ounger man. "You can take your trial run any time--tomorrow."

Ross drew a deeper breath. "Where--to when?"

"An island which will later be Britain. When? About two thousand B.C.
Beaker traders were beginning to open their stations there. This is your
graduation exercise, Murdock."

Ross fitted the blade he had been polishing into the wooden sheath on
the belt. "If you say I can do it, I'm willing to try."

He caught that glance Ashe shot at him, but he could not read its
meaning. Annoyance? Impatience? He was still puzzling over it when the
other turned abruptly and left him alone.

CHAPTER 5

He might have said yes, but that didn't mean, Ross discovered, that he
was to be shipped off at once to early Britain. Ashe's "tomorrow" proved
to be several days later. The cover was that of a Beaker trader, and
Ross's impersonation was checked again and again by experts, making sure
that the last detail was correct and that no suspicion of a tribesman,
no mistake on Ross's part would betray him.

The Beaker people were an excellent choice for infiltration. They were
not a closely knit clan, suspicious of strangers and alert to any
deviation from the norm, as more race-conscious tribes might be. For
they lived by trade, leaving to Ross's own time the mark of their
far-flung "empire" in the beakers found in graves scattered in clusters
of a handful or so from the Rhineland to Spain, and from the Balkans to
Britain.

They did not depend only upon the taboo of the trade road for their
safety, for the Beakermen were master bowmen. A roving people, they
pushed into new territory to establish posts, living amicably among
peoples with far different customs--the Downs farmers, horse herders,
shore-side fisherfolk.

With Ashe, Ross passed a last inspection. Their hair had not grown long
enough to require braiding, but they did have enough to hold it back
from their faces with hide headbands. The kilt-tunics of coarse
material, duplicating samples brought from the past, were harsh to the
skin and poorly fitting. But the workmanship of their link-and-plate
bronze belts, the sleek bow guards strapped to their wrists, and the
bows themselves approached fine art. Ashe's round cloak was the blue of
a master trader, and he wore wealth in a necklace of polished wolf's
teeth alternating with amber beads. Ross's more modest position in the
tribe was indicated not only by his red-brown cloak, but by the fact
that his personal jew