t, so one side or
the other must have gained the victory. They might have only a few
moments left to pass undetected.

Ross's sense of direction was fairly acute, but he could not have gone
so unerringly to what he sought as Ashe did. Only he did not lead them
to the room with the glowing plate, and Ross stifled a protest as they
came instead to a small record room.

On a table were three spools of tape which Ashe caught up avidly,
thrusting two in the front of his baggy tunic, passing the third to
McNeil. Then he sped about trying the cupboards on the walls, but all
were locked. His hand falling from the last latch, Ashe came back to the
door where Ross waited.

"To the plate!" Ross urged.

Ashe surveyed the cupboards once more regretfully. "If we could have
just ten minutes here----"

McNeil snorted. "Listen, you may yearn to be the filling in an ice
sandwich, but I don't! Another shock and we'll be buried so deep even a
drill couldn't find us. Let's get out now. The kid is right about
that--if we still can."

Once more Ashe took the lead and they wove through ghostly rooms to what
must have been the heart of the post--the transfer point. To Ross's
unvoiced relief the plate was glowing. He had been nagged by the fear
that when the lights blew out the transfer plate might also have been
affected. He jumped for the plate.

Neither Ashe nor McNeil wasted time in joining him there. As they clung
together there was a cry from behind them, underlined by a shot. Ross,
feeling Ashe sag against him, caught him in his arms. By the reflected
glow of the plate he saw the Red leader of the post and behind him, his
hairless face hanging oddly bodiless in the gloom, was the alien. Were
those two now allies? Before Ross could be sure that he had really seen
them, the wracking of space time caught him and the rest of the room
faded away.

"... free. Get a move on!"

Ross glanced across Ashe's bowed shoulders to McNeil's excited face. The
other was pulling at Ashe, who was only half-conscious. A stream of
blood from a hole in his bare shoulder soaked the upper edge of his
Beaker tunic, but as they steadied him between them, he gained some
measure of awareness and moved his feet as they pulled him off the
plate.

Well, they were free if only for a few seconds, and there was no
reception committee waiting for them. Ross gave thanks silently for
those two small favors. But if they were now returned to the Bronze Age
village