Time Traders tw-1

by Andre Norton

  “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.”

  3

  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.”

  The story made sense—in a crazy kind of way. Travis mechanically handed Ashe the small tool he was groping for in the tangled grass.

  “But how did the ship get there?” he asked. “Was there an early civilization on earth which had space travel?”

  “That was what we thought—until we found the ship. No, it was from the outside—a cargo freighter lost from some galactic run. Either this world was an astrogation menace of the same type as a reef at sea, or there was some other reason to cause forced landings here. We brought film from the Russian time station pinpointing about a dozen such wrecks. And some of those were on this side of the Atlantic.”

&nb
sp; “You’re planning to dig for one of those here?”

  Ashe laughed. “What d’you think we’d find after about fifteen thousand years and a lot of land upheaval, even local volcanic activity? We want our ship in as good condition as possible.”

  “To study?”

  “With caution. If you’d check with Ross Murdock he’d give you a good reason for the caution. He was one of our agents who was actually aboard the ship the Russians were plundering. When they cornered him in the control cabin, he accidentally activated the com system and called in the real owners. They weren’t too pleased with the Russians—came down and destroyed their time base on that level and then followed them through the other way stations, destroying each. Remember that hush-hush bang in the Baltic early this year? That was the ‘space patrol,’ or whatever they call themselves, putting finis to the Russian project. So far as we know they didn’t discover that we were and are interested in the same thing. So if we find our ship here, we walk softly along its corridors.”

  “You want the cargo?”

  “In part. But mostly we want the knowledge—what its designers had—the key to space.”

  The thrill of that touched Travis. Mankind had reached for the stars for three generations. Men had had small successes, many searing failures. Now—what were missions to the barren moon compared to star flight and what lay far out?

  Ashe, reading his expression, smiled. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

  The Apache nodded absently, gazing down the canyon. He tried to believe that somewhere around here, trapped in time, a wrecked star ship lay waiting for them. But he could not even visualize this country as it must have been in pluvial times. When rain fell most of the year, it must have made a morass of these lands. The retreating arms of shrinking glaciers lay not too far northward.

  “But why the Folsom points?” Out of the welter of facts and half facts he picked that as a starting point.

  “We’ve sent back agents disguised as pre-Celts, as Tartars—or their remote ancestors—as Bronze Age Beaker Traders, and in half a hundred other character parts. Now there’s a chance we may have to produce a few Folsom spearmen. One of the first and most important rules of this game, Fox, is that one does not interfere with time by introducing any modernisms. There must be no hint of our agents’ real identity. We have no idea what might happen if one meddled with the stream of history as we know it, and we trust we’ll never have to find out the hard way.”

  “Hunters,” Travis said slowly, hardly aware at that moment that he spoke at all. “Mammoth—mastodon—camels—the dire wolf—sabertooth—”

  “Why do all those interest you?”

  “Why?” Travis echoed and then stopped to examine his reasons. Why had his reaction to Ashe’s picture of the drifting prehistoric hunters in disguise been his own quick inner vision of a land peopled with strange beasts his own race had never hunted? Or had they? Had the Folsom hunters been his remote ancestors, as the pre-Celt and Beaker Trader Ashe mentioned been the other’s forefathers? He only knew that he had experienced a sudden thrust of excitement that lingered. He longed to see that world his own age knew only by the dim and often contradictory evidence of rocks, a handful of flint points, broken bones, the ancient smears of vanished cooking fires.

  “My people were hunters—long after yours followed another way of life,” he said, making the best answer he could.

  “Right.” Ashe’s told held a note of satisfaction. “Now—just reach me that rod.” He went back to the job at hand and Travis settled down as his somewhat bewildered assistant. The Apache knew that he had made the choice Kelgarries wanted—that he was going to be a part of this whole incredible adventure.

  The one thing he was sure of during the next two crowded days was that they were indeed working under pressure and against deadlines. Whether the unexplained threat which seemed to overhang the whole project came from outside the country or from fear of a policy change here at home, no one bothered to make clear. But Travis was willing to let it go at that. It was far more interesting and absorbing to work with Ross Murdock. They set the proper kind of shafts to the pseudo-Folsom spear points and then experimented with the spear thrower. This made the efficient weapons they finally turned out twice as powerful. A seven-foot javelin could be hurled a good hundred and fifty yards or more by the use of that two-foot shaft of the thrower. Travis knew that in close infighting it would add tremendous thrusting power. No wonder a party of hunters so armed dared to go against mammoth and other giant mammals of the period.

  In addition to the spears they had flint knives, the counterparts of those found in the debris of Folsom camp sites across most of western America. Travis did not know why he was so sure that he was actually going to use knife and spears and play the role of a wandering prehistoric hunter. Still, he was sure. He learned from Ross that the rest of the time agents’ equipment would not be assembled at the base until the experts had taped film reports out of the past to use as samples.

  On the third day Kelgarries and Ashe took a three-man expedition out of the canyon in one ’copter loaded to its limit. They were gone almost a week, and upon their return they hurriedly sent off tapes.

  Ashe joined Travis and Ross that same night. He lay down beside their fire with a sigh of weary pleasure.

  “Hit pay dirt?” Ross wanted to know.

  His chief nodded. There were dark smudges under his eyes and a fine, drawn look to his features. “The wreck is there, all right. And we located hunters on the fringe of the territory. But I think we can follow Plan One. The tribe is small and there doesn’t appear to be more than one. Our guess that the district was thinly populated must be correct. It won’t be necessary to really establish our scouts with the tribe—just let them keep track of wandering hunters.”

  “And the transfer?”

  Ashe glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Harvey and Logwood are assembling the new one. I give them about forty-eight hours. Headquarters will fly in the extra power packs tonight. Then our men go through. We haven’t the time to spend on finer points now. A working crew follows as soon as the scouts give the ‘all clear.’ H.Q. is analyzing the film reports. They’ll have the rest of the equipment to us as soon as possible.”

  Travis stirred. Who was going to be part of that scouting team into the far past? He wanted to ask that—to hope that he might be one. But what had happened a year ago to smash other plans, kept him tongue-tied now. Ross voiced that all-important question.

  “Who makes the first jump, chief?”

  “You—me—we’re on the spot. Our friend here, if he wants to.”

  “You mean that?” Travis asked slowly.

  Ashe reached for the waiting coffeepot. “Fox, as long as you don’t go loping off on your own to test that flint-tipped armory you’ve been constructing on the first available mammoth, you can come along. Mainly because you look the part, or will when we get through with you. And maybe you can adapt better than we can. Briefing for a time run used to take weeks. Ask Ross here; he can tell you what a cram course in our work is like. But today we haven’t weeks to spare. We’ve only days and they grow fewer with each sunrise. So we’re gambling on you, on Ross, on me. But get this—I’m your section leader, the orders come from me. And the main rule is—the job comes first! We keep away from the natives, we don’t get involved in any happenings back there. Our only reason for going through is to make as sure as we can that the technical boys are not going to be disturbed while they work on that wreck. And that may not be an easy job.”

  “Why?” Ross asked.

  “Because this ship didn’t make as good a landing as the one you saw the Russians stripping. According to the films we took through the peeper, there was a bad smash when it hit dirt. We may have to let it go altogether and track down Number Two on our list. Only, if we can come up with just one good find on board this one, we can stave off the objections of the Committee and get the appropriation for future exploration.”

  “Might
do to run one of the Committee through,” Ross remarked.

  Ashe grinned. “Want to lose your job, boy? Give ’em a good look around in some of the spots we’ve prospected and they’d turn up their toes—quick.”

  Just three days later a bright shaft of sunlight pierced a small side pocket of the canyon to spotlight the three as they worked under the critical eyes of a small, neat man. He regarded them intently through the upper half of his bifocals and made terse suggestions in a dry, precise voice. Stripping, they meticulously rubbed their skins with the cream their instructor had provided. That treatment turned their tanned, or naturally dark, skins into the leathery uniform brownness of men who wore very little clothing in any kind of weather.

  Ashe and Ross had been provided with contact lenses so that their eyes were now as dark brown as Travis’. And their closely cropped hair was hidden under wigs of straggling, coarse black locks which fell shoulder-length at the sides and descended like a pony’s mane between their shoulder blades.

  Then each took his turn flat on his back while the make-up artist, working from film charts, proceeded to supply his victims with elaborate patterns of simulated tattoos on chests, upper arms, chins, and upper cheekbones. Travis, undergoing the process, studied Ashe, who now represented the finished product. Had he not seen all the steps in that transformation, he would not have guessed that under that savage exterior now existed Dr. Gordon Ashe.

  “Glad we’re allowed sandals,” the same savage commented as he tightened the thongs which held about him a loincloth-kilt of crudely dressed hide.

  Ross had just thrust his bare feet into a pair of such primitive footwear. “Let’s hope they’ll stay on if we have to scramble, chief,” he said, eyeing them dubiously.

  Finished at last, the three stood in line to be checked by the make-up man and Kelgarries. The Major carried some furred skins over his arm, and now he tossed one to each of the disguised men.

  “Better hold on to those. It gets cold where you’re going. All right—the ’copter’s waiting.”