Key Out of Time | Page 2

had brought another
scar--the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, fighter, rebel,
outlaw by the conventions of his own era, Ross Murdock who
considered himself an exceedingly tough individual, that toughness
steeled by the training for Time Agent sorties, had come up against a
power he did not understand, instinctively hated and feared.
Now he breathed deeply of the wind--the smell of the sea, the scents of
the land growths, strange but pleasant. So easy to relax, to drop into the
soft, lulling swing of this world in which they had found no fault, no
danger, no irritant. Yet, once those others had been here--the
blue-suited, hairless ones he called "Baldies." And what had happened
then ... or afterward?
A black head, brown shoulders, slender body, broke the sleepy slip of
the waves. A shimmering mask covered the face, catching glitter-fire in
the sun. Two hands freed a chin curved yet firmly set, a mouth made
more for laughter than sternness, wide dark eyes. Karara Trehern of the
Alii, the one-time Hawaiian god-chieftain line, was an exceedingly
pretty girl.
But Ross regarded her aloofly, with a coldness which bordered on
hostility, as she flipped her mask into its pocket on top of the gill-pack.
Below his rocky perch she came to a halt, her feet slightly apart in the
sand, an impish twist to her lips as she called mockingly:
"Why not come in? The water's fine."
"Perfect, like all the rest of this." Some of his impatience came out in
the sour tone. "No luck, as usual?"
"As usual," Karara conceded. "If there ever was a civilization here, it's
been gone so long we'll probably never find any traces. Why don't you
just pick out a good place to set up that time-probe and try it blind?"
Ross scowled. "Because"--his patience was exaggerated to the point of

insult--"we have only one peep-probe. Once it's set we can't tear it
down easily for transport somewhere else, so we want to be sure there's
something to look at beyond."
She began to wring the water out of her long hair. "Well, as far as
we've explored ... nothing. Come yourself next time. Tino-rau and Taua
aren't particular; they like company."
Putting two fingers to her mouth, Karara whistled. Twin heads popped
out of the water, facing the shore and her. Projecting noses, mouths
with upturned corners so they curved in a lasting pleasant grin at the
mammals on the shore--the dolphin pair, mammals whose ancestors
had chosen the sea, whistled back in such close counterfeit of the girl's
signal that they could be an echo of her call. Years earlier their species'
intelligence had surprised, almost shocked, men. Experiments, training,
co-operation, had developed a tie which gave the water-limited race of
mankind new eyes, ears, minds, to see, evaluate, and report concerning
an element in which the bipeds were not free.
Hand in hand with that co-operation had gone other experiments. Just
as the clumsy armored diving suits of the early twentieth century had
allowed man to begin penetration into a weird new world, so had the
frog-man equipment made him still freer in the sea. And now the
gill-pack which separated the needed oxygen from the water made even
that lighter burden of tanks obsolete. But there remained depths into
which man could not descend, whose secrets were closed to him. There
the dolphins operated, in a partnership of minds, equal minds--though
that last fact had been difficult for man to accept.
Ross's irritation, unjustified as he knew it to be, did not rest on Tino-rau
or Taua. He enjoyed the hours when he buckled on gill-pack and took
to the sea with those two ten-foot, black-and-silver escorts sharing the
action. But Karara ... Karara's presence was a different matter
altogether.
The Agents' teams had always been strictly masculine. Two men
partnered for an interlocking of abilities and temperaments, going
through training together, becoming two halves of a strong and

efficient whole. Before being summarily recruited into the Project,
Ross had been a loner--living on the ragged edges of the law, an
indigestible bit for the civilization which had become too ordered and
"adjusted" to absorb his kind. But in the Project he had discovered
others like himself--men born out of time, too ruthless, too
individualistic for their own age, but able to operate with ease in the
dangerous paths of the Time Agents.
And when the time search for the wrecked alien ships had succeeded
and the first intact ship found, used, duplicated, the Agents had come
from forays into the past to be trained anew for travel to the stars. First
there had been Ross Murdock, criminal. Then there had been Ross
Murdock and Gordon Ashe, Time Agents. Now there was still Ross
and Gordon and a quest