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THE TIME TRADERS
BY ANDRE NORTON
_Science Fiction_
THE STARS ARE OURS!
STAR BORN
THE TIME TRADERS
_Historical Fiction_
YANKEE PRIVATEER
_Edited by Andre Norton_
BULLARD OF THE SPACE PATROL
SPACE SERVICE
SPACE PIONEERS
SPACE POLICE
_Andre Norton_
THE TIME
TRADERS
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
_Published by_ The World Publishing Company 2231 West 110th Street,
Cleveland 2, Ohio
_Published simultaneously in Canada by_ Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-11154_
SECOND PRINTING
2WP759
Copyright (c) 1958 by The World Publishing Company All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written
permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a
review appearing in a newspaper or magazine. Printed in the United
States of America.
Transcriber's note:
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on
this publication was renewed.
THE TIME TRADERS
CHAPTER 1
To anyone who glanced casually inside the detention room the young man
sitting there did not seem very formidable. In height he might have been
a little above average, but not enough to make him noticeable. His brown
hair was cropped conservatively; his unlined boy's face was not one to
be remembered--unless one was observant enough to note those light-gray
eyes and catch a chilling, measuring expression showing now and then for
an instant in their depths.
Neatly and inconspicuously dressed, in this last quarter of the
twentieth century his like was to be found on any street of the city ten
floors below--to all outward appearances. But that other person under
the protective coloring so assiduously cultivated could touch heights of
encased and controlled fury which Murdock himself did not understand and
was only just learning to use as a weapon against a world he had always
found hostile.
He was aware, though he gave no sign of it, that a guard was watching
him. The cop on duty was an old hand--he probably expected some reaction
other than passive acceptance from the prisoner. But he was not going
to get it. The law had Ross sewed up tight this time. Why didn't they
get about the business of shipping him off? Why had he had that
afternoon session with the skull thumper? Ross had been on the defensive
then, and he had not liked it. He had given to the other's questions all
the attention his shrewd mind could muster, but a faint, very faint,
apprehension still clung to the memory of that meeting.
The door of the detention room opened. Ross did not turn his head, but
the guard cleared his throat as if their hour of mutual silence had
dried his vocal cords. "On your feet, Murdock! The judge wants to see
you."
Ross rose smoothly, with every muscle under fluid control. It never paid
to talk back, to allow any sign of defiance to show. He would go through
the motions as if he were a bad little boy who had realized his errors.
It was a meek-and-mild act that had paid off more than once in Ross's
checkered past. So he faced the man seated behind the desk in the other
room with an uncertain, diffident smile, standing with boyish
awkwardness, respectfully waiting for the other to speak first.
Judge Ord Rawle. It was his rotten luck to pull old Eagle Beak on his
case. Well, he would simply have to take it when the old boy dished it
out. Not that he had to remain stuck with it later....
"You have a bad record, young man."
Ross allowed his smile to fade; his shoulders slumped. But under
concealing lids his eyes showed an instant of cold defiance.
"Yes, sir," he agreed in a voice carefully cultivated to shake
convincingly about the edges. Then suddenly all Ross's pleasure in the
skill of his act was wiped away. Judge Rawle was not alone; that blasted
skull thumper was sitting there, watching the prisoner with the same
keenness he had shown the other day.
"A very bad record for the few years you have had to make it." Eagle
Beak was staring at him, too, but without the same look of penetration,
luckily for Ross. "By rights, you should be turned over to the new
Rehabilitation Service...."
Ross froze inside. That was the "treatment," icy rumors of which had
spread throughout his particular world. For the second time since he had
entered the room his self-confidence was jarred. Then he clung with a
degree of hope to the phrasing of that last sentence.
"Instead, I have been authorized to offer you a choice, Murdock. One
which I shall state--and on record--I do not in the least approve."
Ross's twinge of fear faded. If the judge didn't like it, there must be
something in it to the advantage of Ross Murdock. He'd grab it for sure!
"There is a government project in need of volunteers. It seems that you
have tested out as possible material for this assignment. If you sign
for it, the law will consider the time spent on it as part of your
sentence. Thus you may aid the country which you have heretofore
disgraced----"
"And if I refuse, I go to this rehabilitation. Is that right, sir?"
"I certainly consider you a fit candidate for rehabilitation. Your
record--" He shuffled through the papers on his desk.
"I choose to volunteer for the project, sir."
The judge snorted and pushed all the papers into a folder. He spoke to a
man waiting in the shadows. "Here then is your volunteer, Major."
Ross bottled in his relief. He was over the first hump. And since his
luck had held so far, he might be about to win all the way....
The man Judge Rawle called "Major" moved into the light. At the first
glance Ross, to his hidden annoyance, found himself uneasy. To face up
to Eagle Beak was all part of the game. But somehow he sensed one did
not play such games with this man.
"Thank you, your honor. We will be on our way at once. This weather is
not very promising."
Before he realized what was happening, Ross found himself walking meekly
to the door. He considered trying to give the major the slip when they
left the building, losing himself in a storm-darkened city. But they did
not take the elevator downstairs. Instead, they climbed two or three
flights up the emergency stairs. And to his humiliation Ross found
himself panting and slowing, while the other man, who must have been a
good dozen years his senior, showed no signs of discomfort.
They came out into the snow on the roof, and the major flashed a torch
skyward, guiding in a dark shadow which touched down before them. A
helicopter! For the first time Ross began to doubt the wisdom of his
choice.
"On your way, Murdock!" The voice was impersonal enough, but that very
impersonality got under one's skin.
Bundled into the machine between the silent major and an equally quiet
pilot in uniform, Ross was lifted over the city, whose ways he knew as
well as he knew the lines on his own palm, into the unknown he was
already beginning to regard dubiously. The lighted streets and
buildings, their outlines softened by the soft wet snow, fell out of
sight. Now they could mark the outer highways. Ross refused to ask any
questions. He could take this silent treatment; he _had_ taken a lot of
tougher things in the past.
The patches of light disappeared, and the country opened out. The plane
banked. Ross, with all the familiar landmarks of his world gone, could
not have said if they were headed north or south. But moments later not
even the thick curtain of snowflakes could blot out the pattern of red
lights on the ground, and the helicopter settled down.
"Come on!"
For the second time Ross obeyed. He stood shivering, engulfed in a
miniature blizzard. His clothing, protection enough in the city, did
little good against the push of the wind. A hand gripped his upper arm,
and he was drawn forward to a low building. A door banged and Ross and
his companion came into a region of light and very welcome heat.
"Sit down--over there!"
Too bewildered to resent orders, Ross sat. There were other men in the
room. One, wearing a queer suit of padded clothing, a bulbous headgear
hooked over his arm, was reading a paper. The major crossed to speak to
him and after they conferred for a moment, the major beckoned Ross with
a crooked finger. Ross trailed the officer into an inner room lined with
lockers.
From one of the lockers the major pulled a suit like the pilot's, and
began to measure it against Ross. "All right," he snapped. "Climb into
this! We haven't all night."
Ross climbed into the suit. As soon as he fastened the last zipper his
companion jammed one of the domed helmets on his head. The pilot looked
in the door. "We'd better scramble, Kelgarries, or we may be grounded
for the duration!"
They hurried back to the flying field. If the helicopter had been a
surprising mode of travel, this new machine was something straight out
of the future--a needle-slim ship poised on fins, its sharp nose lifting
vertically into the heavens. There was a scaffolding along one side,
which the pilot scaled to enter the ship.
Unwillingly, Ross climbed the same ladder and found that he must wedge
himself in on his back, his knees hunched up almost under his chin. To
make it worse, cramped as those quarters were, he had to share them with
the major. A transparent hood snapped down and was secured, sealing them
in.
During his short lifetime Ross had often been afraid, bitterly afraid.
He had fought to toughen his mind and body against such fears. But what
he experienced now was no ordinary fear; it was panic so strong that it
made him feel sick. To be shut in this small place with the knowledge
that he had no control over his immediate future brought him face to
face with every terror he had ever known, all of them combined into one
horrible whole.
How long does a nightmare last? A moment? An hour? Ross could not time
his. But at last the weight of a giant hand clamped down on his chest,
and he fought for breath until the world exploded about him.
He came back to consciousness slowly. For a second he thought he was
blind. Then he began to sort out one shade of grayish light from
another. Finally, Ross became aware that he no longer rested on his
back, but was slumped in a seat. The world about him was wrung with a
vibration that beat in turn through his body.
Ross Murdock had remained at liberty as long as he had because he was
able to analyze a situation quickly. Seldom in the past five years had
he been at a loss to deal with any challenging person or action. Now he
was aware that he was on the defensive and was being kept there. He
stared into the dark and thought hard and furiously. He was convinced
that everything that was happening to him this day was designed with
only one end in view--to shake his self-confidence and make him pliable.
Why?
Ross had an enduring belief in his own abilities and he also possessed
a kind of shrewd understanding seldom granted to one so young. He knew
that while Murdock was important to Murdock, he was none too important
in the scheme of things as a whole. He had a record--a record so bad
that Rawle might easily have thrown the book at him. But it differed in
one important way from that of many of his fellows; until now he had
been able to beat most of the raps. Ross believed this was largely
because he had always worked alone and taken pains to plan a job in
advance.
Why now had Ross Murdock become so important to someone that they would
do all this to shake him? He was a volunteer--for what? To be a guinea
pig for some bug they wanted to learn how to kill cheaply and easily?
They'd been in a big hurry to push him off base. Using the silent
treatment, this rushing around in planes, they were really working to
keep him groggy. So, all right, he'd give them a groggy boy all set up
for their job, whatever it was. Only, was his act good enough to fool
the major? Ross had a hunch that it might not be, and that really hurt.
It was deep night now. Either they had flown out of the path of the
storm or were above it. There were stars shining through the cover of
the cockpit, but no moon.
Ross's formal education was sketchy, but in his own fashion he had
acquired a range of knowledge which would have surprised many of the
authorities who had had to deal with him. All the wealth of a big city
library had been his to explore, and he had spent much time there,
soaking up facts in many odd branches of learning. Facts were very
useful things. On at least three occasions assorted scraps of knowledge
had preserved Ross's freedom, once, perhaps his life.
Now he tried to fit together the scattered facts he knew about his
present situation into some proper pattern. He was inside some new type
of super-super atomjet, a machine so advanced in design that it would
not have been used for anything that was not an important mission. Which
meant that Ross Murdock had become necessary to someone, somewhere.
Knowing that fact should give him a slight edge in the future, and he
might well need such an edge. He'd just have to wait, play dumb, and use
his eyes and ears.
At the rate they were shooting along they ought to be out of the country
in a couple of hours. Didn't the Government have bases half over the
world to keep the "cold peace"? Well, there was nothing for it. To be
planted abroad someplace might interfere with plans for escape, but he'd
handle that detail when he was forced to face it.
Then suddenly Ross was on his back once more, the giant hand digging
into his chest and middle. This time there were no lights on the ground
to guide them in. Ross had no intimation that they had reached their
destination until they set down with a jar which snapped his teeth
together.
The major wriggled out, and Ross was able to stretch his cramped body.
But the other's hand was already on his shoulder, urging him along. Ross
crawled free and clung dizzily to a ladderlike disembarking structure.
Below there were no lights, only an expanse of open snow. Men were
moving across that blank area, gathering at the foot of the ladder. Ross
was hungry and very tired. If the major wanted to play games, he hoped
that such action could wait until the next morning.
In the meantime he must learn where "here" was. If he had a chance to
run, he wanted to know the surrounding territory. But that hand was on
his arm, drawing him along toward a door that stood half-open. As far as
Ross could see, it led to the interior of a hillock of snow. Either the
storm or men had done a very good cover-up job, and somehow Ross knew
the camouflage was intentional.
That was Ross's introduction to the base, and after his arrival his view
of the installation was extremely limited. One day was spent in
undergoing the most searching physical he had ever experienced. And
after the doctors had poked and pried he was faced by a series of other
tests no one bothered to explain. Thereafter he was introduced to
solitary, that is, confined to his own company in a cell-like room with
a bunk that was more comfortable than it looked and an announcer in a
corner of the ceiling. So far he had been told exactly nothing. And so
far he had asked no questions, stubbornly keeping up his end of what he
believed to be a tug of wills. At the moment, safely alone and lying
flat on his bunk he eyed the announcer, a very dangerous young man and
one who refused to yield an inch.
"Now hear this...." The voice transmitted through that grill was
metallic, but its rasp held overtones of Kelgarries' voice. Ross's lips
tightened. He had explored every inch of the walls and knew that there
was no trace of the door which had admitted him. With only his bare
hands to work with he could not break out, and his only clothes were the
shirt, sturdy slacks, and a pair of soft-soled moccasins that they had
given him.
"... to identify ..." droned the voice. Ross realized that he must have
missed something, not that it mattered. He was almost determined not to
play along any more.
There was a click, signifying that Kelgarries was through braying. But
the customary silence did not close in again. Instead, Ross heard a
clear, sweet trilling which he vaguely associated with a bird. His
acquaintance with all feathered life was limited to city sparrows and
plump park pigeons, neither of which raised their voices in song, but
surely those sounds were bird notes. Ross glanced from the mike in the
ceiling to the opposite wall and what he saw there made him sit up, with
the instant response of an alerted fighter.
For the wall was no longer there! Instead, there was a sharp slope of
ground cutting down from peaks where the dark green of fir trees ran
close to the snow line. Patches of snow clung to the earth in sheltered
places, and the scent of those pines was in Ross's nostrils, real as the
wind touching him with its chill.
He shivered as a howl sounded loudly and echoed, bearing the age-old
warning of a wolf pack, hungry and a-hunt. Ross had never heard that
sound before, but his human heritage subconsciously recognized it for
what it was--death on four feet. Similarly, he was able to identify the
gray shadows slinking about the nearest trees, and his hands balled into
fists as he looked wildly about him for some weapon.
The bunk was under him and three of the four walls of the room enclosed
him like a cave. But one of those gray skulkers had raised its head and
was looking directly at him, its reddish eyes alight. Ross ripped the
top blanket off the bunk with a half-formed idea of snapping it at the
animal when it sprang.
Stiff-legged, the beast advanced, a guttural growl sounding deep in its
throat. To Ross the animal, larger than any dog he had even seen and
twice as vicious, was a monster. He had the blanket ready before he
realized that the wolf was not watching him after all, and that its
attention was focused on a point out of his line of vision.
The wolfs muzzle wrinkled in a snarl, revealing long yellow-white teeth.
There was a singing twang, and the animal leaped into the air, fell
back, and rolled on the ground, biting despairingly at a shaft
protruding from just behind its ribs. It howled again, and blood broke
from its mouth.
Ross was beyond surprise now. He pulled himself together and got up, to
walk steadily toward the dying wolf. And he wasn't in the least amazed
when his outstretched hands flattened against an unseen barrier. Slowly,
he swept his hands right and left, sure that he was touching the wall of
his cell. Yet his eyes told him he was on a mountain side, and every
sight, sound, and smell was making it real to him.
Puzzled, he thought a moment and then, finding an explanation that
satisfied him, he nodded once and went back to sit at ease on his bunk.
This must be some superior form of TV that included odors, the illusion
of wind, and other fancy touches to make it more vivid. The total effect
was so convincing that Ross had to keep reminding himself that it was
all just a picture.
The wolf was dead. Its pack mates had fled into the brush, but since the
picture remained, Ross decided that the show was not yet over. He could
still hear a click of sound, and he waited for the next bit of action.
But the reason for his viewing it still eluded him.
A man came into view, crossing before Ross. He stooped to examine the
dead wolf, catching it by the tail and hoisting its hindquarters off the
ground. Comparing the beast's size with the hunter's, Ross saw that he
had not been wrong in his estimation of the animal's unusually large
dimensions. The man shouted over his shoulder, his words distinct
enough, but unintelligible to Ross.
The stranger was oddly dressed--too lightly dressed if one judged the
climate by the frequent snow patches and the biting cold. A strip of
coarse cloth, extending from his armpit to about four inches above the
knee, was wound about his body and pulled in at the waist by a belt. The
belt, far more ornate than the cumbersome wrapping, was made of many
small chains linking metal plates and supported a long dagger which
hung straight in front. The man also wore a round blue cloak, now swept
back on his shoulders to free his bare arms, which was fastened by a
large pin under his chin. His footgear, which extended above his calves,
was made of animal hide, still bearing patches of shaggy hair. His face
was beardless, though a shadowy line along his chin suggested that he
had not shaved that particular day. A fur cap concealed most of his
dark-brown hair.
Was he an Indian? No, for although his skin was tanned, it was as fair
as Ross's under that weathering. And his clothing did not resemble any
Indian apparel Ross had ever seen. Yet, in spite of his primitive
trappings, the man had such an aura of authority, of self-confidence,
and competence that it was clear he was top dog in his own section of
the world.
Soon another man, dressed much like the first, but with a rust-brown
cloak, came along, pulling behind him two very reluctant donkeys, whose
eyes rolled fearfully at sight of the dead wolf. Both animals wore packs
lashed on their backs by ropes of twisted hide. Then another man came
along, with another brace of donkeys. Finally, a fourth man, wearing
skins for covering and with a mat of beard on his cheeks and chin,
appeared. His uncovered head, a bush of uncombed flaxen hair, shone
whitish as he knelt beside the dead beast, a knife with a dull-gray
blade in his hand, and set to work skinning the wolf with appreciable
skill. Three more pairs of donkeys, all heavily laden, were led past the
scene before he finished his task. Finally, he rolled the bloody skin
into a bundle and gave the flayed body a kick before he ran lightly
after the disappearing train of pack animals.