Echoes in Time (Time Traders) - Softcover

Norton, Andre; Smith, Sherwood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812552741 ISBN 13: 9780812552744

Publisher: Tor Science Fiction, 2000

Synopsis

Having revitalized the classic Solar Queen series to critical acclaim, Andre Norton and Sherwood Smith now turn their storytelling talents to Norton's popular Time Traders series.

Time agents Ross Murdock and Eveleen Riorden are recalled from their honeymoon to take part in a dangerous assignment: find a team of Russian scientists who have vanished without a trace from a research mission in the past of a far-off planet. Along with a team of Russian time Agents with their own mysterious agenda and Saba, a new agent teamed with Gordon Ashe, they leap into the alien world's distant history.

There they encounter several alien races, whose appearance, language, and customs are almost incomprehensibly strange. Something changed this world, and music seems the only tool that might prove a key to unlocking the planet's secrets.

But as they try to decipher a digital alien Rosetta stone, time is running out for their mission. Ross now knows what happened to the missing scientists--but can he save his team before they too vanish forever?

This thrilling adventure of a desperate race against treacherous time itself is a tale filled with excitement and wonder in the grand Time Traders tradition.

About this title

About the Author

For well over a half century, Andre Norton has been one of the most popular science fiction and fantasy authors in the world. Since her first SF novels were published in the 1940s, her adventure SF has enthralled readers young and old. With series such as Time Traders, Solar Queen, Forerunner, Beast Master, Crosstime, and Janus, as well as many stand-alone novels, her tales of action and adventure throughout the galaxy have drawn countless readers to science fiction.

Her fantasy, including the best-selling Witch World series, her "Magic" series, and many other unrelated novels, has been popular with readers for decades. Lauded as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America, she is the recipient of a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. Not only have her books been enormously popular; she also has inspired several generations of SF and fantasy writers, especially many talented women writers who have followed in her footsteps. In the past two decades she has worked with other writers on a number of novels. Most notable among these are collaborations with Mercedes Lackey, the Halfblood Chronicles, as well as collaborations with A.C. Crispin (in the Witch World series) and Sherwood Smith (in the Time Traders and Solar Queen series). An Ohio native, Ms. Norton lived for a number of years in Winter Park, Florida, and now makes her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where she continues to write, and presides over High Hallack, a writers' resource and retreat.

Sherwood Smith is the author of a number of science fiction and fantasy novels, including the Wren series for Young Adults, the Exordium novels (with Dave Trowbridge), the recent Atlantis Endgame, a novel of the Time Traders series (with Andre Norton), Solar Queen novels (also with Andre Norton), and many others. She lives south of Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1
 
 
THE PHONE RANG. Ross Murdock looked up, startled.
For a moment his eyes met his wife's across the room. Eveleen paused in the act of patting down the folded tablecloth on the basket they'd both just finished packing.
Strange, to hear a phone ring. It'd been days since they'd been so rudely interrupted--long, glorious autumn days there at Safeharbor, on the coast of Maine. No phone, no TV, no newspapers--nothing but seabirds, and the sound of the breakers crashing on the rocks down the hill from the house, and each other. Heaven.
"Let's ignore it," Ross said.
Eveleen shook her head. "This isn't our house, it's Gordon's, and it might be someone who needs to get in touch with him."
"Who?" Ross asked as the phone rang a second time.
Eveleen's expressive brown eyes glanced at him, rounded with amused patience. "Friends? Family?"
"Outside of the Project, he doesn't have any friends," Ross said, half joking. "And I don't think there's any family either. The Project is his friends and family."
Eveleen said, "I really think we should answer it."
"Then I'll get it," Ross said. "I'm closer."
On the fourth ring he picked it up. "Ashe residence." against that is the reality of our government struggling to survive, and the unrest so very close. No one must find out about these alien artifacts--either the ships or the time-travel mechanisms. You know that as well as I. Rather than let anyone find out, anyone at all, we blow up the ship--we blow ourselves up. These secrets cannot fall into the wrong hands. Every single government who knows the secrets agrees. And so necessity forces us all to compromise. To work together. To solve the mysteries we've been presented, before we find ourselves with bigger problems from outside our gravity well than we're causing for one another within it."
She sat back.
Misha sighed, presing his hand against his side. It hurt. "The mission?"
"The flight to New York leaves tomorrow. We begin the training there."
Lightning flared behind Misha's eyes. He strugged up, made it to his feet. "I'm going," he said, not caring that his voice broke. "Get me on that flight."
"But the doctor--"
"I don't care. I will be on that mission, if I have to blast my way across eight time zones to do it. And you know I never make empty threats."
They stared at one another.
"Zina." He relented at last. "Please."
The Colonel's lips creased. Just faintly.
Misha sank down onto the hay-stuffed bed. The effort of standing had made him dizzy. But that no longer mattered. He knew he'd won.
"We will leave tomorrow," she said, "but without you. As soon as your fever is down, you will follow us." She pointed at the bed. "Now get some sleep." The door shut behind her.
"Ross." The voice was immediately familiar--Major Kelgarries. "I've been trying to reach you. We've got an emergency--"
Ross slammed down the receiver. "Phone sales," he said, forcing a smile. "Let's get going on that picnic before the weather drives us back inside again."
Eveleen smiled back, hefted the basket, and opened the door.
Ross closed the door on the sound of the phone ringing again. "Looks like we might luck out weather-wise after all," he said in a voice of loud, hearty cheer.
Eveleen looked at him with her brows quirked, but she said nothing as he slid his hand next to hers on the basket, and with their picnic lunch swinging between them, the two started up the trail behind the house.
An hour later Ross lay stretched out on the cool grass, staring up at the cloud formations.
Emergency, he thought. Yeah, sure. There always was some damned emergency on Project Star, and it seemed to Ross that he'd been stuck in the middle of most of them.
Well, he'd done his time. They'd promised Eveleen and him a honeymoon, and he meant to have it. A honeymoon meant just the two of them, no interruptions, nothing more dangerous than the occasional bumblebee.
He glanced at Eveleen, who had been watching the wheeling seabirds swooping and circling above the Maine breakers. She had turned her attention to him. Their eyes met, and hers narrowed.
"Phone sales?" she repeated.
Surprised, Ross said, "What?"
Eveleen's mouth deepened at the corners. "I might be dense, but it seems odd to me that you'd still be angry an hour after hanging up on a junk sales call."
Ross snorted. "Angry?"
Eveleen reached over and traced her finger over his jawline. "Clenched. Just like some movie hero about to be blasted by twenty machine-gun-totin' bad guys." She tapped his hand, which--he belatedly noticed--had been drumming on the grass. "Not quite white knuckles, but the next thing to it."
Ross gave her a reluctant grin. "It was Kelgarries."
Eveleen whistled. Beyond her, a gull cawed, and far below, as if picking up the sound, came the mews and cries of myriad seabirds.
"This is our time," Ross stated. "I resent like hell their breaking their promise."
"But you know it has to be an emergency, or they wouldn't," Eveleen said. "Did he have a chance to say anything?"
Ross, remembering that same word emergency, gave a shrug.
"Darling." Eveleen looked sardonic. "Don't even waste the breath claiming you don't care. Or that they don't care. The fact is, Kelgarries's ghost is sitting right here between us, or you wouldn't be so tense. We might as well go back and find out what the problem is."
"Dammit." Ross got up, and began repacking the basket.
"Does 'dammit' mean that I'm right?" Eveleen asked, grinning. "A spouse likes to be able to decode these little clues."
"Dammit means dammit," Ross said, slinging the basket over his shoulder.
"I'll remember that," Eveleen said, chuckling, as they started back down the trail.
Within half an hour of their reaching Gordon Ashe's house, the phone rang again. Eveleen gave Ross that sardonic look again. "I'll get it this time," she said, and picked up the phone. "Gordon Ashe's residence," she said in a polite voice. "Eveleen Riordan speaking. May I take a message?"
Ross wished--absurdly, he knew--that she would follow that with "Sorry, wrong number," or maybe "No, we don't need any aluminum siding."
But ten seconds passed. Thirty. She still hadn't spoken.
Ross crossed the room to her side and waited in silence.
She finally said, "I understand, Major. And we appreciate the extra time you've allowed us. See you tomorrow."
She gently laid the receiver back into the cradle, and turned her face up to Ross. "Emergency indeed."
"Project Star." Ross swore, then added, "We should have used the damn transfer machine to blast us forward, or back, or somewhere in time when they couldn't find us." He sighed. "What kind of emergency? He say? No, he wouldn't--not over the phone."
"Correct. All he said was that they need us to report to the Center."
"What about Gordon?"
"He's already there."
Ross let out a long sigh. "It was too good to last, I guess," he muttered, biting down what he really wanted to say. But cursing fate, the world, and his bosses wouldn't change anything. So he added only, "Tomorrow?"
"They're sending a copter to pick us up. At least we don't have to drive all million and a half of those windy roads back down the coast again."
"If it meant we could be alone a little longer…" Ross started.
Eveleen grinned, and wiggled her brows suggestively. "We have the rest of tonight. Let's make the most of it."
He had no objections to that.
* * *
GORDON ASHE POURED a cup of fresh coffee and sat down at the briefing table. He looked up at Major Kelgarries, who gave him a somewhat lopsided smile before saying, "They'll be here tomorrow."
"Was Ross pretty fluent?" Gordon asked, trying for lightness.
Kelgarries--a tall, hatchet-faced man--said, "Ross hung up on me. Ten tries later I spoke with Eveleen. When I mentioned an emergency, she seemed to appreciate our having given them as much time as we have. I suspect Ross might have had a more, ah, characteristic and colorful reaction, but she was the one to hear it--not me."
Gordon Ashe nodded, smiling. Truth was, he was impatient to get Ross and Eveleen back, to plunge directly into what promised to be a tough assignment. He'd never permitted himself to indulge in what he considered to be a dangerous luxury, romance. It was too much like weakness. Yet he had to admit that Eveleen Riordan and Ross Murdock made an excellent partnership.
The catch was that Ross and Gordon were no longer partners.
So would he go solo this time? Or would he, Ross, and Eveleen make a threesome?
Wait. Hadn't Nelson Milliard, the top boss, said something about a later discussion concerning personnel for the mission?
Gordon sipped at his coffee, resigning himself to a day's wait. His years of archaeological study had forced him to learn patience.
* * *
AT MIDDAY THE next day, Ross and Eveleen's second copter ride ended outside a nondescript building located on the outskirts of a small town in upstate New York.
They stepped out of the copter, bending low against the powerful blasts of air generated by the slowing blades--and by a cold rain-laden wind.
As if nature had agreed that their honeymoon was over, a powerful storm had swept down from the north during the night, and it had chased them steadily as they transferred from copter to small plane to copter again.
Ross was peripherally aware of his scarred hand flexing and then tightening into a fist as he and Eveleen crossed the tarmac to the front of the building blandly labeled NORTHSIDE RESEARCH INSTITUTE. His danger sense--whether sparked by the storm or by anticipation of whatever news awaited them inside--made him edgy.
He glanced at Eveleen as a security guard opened the thick glass doors for them. She looked neat and competent as always, her brown hair swept up into a chignon, her slacks and shirt attractive but easy to move in. Only someone who had been trained in martial arts recognized in her controlled grace the mark of the expert who was poised for action; though her face was pleasant, even smiling, Ross realized that she, too, wa...

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812552741
• ISBN 13: 9780812552744
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320