Novel
The Crossroads of Time
- by Andre Norton
- in Ace Double #D-164: Mankind on the Run by Gordon R. Dickson / The Crossroads of Time by Andre Norton (Ace Books, 1956)
So they have not briefed you? Well, a run is a little jaunt back into history—not nice comfortable history such as you learned out of a book when you were a little kid. No, you are dropped back into some savage time before history—
So, you’re a part of this now, whether or no. We can’t afford to let you go, the situation is too critical. So—you’ll be offered a chance to enlist.
Do you mean, have we changed the future? Who can answer that?
. . . she kissed him joyfully.
Moments later the ground seemed to shake slightly: an illusion, Ross knew, a response of the mind to the distorted probability waves sweeping out from the apparatus as it catapulted the two agents into the distant past.
I put the variables together, wondering if you might be part of the equation, and last winter when I uncovered that earring in a place that had been sealed under volcanic ash since 1628 B.C. and saw that modern jeweler’s mark, I decided that maybe it was time to try again to dig you up.