross’s brows.

“No,” Ashe replied. “He’s just what he said he is. Our man reported from the Double A and from Morgan. He can’t be a plant.”

What kind of a plant? wondered Travis. Apparently he was being drafted, but he demanded to know why and for what. He thought he wasn’t hearing correctly when Ashe answered.

“We’re here to see the Folsom hunters’ world.”

“That’s a tall order, Doctor Ashe. You’ve got a super Vis-Tex if you can take a peek ten thousand years back.”

“Even farther back than that,” Ashe corrected him. “We aren’t sure yet.”

“Why the hush-hush? A look at some roaming primitive tribe should bring out the newsmen—”

“We’re more interested in other things than primitive tribesmen.”

“Such as where that gun came from,” agreed Ross. He was again rubbing his scarred hand. His eyes held the same bleakness Travis had noted in their first meeting on the rim of the canyon. It was the look of a fighter preparing for battle.

“You’ll have to take us on faith for a while,” Ashe cut in. “This is a strange business and a necessarily top-secret one, to use the patter of our times.”

They ate supper and Travis moved the pinto to the narrow lower end of the canyon, well away from the improvised landing field. Dusk had hardly closed in before the first of the cargo ’copters touched down. Soon he found himself as one of a line of men passing packages and boxes from the machine back to the shelter of the small grove. They worked without any waste motion at a speed which suggested that time was of the essence. Travis found that he had caught that need for haste from them. The first machine was stripped of its load, rose, and was gone only minutes before a second one came in to take its place. Again an unloading chain formed, this time for heavier boxes which required two men to handle them.

Travis’ back ached, his hands were raw by the time the fourth ’copter was freed and left. Four more men had joined their party, one coming in with each load, but there was little talk. All were concentrating on the unloading and storing of the material. In a period of lull after the departure of the fourth machine, Ashe came up to Travis accompanied by another man.

“Here he is.” Ashe’s hand closed on Travis’ shoulder, drawing him out to face the newcomer.

He was taller than Dr. Ashe, and there was no mistaking the air of command, or the power of those eyes which bored straight into the Apache. But after a long moment the big man smiled briefly.

“You’re quite a problem for us, Fox.”

“Or the missing ingredient,” corrected Ashe. “Fox, this is Major Kelgarries, at present our commanding officer.”

“We’ll have a talk later,” Kelgarries promised. “Tonight’s rather busy.”

“Clear the field!” called someone from the flare line. “Setting down.”

They plunged out of the path of the fifth ’copter and work started again. The Major, Travis noted, was right in line with the others when it came to tossing boxes around. There was no more time for talking.

Seven or eight loads, which was it? Travis tried to count them up, wriggling stiff fingers. It was still night but the flares had been extinguished. The men who had worked together now sat around the fire drinking coffee and wolfing sandwiches which had been delivered with their last cargo. They did not talk much and Travis knew they were as tired as he was.

“Bedtime, brother. And am I glad to hit the sack!” Ross said between yawns. “Need the makings—blankets—anything?”

Half stupid with fatigue, Travis shook his head. “Got my bedroll with m’saddle.” And he was asleep almost before he was fully stretched out.

In the day light of morning the camp looked disorganized. But men were already sorting out the material, working as if this was a task they had often done before. As Travis was helping to shift a large crate, he looked up to see the Major.

“Spare me a moment, Fox.” He led the way from the scene of activity.

“You’ve got yourself—and us—in a muddle, young man. Frankly, we can’t turn you loose—for your own sake, as well as ours. This project has to be kept under wraps and there are some very tough boys who would like to pick you up and learn what they could from you. So, we either take you all the way in—or put you on ice. It’s up to you which it is going to be. You’ve been vouched for by Doctor Morgan.”

Travis tensed. What had they raked up now? Memories cramped his belly. But if they’d been asking questions of Prentiss Morgan, they must know what happened last year—and why. Apparently they did, for Kelgarries continued:

“Fox, the time when anyone can afford prejudices is past—way past. I know about Hewitt’s offer to the University and what happened when he pressured to have you fired from the expedition staff. But prejudices can stretch both ways—you didn’t stand up to him very long, did you?”

Travis shrugged. “Maybe you’ve heard the term ‘second-class citizen,’ Major. How do you suppose Indians rate with some people in this country? To that crowd we are and we’ll always be dirty, ignorant savages. You can’t fight when the other fellow has all the weapons. Hewitt gave that grant to the University to do some important work. When he wanted me off, that was that. If I’d let Doctor Morgan fight to keep me on his staff, Hewitt would have snatched his check away again so fast the friction would have burnt the paper. I know Hewitt and what makes him tick. And Doctor Morgan’s work was more important—” Travis stopped short. Why in the world had he told the Major all that? It was none of Kelgarries’ business why he had quit and come back to the ranch.

“There aren’t many like Hewitt left—fortunately. And I assure you we do not follow his methods. If you choose to join us after Ashe briefs you, you’re one of a team. Lord, man”—the Major slapped his hand vigorously against his dusty breeches—“I don’t care if a man is a blue Martian with two heads and four mouths—if he can keep those mouths shut and do his job! It’s the job which counts here, and, according to Morgan, you have something useful to contribute. Make up your mind and let me know. If you don’t want to play—we’ll ship you out tonight, tell your brother that you’re on government work, and keep you quiet for a while. Sorry, but that’s the way it will have to be.”

Travis smiled at that promise. He thought he could get out of here safely on his own if he really wanted to. But now he prodded the Major a little.

“Expedition back to catch a Folsom man—” But Kelgarries might not have heard, for he had already turned away. Travis followed, to come upon Ashe.

The latter was engaged in assembling a tripod of slender rods. His care proclaimed the objects as brittle and precious. He glanced up as Travis’ shadow fell across his work.

“Decided to join us for a look-see into the past?”

“Do you really mean you can do that?”

“We’ve done more than look.” Ashe adjusted a screw delicately. “We’ve been there.”

Travis stared. He could accept the fact of a new and greatly improved Vis-Tex to provide a peephole into history and prehistory. But time travel was something else.

“It’s perfectly true,” Ashe finished with the screw. His attention passed from the tripod to Travis. His manner carried conviction.

“And we’re going back again.”

“After a Folsom man?” demanded the Apache incredulously.

“After a spaceship.”

This was no dream, not even a realistic one. There was Ashe, his fingers busy, his brown face outlined against the red and yellow walls of the cliff and the crumbling ruins they enclosed. This was here and now—yet what Ashe was saying, soberly, and in detail, was the wildest fantasy.

“ . . . so we discovered the Russians had time travel and were prospecting back into the past. What they dredged up there couldn’t be explained by any logic based on the history we knew and the prehistory we had pieced out. What we didn’t know then was that they had found the remains—badly smashed—of a spaceship. It was encased in the ice of Siberia, along with preserved mammoth bodies and a few other pertinent clues to suggest the proper era for them to explore. They muddied the trail as well as they could by establishing way stations in other periods of time. Then we chanced on one of those middle points. And the Russians themselves, by capturing our time agents, showed us the ship they were plundering some thousands of years earlier.”