Firehand

by Andre Norton

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  Firehand by Andre

  Norton and P.M. Griffin

  1

  ROSS MURDOCK'S EYES flickered to the dancing flames of the small

  fire he had made. Fire. The ancient symbol of home and hearth. The

  source of warmth and light. Humanity's ally against the dark and the

  things, real and imagined, that haunted it. Man's friend. Man's enemy.

  Fire could hurt, too, as evidenced by his scorched face and hands.

  Even in that, it was his aide. Pain, clean physical agony, cut through

  the chain of mental compulsion with which the starmen were attempting

  to bind and draw him to their will.

  Anger flickered inside him, leaping up like the tongues of his fire. The

  aliens had hunted him for days now, followed him inexorably as he had

  struggled downriver in his desperate effort to reach this rendezvous point.

  They had sought him, and they had turned the awesome powers of their

  minds against him in an attempt to break him, to force him to return to

  them. Every step he had taken had been a battle against his own body, and

  when he had been forced to yield to the need for sleep, he had been

  compelled to bind himself to a tree or root so as not to turn back in his

  unconscious state and deliver himself up to them.

  His head raised. Injured, hungry, exhausted, he had still made it. He

  had come too late, but he was here. He was free, and he had beaten their

  first attack.

  He would stay free. Whether he managed by some miracle to return to

  his own time or was fated to remain in the Bronze Age, whether he lived

  for long years more or died relatively soon from want or violence, he would

  perish through an agency born of his own Earth. The Baldies would not

  have him and would not rule him.

  Murdock glanced at the weapon he grasped in his right hand. It did not

  look like much to set against the crippling force of the aliens, only a

  burning brand pulled from his driftwood fire, but it would do the job—if

  he had the courage to use it.

  They attacked again, determined to crush his inexplicable resistance,

  but Ross had braced himself against the agony exploding in his head. His

  mind remained his own. He could think, and he could control the muscles

  he must use.

  His left hand was splayed on the broad surface of the boulder beside

  him. Deliberately, ruthlessly, he lowered the flaming head of the brand…

  Ross sat up, stifling the cry that had shocked him awake. His heart was

  still racing from the horror of the dream, and it was several moments

  before he could completely grip himself.

  Blast those Baldies! Blast every one of their thrice-accursed kind! He

  had no trouble facing the memory of that first clash of wills during his

  waking hours, but all too often, his sleeping mind seized on the terror and

  the pain.

  Well, this time, it had been his own fault. If he had been spent after his

  morning's exertions, he should have refreshed himself with a swim instead

  of stretching out under this tree like some tourist on holiday back on

  Terra.

  The Time Agent came to his feet and walked down the broad beach

  until he reached the edge of the sea. He breathed deeply, letting the clear

  air drive out the last clinging shadows of the unpleasant dream.

  The scene before him was beautiful, but he studied it somberly, without

  any feeling of the pleasure it would have invoked under other

  circumstances.

  Vivid blue sky merged at the horizon with endless blue ocean, which

  tapered to an exquisite turquoise here in the shallows. The water was

  warm, perfect for swimming with no even momentary shock of body heat

  meeting chill liquid upon entering it. The air, too, was perfect, hot but so

  freshened by the constant sea breezes that it never stifled or exhausted.

  Everything was perfect on this Hawaika of the distant past. So damned

  perfect…

  Ross Murdock pressed the scarred fingers of his left hand against his

  forehead, but then he took hold of himself. They were trapped, irrevocably,

  and here they must stay for the remainder of their lives. He had to accept

  that and do what he could to make the best of it, to make some sort of

  meaningful life for himself.

  He could not! He could and would pull his weight, right enough, but

  there was nothing to hold him, absolutely nothing to which he could

  devote himself heart and mind, not since he and his comrades, human and

  dolphins, had joined forces with the local populace and driven off the

  interstellar invaders bent upon the annihilation of all this world's major

  life forms.

  For an instant, fire stirred in his pale gray eyes. Ever since he had

  perforce become part of the Project and traveled back to the dim past on

  his native Terra, he had clashed with those ancient, deadly star-traveling

  people he had called the Baldies from their enlarged, hairless heads. They

  were the enemies of his nightmare and subjects fit for nightmare with

  their high-tech weapons, their fearsome powers of mental control, and

  their seemingly absolute disregard for life forms other than their own.

  His head lifted. He had beaten them that time. He had been part of the

  team that had taken one of their starships and given it to Terra, that and

  a library of journey tapes which had opened for his own kind the stars and

  the planets circling them. He had helped to beat those same killers here.

  The light left him again, and he sighed. Hawaika had been one of the

  worlds to which the Baldies' tapes had brought Terran explorers. They had

  found a lotus planet lacking any large life forms or history of life—until he,

  Gordon Ashe, Karara Trehern, and her dolphin companions, Tinorau and

  Taua, had been drawn back into the planet's past, just at the time when

  the vicious earlier race was culminating their inexplicable plan to wipe the

  native life from existence. They had helped unite the peoples—for there

  were two distinct races—living here and had spearheaded the final attack

  that drove the invaders off. The loss of the gate through which they had

  come was proof of their ultimate success. Success and life for Hawaika,

  doom for him and his.

  The young man drew a long, shuddering breath. With their gate gone,

  they were sealed back in time, in this alien world's history, forever severed

  from their own age, their own people, their own work. Three months had

  passed since that great battle. Three months, and already it felt like three

  years. Or thirty…

  He scowled as a splash and laugh penetrated his reverie. A

  slender-bodied woman rose, leaped, out of the water some twenty yards

  out from him, followed in the next moment by two delighted silver-blue

  forms, rejoicing as only dolphins can in play.

  Ross waved because some reaction was expected of him, but he quickly
r />   turned away and began walking toward a rock formation farther down the

  beach where he might sit and think at peace for a while.

  The mission fate had set them had not proven a disaster for all of them,

  he amended his previous thoughts. The dolphins had adopted this time

  and world for their own, and Karara…

  Murdock shivered despite the heat of the day. This world and time had

  quite literally been made hers.

  In their battle to defeat the invaders, the human Terrans had joined,

  melded, with the three Foanna, the last remnant of the old, magical race

  who had once ruled Hawaika. Need had forced them to take that drastic

  step despite the danger that the effort might leave them somehow altered.

  He and his partner, Doctor Gordon Ashe, had come through whole. To be

  more precise, they had been rejected, cast off, by the Powers they had

  invoked. Not so Trehern. She had been judged and found worthy. Once

  again, he shuddered, and his eyes closed. When she had stepped forth

  again, she was something other than human.

  Ross made himself watch the trio again. Her personality remained, or it

  still remained. For that, he blessed whatever gods ruled the realms of time

  and space. He had never been able to like the woman, although he

  respected her skill and courage. That did not matter. They were comrades,

  fellow Terrans, humans amidst fine but alien peoples…

  Karara had been human. Now she was Foanna, or a shadow of the

  Foanna, and with every passing week, as she grew in the understanding

  and knowledge of the mysterious three, that difference seemed to increase

  within and about her.

  At first, he had believed this accursed planet had changed Gordon as

  well, not physically or in nature, but in the relationship they had shared

  since their first mission together. He, too, had been able to deal easily with

  the Foanna, and he was a scientist, eager to learn and able to throw

  himself into the work of learning. It had seemed to him that without the

  Project to bind them, Ross Murdock had very little to offer to such a man.

  The Time Agent's fingers tightened against the sun-warmed stone. He

  had little to offer Hawaika, either, now that her danger was over. He did

  not fit. His mind would not link with those of the Foanna, though they

  could read some part of his thoughts. Moreover, he did not want to give

  them greater access to his inner being and grudged even what they could

  take.

  Murdock smiled sadly. In his selfishness and self-pity, he had

  misjudged Ashe's response to their exile. Gordon might be able to use his

  time better, but he was very nearly as unhappy as Ross was himself.

  For starters, the man was an archeologist, not an anthropologist, and

  he had never been one of those lovers of pure theory who could sit back,

  joyfully pouring over the facts others had amassed as a miser did money

  he would never spend. He, too, had given himself to the Time Project and

  to the opening of the star worlds it had engendered. To be cut off from all

  that, to be forced into an observer's place, less than that, was as killing to

  him as it was to his more restless younger comrade.

  As for the bond between them, he had been a proper ass about that. It

  had not broken or lessened, merely altered in the manner of its

  manifestation under the very different conditions under which they were

  now compelled to function.

  That the archeologist spent a considerable amount of time with the

  Foanna was only to be expected given his education and interests and his

  good fortune in being able to communicate well with them. Lord of Time,

  Ross thought, unconsciously picking up Eveleen's phrase in the anguish

  and shame suddenly sweeping him, he should be on his knees in gratitude

  to them instead of nursing a jealousy even he recognized as childish. It

  was they who had finally succeeded in healing completely the terrible

  mental wound the older man had taken with the loss of Travis Fox and his

  colony. Ashe, unjustly, had held himself responsible for that, and the guilt,

  the pain of it, had very nearly destroyed him.

  "Ross!"

  He turned. "Gordon! Over here!"

  The other joined him. Ashe was maybe a head taller than Murdock and

  was some years his senior, but his body was as lean and hard, and as

  browned now by exposure to Hawaika's sun, although he had insisted that

  both of them keep covered for the most part lest rays stronger than nature

  had meant their skin to bear prove deadly to them in the long run.

  "Look at those three," Ross said, pointing to the woman and sea

  mammals with apparent pleasure, as if he had only been enjoying their

  antics. One thing for sure, he was not about to let himself be caught

  whimpering over a fate he could not change like some blasted spoiled

  adolescent.

  "They've found their home," Gordon agreed, smiling.

  He eyed his companion speculatively but then let his gaze wander along

  the beach to the tall-masted ship berthed at its farther end. "I watched

  you and Torgul today. It took you precisely two minutes and forty seconds

  to disarm him, and he's been training with a sword since the day he could

  first toddle. Even Eveleen would've been impressed."

  A sharp stab of regret raked Ross at the mention of the Project's tough

  little expert in ancient weapons and unarmed combat. He had to make

  himself laugh. "She'd tell me fair enough and push me on to working with

  some other instrument of mayhem."

  Still, he was pleased. It was Ashe who had insisted that he learn all he

  could from the people around them, particularly their combat and

  seafaring skills, as if he were preparing himself for another mission

  instead of merely warding off the deadly weight of time and trying to

  make himself a more salable commodity to better earn his keep…

  He had obeyed willingly enough, although without real heart. It was

  interesting work, at least, and the effort did keep his responses keen and

  his mind sharp. It also effectively preserved his sanity. Between struggling

  to acquire the fine points of the Rovers' weapons of war and self-defense

  and the handling of the ships that were their lives, it was precious little

  time he had to squander as he had this last quarter hour.

  Suddenly, guilt filled him, and he looked somberly at the archeologist.

  He owed this man so much. "I won't go back," he said abruptly, "not to

  what I was."

  "I never imagined you would." Murdock had been well on the road to

  the life of a petty criminal when the Project had discovered him, some six

  Terran years previously, a boy with the instincts of a clan chieftain or

  commando in an age where such talent was a detriment to all but very

  specialized groups such as theirs. Ross had proven to be one of the best

  finds they had made, maybe the best. "You've grown up, my young friend."

  His eyes sparkled. "Except in the matter of patience."

  "We'll need a lifetime of that," he responded quietly, suppressing the

  regret that threatened to flood his voice.

  "I don't know about that," his partner told him. "If I were you, I'd plan

  on exhibiting
my newfound abilities for Eveleen Riordan's approval a lot

  sooner than that. A matter of days might be a more realistic target."

  2

  MURDOCK FELT HIS chest, his stomach, tighten. He took a deep

  breath to steady himself, then met the other's blue eyes steadily. "Gordon,

  don't joke about that. I don't find it funny…"

  Ashe laughed. "Calm down, Ross Murdock. You've been feeling rather

  sorry for yourself, I fear, to the detriment of your thinking."

  "Go on." He would have liked to tell him in graphic detail where to put

  that remark, but it was accurate, and he was more interested in an answer

  right now than in verbally avenging the observation.

  "Consider the matter from the Project's point of view. Five experienced,

  very expensive Time Agents suddenly vanish, and in their place, a

  full-fledged Hawaikan civilization complete with hitherto equally

  nonexistent flora and fauna quite literally appears on the scene. What do

  you imagine their response should be?"

  "Put a gate up as fast as they could slap one together and get back to

  us." The hope withered in him. He did not dare let it run, not yet. "It's

  been three months, Gordon," he said simply.

  "Our time. Besides, there would be the little matter of dealing with the

  locals and then locating not only the right period but the precise time, the

  month and week and maybe even the day within it."

  Ross turned his gaze to the eternally tossing ocean. "Why didn't you say

  something before?"

  He sighed. "Because I couldn't be sure. There were so many ifs, so many

  things I just didn't know, so many suppositions and out-and-out guesses.

  You could accept permanent exile, Ross, but maybe years or a life of

  uncertainty and waiting—I wasn't about to do that to you. I was having

  too much of a taste of it myself."

  Murdock looked swiftly at him. "I'm sorry." His head lowered. "I haven't

  been much help."

  Gordon smiled. "You've done your share."

  "You said a matter of days?" the younger agent prompted, once more

  feeling the eagerness rising in him. Eagerness? He felt as if he were

  returning to life.

  He nodded. "The Foanna shared my opinion and have been helping me

  watch for some kind of signal that a breakthrough might be imminent."

  He grimaced. "To put it more accurately, I've been trying to help them.

  The Lady Ynvalda discovered something yesterday morning, the beginning