ter on the crown of the hill, and Ashe stood apart from it, eying the
fragments about them--scorched wood, blackened stone.

"The Reds?"

"It must have been. This damage was done by explosives."

It was clear why Outpost Gog could not report the disaster. The attack
had destroyed their one link with the post on this time level; the
concealed communicator had gone up with the blast.

"Eleven--" Ashe's finger tapped on the ornate buckle of his wide belt.
"We have about ten days to stick it out," he added, "and it seems we may
be able to use them to better advantage than just letting you learn how
it feels to walk about some four thousand years before you were born. We
have to find out--if we can--what happened here and why!"

Ross gazed at the mess. "Dig?" he asked.

"Some digging is indicated."

So they dug. Finally, black with charcoal smudges and sick with the
evidences of death they had chanced upon, they collapsed on the cleanest
spot they could find.

"They must have hit at night," Ashe said slowly. "Only at that time
would they find everyone here. Men don't trust a night filled with
ghosts, and our agents conform to local custom as usual. All of the post
people could be erased with one bomb at night."

All except two of them had been true Beaker traders, including women and
children. No Beaker trading post was large, and this one was unusually
small. The attacker had wiped out some twenty people, eighteen of them
innocent victims.

"How long ago?" Ross wanted to know.

"Maybe two days. And this attack came without any warning, or Sandy
would have sent a message. He had no suspicions at all; his last reports
were all routine, which means that if they were on to him--and they must
have been, judging by the results--he was not even aware of it."

"What do we do now?"

Ashe looked at him. "We wash--no--" he corrected himself--"we don't! We
go to Nodren's village. We are frightened, grief-stricken. We have found
our kinsmen dead under strange circumstances. We ask questions of one to
whom I am known as an inhabitant of this post."

So, covered with dirt, they walked along the trackway toward the
neighboring village with a weariness they did not have to counterfeit.

The dog sighted or perhaps scented them first. It was a rough-coated
beast, showing its fangs with a wolflike ferocity. But it was smaller
than a wolf, and it barked between its warning snarls. Ashe brought his
bow from beneath the shelter