track of time within that underground warren which was the
base. Ross gradually discovered that the whole establishment covered a
large area under an external crust of ice and snow. There were
laboratories, a well-appointed hospital, armories which stocked weapons
usually seen only in museums, but which here were free of any signs of
age, and ready for use. There were libraries with mile upon mile of tape
recordings as well as films. Ross could not understand everything he
heard and saw, but he soaked up all he could so that once or twice, when
drifting off to sleep at night, he thought of himself as a sponge which
had nearly reached its total limit of absorption.

He learned to wear naturally the clumsy kilt-tunic he had seen on the
wolf slayer, to shave with practiced assurance, using a leaf-shaped
bronze razor, to eat strange food until he relished the taste. Making
lesson time serve a double duty, he lay under sunlamps while listening
to tape recordings, until his skin darkened to a weathered hue
resembling Ashe's. There was always talk to listen to, important talk
which he was afraid to miss.

"Bronze." Ashe weighed a dagger in his hand one day. Its hilt, made of
dark horn studded with an intricate pattern of tiny golden nail heads,
had a gleam not unlike that of the blade. "Do you know, Murdock, that
bronze can be tougher than steel? If it wasn't that iron is so much more
plentiful and easier to work, we might never have come out of the Bronze
Age? Iron is cheaper and easier found, and when the first smith learned
to work it, an end came to one way of life, a beginning to another.

"Yes, bronze is important to us here, and so are the men who worked it.
Smiths were sacred in the old days. We know that they made a secret of
their trade which overrode the bounds of district, tribe, and race. A
smith was welcome in any village, his person safe on the road. In fact,
the roads themselves were under the protection of the gods; there was
peace on them for all wayfarers. The land was wide then, and it was
empty. The tribes were few and small, and there was plenty of room for
the hunter, the farmer, the trader. Life was not such a scramble of man
against man, but rather of man against nature----"

"No wars?" asked Ross. "Then why the bow-and-dagger drill?"

"Wars were small affairs, disputes between family clans or tribes. As
for the bow, there were formidable things in the forests--giant animals,
wolves, wild boars---