The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

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 ob servation 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