n."

He whipped around the door and was gone. Webb got up slowly. "I will
work over the maps again," he told Ashe. "We haven't scouted that area,
and we don't dare send a photo-plane over it now. Any trip in will be a
stab in the dark."

"When you have only one road, you take it," Ashe replied. "I'll be glad
to see anything you can show me, Miles."

If Ross had believed that his pre-trial-run cramming had been a rigorous
business, he was soon to laugh at that estimation. Since the burden of
the next jump would rest on only three of them--Ashe, McNeil, and
himself--they were plunged into a whirlwind of instruction, until Ross,
dazed and too tired to sleep on the third night, believed that he was
more completely bewildered than indoctrinated. He said as much sourly to
McNeil.

"Base has pulled back three other teams," McNeil replied. "But the men
have to go to school again, and they won't be ready to come on for maybe
three, four weeks. To change runs means unlearning stuff as well as
learning it----"

"What about new men?"

"Don't think Kelgarries isn't out now beating the bushes for some! Only,
we have to be fitted to the physical type we are supposed to represent.
For instance, set a small, dark-headed pugnose among your Norse sea
rovers, and he's going to be noticed--maybe remembered too well. We
can't afford to take that chance. So Kelgarries had to discover men who
not only look the part but are also temperamentally fitted for this job.
You can't plant a fellow who thinks as a seaman--not a seaman, you
understand, but one whose mind works in that pattern--among a wandering
tribe of cattle herders. The protection for the man and the project lies
in his being fitted into the right spot at the right time."

Ross had never really thought of that point before. Now he realized that
he and Ashe and McNeil were of a common mold. All about the same
height, they shared brown hair and light eyes--Ashe's blue, his own
gray, and McNeil's hazel--and they were of similar build, small-boned,
lean, and quick-moving. He had not seen any of the true Beakermen except
on the films. But now, recalling those, he could see that the three time
traders were of the same general physical type as the far-roving people
they used as a cover.

It was on the morning of the fifth day while the three were studying a
map Webb had produced that Kelgarries, followed at his own weighty pace
by Millaird, burst in upon them.

"We have it! This