The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

has saved your neck this time, Murdock. Step out of line once more, and nothing will help you. But just so we won’t have to worry about that, suppose you ask a few of those questions.”
    “How much of what Kurt fed me is the truth?” Ross blurted out. “I mean all that stuff about shooting back in time.”
    “All of it.” The major said it so quietly that it carried complete conviction.
    “But why—how—?”
    “You have us on a spot, Murdock. Because of your little expedition, we have to tell you more now than we tell any of our men before the final briefing. Listen, and then forget all of it except what applies to the job at hand.
    “The Reds shot up Sputnik and then Muttnik.… When—? Twenty-five years ago. We got up our answers a little later. There were a couple of spectacular crashes on the moon, then that space station that didn’t stay in orbit, after that—stalemate. In the past quarter century we’ve had no voyages into space, nothing that was prophesied. Too many bugs, too many costly failures. Finally we began to get hints of something big, bigger than any football roaming the heavens.
    “Any discovery in science comes about by steps. It can be traced back through those steps by another scientist. But suppose you were confronted by a result which apparently had been produced without any preliminaries. What would be your guess concerning it?”
    Ross stared at the major. Although he didn’t see what all this had to do with time-jumping, he sensed that Kelgarries was waiting for a serious answer, that somehow Ross would be judged by his reply.
    “Either that the steps were kept strictly secret,” he said slowly, “or that the result didn’t rightfully belong to the man who said he discovered it.”
    For the first time the major regarded him with approval. “Suppose this discovery was vital to your life—what would you do?”
    “Try to find the source!”
    “There you have it! Within the past five years our friends across the way have come up with three such discoveries. One we were able to trace, duplicate, and use, with a few refinements of our own. The other two remain rootless; yet they are linked with the first. We are now attempting to solve that problem, and the time grows late. For some reason, though the Reds now have their super, super gadgets, they are not yet ready to use them. Sometimes the things work, and sometimes they fail. Everything points to the fact that the Reds are now experimenting with discoveries which are not basically their own—”
    “Where did they get them? From another world?” Ross’s imagination came to life. Had a successful space voyage been kept secret? Had there been contact made with another intelligent race?
    “In a way it’s another world, but the world of time—not space. Seven years ago we got a man out of East Berlin. He was almost dead, but he lived long enough to record on tape some amazing data, so wild it was almost dismissed as the ravings of delirium. But that was after Sputnik, and we didn’t dare disregard any hints from the other side of the Iron Curtain. So the recording was turned over to our scientists, who proved it had a core of truth.
    “Time travel has been written up in fiction; it has been discussed otherwise as an impossibility. Then we discover that the Reds 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 the education of your big brains, 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 Reds 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