Ross fought to break that hold, to turn his head, to face the peril
which crept upon him now. Unlike anything he had ever met before in his
short lifetime, it could only have come from some alien source. This
strange encounter was a battle of will against will! The same rebellion
against authority which had ruled his boyhood, which had pushed him into
the orbit of the project, stiffened him to meet this attack.
He was going to turn his head; he was going to see who stood there. He
_was_! Inch by inch, Ross's head came around, though sweat stung his
seared and bitten flesh, and every breath was an effort. He caught a
half glimpse of the beach behind the rocks, and the stretch of sand was
empty. Overhead the birds were gone--as if they had never existed. Or,
as if they had been swept away by some impatient fighter, who wanted no
distractions from the purpose at hand.
Having successfully turned his head, Ross decided to turn his body. His
left hand went out, slowly, as if it moved some great weight. His palm
gritted painfully on the rock and he savored that pain, for it pierced
through the dead blanket of compulsion that was being used against him.
Deliberately he ground his blistered skin against the stone,
concentrating on the sharp torment in his hand as the agony shot up his
arm. While he focused his attention on the physical pain, he could feel
the pressure against him weaken. Summoning all his strength, Ross swung
around in a movement which was only a shadow of his former feline grace.
The beach was still empty, except for the piles of driftwood, the rocks,
and the other things he had originally found there. Yet he knew that
something was waiting to pounce. Having discovered that for him pain was
a defense weapon, he had that one resource. If they took him, it would
be after besting him in a fight.
Even as he made this decision, Ross was conscious of a curious weakening
of the force bent upon him. It was as if his opponents had been
surprised, either at his simple actions of the past few seconds or at
his determination. Ross leaped upon that surprise, adding it to his
stock of unseen weapons.
He leaned forward, still grinding his torn hand against the rock as a
steadying influence, took up a length of dried wood, and thrust its end
into the fire. Having once used fire to save himself, he was ready and
willing to do it again, although at the same time, another part of him
shrank from what he intended.
Holding his improvised torch breast-high, Ross stared across it,
searching the land for the faintest sign of his enemies. In spite of the
fire and the light he held before him, the dusk prevented him from
seeing too far. Behind him the crash of the surf could have covered the
noise of a marching army.
"Come and get me!"
He whirled his brand into bursting life and then hurled it straight into
the drift among the dunes. He was grabbing for a second brand almost
before the blazing head of the first had fallen into the twisted,
bleached roots of a dead tree.
He stood tense, a second torch now kindled in his hand. The sharp vise
of another's will which had nipped him so tightly a moment ago was
easing, slowly disappearing as water might trickle away. Yet he could
not believe that this small act of defiance had so daunted his unseen
opponent as to make him give up the struggle this easily. It was more
likely the pause of a wrestler seeking for a deadlier grip.
The brand in his hand--Ross's second line of defense--was a weapon he
was loath to use, but would use if he were forced to it. He kept his
hand mercilessly flat against the rock as a reminder and a spur.
Fire twisted and crackled among the driftwood where the first torch had
lodged, providing a flickering light yards from where he stood. He was
grateful for it in the gloom of the gathering storm. If they would only
come to open war before the rain struck....
Ross sheltered his torch with his body as spray, driven inward from the
sea, spattered his shoulders and his back. If it rained, he would lose
what small advantage the fire gave him, but then he would find some
other way to meet them. They would neither break him nor take him, even
if he had to wade into the sea and swim out into the lash of the cold
northern waves until he could not move his tired limbs any longer.
Once again that steel-edge will struck at Ross, probing his
stubbornness, assaulting his mind. He whirled the torch, brought the
scorching breath of the flame across the hand resting on the rock.
Unable to control his own cry of protest, he was not sure he had the
fortitude to repeat such an act.
He had won again! The pressure had fallen away in a flick, almost as if
some current had been snapped off. Through the red curtain of his
torment Ross sensed a surprise and disbelief. He was unaware that in
this queer duel he was using both a power of will and a depth of
perception he had never known he possessed. Because of his daring, he
had shaken his opponents as no physical attack could have affected them.
"Come and get me!" He shouted again at the barren shoreline where the
fire ate at the drift and nothing stirred, yet something very much alive
and conscious lay hidden. This time there was more than simple challenge
in Ross's demand--there was a note of triumph.
The spray whipped by him, striking at his fire, at the brand he held.
Let the sea water put both out! He would find another way of fighting.
He was certain of that, and he sensed that those out there knew it too
and were troubled.
The fire was being driven by the wind along the crisscross lines of
bone-white wood left high on the beach, forming a wall of flame between
him and the interior, not, however, an insurmountable barrier to
whatever lurked there.
Again Ross leaned against the rock, studying the length of beach. Had he
been wrong in thinking that they were within the range of his voice? The
power they had used might carry over a greater distance.
"Yahhhh--" Instead of a demand, he now voiced a taunting cry, screaming
his defiance. Some wild madness had been transmitted to him by the
winds, the roaring sea, his own pain. Ready to face the worst they could
send against him, he tried to hurl that thought back at them as they had
struck with their united will at him. No answer came to his challenge,
no rise to counter-attack.
Moving away from the rock, Ross began to walk forward toward the burning
drift, his torch ready in his hand. "I am here!" he shouted into the
wind. "Come out--face me!"
It was then that he saw those who had tracked him. Two tall thin
figures, wearing dark clothes, were standing quietly watching him, their
eyes dark holes in the white ovals of their faces.
Ross halted. Though they were separated by yards of sand and rock and a
burning barrier, he could feel the force they wielded. The nature of
that force had changed, however. Once it had struck with a vigorous
spear point; now it formed a shield of protection. Ross could not break
through that shield, and they dared not drop it. A stalemate existed
between them in this strange battle, the like of which Ross's world had
not known before.
He watched those expressionless white faces, trying to find some reply
to the deadlock. There flashed into his mind the certainty that while he
lived and moved, and they lived and moved, this struggle, this unending
pursuit, would continue. For some mysterious reason they wanted to have
him under their control, but that was never going to happen if they all
had to remain here on this strip of water-washed sand until they starved
to death! Ross tried to drive that thought across to them.
"Murrrrdock!" That croaking cry borne out of the sea by the wind might
almost have come from the bill of a sea bird.
"Murrrrdock!"
Ross spun around. Visibility had been drastically curtailed by the
lowering clouds and the dashing spray, but he could see a round dark
thing bobbing on the waves. The sub? A raft?
Sensing a movement behind him, Ross wheeled about as one of the alien
figures leaped the blazing drift, heedless of the flames, and ran
light-footedly toward him in what could only be an all-out attempt at
capture. The man had ready a weapon like the one that had felled Foscar.
Ross threw himself at his opponent in a reckless dive, falling on him
with a smashing impact.
In Ross's grasp the alien's body was fragile, but he moved fluidly as
Murdock fought to break his grip on the hand weapon and pin him to the
sand. Ross was too intent upon his own part of the struggle to heed the
sounds of a shot over his head and a thin, wailing cry. He slammed his
opponent's hand against a stone, and the white face, inches away from
his own, twisted silently with pain.
Fumbling for a better hold, Ross was sent rolling. He came down on his
left hand with a force which brought tears to his eyes and stopped him
just long enough for the other to regain his feet.
The blue-suited man sprinted back to the body of his fellow where it lay
by the drift. He slung his unconscious comrade over the barrier with
more ease than Ross would have believed possible and vaulted the barrier
after him. Ross, half crouched on the sand, felt unusually light and
empty. The strange tie which had drawn and held him to the strangers had
been broken.
"Murdock!"
A rubber raft rode in on the waves, two men aboard it. Ross got up,
pulling at the studs of his suit with his right hand. He could believe
in what he saw now--the sub had not left, after all. The two men running
toward him through the dusk were of his own kind.
"Murdock!"
It did not seem at all strange that Kelgarries reached him first. Ross,
caught up in this dream, appealed to the major for aid with the studs.
If the strangers from the ship did trace him by the suit, they were not
going to follow the sub back to the post and serve the project as they
had the Reds.
"Got--to--get--this--off--" He pulled the words out one by one, tugging
frantically at the stubborn studs. "They can trace this and follow
us--"
Kelgarries needed no better explanation. Ripping loose the fastenings,
he pulled the clinging fabric from Ross, sending him reeling with pain
as he pulled the left sleeve down the younger man's arm.
The wind and spray were ice on his body as they dragged him down to the
raft, bundling him aboard. He did not at all remember their arrival on
board the sub. He was lying in the vibrating heart of the undersea ship
when he opened his eyes to see Kelgarries regarding him intently. Ashe,
a coat of bandage about his shoulder and chest, lay on a neighboring
bunk. McNeil stood watching a medical corpsman lay out supplies.
"He needs a shot," the medic was saying as Ross blinked at the major.
"You left the suit--back there?" Ross demanded.
"We did. What's this about them tracing you by it? Who was tracing you?"
"Men from the space ship. That's the only way they could have trailed me
down the river." He was finding it difficult to talk, and the protesting
medic kept waving a needle in his direction, but somehow in bursts of
half-finished sentences Ross got out his story--Foscar's death, his own
escape from the chief's funeral pyre, and the weird duel of wills back
on the beach. Even as he poured it out he thought how unlikely most of
it must sound. Yet Kelgarries appeared to accept every word, and there
was no expression of disbelief on Ashe's face.
"So that's how you got those burns," said the major slowly when Ross had
finished his story. "Deliberately searing your hand in the fire to break
their hold--" He crashed his fist against the wall of the tiny cabin and
then, when Ross winced at the jar, he hurriedly uncurled those fingers
to press Ross's shoulder with a surprisingly warm and gentle touch. "Put
him to sleep," he ordered the medic. "He deserves about a month of it,
I should judge. I think he has brought us a bigger slice of the future
than we had hoped for...."
Ross felt the prick of the needle and then nothing more. Even when he
was carried ashore at the post and later when he was transported into
his proper time, he did not awaken. He only approached a strange dreamy
state in which he ate and drowsed, not caring for the world beyond his
own bunk.
But there came a day when he did care, sitting up to demand food with a
great deal of his old self-assertion. The doctor looked him over,
permitting him to get out of bed and try out his legs. They were
exceedingly uncooperative at first, and Ross was glad he had tried to
move only from his bunk to a waiting chair.
"Visitors welcome?"
Ross looked up eagerly and then smiled, somewhat hesitatingly, at Ashe.
The older man wore his arm in a sling but otherwise seemed his usual
imperturbable self.
"Ashe, tell me what happened. Are we back at the main base? What about
the Reds? We weren't traced by the ship people, were we?"
Ashe laughed. "Did Doc just wind you up to let you spin, Ross? Yes, this
is home, sweet home. As for the rest--well, it is a long story, and we
are still picking up pieces of it here and there."
Ross pointed to the bunk in invitation. "Can you tell me what is known?"
He was still somewhat at a loss, his old secret awe of Ashe tempering
his outward show of eagerness. Ross still feared one of those snubs the
other so well knew how to deliver to the bumptious. But Ashe did come in
and sit down, none of his old formality now in evidence.
"You have been a surprise package, Murdock." His observation had some
of the ring of the old Ashe, but there was no withdrawal behind the
words. "Rather a busy lad, weren't you, after you were bumped off into
that river?"
Ross's reply was a grimace. "You heard all about that!" He had no time
for his own adventures, already receding into a past which made them
both dim and unimportant. "What happened to you--and to the
project--and----"
"One thing at a time, and don't rush your fences." Ashe was surveying
him with an odd intentness which Ross could not understand. He continued
to explain in his "instructor" voice. "We made it down the river--how,
don't ask me. That was something of a 'project' in itself," he laughed.
"The raft came apart piece by piece, and we waded most of the last
couple of miles, I think. I'm none too clear on the details; you'll have
to get those out of McNeil, who was still among those present then.
Other than that, we cannot compete with your adventures. We built a
signal fire and sat by it toasting our shins for a few days, until the
sub came to collect us----"
"And took you off." Ross experienced a fleeting return of that hollow
feeling he had known on the shore when the still-warm coals of the
signal fire had told him the story of his too-late arrival.
"And took us off. But Kelgarries agreed to spin out our waiting period
for another twenty-four hours, in case you did manage to survive that
toss you took into the river. Then we sighted your spectacular display
of fireworks on the beach, and the rest was easy."
"The ship people didn't trace us back to post?"
"Not that we know of. Anyway, we've closed down the post on that time
level. You might be interested in a very peculiar tale our modern agents
have picked up, floating over and under the iron curtain. A blast went
off in the Baltic region of this time, wiping some installation clean
off the map. The Reds have kept quiet as to the nature of the explosion
and the exact place where it occurred."
"The aliens followed _them_ all the way up to this time!"--Ross half
rose from the chair--"But why? And why did they trail me?"
"That we can only guess. But I don't believe that they were moved by any
private vengeance for the looting of their derelict. There is some more
imperative reason why they don't want us to find or use anything from
one of their cargoes----"
"But they were in power thousands of years ago. Maybe they and their
worlds are gone now. Why should things we do today matter to them?"
"Well, it does matter, and in some very important way. And we have to
learn that reason."
"How?" Ross looked down at his left hand, encased in a mitten of bandage
under which he very gingerly tried to stretch a finger. Maybe he should
have been eager to welcome another meeting with the ship people, but if
he were truly honest, he had to admit that he did not. He glanced up,
sure that Ashe had read all that hesitation and scorned him for it. But
there was no sign that his discomfiture had been noticed.
"By doing some looting of our own," Ashe answered. "Those tapes we
brought back are going to be a big help. More than one derelict was
located. We were right in our surmise that the Reds first discovered the
remains of one in Siberia, but it was in no condition to be explored.
They already had the basic idea of the time traveler, so they applied it
to the hunting down of other ships, with several way stops to throw
people like us off the scent. So they found an intact ship, and also
several others. At least three are on _this_ side of the Atlantic where
they couldn't get at them very well. Those we can deal with now----"
"Won't the aliens be waiting for us to try that?"
"As far as we can discover they don't know where any of these ships
crashed. Either there were no survivors, or passengers and crew took off
in lifeboats while they were still in space. They might never have known
of the Reds' activities if you hadn't triggered that communicator on the
derelict."
Ross was reduced to a small boy who badly needed an alibi for some piece
of juvenile mischief. "I didn't mean to." That excuse sounded so feeble
that he was surprised into a laugh, only to see Ashe grinning back at
him.
"Seeing as how your action also put a very effective spike in the
opposition's wheel, you are freely forgiven. Anyway, you have also
provided us with a pretty good idea of what we may be up against with
the aliens, and we'll be prepared for that next time."
"Then there will be a next time?"
"We are calling in all time agents, concentrating our forces in the
right period. Yes, there will be a next time. We have to learn just what
they are trying so hard to protect."
"What do you think it is?"
"Space!" Ashe spoke the word softly as if he relished the promise it
held.
"Space?"
"That ship you explored was a derelict from a galactic fleet, but it was
a ship and it used the principle of space flight. Do you understand now?
In these lost ships lies the secret which will make us free of all the
stars! We must claim it."
"Can we----?"
"Can _we_?" Ashe was laughing at Ross again with his eyes, though his
face remained sober. "Then _you_ still want to be counted in on this
game?"
Ross looked down again at his bandaged hand and remembered swiftly so
many things--the coast of Britain on a misty morning, the excitement of
prowling the alien ship, the fight with Ennar, even the long nightmare
of his flight down the river, and lastly, the exultation he had tasted
when he had faced the alien and had locked wills--to hold steady. He
knew that he could not, would not, give up what he had found here in the
service of the project as long as it was in his power to cling to it.
"Yes." It was a very simple answer, but when his eyes met Ashe's, Ross
knew that it would serve better than any solemn oath.
SECOND PRINTING $3.00
The Time Traders
by ANDRE NORTON
If it is possible to conquer space, then perhaps it is also possible to
conquer time. At least that was the theory American scientists were
exploring in an effort to explain the new sources of knowledge the
Russians possessed. Perhaps Russian scientists had discovered how to
transport themselves back in time in order to learn long-forgotten
secrets of the past.
That was why young Ross Murdock, above average in intelligence but a
belligerently independent nonconformist, found himself on a "hush-hush"
government project at a secret base in the Arctic. The very qualities
that made him a menace in civilized society were valuable traits in a
man who must successfully act the part of a merchant trader of the
Beaker people during the Bronze Age.
For once they were transferred by time machine to the remote Baltic
region where the Russian post was located, Ross and his partner Ashe
were swept into a fantastic action-filled adventure involving Russians,
superstitious prehistoric men, and the aliens of a lost galactic
civilization that demanded every ounce of courage the Americans
possessed.
Andre Norton's earlier books, _Star Born_ and _The Stars Are Ours!_,
have made this author one of the most popular writers in the
science-fiction field. In this daring adventure into the mists of time,
readers will find themselves transported to still more exciting "other"
worlds.
_Jacket by Virgil Finlay_
0012 up
$2.75
_Star Born_
by ANDRE NORTON
Far from the Terran colony's Homeport on the planet Astra, young Dalgard
Nordis and his merman companion Sssuri are suddenly confronted by their
old enemies, the alien Astrans. Within the ruins of the Astrans' former
citadel the two discover that remnants of this nonhuman race, which had
once ruled the entire planet, are struggling to recover their lost
knowledge and thus regain their power. Dalgard realizes that the safety
of the Terrans is seriously threatened by this, and there is no hope of
warning his people in time.
When a space ship arrives from Terra, its crew ignorant of the existence
of a Terran colony on the western continent across the sea, the aliens
enlist the spacemen's aid. Of the members of the crew only young Raf
Kurbi instinctively mistrusts the Astrans. Through a series of weird and
exciting adventures among the ruins and in ancient underground tunnels,
Raf eventually meets Dalgard and joins him in the fight against the
aliens.
In this sequel to _The Stars Are Ours!_ Andre Norton has produced
another superb science-fiction adventure.
_Jacket by Virgil Finlay_
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
SCIENCE FICTION
by ANDRE NORTON
STAR BORN
_by Andre Norton_
Young Dalgard Nordis of the planet Astra and his merman companion Sssuri
join forces with a space man from Terra to outwit resurgent nonhuman
Aliens. A sequel to _The Stars Are Ours!_ $2.75
THE STARS ARE OURS!
_by Andre Norton_
To escape the tyranny on Terra in the year 2500, a group of scientists
make a last-minute getaway under fire and take off for another planet in
another solar system. Their adventures make top-flight entertainment for
all science-fiction fans. $3.00
SPACE SERVICE
_Edited With an Introduction and Notes by Andre Norton_
Ten great stories by such leading science-fiction writers as Bernard I.
Kahn, H. B. Fyfe, Walt Sheldon, Theodore R. Cogswell, and Raymond Z.
Gallun that will delight all science-fiction fans with their portrayals
of adventure in a far-flung galactic empire. $2.50
SPACE PIONEERS
_Edited With an Introduction and Notes by Andre Norton_
A collection of outstanding stories by some of the finest writers in the
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startling glimpse into the future of space travel, artificial
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SPACE POLICE
_Edited With an Introduction and Notes by Andre Norton_
Nine top science-fiction writers are brought together in this fine
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