 10. Having been cuffed and battered into submission more quickly than would have been possible three weeks earlier, Murdoch now stood sullenly surveying a man who, though he dressed like a beaker trader, persisted in using a language Ross did not know. We do not play as children here. At last a man spoke words Ross could understand. You will answer me, or else others shall ask the questions, and less gently. I say to you now, who are you, and from where do you come? For a moment Ross glowered across the table at him, his inbred antagonism to authority aroused by that contiguous demand. But then common sense caution, his initial introduction to this village had left him bruised, and with one of his headaches. There was no reason to let them beat him until he was in no shape to make a break for freedom, when and if there was an opportunity. I am Ross of the traitors, he returned, eyeing the man with a carefully measured stare. I came into this land in search of my kinsmen who were taken by raiders in the night. The man who sat on a stool by the table smiled slowly. Again he spoke in a strange tongue, and Ross merely stared stolidly back. His words were short and explosive-sounding, and the man's smile faded. His annoyance grew as he continued to speak. One of Ross's two guards ventured to interrupt, using the beaker language. From where did you come? He was a quiet-faced, slender man, not like his companion, who had roped Murdoch from behind, and was of the bully breed, able to subdue Ross's wildcat resistance in a very short struggle. I came to this land from the south, Ross answered, after the manner of my people. This is a new land with furs and golden tears of the sun to be gathered and bartered. The traitors move in peace, and their hands are raised against no man. Yet in the darkness there came those who would slay without profit. For what reason I have no knowing? The quiet man continued to questioning, and Ross answered fully with details of the past of one Rossa, a beaker merchant. Yes, he was from the south. His father was Gerdy, who had a trading post in the warm lands along the Big River. This was Ross's first trip to open new territory. He had come with his father's blood brother Asha, who was a noted bar voyager, and it was an honor to be chosen as donkey leader for such a one as Asha. With Asha had been Macta, one who was also a far trader, though not as noted as Asha. Of a certainty, Asha was of his own race. Ross blanked at that question. One need only to look upon him to know that he was of traitors' blood, and no uncivilized wood runner. How long had he known Asha? Ross shrugged. Asha had come to his father's post to winter before, and had stayed with them through the cold season. Gerdy and Asha had meagled blood after he pulled Gerdy free from the river in flood. Asha had lost his boat and trade goods in that rescue. So Gerdy had made good his lost this year. Detail by detail he gave the story. In spite of the fact that he provided these details glibly, since that they were true, Ross continued to be haunted by an odd feeling that he was indeed reciting a tale of adventure, which had happened a long ago and to someone else. Perhaps that pain in his head made him think that these events as very colorless and far away. It was seen the quiet man returned to the one behind the table, that this is indeed one Ross a beaker trader. But the man looked impatient and angry. He made a sign to the other guard who turned Ross around roughly and sent him towards the door with a shove. Once again the leader gave an order to in his own language, adding a few words more with a stinging snap that might have been a threat or a warning. Ross was thrust into a small room with a hard floor and not even a skin rug to serve as a bed. Since the quiet man had ordered removal of the ropes from Ross's arms, he leaned against the wall, rubbing the pain of returning circulation away from his wrist and trying to understand what had happened to him and where he was. Having spied upon it from the heights, he knew it wasn't an ordinary trading station and he wanted to know what they did here. Also somewhere in this village he hoped to find Asha and Makna. At the end of the day, his captors opened the door only long enough to push inside a bowl and a small jug. He felt for those in the dust, dipping his fingers into a lukewarm mush of meal and drinking the water from the jug avidly. His headache dulled and from experience Ross knew that this bout was almost over. If he slept, he would awaken with a clearer mind and no pain. Knowing he was very tired, he took the precaution of curling up directly in front of the door so that no one could enter without arousing him. It was still dark when he awoke with a curious urgency remaining from a dream he could not remember. Ross set up, flexing his arms and shoulders to combat the stiffness which had come with his cramped sleep. He could not rid himself of a feeling that there was something to be done and that time was his enemy. Asha, gratefully he seized on that. He must find Asha and Makna, for the three of them could surely discover a way to get out of this village. That was what was so important. He had been handled none too gently and they were holding him a prisoner. But Ross believed that this was not the worst which could happen to him here. And he must be free before the worst did come. The question was, how could he escape? His bow and dagger were gone. And he did not even have his long cloak pin for a weapon, since he had given that to Frigate. Running his hands over his body, Ross inventoried what remained of his clothing and possessions. He infested the bronze chain belt still buckled to his kilt tunic. Swinging the length spectatively, in one hand, a masterpiece of craftsmanship. It consisted of patterned plates linked together with a series of five finely wrought chains and a front buckle in the form of a lion's head. His protruding tongue served as a hook to support a dagger sheath. Its weight promised a weapon of sorts, which when added to the element of surprise might free him. By rights, they would be expecting him to produce some opposition. However, it was well known that only the best fighters, the shrewdest minds, followed the traitors roads. It was a proud thing to be a traitor in the wilderness. They thought that warm Ross now as he waited in the dark for what luck and ball ball of the bright horns would send. Were he ever to return to Gertie's post ball ball, whose boat rode across the sky from dawn to dusk would have it find ox jars of the first brewing and sweet swelling amber laid upon his altar. Ross had patients which he had learned from the mixed heritage of his two pasts, the real and the false craft. He could wait as he had waited many times before quiet and without word ease for the right moment to come. It came now with footsteps ringing sharply halting before his cell door. With the noiseless speed of a hunting cat Ross plung himself from behind a door to a wall where he would be hidden from the newcomer for that necessary instant or two. If his tack was to be successful, it must occur inside the room. He heard the sound of a bar being slid out of his brackets, and he poised himself. The belt rippling from his right hand. The door was opening inward, and a man stood silhouetted against the outer light. He murmured, looking toward the corner where Ross had thrown his single garment in a roll which might just resemble for the needed second or two, a man curled in slumber. The man in the doorway took the bait. Coming forward far enough for Ross to send the door slamming shut as he himself sprang with the belt aimed for the other's head. There was a startled cry cut off in the middle as a belt plates met flesh and bone in a crushing force. Luck was with him. Ross caught up his kilt and belted it around him after he had made a hurried examination of the body now lying at his feet. He was not sure that the man was dead, but at any rate he was completely unconscious. Ross stripped off the man's cloak and located his dagger, freed it from the belt hook and snapped it on his own. Then inch by inch, Ross edged to open the door, peering through the crack. As far as he could see the hall was empty. So he jerked the portal open and dagger in hand, spring out, ready for attack. He closed the door, flipping the bar back into his brackets. As the man inside revived and pounded for attention, his own friends might think it was Ross and delay investigating. But to escape from the cell was the easiest part of what he planned to do as Ross well knew. To find Asia and Macta in this maze of rooms occupied by the enemy was far more difficult. Although we had no idea in which of the village buildings they might be confined. This one was the largest and seemed to be the headquarters of the chief men, which meant it could also serve as their prison. Light came from a torch in a bracket halfway down the hall, the wood burned smokily giving off a resonance odor. And to Ross, the glow was sufficient illumination. He slipped along as close to the wall as he could, ready to freeze at the flight of sound. But this portion of the building might well have been deserted. For he saw or heard no one. He tried the other two doors opening out of the hall, but they were secured on the other side. Then he came to a bend in the corridor and stopped short, hearing a murmur of low voices. If he had used a hunter's tricks of silent tread and vigilant weariness before, Ross was doubly on guard now as he wiggled to a point from which he could see beyond that turn. Mere luck prevented him from giving himself away a moment later. Asha. Asha alive? Well, apparently under no restraint, but just turning away from the same quiet man who had had a part in Ross's interrogation. That was surely Ross's brown hair, his slender, wiry body draped with a beaker's kilt. A familiar tilt of the head convinced Ross, though he could not see the man's face. The quiet man went down the hall, leaving Asha before a door. As he passed through it, Ross sped forward and followed him inside. Asha had crossed the bare room and was standing on a glowing plate in the floor. Ross aroused his too desperate action by some fear he did not understand, leaped after him. His left hand fell upon Asha's shoulder, turning the man half around as Ross too stepped upon the patch of luminescence. Murdock had only an instant to realize that he was staring into the face of an astonished stranger. His hand flashed up in an edgewise blow, which caught the other on the side of the throat. And then the world came apart about them. There was a churning, whirling sickness which ripped and bent Ross almost double across the crumbled body of his victim. He held his head lest it be torn from his shoulders by the spinning thing which seemed base behind his eyes. The sickness endured only for a moment, and some varied part of Ross's mind accepted it as a phenomenon he had experienced before. He came out of it gasping to focus his attention once more on the man at his feet. The stranger was still breathing. Ross stooped to drag him from the plate and began binding and gagging him with legs torn from his kilt. Only when his captive was secure did he begin looking about him curiously. The room was bare of any furnishings, and now as he glanced at the floor, Ross saw that the plate had lost its glow. The beaker trader, Ross, a rubbed sweating palms on his kilt and thought believingly a forced ghost and other mysteries. Knocked at the trader's bow to those ghosts, which were the plague of lesser men and tribes, but anything which suddenly appeared and then disappeared without any logical explanation needed thinking on. Murdock pulled the prisoner who was now reviving to the far end of the room, and then went back to the plate with the persistence of a man who refused to treat with ghost and wanted something concrete to explain the unexplainable. Though he rubbed his hands across the smooth surface of the plate, it did not light up again. His captain, having ripped himself half out of the corner of the room, Ross debated the wisdom of another silencing. Say a tap on the skull with the heavy hilt of his dagger. Deciding against it because he might need a guide, he freed the victim's ankle bonds and pulled him to his feet, holding the dagger ready where the man could see it. Were there any more surprises to be encountered in this place, Ashes Devil would test them first. The door did not lead to the same quarter, or even the same kind of quarter, Ross had passed through moments earlier. Instead, they entered a short passage with walls of some smooth stuff which had almost a sheen of polished metal and were sleek and cold to the touch. In fact, the whole place was chill. Chill its river water in the spring. Still hurting the prisoner before him, Ross came to the nearest door and looked within. To be faced by incomprehensible frames of metal rods and boxes, Rossa of the traders marveled and stared. But again, he realized that what he saw was not altogether strange. Part of one wall was a board on which small lights flashed and died, to flash again in wakes of bright color. A mysterious object made a wire and disk hung across the back of a chair standing nearby. The bound man lurched for the chair and fell, rolling toward the wall. Ross pushed him on until he was hidden behind one of the metal boxes. Then he made the rounds of the room, touching nothing, but studying what he could not understand. Pust of warm air came in through grills near the floor, but the room had the same general chill as a hall outside. Meanwhile, the lights on the board had become more active, flashing on and off in complex patterns. Ross had heard a buzzing as if a swarm of angry insects were gathering for an attack. Crouching beside his captive, Ross watched the lights, trying to discover the source of the sound. The buzz grew shriller, almost demanding. Ross heard the tramp of heavy foot gear in the corridor, and a man entered the room, crossing purposely to the chair. He sat down and drew the wire and disk frame over his head. His hands moved under the lights, but Ross could not guess what he was doing. The captive at Murdoch's side tried to stir, but Ross's hand pinned him quiet. The shrill noise, which had originally summoned the man at the lights, was interrupted by a sharp pattern of long and short sounds, and his hands flew even more quickly, while Ross took in every detail of the other's clothing and equipment. He was neither a shaggy tridesman nor a trader. He wore a dull green outer garment cut in one piece to cover his arms and legs as well as his body. And his hair was so short that his round skull might have been shaven. Ross rubbed the back of his wrist across his eyes, experiencing again that dim other memory. Odd as this man looked, Murdoch had seen his like before somewhere. Yet the background had not been Gertys' post in the southern river, where and when had he, Rossa, ever been with such strange beings? And why could he not remember it all more clearly? Boots sounded once more in the hall, and another figure strode in. This one wore furrs, but he too was no woods' hunter. Ross realized as he studied the newcomer in detail. The loose overshirt, a thick furr with his hood thrown back, the high boots, and all the rest were not of any primitive fashioning. And the man had four eyes. One pair were placed normally on either side of his nose, and the other two, black rimmed and murky, were set above on his forehead. The furr clad man tapped the one seated at the board. He freed his head partially from the wire cage so that they could talk together in a strange language while lights continued to flash and the buzzing died away. Ross's catty wiggled with renewed vigor and at last thrust free a foot to kick at one of the metal installations. The resulting clang brought both men around. The one at the board tore his head cage off as he jumped to his feet while the other brought out a gun. Gun? One little fraction of Ross's mind wandered at his recognition of that black thing and of the danger it promised, even as he prepared for battle. He pushed his captive across the past as the man inferred and threw himself in the other direction. There was a blast to make a torment in his head as he hurled towards the door. So intent was Ross upon escape that he did not glance behind, but skidded out on his hands and knees, thus fortunately presenting a poor target to the third man coming down the hall. Ross's shoulder hit the newcomer at thigh level and they tangled in a struggling mass which saved Ross's life as the others burst out behind him. 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 ranks snapped about his wrist. Then he was rolled back to lie blinking up at his enemies. All three men gathered over him, marking questions which he could not understand. One of them disappeared and returned with Ross's former captain. His mouth a straight line and a light in his eyes Ross understood far better than words. You are the traitor prisoner, the man who looked like Ash had leaned over Murdock, patches of red on his tanned skin for the gag and wrist bonds had been. I am Ross, son of dirty, of the traitors. Ross returned, meeting what he read in the others expression with a ready defiance. I was a prisoner, yes, but you did not keep me one for a very 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 a ring of an order in his voice. They pulled Ross to his feet, pushing him ahead of them. During the short march, Ross used his eyes, noticing 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 furclad guard for the other two to put on similar garments. Ross had lost his cloak in the fight, but no first shirt was given him. He shivered more and more as a chill which hung to that warrant 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 and how he had come here. 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 along which all the colors of the rainbow rained. There was a round door, and when one of the guards used both hands to tug it open, the cold it swept in at them was a frigid breath that burned as it touched bare skin. This concludes the reading of chapter 10. The Times Traders by Andre Norton, chapter 11. This is Leverbox Recording. All Leverbox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Leverbox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. The Times Traders by Andre Norton, chapter 11. It took Ross a while to learn that the dirty white walls of this tunnel which were almost entirely opaque with dark objects showing dimly through them here and there were a solid ice. A black wire was hooked overhead and at regular intervals hung with lights which did nothing to break the sensation of glacier or cold about them. Ross shuttered. Every breath he drew stung in his lungs. His bare shoulders and arms and the exposed section of thigh between kilt and boot were numb. He could only move on stipply, pushed ahead by his guards when he faltered. He guessed that where he'd lose his footing here and surrender to the cold he would forfeit the battle entirely and with it his life. He had no way of measuring the length of the boring through the solid ice but they were last fronted by another opening a ragged one which might have been hacked with an axe. 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 surrounded completely to the brutal force of winter in a strange abnormal way. It was a still, dead, white gray world in which nothing moved save the wind with curled adrift. His guards covered their eyes with the murky lenses they had worn pushed up on their foreheads within the shelter. For above them sunlight dazzled on the ice chest. Ross, his eyes smarting, kept his gaze centered on his feet. He was given no time to look about. A rope was produced. A loof of it flipped in a noose about his throat and he was towed along like at least stone. Before them was a past 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 least 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 numb now to feel the additional cold of the snow snow so hard that his 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 firm 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 slid past a man who led him sliding down the slope of a glass-slicked 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 opened the rings about his wrist. 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 now 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 Ross the traitor was content to lie there to yield to the legacy born of the frigid world about him but the subconscious Ross murduck to the project prodded at him. He had always had a certain cold hatred which would crystallize and become 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 crevice like 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 captor's 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 it 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 rudder's path from which they had tumbled him. Even if he could there was no sense in going along that rudder trail for it led back to the ice in case building from which he had been brought. They had thrust him out to die. They would not take him in. But he rode as 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 down upon this land only to be gnawed in return. Rounding one of those rock fangs Ross looked at a stretch of level ground. Snow lie there 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 the 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 realized 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 major 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. He 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 passengers to remain unseen from the stair but he had gone only partway 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 a stupefied wonder. Lying on a soft surface he was enfolded by a warp 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 he sleep thin to waking. He lay with his eyes closed fitting together odd bits of dreams. No, he was certain that they were memories. Ross of the beaker traders and Ross Murduck 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 missed it at the edges and the 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 a 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 red line like a long heel scar that was all. Ross lifted his head to look about him. His body lay supported in a cradle like arrangement of metal almost entirely immersed in a red gelatinous substance with a clean aromax odor. Just as he was no longer cold neither was he hungry. He fell to spit as he ever had in his life. Setting up in the cradle he stroked a 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 features in the small cylinder like chamber besides that odd bed in which he had lain. Two bucket shaped seats were placed at the narrow four part of the room and before these 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 which brought 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 his fastening. Ross shook out a garment of material such as he had never seen before. Its sheen and satin smooth surface suggested metal but his stuff was as supple as fine silk. Color rippled across it with every twist and turn he gave to the length. Dark blue faded to pail violet accented with wavering streets of vivid and startling green. Ross experimented with a row of small brilliant green studs which made a traverse line from the right shoulder to the left hip and they came apart. As he climbed into the suit the stuff molded to his body in a tight but perfect fit. Across the shoulders were bands of green to mask the studs and the stocking like tights were sold with a thick substance which formed a cushion for his feet. He pressed the studs together felt them lock and it 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 red time post. 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 reds had taken him with this one. At the sound of another soft noise Ross glanced over his shoulder just at time to see the cradle of jelly from which he had emerged closed in upon itself until his bulk was a third of its former size compact as a box it folded up against the wall. Ross his cushion 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 shape 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 Milard and Kilgaris has staked the entire project. This was a source or one of the sources from which the Reds 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 polished 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 covered 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 haphazard globe he had seen from his sickness at 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 portray such an opening. I went 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 for the cradle had swung before it had folded itself away. Wrapping 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 hooked 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 widened 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 enclosed chamber as a bullet is shot from a rifle barrel. But why? Ross's imagination jumped from fact to theory. The torpedo craft could be an atomic jet. 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 beings who had to leave the building in a hurry. In other words a lifeboat. But why would a building need a lifeboat? That would be rather 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 reds? The fact spitted they fitted so well with all he had been able to discover that Ross was sure it was true. But he determined to prove it beyond all doubt. He closed the door leading to the lifeboat berth but not so security that he could not open it again. That was too good a hiding place. On his cushion 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 other bucket seats. Only these swung in webbing. He put his hand on one and it bobbed elastically. The control board 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 malador. He left the vantage point by the stairs and paced between the control boards and their empty swunging 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 airborne craft. But a civilization so advanced as this would surely have left some remains. Ross was willing to believe that he could be much further back in time than 2000 BC. But he was still sure that tracers of those who had built a thing like this would have existed in the 20th century AD. Maybe that was how the Reds had found this. Something they had turned up within their country. Say in Siberia. Or some of the forgotten corners of 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 over odd Ross. More than he would admit. If the project could find this turn loose on it 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, some way he had to get back. How did this half buried ship and ice bound world back to where he could find his own people. Perhaps 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 uncorkable 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. This concludes the reading of Chapter 11. The Time Traders by Andre Norton Chapter 12. This is a Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org. Recording by R. J. Davis. The Time Traders by Andre Norton Chapter 12. 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 and became stronger to Ross's senses as he waited intentionally 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 and Ross struck. Knowing as his hand chopped against the folds of a fur hood that he had failed but the emphasis 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 brought himself perhaps a yard 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 he would deflect bullets if some sharpshooter tried to wing him by ricochet. Every so often there was a 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 their 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 a point from which the ship had been sailed in the air or in some now frozen sea. These control blowers must have given the ship's master the means not only of propelling the basketball 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 successfully. Both filled 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 with a sense 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 20 slowly as he waited for a reaction. Below the switch was an oval button marked with two wiggles on 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 the button did not push in or move up or down Ross pulled him out without even waiting to count off. This time he had results. A crackling of noise with a singsong rhythm the volume of which low at first arose to a drone filled a cabin. Ross deafened by the dim twisted first one lever and then the other until he had brought the noise to a less piercing howl. But he needed action not just noise. He moved from behind the first chair to the next foot. 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 on a crosshatch. Why make a choice? Wrecklessness bubbled to the surface and Ross pushed all the buttons in rapid succession. The results were in a major spectacular. Out of the top of the control board rose a triangle of screen which steadied and stood firm while across it played a rickling wave of color. Meanwhile the singsong became an angry squawking as if in 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 shot 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 cork 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 mouth at the immediate result. The cream of 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. Only he was also 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 the face was more preposterously nonhuman. The visage on the screen was sharply triangular with a small sharply pointed chin and a jawline 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 shiny 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, squeak, squawk. The creature in the mirror on a vision plate or outside the window moved its absurdly small mouth and time to those sounds. Ross swallowed again and automatically made an answer. Hello! His voice was a weak whistle and perhaps it did not reach the furry face one. For he continued his questions if questions they were. Meanwhile, Ross over his first superfaction tried to see something of the creature's background. 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 a smooth dome of his skull. When one would become accustomed to that egg's 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 say anything. Instead he stared at Ross long and measuringly. His eyes growing colder and less friendly with every second of that examination. Ross had resented Kilgaris back at the project but the major could not mask Baldy for the sheer weight of unpleasant warning 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 get across and proved to Baldy that he could 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 the attack on the barricade too late by the time he turned around the cork 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 furclad reds climbed into the control chamber. Ross recognized the leader as Ash'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 Murdoch around bringing his hands down behind him to clamp his wrist together. Once again Ross fronted the screen and saw Baldy watch in 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 and his hands whipped back and forth restoring to other silence both screen and room. What are you? The man who might have been Ash 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 the ship. Let that worry the red. But they did not try to answer him. At a signal he was led to the stair to send 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. Keeping a gun on him carefully 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 his 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 manikuling his hands and dropping a noose leash on him so they were taking him back to their post here. Well in the post was a time transporter which could return him to his own kind. It would be it must be possible to get to them. He gave his captors no more trouble but trudged outwardly dispirited along the rutted way through the snow of 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 human in any way he knew. Ross chewed on that as he walked. He believed that those with him were looting the ship of his cargo and by its size that cargo must be a large one. But cargo from where? Made by what hands? What kind of hands? En route to what port? And how had the Reds 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 Reds job here by activating the communication system of the derelict and calling the attention of its probable owners to his fate. He also believed that the owners might take steps to regain their property. Baldy 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 Reds guessing as long as he could and hoped 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 roundavoo 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 Reds. As they approached the post Ross realized how much skill had gone into its construction. It looks 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 but a thick core of its own substance. Ross was shoved through the white wall tunnel to the building beyond. He was hurried through the chain of rooms to a door and thrust through his hand 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 the faint thud a dull and hollow sound. Who is here? He used the beaker speech determined 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 meat began again. Ross stepped cautiously forward and by the simple method of running face full into the walls discovered that he was in a bare cell. He also discovered that the noise lay behind the left hand wall and 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. Others came in a quick rain. It was if someone were digging. Were the Reds engaged in enlarging their icebound headquarters? Having listed 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 up on the results of labor was that the extent of the excavation or the continued preservation of secrecy. Ross slipped down along the wall. His shoulder still resting against it and rested with his head twisted so he could hear the tapping. Meanwhile he flexed his wrist inside the hoops which confined him and folded his hands as small as possible tried to slip them through the range. The only result was that he chaffed the 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 conditioning device. With no hope of relief Ross rubbed his hands back and forth against the wall scraping the hoops on his wrist. The distant pounding had ceased and this time the pause lengthened into so long a period that Ross fell asleep. His head falling forward on his chest. His raw wrist still pushed against the surface behind him. He was hungry when he awoke and with that hunger his rebellion sparked 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 open 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 ignored 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. Agent Double and a quiet man who had questioned him back in the other time station. The third clearly won a greater authority regarded Ross bleakly. Who are you? The quiet man asked. Ross, son of Gertie 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 minute before you refuse my young friend. He raised his hand from his left and once again Ross faced an automatic. Ah, I see that you know what I hold. Odd knowledge for an innocent broad-aged trader and please have no doubts about my hesitation to use this. I shall not kill you naturally, the man continued, but there are certain wounds which supply a maximum of pain and little serious damage. Remove his park at Khrushchev. Once more Ross was unmanical. The first trip 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 was Childros. Major Chilgaris had displayed his like. Ash had it in another degree and certainly had it been present in Baldy. There was no doubt that the speaker met exactly what he said. He had at his command methods which would ring 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 a 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 save 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 would 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 the dangerous with an expression of complete lack of comprehension 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 skill for Ross possessed no illusions concerning the type of examiner he now faced he was never to know. Perhaps a drastic interruption that occurred the next moment saved for Ross a major of self-esteem. There was a distant boom hollow and thunderous underneath and around him 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. This concludes the reading of chapter 12 The Time Traders by Andre Norton Chapter 13 This is a Lieberbach recording All Lieberbach recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit Lieberbach.org Recording by RJ Davis The Time Traders by Andre Norton Chapter 13 Ross swayed against a guard was fended off and bounced against the wall as a 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 spelt and he was thrust into safe keeping with no ceremony. He had 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 ranch was really bad. Ross found himself lying on the floor feeling tremors rippling along the earth. His stomach nodded convulsively with a fear unlike any he had known before. It was if the very security of the world had been jerked from under him but that last explosion if it was an explosion appeared to be the end. Ross set 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 heading towards it on his hands and knees when a sharp noise behind him brought him to a stop. There was no light to see by but he was certain that this 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 perhaps a foot from his head there sounded a rip of metal. The wall was being whole from the other side. Ross caught a flicker of very weak light and moving in it was the point of a tool pulling 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 went 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. Asya! Ross was unprepared for what followed his cry. The lean brown man moved with a panther striking speed and Ross was forced back. A hand like a steel ring on his throat shut the breath away from his bursting lungs. The other's muscular body held him flat in spite of his struggles. The light of the small flies 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? Asya's quick voice was muffled by another sudden explosion. This time the earth tremors not only hurled him from their feet but seemed to run along the walls and across the ceiling. Ross, bearing 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 ash. 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 ash 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 were parked under. Glacier? Ash's explanation was as explosive as a tremor. So we're inside a glacier. That explains it. Yes, we've been here. On ice, McNeil commented and then left, glacier? Ice? That's right, isn't it? We're collaborating, ash 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 surprised 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, I disagree. 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 the end of this iceberg 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. Ross was ready enough to respond to that order. But they were stopped by a crackless sound. That could be only one thing. Rapid fire guns. Somewhere in this war, 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 reds. If so, would the ship people distinguish between those found here? He feared not. The room outside was clear, but not for long. As I lay watching, two men backed in, then the world 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 crack. The man nearest Ross gave a queer little cough and folded forward to his knees, sprawling 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. Ash 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 with Neil Comet 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? Ash caught him up swiftly. The big one, the reds have been looting. Ship, echoed by Neil. And where did you get that rig? In the bright light, it was easy to see Ross's alien dress. But Neil 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 reds. 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, commanded Neil bitterly out of the dark. I never did care for blind men's bluff. The transfer plate Ross clung to his own plan of escape if we can reach that. The light which had served Ash and McNeil in their tunneling clicked on. Since the earth shocks appeared to be over for a while, they moved on. With Ash in the lead and McNeil bringing up the rear, Ross hoped Ash knew the way. The sound of fighting had died out, so one side or another 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 unearingly to what he sought as Ash did. Only he did not lead them to the room with a 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 Ash caught up avidly, thrusting two in the front of his baggy tunic, passing the third to McNeil. Then he sped about trying to coverage on the walls, but all were locked. His hand falling from the last latch, Ash came back to the door where Ross waited. To the plate, Ross urged, Ash surveyed the coverage once more regretfully. If we could have just ten minutes here, McNeil sorted. 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. Let's get out now. The kid is right about that, if we still can. Once more, Ash took the lead and they wove through ghostly rooms to what must have been the heart of the post, the transfer port. To Ross's unvoiced relief, the plate was glowing. He had been nagged by the fear that when the light blew out, the transfer plate might also have been affected. He jumped for the plate. Neither Ash nor McNeil wasted time enjoying him there. As they clung together, there was a cry from behind them. Underlined by a shot, Ross, feeling Ash's sag against him, caught him in his arm. By the reflected glow of the plate, he saw the red leader of the post and behind him, his hairless face hanging oddly body-less in a gloom was the alien. Were those two now allies? Before Ross could be sure that he had really seen them, the racking of spacetime caught him and the rest of the room faded away. Free, get a move on. Ross glanced across Ash's bowed shoulders to McNeil's excited face. The other was pulling at Ash, who would only have 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 major 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 Ash 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 Ash's wound. Although he was still groggy, he was fighting, driven by the fear which put them all. Time was one of the foremost enemies. Ross, Ash's gun in hand, kept watch on the transfer plate, ready to shoot at anything appearing there. That will have to do, Ash pulled free from McNeil. We must move. He hesitated and then pulled 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 Ash 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 whisperer a sound. Ross's phone sold feet none at all. He could not have found a door to the outer world, but again, Ash guided them and only once did they have to seek cover. At last they faced a barred door. Ash leaned against the wall, McNeil supporting him, as Ross pulled free the locking beam. They let themselves out into the night. Which way, McNeil asked. To Ross's surprise, Ash did not turn to the gate in the outer socket. Instead he gestured at the mountain wall in the opposite direction. They'll expect us to try for the valley pass. So we'd better go up the slope there. That has a look of a tough climb, Benchard McNeil. Ash 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 on their own efforts that night. He was sure the resolution would have been equal to the attempt, but their escape would have depended from on a fabulous run of luck such as men seldom encounter. As it was, they had just reached a pool of shadow beside a small hut, some 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 sphere of radius, the roof sprouted tongues of more natural red and yellow flames. Figures shot from doors as the fire left down the peak of the roof. Now, in spite of the rising clamor, Asher's voice carried to his two companions. The three sprinted for the fallow side, mingling with bewildered men who ran out of the other cabins. The waves of fire washed on, providing light, too much light. Asher McNeil could pass as part of the crowd, but Ross's unusual clothing might be easily marked. Others were running for the wall. Ross and McNeil boosted ash to the top, saw him over and safely. 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 ash and McNeil were waiting for him or had gone ahead. Hearing that strange cry again, Ross leaked 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 ash 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 his 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 ash and McNeil, and that he would never be able to pick up the trail in the wilderness ahead. Thankful for the dark suity war, which was protective covering in the night, he twice ducked into the brush to allow parties of refugees to pass him. Hearing them speak to guttural clicking speech, he had learned from opus people Ross deduced that they were innocent of the village's real purpose. These people were convinced that they had been attacked by night demons. Perhaps there had only been a handful of reds in that hidden retreat. Ross pulled himself up a hard climb and, pausing to catch his breath, looked back. He was not overly surprised to see figures moving leisurely about the village, examining the cabins. Perhaps in search of the inhabitants. Each of these 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 walls of flame, apparently unconcerned and unsensed by the heat. The human beings trapped in the town wailed and ran, or lay and beat their heads and hands on the ground. So fine before the invaders. Each captive was dragged back to a knot of aliens near the main building. Some were whorled 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 reds. Ross had no desire to learn the particulars. He started climbing again, finding the pass at last. Beyond, the ground fell away again, and 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, too hungry, to keep on his feet without stumbling, and a fall in the dark at 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 stave of pain cutting into his side with every breath he drew. He awoke all at once with the snap of a fighting man who was alert to the ever-present danger. A hand lay warm and hard over his mouth, and above it his eyes make him kneel. When he saw that Ross was awake, but kneel 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. Ash, 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, but McNeil spoke jerkily using beaker speech. Ash was out of his head some of the time. That hole in his shoulder is worse than we thought it was, and there's always a 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 browned. I don't know just what happened back there, but it certainly must have been plenty. Ross swallowed a very dry mouthful of drain, and then stooped 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, Ash 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 has happened lately, he was willing to go along with the idea as long as he could. Gathering up more snow, he stepped it into his mouth before he followed the already disappearing McNeil. This concludes the reading of chapter 13. The Time Traders by Andre Norton, chapter 14. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. The Time Traders by Andre Norton, chapter 14. That's my half of it, the rest of it, you know. Ross held his hand close to the small fire, sheltered in the pit he had helped dig, and flexed his cold-none fingers in the warmth. From across the handful of flames, Ash's eyes, too bright in a fever-plus space, watched him demandingly. The fugitives had taken cover in an angle where the mass remains of an old ambulance provided a cave pocket. McNeil was off scouting in the gray drizzle of the day, and their escape from the village was now some 48 hours behind them. So the crack pots were right after all. They only had their times mixed. Ash shifted on the bed of brush and leaves they had raked together for his cover. I don't understand. Flying saucers. Ash returned with an odd little laugh. It was a wild possibility, but it was on the books from the start. This certainly will make Kilgarry's turn red. Flying saucers? Ash must be out of his head from the fever, Ross supposed. He wondered what he should do if Ash 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 Ash down in a real fight. That globe ship was never built on this world. Use your head, Murdoch. Think about your furry-faced friend and the baldy with him. Did either look like normal terns to you? But a spaceship. It was something that had so long been laughed to scorn when men had failed to break into space after the initial excitement of the satellite lodgings. Spaceflight had become a matter for jeers. On the other hand, there was the evidence collected by his own eyes and ears. His own experience. The services of the lifeboat had been techniques outside of his experience. This was insinuated once. Ross was lying flat now, gazing spectatively at the projection of logs and earth which made them a partial room. Along with a lot of other ideas, by a gentleman named Charles Fork, who took a lot of pleasure in pricking what he considered to be vastly overinflated scientific pomposity. He gathered together four book clothes 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. And now perhaps we may prove it true. 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 embedded 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 Reds went visiting. That ice began about a million years before we were born. And the last of the ice ebbed out of New York State some 38,000 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. Climatic changes, geographical changes, all altered the face of our continents. There was a sea in Kansas, England was part of Europe. So even those as many as 56 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 really intelligent man 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 Counter? 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. How did the Indian civilizations of the New World learn to harden gold into a usable point for a cutting weapon? What was the secret of building possessed by the ancient Egyptians? Today you will find plenty of men argue these problems and have a hundred others. The Egyptians 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. Through our European ancestors of the Middle Ages, China was almost a legend. And the fact that Egyptians had successfully sailed around the Cape of Good Hope was unknown. Suppose our spaceforgers 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 starships 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 less strictly alone until it discovered spaceflight for itself. Yes, every one of Asia's suppositions made good sense and Ross was able to believe them. It was easier to think that both furry face and bald plate were inhabitants of another world than to think their kind existed on this planet before his own species was born. But how did the Reds locate that ship? Unless that information is on the tapes we were able to bring along, we shall probably never know. As said Drowsley, I might make one guess the Reds have been making an all-out effort for the past 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 tropical plants in their stomachs. This is if the beasts were given some deep freeze-treatment instantaneously. If in their excavations the Reds 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 Reds now? No ship's officers ever thought gently of pirates as their eyes closed. There were questions they flooded them that Ross wanted to ask. He smoothed the fabric on his arm. That stuff was clung so tightly to his skin, yet kept him warm without any need for more covering. If asked for a 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 the shelter and dropped two hairs at the edge of the fire. How goes it, he said, as Ross began to clean them? Reasonably well, as 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 asked her in a dry tone, and we have company, all right, lots of it. That brought ice 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 this side of the mountains. He 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, asked Muse, maybe, but McNeil did not sound convinced. The sooner we head downstream, the better. I hope the boys will have that sub waiting where they promised. We do possess one thing in our favor, the spring's floods are succeeding, and the high water should have plenty of rap material. We're actually back again. We'll make those five miles tomorrow. McNeil stirred uneasily, and Ross, having cleaved and splitted the hairs, swung them over the flames to broil. Five miles in this country, the younger man observed, is it pretty good today's march? He did not add, as he wanted to, for a well man. I will make it Ash Promise, 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. Ash 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 rap material marking the high water level of the spring flood. The migrations McNeil had reported were still in progress, and the three men hid twice to watch the passing of small family clans. Once a respectfully sized tribe, including wounded men, marched across their route, seeking a forward at the river. They've been badly mauled, McNeil whispered as they watched the people huddled along the water's edge, while scouts cast upstream and down, searching for a forward. When they returned with the news that there was no forward to be found, the tribe's men then sullenly went to work with plant axes and knives to make wraps. Pressure, they are on the run. Ash rested his chin on his good forehand 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 Oofa's kin either. I would 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, red sweeping them out, Ross suggested, or could the ship people? Ash started to shake his head and then went. I wonder. The creased between his level brows deepened. The axe 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. Axe 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. Tardars, McNeil was puzzled, this far west? Not Tardars, 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 axe people. Save that they move 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 riverbank rose close to the frenzy. The three men out of time were doubly uneasy. It was not for them to merely cross the river. They had to build a raft which would be water-worthly enough to take them downstream to the sea if they were lucky. And to build such a sturdy craft 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 had his heel. Since they lacked even the stone tools of the tribesmen, they were at a disadvantage. And Ross found he was hands and feet for ash, working under the others' close direction. Before night closed in, they had a good beginning and two sets of listed hands, as well as aching backs. When it was too dark to work any longer, ash 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, ash agreed. Those who built that blaze are insist numbers that they don't have to take precaution. 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 meadowland 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 planned this friendly, and we can't be here for too long. And we can't be here when they arrive. Ross stretched, reminiscing at the twinge of pain in his shoulders. His hands smarted and throbbed, and this was just the beginning of their task. If ash had been fit, they might have trusted two logs for support and swum downstream to hunt a safer place for the shipbuilding project. But he knew that ash could not stand such an effort. Ross slept that night mainly because his body was too exhausted to let him lie awake and worry. Ross, in the earliest dawn by McNeil, they both crawled down to the water's edge and struggled to bind stubbornly resisting saplings together, with cores twisted from bark. They reinforced them at crucial points with some strings torn from their kilts. The strips of rabbit hides saved from their kilts over the past few days. They worked with hunger gnawing at them, having no time now to hunt. When the sun was well westerd, they had a clumsily craft which floated sluggishly. Whether it would answer to either pole or improvised paddle, they could not know until they tried it. Ash, 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 and cupped hands, and gave a little sigh of relief as Ross wiped his face with wet grass, muttering something about Kilgaris, which neither of his companions understood. McNeil shoved off and the bobbing crass spun around dizzily as a 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 pulled furiously, but there were too many rocks and snagged trees projecting from the banks. Sharing that sweep of water with them and coming up fast was a full-sized tree. Twice as mad a branch is caught on some snag holding it back, and Ross breathes 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 ramp, 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 pooch did not meet bottom. The stake in his hands plunged into some pothole in the hidden riverbed. He heard McNeil cry out as he toppled into the water, gasping as a murky liquid flooded his mouth, choking him. Half days 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-climbs of a dark shadow. Was it the edge of the raft? He caught it it desperately, skinning his hands on rough bark dragged on by it, the tree. He blinked his eyes to clear them on water to try to see, but he could not pull his exhausted body high enough out of the water to see past a screen of roots. He could only cling to the small safety he had won, and hoped 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 rest himself free and trust again through the haphazard chance of making sure through the gathering dusk. Suddenly, a shocked jarred his body, and strained the arm he had thrust among the roots, ringing a cry out of him. He swung around and brushed footing under the water. The tree had caught on a shore snake. 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 under an open meadow flooded with moonlight. For a while he lay there, his cold shore 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 dullly, and then, though the ground upon which he lay, Ross felt as well as heard the pounding of hooves. Horses? Horses go over the mountains. Horses which might mean danger. His mind seemed as dull and numb as his hands. And it took quite a long while for him to fully realize the menace horses might bring. Getting up, Ross noticed a winged shape sweeping across the disc 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 his prey. Then the barking sound was 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 towards 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 spoils sands per demand. Having reached the rising bank, he had climbed so laboriously before, Ross miscalculated and tumble back, rolling down into the mud of the reed bed. Mechanically, he wiped the slime from his face. The tree was still anchored there, but some freaks of current had rammed its rooted end up on a sand split. Above in the meadow the barking sounded very close, and now it was anchored 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 had escaped for 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 tone. He was then joined by a larger and even more vocal companion. The dogs grew even with Ross, who wondered dolly if the animals could sight him in the shadows below, or whether they only sent his presence. Had he 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 worms' progress across the reed bed had liberally bespared his dark clothing and master skin of his face and hands, giving him better cover than any 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 split, saw nothing but the trunk of the tree wedged against the mound of mud. Ross heard a confused murmur of voices broken by the clamor of the dogs. Then the torch was raised at a line of his dazzled eyes. He saw one of the indistinct figures above cuff away a dog and move off, calling the hounds after him. Reluctantly, still barking, the animals went. Ross with a little sob subsided limply in the uncomfortable net of roots still undiscovered. This concludes the reading of chapter 14.