Time Traders by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online

proved it had a core of truth.
    "Time travel has been written about in fiction; it has been discussed otherwise as an impossibility. Then we discover that the Russians have it working—"
    "You mean, they go into the future and bring back machines to use now."
    The major shook his head. "Not the future, the past."
    Was this an elaborate joke? Somewhat heatedly Ross snapped out the answer to that. "Look, here, I know I haven't your education, but I do know that the farther back you go into history the simpler things are. We ride in cars; only a hundred years ago men drove horses. We have guns; go back a little and you'll find them waving swords and shooting guys with bows and arrows—those that don't wear tin plate on them to stop being punctured—"
    "Only they were, after all," commented Ashe. "Look at Agincourt, m'lad, and remember what arrows did to the French knights in armor."
    Ross disregarded the interruption. "Anyway," he stuck doggedly to his point—"the farther back you go, the simpler things are. How are the Russians going to find anything in history we can't beat today?"
    "That is a point which has baffled us for several years now," the major returned. "Only it is not how they are going to find it, but where . Because somewhere in the past of this world they have contacted a civilization able to produce weapons and ideas so advanced as to baffle our experts. We have to find that source and either mine it ourselves or close it off. As yet we're still trying to find it."
    Ross shook his head. "It must be a long way back. Those guys who discover tombs and dig up old cities—couldn't they give you some hints? Wouldn't a civilization like that have left something we could find today?"
    "It depends," Ashe remarked, "upon the type of civilization. The Egyptians built in stone, grandly. They used tools and weapons of copper, bronze, and stone, and they were considerate enough to operate in a dry climate which preserved relics well. The cities of the Fertile Crescent built in mudbrick and used stone, copper, and bronze tools. They also chose a portion of the world where climate was a factor in keeping their memory green.
    "The Greeks built in stone, wrote their books, kept their history to bequeath it to their successors, and so did the Romans. And on this side of the ocean the Incas, the Mayas, the unknown races before them, and the Aztecs of Mexico all built in stone and worked in metal. And stone and metal survive. But what if there had been an early people who used plastics and brittle alloys, who had no desire to build permanent buildings, whose tools and artifacts were meant to wear out quickly, perhaps for economic reasons? What would they leave us—considering, perhaps, that an ice age had intervened between their time and ours, with glaciers to grind into dust what little they did possess?
    "There is evidence that the poles of our world have changed and that this northern region was once close to being tropical. Any catastrophe violent enough to bring about a switch in the poles of this planet might well have wiped out all traces of a civilization, no matter how superior. We have good reason to believe that such a people must have existed, but we must find them."
    "And Ashe is a convert from the skeptics—" the major slipped down from his perch on the wall shelf— "he is an archaeologist, one of your tomb discoverers, and knows what he is talking about. We must do our hunting in time earlier than the first pyramid, earlier than the first group of farmers who settled by the Tigris River. But we have to let the enemy guide us to it. That's where you come in."
    "Why me?"
    "That is a question which our psychologists are still trying to answer, my young friend. It seems that the majority of the people of several nations linked together in this project have become too civilized. The reactions of most men to given sets of circumstances have become set in such regular patterns that they cannot break that