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In the realm of software testing, the optimization of test suites is a critical aspect that can significantly influence the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process. Test suite optimization aims to select the most relevant and minimal set of test cases from a larger suite to ensure maximum code coverage while minimizing redundancy and execution time. One of the promising techniques for test suite optimization is inspired by nature itself – the Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) algorithm. This algorithm, as the name suggests, is inspired by the foraging behavior of honey bees. In nature, bees are known for their ability to find the shortest routes to flowers with the most nectar, thereby optimizing their foraging efforts. Similarly, in the context of test suite optimization, BCO can be used to find an optimal subset of test cases that provide maximum code coverage with minimal redundancy. The application of BCO in test suite optimization is a relatively new and exciting area of research. This article aims to delve into the methodology of Bee Colony Test Suite Optimization, providing insights into how this nature-inspired algorithm can revolutionize software testing practices. Overview Bee Colony Optimization is a population-based search algorithm that was developed by observing the food foraging behavior of honey bees. In a bee colony, there are three types of bees: employed bees, onlooker bees, and scout bees. Each of these bees plays a different role in the search for food sources (nectar). are associated with a specific food source, which they exploit by carrying out a local search. They share the information about their food sources with onlooker bees in the hive. Employed bees wait in the hive and evaluate the information shared by employed bees. Based on this information, they choose a food source to exploit. Onlooker bees carry out a random search for new food sources. When an employed bee’s food source is exhausted, it becomes a scout. Scout bees The BCO algorithm mimics this behavior. It starts with a population of solutions (food sources) and an objective function (nectar amount). The algorithm iteratively updates the solutions by mimicking the behavior of employed, onlooker, and scout bees until a termination condition is met. The algorithm has been successfully applied to various optimization problems due to its simplicity, flexibility, and robustness. It has shown particularly good performance in problems with dynamic environments, multiple objectives, and large search spaces. Methodology The methodology of applying Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) to test suite optimization involves several steps. The process begins with the initialization of the population (test suites) and ends with the identification of the optimal test suite. Here’s a detailed breakdown. A population of test suites is randomly generated. Each test suite is a potential solution and represents a specific selection and ordering of test cases. Initialization. Each employed bee (test suite) is modified by applying local search operators (e.g., adding, removing, or reordering test cases). The objective function (e.g., fault detection rate, execution time) is used to evaluate the quality of the modified test suite. Employed Bee Phase. Onlooker bees probabilistically choose employed bees (test suites) based on their fitness (objective function value). The chosen test suites are then modified using local search operators. Onlooker Bee Phase. If an employed bee cannot improve its solution for a certain number of iterations (known as the “limit”), it becomes a scout bee. The scout bee abandons its current solution and randomly generates a new test suite. Scout Bee Phase. After all bees have completed their phases, the solutions are updated. If a modified test suite has a better fitness than the original one, it replaces the original one in the population. The best solution found so far is recorded. Solution Update and Selection. The above steps are repeated until a termination condition is met (e.g., maximum number of iterations reached, solution quality threshold met). Termination. Application In the context of test suite optimization, we are dealing with a multi-objective optimization problem. The objectives are to maximize the fault detection capability and to minimize the execution time of the test suite. Each test case in the suite can be considered as a “food source”. The “nectar amount” of a food source corresponds to the fault detection capability of a test case, and the “distance” between the hive and the food source corresponds to the execution time of the test case. In BCO, each solution represents a possible selection and ordering of test cases from the test suite. This is crucial because the order in which tests are executed can affect the overall execution time and fault detection capability. The solution is often represented as a binary vector, where each element corresponds to a test case in the suite. If an element is , it means that the corresponding test case is included in the selection; if it’s , the test case is not included. For example, if we have five test cases in total, a solution might look like this: . This means that the first, third, and fourth test cases are selected for the optimized test suite. 1 0 [1, 0, 1, 1, 0] However, it’s important to note that this binary vector not only represents which test cases are selected but also the order in which they are executed. The position of the s in the vector determines the execution order of the selected test cases. 1 This representation allows for a vast search space for the BCO algorithm to explore. Each possible combination and ordering of test cases represents a potential solution that the algorithm can evaluate and use to find an optimal or near-optimal solution. The representation of solutions is a key aspect of applying BCO to test suite optimization. It directly impacts how the algorithm explores the search space and converges on an optimal solution. In the context of BCO for test suite optimization, the fitness function plays a crucial role. It is used to evaluate the quality or “fitness” of each solution (i.e., each selection and ordering of test cases).
The fitness function is typically defined as a combination of multiple objectives that we want to optimize. In the case of test suite optimization, these objectives can be: – the ability of a test suite to detect faults in the software system. It can be measured as the number of faults detected by the test suite. The goal is to maximize this objective, as a higher fault detection capability means that the test suite is more effective. fault detection – the total time required to execute all the test cases in the test suite. It can be measured in units of time (e.g., seconds). The goal is to minimize this objective, as a shorter execution time means that the testing process is more efficient. execution time Therefore, the fitness function could be defined as follows: where and are weights that determine the relative importance of each objective. These weights can be adjusted based on the specific requirements of the testing process. fitness = w1 * fault detection - w2 * execution time w1 w2 Each solution (i.e., each selection and ordering of test cases) is evaluated using this fitness function. The BCO algorithm then uses these fitness values to guide its search for an optimal solution. It’s important to note that defining an appropriate fitness function is critical for the success of BCO in test suite optimization. The fitness function should accurately reflect the objectives of the testing process and should be able to discriminate between good and bad solutions. Execution Let’s assume we have a software system with 5 test cases, and we want to find an optimal subset of these test cases that maximizes fault detection while minimizing execution time. . We start by randomly generating a population of solutions. Each solution is a binary vector representing a selection of test cases. For example, we might have the following three solutions: Solution 1: [1, 0, 1, 1, 0], Solution 2: [0, 1, 0, 1, 1], Solution 3: [1, 1, 0, 0, 1]. Initialization . Each employed bee (solution) is modified by applying local search operators. For instance, we might flip a bit in the binary vector (add or remove a test case). After modification, our solutions might look like this: Solution 1: [1, , 1, 1, 0], Solution 2: [0, , 0, 1, 1], Solution 3: [ , 1, 0, , 1]. Employed Bee Phase 1 0 0 1 . Onlooker bees probabilistically choose solutions based on their fitness. The fitness of a solution is determined by its fault detection capability and execution time. Let’s say that after this phase, Solution 2 is selected and modified: Solution 2: [ , , , 1, ]. Onlooker Bee Phase 1 1 1 0 . If a solution cannot be improved after a certain number of iterations (the “limit”), it becomes a scout bee and generates a new solution. Let’s assume that Solution 3 reached the limit and is replaced by a new randomly generated solution: Solution 3: [ , , , , ]. Scout Bee Phase 0 0 1 0 0 . If a modified solution has better fitness than the original one, it replaces the original in the population. Let’s say that all our modified solutions are better than the originals: Solution 1: [1, , 1, 1, 0], Solution 2: [ , , , 1, ], Solution 3: [ , , , , ]. Solution Update and Selection 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 . The above steps are repeated until a termination condition is met (e.g., maximum number of iterations reached). At this point, the best solution found so far is returned as the output of the BCO algorithm. Termination Conclusion The application of BCO in test suite optimization presents a promising approach to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of software testing. By mimicking the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bees, it provides a nature-inspired methodology for selecting an optimal subset of test cases that maximizes fault detection while minimizing execution time. The key to the success lies in its unique solution representation, fitness function, and algorithm execution process. The binary vector representation allows for a vast search space of possible test suite selections. The fitness function, which combines fault detection capability and execution time, guides the search towards optimal solutions. The algorithm execution process, which includes the employed bee phase, onlooker bee phase, and scout bee phase, ensures a diverse and comprehensive exploration of the search space. Practical applications of BCO in test suite optimization have shown promising results. In comparison with other optimization algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), BCO has demonstrated superior performance in terms of both solution quality and computational efficiency. However, it’s important to note that the performance of BCO can be influenced by various factors, including the characteristics of the software system, the quality of the initial test suite, and the specific configuration of the BCO algorithm. Therefore, careful tuning and adaptation of the algorithm may be required to achieve the best results in different testing scenarios. In conclusion, BCO offers a powerful and flexible tool for test suite optimization. With its nature-inspired methodology and proven effectiveness, it has the potential to revolutionize software testing practices, leading to more reliable software systems and more efficient testing processes.

Methodology of Bee Colony Test Suite Optimization

Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes by Charles Babbage, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Section 7 here SECTION 7. OF THE ROYAL MEDALS. At a period when the attention of Government to science had not undergone any marked change, a most unexpected occurrence took place. His Majesty intimated to the Royal Society, through his Secretary of State, his intention to found two gold medals, of the value of fifty guineas each, to be awarded annually by the Council of the Royal Society, according to the rules they were desired to frame for that purpose. The following is the copy of Mr. Peel's letter:— WHITEHALL, December 3d, 1825. SIR, I am commanded by the King to acquaint you, that His Majesty proposes to found two gold medals, of the value of fifty guineas each, to be awarded as honorary premiums, under the direction of the President and Council of the Royal Society, in such a manner as shall, by the excitement of competition among men of science, seem best calculated to promote the object for which the Royal Society was instituted. His Majesty desires to receive from the President and Council of the Royal Society their opinion upon the subject generally of the regulations which it may be convenient to establish with regard to the appropriation of the medals; and I have, therefore, to request that you will make the necessary communication to the Council of the Royal Society, in order that His Majesty's wishes may be carried into effect. I have the honour to be, &c. &c. (Signed) R. PEEL. Nothing could be more important for the interests of science, than this gracious manifestation of His Majesty's concern for its advancement. It was hailed by all who were made acquainted with it, as the commencement of a new era, and the energies which it might have awakened were immense. The unfettered nature of the gift excited admiration, whilst the confidence reposed in the Council was calculated to have insured the wavering faith of any less-gifted body. Even those who, either from knowing the MANAGEMENT of the Society, or from other grounds, doubted the policy of establishing medals, saw much to admire in the tone and spirit in which they were offered. The Council immediately came to the resolution of gratefully accepting them: and it appears that the President communicated that resolution, on the 26th, to Mr. Peel, in a letter, which is found on the minutes of the Council-book of the 26th of January. At the same Council, the rules for the award of the Royal medals were decided upon; they were as follow:— 26th January, 1826. RESOLVED, That it is the opinion of the Council, that the medals be awarded for the most important discoveries or series of investigations, completed and made known to the Royal Society in the year preceding the day of their award. That it is the opinion of the Council, that the presentation of the medals should not be limited to British subjects. And they propose, if it should be His Majesty's pleasure, that his effigy should form the obverse of the medal. That two medals from the same die should be struck upon each foundation; one in gold, one in silver. If these rules are not the wisest which might have been formed, yet they are tolerably explicit; and it might have been imagined that even a councillor of the Royal Society, prepared for office by the education of a pleader, could not have mystified his brethren so completely, as to have made them doubt on the point of time. The rules fixed precisely, that the discoveries or experiments rewarded, must be completed and made known to the Royal Society, within the YEAR PRECEDING THE DAY of the award. Perhaps it might have been a proper mark of respect to this communication, to have convened a special general meeting of the Society, to have made known to the whole body the munificent endowment of their Patron: and when his approbation of the laws which were to govern the distribution of these medals had been intimated to the Council, such a course would have been in complete accordance with the wish expressed in Mr. Peel's letter, "TO EXCITE COMPETITION AMONGST MEN OF SCIENCE" by making them generally known. Let us now examine the first award of these medals: it is recorded in the following words:— November 16, 1826. ONE of the medals of His Majesty's donation for the present year was awarded to John Dalton, Esq. President of the Philosophical and Literary Society, Manchester, for his development of the Atomic Theory, and his other important labours and discoveries in physical science. The other medal for the present year was awarded to James Ivory, Esq. for his paper on Astronomical Refractions, published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1823, and his other valuable papers on mathematical subjects. The Copley medal was awarded to James South, Esq. for his observations of double stars, and his paper on the discordances between the sun's observed and computed right ascensions, published in the Transactions. It is difficult to believe that the same Council, which, in January, formed the laws for the distribution of these medals, should meet together in November, and in direct violation of these laws, award them to two philosophers, one of whom had made, and fully established, his great discovery almost twenty years before; and the other of whom (to stultify themselves still more effectually) they expressly rewarded for a paper made known to them three years before. Were the rules for the award of these medals read previous to their decision? Or were the obedient Council only used to register the edict of their President? Or were they mocked, as they have been in other instances, with the semblance of a free discussion? Has it never occurred to gentlemen who have been thus situated, that although they have in truth had no part in the decision, yet the Society and the public will justly attribute a portion of the merit or demerit of their award, to those to whom that trust was confided? Did no one member of the Council venture, with the most submissive deference, to suggest to the President, that the public eye would watch with interest this first decision on the Royal medals, and that it might perhaps be more discreet to adjudge them, for the first time, in accordance with the laws which had been made for their distribution? Or was public opinion then held in supreme contempt? Was it scouted, as I have myself heard it scouted, in the councils of the Royal Society? Or was the President exempt, on this occasion, from the responsibility of dictating an award in direct violation of the faith which had been pledged to the Society and to the public? and, did the Council, intent on exercising a power so rarely committed to them; and, perhaps, urged by the near approach of their hour of dinner, dispense with the formality of reading the laws on which they were about to act? Whatever may have been the cause, the result was most calamitous to the Society. Its decision was attacked on other grounds; for, with a strange neglect, the Council had taken no pains to make known, either to the Society, or to the public, the rules they had made for the adjudication of these medals. The evils resulting from this decision were many. In the first place, it was most indecorous and ungrateful to treat with such neglect the rules which had been approved by our Royal Patron. In the next place, the medals themselves became almost worthless from this original taint: and they ceased to excite "competition amongst men of science," because no man could feel the least security that he should get them, even though his discoveries should fulfil all the conditions on which they were offered, The great injury which accrued to science from this proceeding, induced me, in the succeeding session, when I found myself on the Council of the Royal Society, to endeavour to remove the stigma which rested on our character. Whether I took the best means to remedy the evil is now a matter of comparatively little consequence: had I found any serious disposition to set it right, I should readily have aided in any plans for doing that which I felt myself bound to attempt, even though I should stand alone, as I had the misfortune of doing on that occasion. [It is but justice to Mr. South, who was a member of that Council, to state, that the circumstance of his having had the Copley medal of the same year awarded to him, prevented him from taking any part in the discussion.] The impression which the whole of that discussion made on my mind will never be effaced. Regarding the original rules formed for the distribution of the Royal medals, when approved by his Majesty, as equally binding in honour and in justice, I viewed the decision of the Council, which assigned those medals to Mr. Dalton and Mr. Ivory, as void, IPSO FACTO, on the ground that it was directly at variance with that part which CONFINES the medals to discoveries made known to the Society within ONE YEAR PREVIOUS TO THE DAY OF THEIR AWARD. I therefore moved the following resolutions: "1st, That the award of the Royal medals, made on the 16th of November, 1826, being contrary to the conditions under which they were offered, is invalid. "2dly, That the sum of fifty guineas each be presented to J. Dalton, Esq. and James Ivory, Esq. from the funds of the Society; and that letters be written to each of those gentlemen, expressing the hope of the Council that this, the only method which is open to them of honourably fulfilling their pledges, will be received by those gentlemen as a mark of the high sense entertained by the Council of the importance and value of their discoveries, which require not the aid of medals to convey their reputation to posterity, as amongst the greatest which distinguished the age in which they lived." It may be curious to give the public a specimen of the reasoning employed in so select a body of philosophers as the Council of the Royal Society. It was contended, on the one hand, that although the award was SOMEWHAT IRREGULAR, yet nothing was more easy than to set it right. As the original rules for giving the medals were merely an order of the Council,—it would only be necessary to alter them, and then the award would agree perfectly with the laws. On the other hand, it was contended, that the original rules were unknown to the public and to the Society; and that, in fact, they were only known to the members of the Council and a few of their friends; and therefore the award was no breach of faith. All comment on such reasoning is needless. That such propositions could not merely be offered, but could pass unreproved, is sufficient to show that the feelings of that body do not harmonize with those of the age; and furnishes some explanation why several of the most active members of the Royal Society have declined connecting their names with the Council as long as the present system of management is pursued. The little interest taken by the body of the Society, either in its peculiar pursuits, or in the proceedings of the Council, and the little communication which exists between them, is an evil. Thus it happens that the deeds of the Council are rarely known to the body of the Society, and, indeed, scarcely extend beyond that small portion who frequent the weekly meetings. These pages will perhaps afford the first notice to the great majority of the Society of a breach of faith by their Council, which it is impossible to suppose a body, consisting of more than six hundred gentlemen, could have sanctioned. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Charles Babbage (1998).Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1216/pg1216-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

OF THE ROYAL MEDALS.

OUT OF TUNE.

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . MARIE'S FORTUNE. here MARIE'S FORTUNE. When Marie Melmotte assured Sir Felix Carbury that her father had already endowed her with a large fortune which could not be taken from her without her own consent, she spoke no more than the truth. She knew of the matter almost as little as it was possible that she should know. As far as reticence on the subject was compatible with the object he had in view Melmotte had kept from her all knowledge of the details of the arrangement. But it had been necessary when the thing was done to explain, or to pretend to explain, much; and Marie's memory and also her intelligence had been strong beyond her father's anticipation. He was deriving a very considerable income from a large sum of money which he had invested in foreign funds in her name, and had got her to execute a power of attorney enabling him to draw this income on her behalf. This he had done fearing shipwreck in the course which he meant to run, and resolved that, let circumstances go as they might, there should still be left enough to him of the money which he had realised to enable him to live in comfort and luxury, should he be doomed to live in obscurity, or even in infamy. He had sworn to himself solemnly that under no circumstances would he allow this money to go back into the vortex of his speculations, and hitherto he had been true to his oath. Though bankruptcy and apparent ruin might be imminent he would not bolster up his credit by the use of this money even though it might appear at the moment that the money would be sufficient for the purpose. If such a day should come, then, with that certain income, he would make himself happy, if possible, or at any rate luxurious, in whatever city of the world might know least of his antecedents, and give him the warmest welcome on behalf of his wealth. Such had been his scheme of life. But he had failed to consider various circumstances. His daughter might be untrue to him, or in the event of her marriage might fail to release his property,—or it might be that the very money should be required to dower his daughter. Or there might come troubles on him so great that even the certainty of a future income would not enable him to bear them. Now, at this present moment, his mind was tortured by great anxiety. Were he to resume this property it would more than enable him to pay all that was due to the Longestaffes. It would do that and tide him for a time over some other difficulties. Now in regard to the Longestaffes themselves, he certainly had no desire to depart from the rule which he had made for himself, on their behalf. Were it necessary that a crash should come they would be as good creditors as any other. But then he was painfully alive to the fact that something beyond simple indebtedness was involved in that transaction. He had with his own hand traced Dolly Longestaffe's signature on the letter which he had found in old Mr. Longestaffe's drawer. He had found it in an envelope, addressed by the elder Mr. Longestaffe to Messrs. Slow and Bideawhile, and he had himself posted this letter in a pillar-box near to his own house. In the execution of this manœuvre, circumstances had greatly befriended him. He had become the tenant of Mr. Longestaffe's house, and at the same time had only been the joint tenant of Mr. Longestaffe's study,—so that Mr. Longestaffe's papers were almost in his very hands. To pick a lock was with him an accomplishment long since learned. But his science in that line did not go so far as to enable him to replace the bolt in its receptacle. He had picked a lock, had found the letter prepared by Mr. Bideawhile with its accompanying envelope, and had then already learned enough of the domestic circumstances of the Longestaffe family to feel assured that unless he could assist the expedition of this hitherto uncompleted letter by his own skill, the letter would never reach its intended destination. In all this fortune had in some degree befriended him. The circumstances being as they were it was hardly possible that the forgery should be discovered. Even though the young man were to swear that the signature was not his, even though the old man were to swear that he had left that drawer properly locked with the unsigned letter in it, still there could be no evidence. People might think. People might speak. People might feel sure. And then a crash would come. But there would still be that ample fortune on which to retire and eat and drink and make merry for the rest of his days. Then there came annoying complications in his affairs. What had been so easy in reference to that letter which Dolly Longestaffe never would have signed, was less easy but still feasible in another matter. Under the joint pressure of immediate need, growing ambition, and increasing audacity it had been done. Then the rumours that were spread abroad,—which to Melmotte were serious indeed,—they named, at any rate in reference to Dolly Longestaffe, the very thing that had been done. Now if that, or the like of that, were brought actually home to him, if twelve jurymen could be got to say that he had done that thing, of what use then would be all that money? When that fear arose, then there arose also the question whether it might not be well to use the money to save him from such ruin, if it might be so used. No doubt all danger in that Longestaffe affair might be bought off by payment of the price stipulated for the Pickering property. Neither would Dolly Longestaffe nor Squercum, of whom Mr. Melmotte had already heard, concern himself in this matter if the money claimed were paid. But then the money would be as good as wasted by such a payment, if, as he firmly believed, no sufficient evidence could be produced to prove the thing which he had done. But the complications were so many! Perhaps in his admiration for the country of his adoption Mr. Melmotte had allowed himself to attach higher privileges to the British aristocracy than do in truth belong to them. He did in his heart believe that could he be known to all the world as the father-in-law of the eldest son of the Marquis of Auld Reekie he would become, not really free of the law, but almost safe from its fangs in regard to such an affair as this. He thought he could so use the family with which he would be connected as to force from it that protection which he would need. And then again, if he could tide over this bad time, how glorious would it be to have a British Marquis for his son-in-law! Like many others he had failed altogether to enquire when the pleasure to himself would come, or what would be its nature. But he did believe that such a marriage would add a charm to his life. Now he knew that Lord Nidderdale could not be got to marry his daughter without the positive assurance of absolute property, but he did think that the income which might thus be transferred with Marie, though it fell short of that which had been promised, might suffice for the time; and he had already given proof to the Marquis's lawyer that his daughter was possessed of the property in question. And indeed, there was another complication which had arisen within the last few days and which had startled Mr. Melmotte very much indeed. On a certain morning he had sent for Marie to the study and had told her that he should require her signature in reference to a deed. She had asked him what deed. He had replied that it would be a document regarding money and reminded her that she had signed such a deed once before, telling her that it was all in the way of business. It was not necessary that she should ask any more questions as she would be wanted only to sign the paper. Then Marie astounded him, not merely by showing him that she understood a great deal more of the transaction than he had thought,—but also by a positive refusal to sign anything at all. The reader may understand that there had been many words between them. "I know, papa. It is that you may have the money to do what you like with. You have been so unkind to me about Sir Felix Carbury that I won't do it. If I ever marry the money will belong to my husband!" His breath almost failed him as he listened to these words. He did not know whether to approach her with threats, with entreaties, or with blows. Before the interview was over he had tried all three. He had told her that he could and would put her in prison for conduct so fraudulent. He besought her not to ruin her parent by such monstrous perversity. And at last he took her by both arms and shook her violently. But Marie was quite firm. He might cut her to pieces; but she would sign nothing. "I suppose you thought Sir Felix would have had the entire sum," said the father with deriding scorn. "And he would;—if he had the spirit to take it," answered Marie. This was another reason for sticking to the Nidderdale plan. He would no doubt lose the immediate income, but in doing so he would secure the Marquis. He was therefore induced, on weighing in his nicest-balanced scales the advantages and disadvantages, to leave the Longestaffes unpaid and to let Nidderdale have the money. Not that he could make up his mind to such a course with any conviction that he was doing the best for himself. The dangers on all sides were very great! But at the present moment audacity recommended itself to him, and this was the boldest stroke. Marie had now said that she would accept Nidderdale,—or the sweep at the crossing. On Monday morning,—it was on the preceding Thursday that he had made his famous speech in Parliament,—one of the Bideawhiles had come to him in the City. He had told Mr. Bideawhile that all the world knew that just at the present moment money was very "tight" in the City. "We are not asking for payment of a commercial debt," said Mr. Bideawhile, "but for the price of a considerable property which you have purchased." Mr. Melmotte had suggested that the characteristics of the money were the same, let the sum in question have become due how it might. Then he offered to make the payment in two bills at three and six months' date, with proper interest allowed. But this offer Mr. Bideawhile scouted with indignation, demanding that the title-deeds might be restored to them. "You have no right whatever to demand the title-deeds," said Melmotte. "You can only claim the sum due, and I have already told you how I propose to pay it." Mr. Bideawhile was nearly beside himself with dismay. In the whole course of his business, in all the records of the very respectable firm to which he belonged, there had never been such a thing as this. Of course Mr. Longestaffe had been the person to blame,—so at least all the Bideawhiles declared among themselves. He had been so anxious to have dealings with the man of money that he had insisted that the title-deeds should be given up. But then the title-deeds had not been his to surrender. The Pickering estate had been the joint property of him and his son. The house had been already pulled down, and now the purchaser offered bills in lieu of the purchase money! "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Melmotte, that you have not got the money to pay for what you have bought, and that nevertheless the title-deeds have already gone out of your hands?" "I have property to ten times the value, twenty times the value, thirty times the value," said Melmotte proudly; "but you must know I should think by this time that a man engaged in large affairs cannot always realise such a sum as eighty thousand pounds at a day's notice." Mr. Bideawhile without using language that was absolutely vituperative gave Mr. Melmotte to understand that he thought that he and his client had been robbed, and that he should at once take whatever severest steps the law put in his power. As Mr. Melmotte shrugged his shoulders and made no further reply, Mr. Bideawhile could only take his departure. The attorney, although he was bound to be staunch to his own client, and to his own house in opposition to Mr. Squercum, nevertheless was becoming doubtful in his own mind as to the genuineness of the letter which Dolly was so persistent in declaring that he had not signed. Mr. Longestaffe himself, who was at any rate an honest man, had given it as his opinion that Dolly had not signed the letter. His son had certainly refused to sign it once, and as far as he knew could have had no opportunity of signing it since. He was all but sure that he had left the letter under lock and key in his own drawer in the room which had latterly become Melmotte's study as well as his own. Then, on entering the room in Melmotte's presence,—their friendship at the time having already ceased,—he found that his drawer was open. This same Mr. Bideawhile was with him at the time. "Do you mean to say that I have opened your drawer?" said Mr. Melmotte. Mr. Longestaffe had become very red in the face and had replied by saying that he certainly made no such accusation, but as certainly he had not left the drawer unlocked. He knew his own habits and was sure that he had never left that drawer open in his life. "Then you must have changed the habits of your life on this occasion," said Mr. Melmotte with spirit. Mr. Longestaffe would trust himself to no other word within the house, but, when they were out in the street together, he assured the lawyer that certainly that drawer had been left locked, and that to the best of his belief the letter unsigned had been left within the drawer. Mr. Bideawhile could only remark that it was the most unfortunate circumstance with which he had ever been concerned. The marriage with Nidderdale would upon the whole be the best thing, if it could only be accomplished. The reader must understand that though Mr. Melmotte had allowed himself considerable poetical licence in that statement as to property thirty times as great as the price which he ought to have paid for Pickering, still there was property. The man's speculations had been so great and so wide that he did not really know what he owned, or what he owed. But he did know that at the present moment he was driven very hard for large sums. His chief trust for immediate money was in Cohenlupe, in whose hands had really been the manipulation of the shares of the Mexican railway. He had trusted much to Cohenlupe,—more than it had been customary with him to trust to any man. Cohenlupe assured him that nothing could be done with the railway shares at the present moment. They had fallen under the panic almost to nothing. Now in the time of his trouble Melmotte wanted money from the great railway, but just because he wanted money the great railway was worth nothing. Cohenlupe told him that he must tide over the evil hour,—or rather over an evil month. It was at Cohenlupe's instigation that he had offered the two bills to Mr. Bideawhile. "Offer 'em again," said Cohenlupe. "He must take the bills sooner or later." On the Monday afternoon Melmotte met Lord Nidderdale in the lobby of the House. "Have you seen Marie lately?" he said. Nidderdale had been assured that morning, by his father's lawyer, in his father's presence, that if he married Miss Melmotte at present he would undoubtedly become possessed of an income amounting to something over £5,000 a year. He had intended to get more than that,—and was hardly prepared to accept Marie at such a price; but then there probably would be more. No doubt there was a difficulty about Pickering. Melmotte certainly had been raising money. But this might probably be an affair of a few weeks. Melmotte had declared that Pickering should be made over to the young people at the marriage. His father had recommended him to get the girl to name a day. The marriage could be broken off at the last day if the property were not forthcoming. "I'm going up to your house almost immediately," said Nidderdale. "You'll find the women at tea to a certainty between five and six," said Melmotte. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Anthony Trollope (2004). The Way We Live Now. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5231/pg5231-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

MARIE'S FORTUNE.

A week from the succeeding Saturday, Mr. Skinner did not come down to the office

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Concerning Irregular Figures here Concerning Irregular Figures Throughout the previous pages I have been assuming—what perhaps should have been laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental proposition—that every human being in Flatland is a Regular Figure, that is to say of regular construction. By this I mean that a Woman must not only be a line, but a straight line; that an Artisan or Soldier must have two of his sides equal; that Tradesmen must have three sides equal; Lawyers (of which class I am a humble member), four sides equal, and generally, that in every Polygon, all the sides must be equal. The size of the sides would of course depend upon the age of the individual. A Female at birth would be about an inch long, while a tall adult Woman might extend to a foot. As to the Males of every class, it may be roughly said that the length of an adult's sides, when added together, is two feet or a little more. But the size of our sides is not under consideration. I am speaking of the EQUALITY of sides, and it does not need much reflection to see that the whole of the social life in Flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that Nature wills all Figures to have their sides equal. If our sides were unequal our angles might be unequal. Instead of its being sufficient to feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order to determine the form of an individual, it would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the experiment of Feeling. But life would be too short for such a tedious grouping. The whole science and art of Sight Recognition would at once perish; Feeling, so far as it is an art, would not long survive; intercourse would become perilous or impossible; there would be an end to all confidence, all forethought; no one would be safe in making the most simple social arrangements; in a word, civilization would relapse into barbarism. Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious conclusions? Surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one that our whole social system is based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles. You meet, for example, two or three Tradesmen in the street, whom you recognize at once to be Tradesmen by a glance at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to step into your house to lunch. This you do at present with perfect confidence, because everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied by an adult Triangle: but imagine that your Tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal:—what are you to do with such a monster sticking fast in your house door? But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages of a Residence in Spaceland. Obviously the measurements of a single angle would no longer be sufficient under such portentous circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up in feeling or surveying the perimeter of one's acquaintances. Already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are enough to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated Square; but if no one could calculate the Regularity of a single figure in the company, all would be chaos and confusion, and the slightest panic would cause serious injuries, or—if there happened to be any Women or Soldiers present—perhaps considerable loss of life. Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the seal of its approval upon Regularity of conformation: nor has the Law been backward in seconding their efforts. "Irregularity of Figure" means with us the same as, or more than, a combination of moral obliquity and criminality with you, and is treated accordingly. There are not wanting, it is true, some promulgators of paradoxes who maintain that there is no necessary connection between geometrical and moral Irregularity. "The Irregular", they say, "is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics, scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all posts of responsibility, trust, and useful activity. His every movement is jealously watched by the police till he comes of age and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed, if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation, or else immured in a Government Office as a clerk of the seventh class; prevented from marriage; forced to drudge at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend; obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation under close supervision; what wonder that human nature, even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted by such surroundings!" All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State. Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard. If a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life? Are the houses and doors and churches in Flatland to be altered in order to accommodate such monsters? Are our ticket-collectors to be required to measure every man's perimeter before they allow him to enter a theatre or to take his place in a lecture room? Is an Irregular to be exempted from the militia? And if not, how is he to be prevented from carrying desolation into the ranks of his comrades? Again, what irresistible temptations to fraudulent impostures must needs beset such a creature! How easy for him to enter a shop with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods to any extent from a confiding tradesman! Let the advocates of a falsely called Philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogation of the Irregular Penal Laws, I for my part have never known an Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be—a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power, a perpetrator of all manner of mischief. Not that I should be disposed to recommend (at present) the extreme measures adopted by some States, where an infant whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily destroyed at birth. Some of our highest and ablest men, men of real genius, have during their earliest days laboured under deviations as great as, or even greater than, forty-five minutes: and the loss of their precious lives would have been an irreparable injury to the State. The art of healing also has achieved some of its most glorious triumphs in the compressions, extensions, trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diaetetic operations by which Irregularity has been partly or wholly cured. Advocating therefore a VIA MEDIA, I would lay down no fixed or absolute line of demarcation; but at the period when the frame is just beginning to set, and when the Medical Board has reported that recovery is improbable, I would suggest that the Irregular offspring be painlessly and mercifully consumed. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edwin Abbott Abbott (1995). Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/201/pg201-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Concerning Irregular Figures

Dedicated to Vancouver's multilingual Sophia Books

Dedicated to Chapters/Indigo, the national Canadian megachain

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . IN WHICH A NEW SPECIES OF FUNDS, UNKNOWN TO THE MONEYED MEN, APPEARS ON ’CHANGE here CHAPTER V. IN WHICH A NEW SPECIES OF FUNDS, UNKNOWN TO THE MONEYED MEN, APPEARS ON ’CHANGE Phileas Fogg rightly suspected that his departure from London would create a lively sensation at the West End. The news of the bet spread through the Reform Club, and afforded an exciting topic of conversation to its members. From the club it soon got into the papers throughout England. The boasted “tour of the world” was talked about, disputed, argued with as much warmth as if the subject were another Alabama claim. Some took sides with Phileas Fogg, but the large majority shook their heads and declared against him; it was absurd, impossible, they declared, that the tour of the world could be made, except theoretically and on paper, in this minimum of time, and with the existing means of travelling. The , and , and twenty other highly respectable newspapers scouted Mr. Fogg’s project as madness; the alone hesitatingly supported him. People in general thought him a lunatic, and blamed his Reform Club friends for having accepted a wager which betrayed the mental aberration of its proposer. Times, Standard, Morning Post Daily News Daily Telegraph Articles no less passionate than logical appeared on the question, for geography is one of the pet subjects of the English; and the columns devoted to Phileas Fogg’s venture were eagerly devoured by all classes of readers. At first some rash individuals, principally of the gentler sex, espoused his cause, which became still more popular when the came out with his portrait, copied from a photograph in the Reform Club. A few readers of the even dared to say, “Why not, after all? Stranger things have come to pass.” Illustrated London News Daily Telegraph At last a long article appeared, on the 7th of October, in the bulletin of the Royal Geographical Society, which treated the question from every point of view, and demonstrated the utter folly of the enterprise. Everything, it said, was against the travellers, every obstacle imposed alike by man and by nature. A miraculous agreement of the times of departure and arrival, which was impossible, was absolutely necessary to his success. He might, perhaps, reckon on the arrival of trains at the designated hours, in Europe, where the distances were relatively moderate; but when he calculated upon crossing India in three days, and the United States in seven, could he rely beyond misgiving upon accomplishing his task? There were accidents to machinery, the liability of trains to run off the line, collisions, bad weather, the blocking up by snow—were not all these against Phileas Fogg? Would he not find himself, when travelling by steamer in winter, at the mercy of the winds and fogs? Is it uncommon for the best ocean steamers to be two or three days behind time? But a single delay would suffice to fatally break the chain of communication; should Phileas Fogg once miss, even by an hour; a steamer, he would have to wait for the next, and that would irrevocably render his attempt vain. This article made a great deal of noise, and, being copied into all the papers, seriously depressed the advocates of the rash tourist. Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers; to bet is in the English temperament. Not only the members of the Reform, but the general public, made heavy wagers for or against Phileas Fogg, who was set down in the betting books as if he were a race-horse. Bonds were issued, and made their appearance on ’Change; “Phileas Fogg bonds” were offered at par or at a premium, and a great business was done in them. But five days after the article in the bulletin of the Geographical Society appeared, the demand began to subside: “Phileas Fogg” declined. They were offered by packages, at first of five, then of ten, until at last nobody would take less than twenty, fifty, a hundred! Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only advocate of Phileas Fogg left. This noble lord, who was fastened to his chair, would have given his fortune to be able to make the tour of the world, if it took ten years; and he bet five thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg. When the folly as well as the uselessness of the adventure was pointed out to him, he contented himself with replying, “If the thing is feasible, the first to do it ought to be an Englishman.” The Fogg party dwindled more and more, everybody was going against him, and the bets stood a hundred and fifty and two hundred to one; and a week after his departure an incident occurred which deprived him of backers at any price. The commissioner of police was sitting in his office at nine o’clock one evening, when the following telegraphic dispatch was put into his hands: Suez to London. ROWAN, COMMISSIONER OF POLICE, SCOTLAND YARD: I’ve found the bank robber, Phileas Fogg. Send without delay warrant of arrest to Bombay. FIX, . Detective The effect of this dispatch was instantaneous. The polished gentleman disappeared to give place to the bank robber. His photograph, which was hung with those of the rest of the members at the Reform Club, was minutely examined, and it betrayed, feature by feature, the description of the robber which had been provided to the police. The mysterious habits of Phileas Fogg were recalled; his solitary ways, his sudden departure; and it seemed clear that, in undertaking a tour round the world on the pretext of a wager, he had had no other end in view than to elude the detectives, and throw them off his track. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1994). Around the World in Eighty Days. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/103/103-h/103-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

IN WHICH A NEW SPECIES OF FUNDS, UNKNOWN TO THE MONEYED MEN, APPEARS ON ’CHANGE

THE O.P. MANIA

INSECTS AND MUSHROOMS

THE UNITY OF MATERIAL IN THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH

After days of speculation and debate, CEO Elon Musk revealed that his electric car company will build a manufacturing plant in the state of Nuevo León, in northern Mexico. Tesla During the company’s 2023 Investors Day on Wednesday, Musk said he was “excited to announce that we’re going to be building a new Gigafactory in Mexico.” According to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the project entails an investment of USD $5 billion. The Gigafactory will be based in Santa Catarina, a city of around 300,000 people that’s about a seven-hour drive from Tesla’s Austin, Texas, headquarters. It will join the ranks of other plants in the United States, Germany, and China. Reportedly the Gigafactory will up to 1,000 cars per year and create 6,000 jobs in the region. produce Initially conceived as a massive battery production facility, capable of producing up to billions of watt-hours per year in batteries, Gigafactories are now a staple of Tesla’s production line worldwide, producing battery packs, solar panels, and different car models. While Musk did not provide further detail as to when construction will begin on the latest Gigafactory, or what exactly will be produced there, Tesla did announce on Twitter that their new “next-gen vehicle” would be assembled at the Mexican plant. The announcement comes weeks after López Obrador issued a presidential decree that nationalized 234,855 hectares rich in lithium in the northwestern Sonoran desert. Lithium is an important mineral for battery production, and a 2021 revealed that Tesla consumes more lithium than its four closest competitors combined. report Concerns over the factory’s impact on drought-stricken Nuevo Leon Initially, López Obrador had refused to allow Tesla to open its manufacturing plant in Monterrey over concerns of the intense droughts afflicting the city. (Santa Catarina is a suburb of Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon). “Things are going well. We spoke yesterday with Mr. Elon Musk, the director of Tesla. There is already an understanding; they are going to dedicate the investment to Mexico, and the plant will be established in Monterrey with a series of commitments to address the problem of water scarcity,” the president at a press conference. said In 2022, northern Mexico experienced extreme water shortages, and Nuevo Leon a state of emergency last February due to lack of water. Declining rainfall is a major factor, but locals also blame shortages on , such as beverage plants, that are sucking aquifers dry. issued heavy industries https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1631087437723172868?s=20&embedable=true Leading up to the announcement, the Mexican president seemed to have favored the central state of Hidalgo for the site of Tesla’s new plant, which is close to one of his signature infrastructure projects, the new Felipe Angeles International Airport. While the two sides came to an agreement on the Gigafactory in Nuevo Leon, on Friday that the company had scouted locations for a potential battery factory in the central states of Hidalgo, Queretaro and Puebla. Reuters reported With the Gigafactory agreement inked, Musk stands to benefit from a series of advantages a Mexican factory could provide. Nearshoring and Mexican lithium Constructing the Tesla plant in Santa Catarina, which sits about 900 miles from the lithium-rich Sonoran desert, could facilitate access to the mineral reserves, which the Mexican government has placed at the center of their renewable energy industry strategy. Mexico has announced a plan to build multiple solar energy farms in Sonora as well as develop its lithium reserves for battery production, including in electric vehicles. The move could make Mexico to produce electric vehicle batteries on a commercial scale. the first Latin American country “I clarified to [Musk] that lithium has already been nationalized, but we can still reach an agreement,” the president said on Wednesday. “Lithium belongs to the Mexicans, but if the raw material is purchased and put in the battery plants in Sonora, and if Sonorans and Mexicans are given jobs, then an agreement can be reached.” Currently, the largest lithium producers in the world are Australia, Chile, and China. In 2021, Tesla with China’s Ganfeng Lithium to supply the electric automaker. signed a three-year deal However, the country has been diversifying its suppliers in what some analysts say is an on China. effort to reduce its dependence https://twitter.com/samuel_garcias/status/1631110036440186880?embedable=true By focusing on nearshoring its manufacturing operations in Mexico, and so close to vast lithium reserves, Tesla could centralize its operations closer to its Texas headquarters. Mexico is also well known for its automotive manufacturing sector. According to its National Auto Parts Industry (Industria Nacional de Autopartes), Mexico is Latin America’s manufacturer and exporter of vehicles and auto parts. leading The industry has established a vast infrastructure to export vehicles and auto parts to the U.S., and thanks to the trilateral North American commercial agreement (USMCA), vehicles containing at least 75% of locally manufactured components are from paying the 25% tariffs usually charged to cars imported into the U.S. from other countries. exempted This article was originally published by Jorge Antonio Rocha on The Sociable.

Tesla to Build $5 Billion Gigafactory in Mexico

Tesla construirá una gigafábrica de 5.000 millones de dólares en México

Tesla va construire une Gigafactory de 5 milliards de dollars au Mexique

मेक्सिको में 5 अरब डॉलर की गीगाफैक्टरी बनाएगी टेस्ला

テスラ、メキシコに 50 億ドルのギガファクトリーを建設

Tesla construirá Gigafábrica de US$ 5 bilhões no México

Tesla xây dựng Gigafactory trị giá 5 tỷ đô la ở Mexico

特斯拉将在墨西哥建造价值 50 亿美元的超级工厂

The Eternal Savage by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . NU AND THE LION NU AND THE LION Victoria Custer had gone to her room much earlier in the evening than was her custom, but not to sleep. She did not even disrobe, but sat instead in the darkness beside her window looking out toward the black and mysterious jungle in the distance, and the shadowy outlines of the southern hills. She was trying to fight down forever the foolish obsession that had been growing upon her slowly and insidiously for years. Since the first awakening of developing womanhood within her she had been subject to the strange dream that was now becoming an almost nightly occurrence. At first she had thought nothing of it, other than it was odd that she should continue to dream the same thing so many times; but of late these nightly visions had seemed to hold more of reality than formerly, and to presage some eventful happening in her career—some crisis that was to alter the course of her life. Even by day she could not rid herself of the vision of the black-haired young giant, and tonight the culmination had come when she had heard his voice calling her from the rose thicket. She knew that he was but a creature of her dreams, and it was this knowledge which frightened her so—for it meant but one thing; her mind was tottering beneath the burden of the nervous strain these hallucinations had imposed upon it. She must gather all the resources of her nervous energy and throw off this terrible obsession forever. She must! She must! Rising, the girl paced back and forth the length of her room. She felt stifled and confined within its narrow limits. Outside, beneath the open sky, with no boundaries save the distant horizon was the place best fitted for such a battle as was raging within her. Snatching up a silken scarf she threw it about her shoulders—a concession to habit, for the night was hot—and stepping through her window to the porch that encircled the bungalow she passed on into the garden. Just around the nearest angle of the house her brother and Billy Curtiss sat smoking before the window of their bed room, clad in pajamas and slippers. Curtiss was cleaning the rifle he had used that day—the same that he had carried into the rose garden earlier in the evening. Neither heard the girl's light footsteps upon the sward, and the corner of the building hid her from their view. In the open moonlight beside the rose thicket Victoria Custer paced back and forth. A dozen times she reached a determination to seek the first opportunity upon the morrow to give Billy Curtiss an affirmative answer to the question he had asked her the night before—the night of the earthquake; but each time that she thought she had disposed of the matter definitely she found herself involuntarily comparing him with the heroic figure of her dream-man, and again she must need rewage her battle. As she walked in the moonlight two pair of eyes watched her every movement—one pair, clear, black eyes, from the rose thicket—the other flaming yellow-green orbs hidden in a little clump of bushes at the point where she turned in her passing to retrace her steps—at the point farthest from the watcher among the roses. Twenty times Nu was on the point of leaping from his concealment and taking the girl in his arms, for to him she was Nat-ul, daughter of Tha, and it had not been a hundred thousand years, but only since the day before yesterday that he had last seen her. Yet each time something deterred him—a strange, vague, indefinable fear of this wondrous creature who was Nat-ul, and yet who was not Nat-ul, but another made in Nat-ul's image. The strange things that covered her fair form seemed to have raised a barrier between them—the last time that he had walked hand in hand with her upon the beach naught but a soft strip of the skin of a red doe's calf had circled her gracefully undulating hips. Her familiar association, too, with these strange people, coupled with the fact that she spoke and understood their language only tended to remove her further from him. Nu was very sad, and very lonely; and the sight of Nat-ul seemed to accentuate rather than relieve his depression. Slowly there was born within him the conviction that Nat-ul was no longer for Nu, the son of Nu. Why, he could not guess; but the bitter fact seemed irrevocable. The girl had turned quite close to him now, and was retracing her steps toward the bushes twenty yards away. Behind their screening verdure "old Raffles" twitched his tufted tail and drew his steel thewed legs beneath him for the spring, and as he waited just the faintest of purrs escaped his slavering jowls. Too faint the sound to pierce the dulled senses of the twentieth century maiden; but to the man hiding in the rose thicket twenty paces further from the lion than she it fell deep and sinister upon his unspoiled ear. Like a bolt of lightning—so quickly his muscles responded to his will—the cave man hurtled the intervening rose bushes with a single bound, and, raised spear in hand, bounded after the unconscious girl. The great lion saw him coming, and lest he be cheated of his prey leaped into the moonlight before his intended victim was quite within the radius of his spring. The beast emitted a horrid roar that froze the girl with terror, and then in the face of his terrific charge the figure of a naked giant leaped past her. She saw a great arm, wielding a mighty spear, hurl the weapon at the infuriated beast—and then she swooned. As the savage note of the lion's roar broke the stillness of the quiet night Curtiss and Barney Custer sprang to their feet, running toward the side of the bungalow from which the sound had come. Curtiss grasped the rifle he had but just reloaded, and as he turned the corner of the building he caught one fleeting glimpse of something moving near the bushes fifty yards away. Raising his weapon he fired. The whole household had been aroused by the lion's deep voice and the answering boom of the big rifle, so that scarcely a minute after Barney and Curtiss reached the side of the prostrate girl a score of white men and black were gathered about them. The dead body of a huge lion lay scarce twenty feet from Victoria Custer, but a hurried examination of the girl brought unutterable relief to them all, for she was uninjured. Barney lifted her in his arms and carried her to her room while the others examined the dead beast. From the center of the breast a wooden shaft protruded, and when they had drawn this out, and it required the united efforts of four strong men to do it, they found that a stone-tipped spear had passed straight through the savage heart almost the full length of the brute's body. "The zebra killer," said Brown to Greystoke. The latter nodded his head. "We must find him," he said. "He has rendered us a great service. But for him Miss Custer would not be alive now;" but though twenty men scouted the grounds and the plain beyond for several hours no trace of the killer of "old Raffles" could be found, and the reason that they did not find him abroad was because he lay directly beneath their noses in a little clump of low, flowering shrubs, with a bullet wound in his head. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (2023). The Eternal Savage. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70002/pg70002-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

NU AND THE LION

The Time Traders by Andre Alice Norton, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . CHAPTER 8 8 The Time Traders Chapter "... and that is about all." Ten days later Ashe, a dressing on his leg and a few of the pain lines smoothed from his face, sat on a bunk in the arctic time post nursing a mug of coffee in his hands and smiling, a little crookedly, at Nelson Millaird. Millaird, Kelgarries, Dr. Webb, all the top brass of the project had not only come through the transfer point to meet the three from Britain but were now crammed into the room, nearly pushing Ross and McNeil through the wall. Because this was it! What they had hunted for months—years—now lay almost within their grasp. Only Millaird, the director, did not seem so confident. A big man with a bushy thatch of coarse graying hair and a heavy, fleshy face, he did not look like a brain. Yet Ross had been on the roster long enough to know that it was Millaird's thick and hairy hands that gathered together all the loose threads of Operation Retrograde and deftly wove them into a workable pattern. Now the director leaned back in a chair which was too small for his bulk, chewing thoughtfully on a toothpick. "So we have the first whiff of a trail," he commented without elation. "A pretty strong lead!" Kelgarries broke in. Too excited to sit still, the major stood with his back against the door, as alert as if he were about to turn and face the enemy. "The Reds wouldn't have moved against Gog if they did not consider it a menace to them. Their big base must be in this time sector!" "A big base," Millaird corrected. "The one we are after, no. And right now they may be switching times. Do you think they will sit here and wait for us to show up in force?" But Millaird's tone, intended to deflate, had no effect on the major. "And just how long would it take them to dismantle a big base?" that officer countered. "At least a month. If we shoot a team in there in a hurry—" Millaird folded his huge hands over his barrel-shaped body and laughed, without a trace of humor. "Just where do we send that team, Kelgarries? Northeast of a coastal point in Britain is a rather vague direction, to say the least. Not," he spoke to Ashe now, "that you didn't do all you could, Ashe. And you, McNeil, nothing to add?" "No, sir. They jumped us out of the blue when Sandy thought he had every possible line tapped, every safeguard working. I don't know how they caught on to us, unless they located our beam to this post. If so, they must have been deliberately hunting us for some time, because we only used the beam as scheduled——" "The Reds have patience and brains and probably some more of their surprise gadgets to help them. We have the patience and the brains, but not the gadgets. And time is against us. Get anything out of this, Webb?" Millaird asked the hitherto silent third member of his ruling committee. The quiet man adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, a flattish nose which did not support them very well. "Just another point to add to our surmises. I would say that they are located somewhere near the Baltic Sea. There are old trade routes there, and in our own time it is a territory closed to us. We never did know too much about that section of Europe. Their installation may be close to the Finnish border. They could disguise their modern station under half a dozen covers; that is strange country." Millaird's hands unfolded and he produced a notebook and pen from a shirt pocket. "Won't hurt to stir up some of the present-day agents of the M.I. and the rest. They might just come up with a useful hint. So you'd say the Baltic. But that is a big slice of country." Webb nodded. "We have one advantage—the old trade routes. In the Beaker period they are pretty well marked. The major one into that section was established for the amber trade. The country is forested, but not so heavily as it was in an earlier period. The native tribes are mostly roving hunters, and fishermen along the coast. But they have had contact with traders." He shoved his glasses back into place with a nervous gesture. "The Reds may run into trouble themselves there at this time——" "How?" Kelgarries demanded. "Invasion of the ax people. If they have not yet arrived, they are due very soon. They formed one of the big waves of migratory people, who flooded the country, settled there. Eventually they became the Norse or Celtic stock. We don't know whether they stamped out the native tribes they found there or assimilated them." "That might be a nice point to have settled more definitely," McNeil commented. "It could mean the difference between getting your skull split and continuing to breathe." "I don't think they would tangle with the traders. Evidence found today suggests that the Beaker folk simply went on about their business in spite of a change in customers," Webb returned. "Unless they were pushed into violence." Ashe handed his empty mug to Ross. "Don't forget Lurgha's Wrath. From now on our enemies might take a very dim view of any Beaker trade posts near their property." Webb shook his head slowly. "A wholesale attack on Beaker establishments would constitute a shift in history. The Reds won't dare that, not just on general suspicion. Remember, they are not any more eager to tinker with history than we are. No, they will watch for us. We will have to stop communication by radio——" "We can't!" snapped Millaird vehemently. "We can cut it down, but I won't send the boys out without some means of quick communication. You lab boys put your brains to work and see what you can turn out in the way of talk boxes that they can't snoop. Time!" He drummed on his knee with his thick fingers. "It all comes back to a question of time." "Which we do not have," Ashe observed in his usual quiet voice. "If the Reds are afraid they have been spotted, they must be dismantling their post right now, working around the clock. We'll never again have such a good chance to nail them. We must move now." Millaird's lids drooped almost shut; he might have been napping. Kelgarries stirred restlessly by the door, and Webb's round face had settled into what looked like permanent lines of disapproval. "Doc," Millaird spoke over his shoulder to the fourth man of his following, "what is your report?" "Ashe must be under treatment for at least five days. McNeil's burns aren't too bad, and Murdock's slash is almost healed." "Five days—" Millaird droned, and then flashed a glance at the major. "Personnel. We're tied down without any useful personnel. Who in processing could be switched without tangling them up entirely?" "No one. I can recall Jansen and Van Wyke. These ax people might be a good cover for them." The momentary light in Kelgarries' eyes faded. "No, we have no proper briefing and can't get it until the tribe does appear on the map. I won't send any men in cold. Their blunders would not only endanger them but might menace the whole project." "So that leaves us with you three," Millaird said. "We'll recall what men we can and brief them again as fast as possible. But you know how long that will take. In the meantime——" Ashe spoke directly to Webb. "You can't pinpoint the region closer than just the Baltic?" "We can do this much," the other answered him slowly, and with obvious reluctance. "We can send the sub cruising offshore there for the next five days. If there is any radio activity—any communication—we should be able to trace the beams. It all depends upon whether the Reds have any parties operating from their post. Flimsy——" "But something!" Kelgarries seized upon it with the relief of one who needed action. "And they will be waiting for just such a move on our part," Webb continued deliberately. "All right, so they'll be watching!" the major said, about to lose his temper, "but it is about the only move we can make to back up the boys when they do go in." He whipped around the door and was gone. Webb got up slowly. "I will work over the maps again," he told Ashe. "We haven't scouted that area, and we don't dare send a photo-plane over it now. Any trip in will be a stab in the dark." "When you have only one road, you take it," Ashe replied. "I'll be glad to see anything you can show me, Miles." If Ross had believed that his pre-trial-run cramming had been a rigorous business, he was soon to laugh at that estimation. Since the burden of the next jump would rest on only three of them—Ashe, McNeil, and himself—they were plunged into a whirlwind of instruction, until Ross, dazed and too tired to sleep on the third night, believed that he was more completely bewildered than indoctrinated. He said as much sourly to McNeil. "Base has pulled back three other teams," McNeil replied. "But the men have to go to school again, and they won't be ready to come on for maybe three, four weeks. To change runs means unlearning stuff as well as learning it——" "What about new men?" "Don't think Kelgarries isn't out now beating the bushes for some! Only, we have to be fitted to the physical type we are supposed to represent. For instance, set a small, dark-headed pugnose among your Norse sea rovers, and he's going to be noticed—maybe remembered too well. We can't afford to take that chance. So Kelgarries had to discover men who not only look the part but are also temperamentally fitted for this job. You can't plant a fellow who thinks as a seaman—not a seaman, you understand, but one whose mind works in that pattern—among a wandering tribe of cattle herders. The protection for the man and the project lies in his being fitted into the right spot at the right time." Ross had never really thought of that point before. Now he realized that he and Ashe and McNeil were of a common mold. All about the same height, they shared brown hair and light eyes—Ashe's blue, his own gray, and McNeil's hazel—and they were of similar build, small-boned, lean, and quick-moving. He had not seen any of the true Beakermen except on the films. But now, recalling those, he could see that the three time traders were of the same general physical type as the far-roving people they used as a cover. It was on the morning of the fifth day while the three were studying a map Webb had produced that Kelgarries, followed at his own weighty pace by Millaird, burst in upon them. "We have it! This time we have the luck! The Reds slipped. Oh, how they slipped!" Webb watched the major, a thin little smile pulling at his pursed mouth. "Miracles sometimes do happen," he remarked. "I suppose the sub has a fix for us." Kelgarries passed over the flimsy strip of paper he had been waving as a banner of triumph. Webb read the notation on it and bent over the map, making a mark with one of those needle-sharp pencils which seemed to grow in his breast pocket, ready for use. Then he made a second mark. "Well, it narrows it a bit," he conceded. Ashe looked in turn and laughed. "I would like to hear your definition of 'narrow' sometime, Miles. Remember we have to cover this on foot, and a difference of twenty miles can mean a lot." "That mark is quite a bit in from the sea." McNeil offered his own protest when he saw the marking. "We don't know that country—" Webb shoved his glasses back for the hundredth time that morning. "I suppose we could consider this critical, condition red," he said in such a dubious tone that he might have been begging someone to protest his statement. But no one did. Millaird was busy with the map. "I think we do, Miles!" He looked to Ashe. "You'll parachute in. The packs with which you will be equipped are special stuff. Once you have them off sprinkle them with a powder Miles will provide and in ten minutes there won't be enough of them left for anyone to identify. We haven't but a dozen of these, and we can't throw them away except in a crisis. Find the base and rig up the detector. Your fix in this time will be easy—but it is the other end of the line we must have. Until you locate that, stick to the job. Don't communicate with us until you have it!" "There is the possibility," Ashe pointed out, "the Reds may have more than one intermediate post. They probably have played it smart and set up a series of them to spoil a direct trace, as each would lead only to another farther back in time——" "All right. If that proves true, just get us the next one back," Millaird returned. "From that we can trace them along if we must send in some of the boys wearing dinosaur skins later. We have to find their primary base, and if that hunt goes the hard way, well, we do it the hard way." "How did you get the fix?" McNeil asked. "One of their field parties ran into trouble and yelled for help." "Did they get it?" The major grinned. "What do you think? You know the rules—and the ones the Reds play by are twice as tough on their own men." "What kind of trouble?" Ashe wanted to know. "Some kind of a local religious dispute. We do our best with their code, but we're not a hundred per cent perfect in reading it. I gather they were playing with a local god and got their fingers burned." "Lurgha again, eh?" Ashe smiled. "Foolish," Webb said impatiently. "That is a silly thing to do. You were almost over the edge of prudence yourself, Gordon, with that Lurgha business. To use the Great Mother was a ticklish thing to try, and you were lucky to get out of it so easily." "Once was enough," Ashe agreed. "Though using it may have saved our lives. But I assure you I am not starting a holy war or setting up as a prophet." Ross had been taught something of map reading, but mentally he could not make what he saw on paper resemble the countryside. A few landmarks, if there were any outstanding ones, were all he could hope to impress upon his memory until he was actually on the ground. Landing there according to Millaird's instruction was another experience he would not have chosen of his own accord. To jump was a matter of timing, and in the dark with a measure of rain thrown in, the action was anything but pleasant. Leaving the plane in a blind, follow-the-leader fashion, Ross found the descent into darkness one of the worst trials he had yet faced. But he did not make too bad a landing in the small parklike expanse they had chosen for their target. Ross pulled loose his harness and chute, dragging them to what he judged to be the center of the clearing. Hearing a plaintive bray from the air, he dodged as one of the two burden asses sent to join them landed and began to kick at its trappings. The animals they had chosen were the most docile available and they had been given sedation before the jump so that now, feeling Ross's hands, the donkey stood quietly while Ross stripped it of its hanging straps. "Rossa—" The sound of his Beaker name called through the dark brought Ross facing in the other direction. "Here, and I have one of the donkeys." "And I the other!" That was McNeil. Their eyes adjusted to a gloom which was not as thick as it would be in the forest and they worked fast. Then they dragged the parachutes together in a heap. The rain would, Webb had assured them, add to the rapid destruction wrought by the chemical he had provided. Ashe shook it over the pile, and there was a faint greenish glow. Then they moved away to the woodland and made camp for the balance of the night. So much of their whole exploit depended upon luck, and this small part had been successful. Unless some agent had been stationed to watch for their arrival Ross believed they could not be spotted. The rest of their plan was elastic. Posing as traders who had come to open a new station, they were to stay near a river which drained a lake and then angled southward to the distant sea. They knew this section was only sparsely settled by small tribes, hardly larger than family clans. These people were generations behind the civilized level of the villagers of Britain—roving hunters who followed the sweep of game north or south with the seasons. Along the seashore the fishermen had established more permanent holdings which were slowly becoming towns. There were perhaps a few hardy pioneer farmers on the southern fringes of the district, but the principle reason traders came to this region was to get amber and furs. The Beaker people dealt in both. Now as the three sheltered under the wide branches of a towering pine Ashe fumbled with a pack and brought out the "beaker" which was the identifying mark of his adopted people. He measured into it a portion of the sour, stimulating drink which the traders introduced wherever they went. The cup passed from hand to hand, its taste unpleasant on the tongue, but comfortingly warm to one's middle. They took turns keeping the watch until the gray of false dawn became the clearer light of morning. After breakfasting on flat cakes of meal, they packed the donkeys, using the same knots and cross lashing which were the mark of real Beaker traders. Their bows protected from dampness under their cloaks, they set out to find the river and their path southward. Ashe led, Ross towed the donkeys, and McNeil brought up the rear. In the absence of a path they had to set a ragged course, keeping to the edge of the clearing until they saw the end of the lake. "Woodsmoke," Ashe commented when they had completed two thirds of their journey. Ross sniffed and was able to smell it too. Nodding to Ashe, McNeil oozed into nothingness between the trees with an ease Murdock envied. As they waited for him to return, Ross became conscious of another life about them, one busy with its own concerns, which were in no way those of human beings, except that food and perhaps shelter were to be reckoned among them. In Britain, Ross had known there were others of his kind about, but this was different. Here, he could have believed it if he had been told he was the first man to walk this way. A squirrel ran out on a tree limb and surveyed the two men with curious beady eyes, then clung head down on the tree trunk to see them better. One of the donkeys tossed its head, and the squirrel was gone with a flirt of its tail. Although it was quiet, there was a hum underneath the surface which Ross tried to analyze, to identify the many small sounds which went into its making. Perhaps because he was trying so hard, he noted the faint noise. His hand touched Ashe's arm and a slight movement of his head indicated the direction of the sound. Then, as fluidly as he had melted into the woods, McNeil returned. "Company," he said in a soft voice. "What kind?" "Tribesmen, but wilder than any I've seen, even on the tapes. We are certainly out on the fringes now. These people look about cave level. I don't think they've ever heard of traders." "How many?" "Three, maybe four families. Most of the males must be out hunting, but there're about ten children and six or seven women. I don't think they've had good luck lately by the look of them." "Maybe their luck and ours are going to turn together," Ashe said, motioning Ross forward with the donkeys. "We will circle about them to the river and then try bartering later. But I do want to establish contact." About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Andre Alice Norton (2006). The Time Traders. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19145/pg19145-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

"... and that is about all." 

The Time Traders  by Andre Alice Norton, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 6 "That bird of Lurgha's—" said Ross, once they were out of sight of Cassca and Lal, "could it have been a plane?" "Sounds like it," snapped his companion. "If the Reds have done their work efficiently, and there's no reason to suppose otherwise, then there is no use in contacting either Dorhta's town or Munga's. The same announcement concerning the Wrath of Lurgha was probably made there—to their good purpose, not ours." "Cassca didn't seem to be overly impressed with Lurgha's curse, not as much as the man was." "She is the closest thing to a priestess that this tribe knows, and she serves a goddess older and more powerful than Lurgha—the Mother Earth, the Great Mother, goddess of fertility and growth. Nodren's people believe that unless Cassca performs her mysteries and sows part of the first field in the spring there won't be any harvest. Consequently, she is secure in her office and doesn't fear the Wrath of Lurgha too much. These people are now changing from one type of worship to another, but some of Cassca's beliefs will persist clear down to our day, taking on the coating of 'magic' and a lot of other enameling along the way." Ashe had been talking as a man talks to cover up furious thinking. Now he paused again and turned toward the sea. "We have to stick it out somewhere until the sub comes to pick us up. We'll need shelter." "Will the tribesmen be after us?" "They may well be. Let the right men get to talking up a holy extermination of those upon whom the Wrath of Lurgha has fallen and we could be in for plenty of trouble. Some of those men are trained hunters and trackers, and the Reds may have planted an agent to report the return of anyone to our post. Just now we're about the most important time travelers out, for we know the Reds have appeared on this line. They must have a large post here, too, or they couldn't have sent a plane on that raid. You can't build a time transport large enough to take through a considerable amount of material. Everything used by us in this age has to be assembled on this side, and the use of all machines is limited to where they can not be seen by any natives. Luckily large sections of this world are mostly wilderness and unpopulated in the areas where we operate the base posts. So if the Reds have a plane, it was put together here, and that means a big post somewhere." Again Ashe was thinking aloud as he pushed ahead of Ross into the fringes of a wood. "Sandy and I scouted this territory pretty well last spring. There is a cave about half a mile to the west; it will shelter us for tonight." Ashe's plans would probably have been easily accomplished if the cave had been unoccupied. Without incident they came down into a hollow through which trickled a small stream, its banks laced with a thin edging of ice. Under Ashe's direction Ross collected an armload of firewood. He was no woodsman and his prolonged exposure to the chilling drizzle made him eager for even the very rough shelter of a cave, so eager that he plunged forward carelessly. His foot came down on a slippery patch of mud, sending him sprawling on his face. There was a growl, and a white bulk rushed him. The cloak, rucked up about his throat and shoulders, then saved his life, for only stout cloth was caught between those fangs. With a startled cry, Ross rolled as he might have to escape a man's attack, struggling to unsheath his dagger. A white-hot flash of pain scored his upper arm. The breath was driven out of him as a fight raged over his prone body; he heard grunts, snarls, and was severely pommeled. Then he was free as the bodies broke away. Shaken, he got to his knees. A short distance away the fight was still in progress. He saw Ashe straddle the body of a huge white wolf, his legs clamped about the animal's haunches, his hooked arm under the beast's head, forcing it up and back while his dagger rose and sank twice in the underparts of the heaving body. Ross held his own weapon ready. He leaped from a half crouch, and his dagger sank cleanly home behind the short ribs. One of their blows must have reached the animal's heart. With an almost human cry the wolf stiffened convulsively. Then it was still. Ashe squatted near it, methodically driving his dagger into the moist soil to clean the blade. A red rivulet trickled down his thigh where the lower edge of his kilt-tunic had been ripped up to the link belt. He was breathing hard, but otherwise he was as composed as always. "These sometimes hunt in pairs at this season," he observed. "Be ready with your bow—" Ross strung his with the cord he had been keeping dry within the breast folds of his tunic. He fitted an arrow to the string, grateful to be a passable marksman. The slash on his arm smarted in protest as he moved, and he noted that Ashe did not try to get up. "A bad one?" Ross indicated the blood now thickening into a stream along Ashe's thigh. Ashe pulled away the torn tunic and exposed a nasty looking gash on the outside of his hip. He pressed his palm against the gaping wound and motioned Ross to scout ahead. "See if the cave is clear. We can't do anything until we know that." Reluctantly Ross followed the stream until he found the cave, a snug-looking place with an overhang to keep it dry. The unpleasant smell of a lair hung about its mouth. He chose a stone from the stream, chucked it into the dark opening, and waited. The stone rattled as it struck an inner wall, but there was no other sound. A second stone from a different angle followed the first, with the same results. Ross was now certain that the cave was unoccupied. Once they were inside with a fire going at the entrance, they could hope to keep it free of intruders. A little heartened, he cast about a bit upstream and then turned back to where he had left Ashe. "No male?" the other greeted him. "This is a female, and she was close to whelping—" He nudged the white wolf with his toe. His hands held a pad of rags against his hip, and his face was shaded with pain. "Nothing in the cave anyway. Let's see about this...." Ross laid aside the bow and kneeled to examine Ashe's thigh wound. His own slash was more of a smarting graze, but this tear was deep and ugly. "Second plate—belt—" Ashe got the words out between set teeth, and Ross clicked open the hidden recess in the other's bronze belt to bring out a small packet. Ashe made a wry face as he swallowed three of the pills within. Ross mashed another pill onto the bandage he prepared, and when the last cumbersome fold was secure Ashe relaxed. "Let us hope that works," he commented a little bleakly. "Now come here where I can get my hands on you and let me see your scratch. Animal bites can be a nasty business." Bandaged in turn, with the bitterness of the anti-septo pill on his tongue, Ross helped Ashe limp upstream to the cave. He left the older man outside while he cleaned up the floor of the cave and then made his companion as comfortable as he could on a bed of bracken. The fire Ross had longed for was built. They stripped off their sodden clothing and hung it to dry. Ross wrapped a bird he had shot in clay and tucked it under the hot coals to be roasted. They had surely had bad luck, he thought, but they were now undercover, had a fire, and food of a sort. His arm ached, sharp pain shooting from fingers to elbow when he moved it. Though Ashe made no complaint, Ross gauged that the older man's discomfort was far worse than his own, and he carefully hid all signs of his own twinges. They ate the bird, saltless, and with their fingers. Ross savored each greasy bite, licking his hands clean afterward while Ashe lay back on the improvised bed, his face gaunt in the half light of the fire. "We are about five miles from the sea here. There is no way of raising our base now that Sandy's installation is gone. I'll have to lay up, since I can't risk any more loss of blood. And you're not too good in the woods—" Ross accepted that valuation with a new humbleness. He was only too well aware that if it had not been for Ashe, he and not the white wolf would have died down in the valley. Yet a strange shyness kept him from trying to put his thanks into words. The only kind of amends he could make for the other's hurt was to provide hands, feet, and strength for the man who did know what to do and how to do it. "We'll have to hunt—" he ventured. "Deer," Ashe caught him up. "But the marsh at the mouth of this stream provides a better hunting ground than inland. If the wolf laired here very long, she has already frightened away any large game. It isn't the matter of food which bothers me——" "It is being tied up here," Ross filled in for him with some daring. "But look here, I'll take orders. This is your territory, and I'm green at the game. You tell me what to do, and I'll do it the best that I can." He glanced up to find Ashe surveying him intently, but as usual there was no readable expression on the other's brown face. "The first thing to do is get the wolf's hide," Ashe said briskly. "Then bury the carcass. You'd better drag it up here to work on it. If her mate is hanging around, he might try to jump you." Why Ashe should think it necessary to acquire the wolf skin puzzled Ross, but he asked no questions. His skinning task took four times as long and was far from being the neat job the shock-haired man of the record tape had accomplished. Ross had to wash himself off in the stream before piling stones over the corpse in temporary burial. When he pulled his bloody burden back to the cave, Ashe lay with his eyes closed. Ross thankfully sat on his own pile of bracken and tried not to notice the throbbing ache in his arm. He must have fallen asleep, for when he roused it was to see Ashe crawl over to mend the dying fire from their store of wood. Ross, angry at himself, beat the other to the task. "Get back," he said roughly. "This is my job. I didn't mean to fail." Surprisingly, Ashe settled back without a word, leaving Ross to sit by the fire, a fire he was very glad to have a moment or so later when a wailing howl sounded down-wind. If this was not the white wolf's mate, then it was another of her kin who prowled the upper reaches of the small valley. The next day, having provided Ashe with a supply of firewood, Ross went to try his luck in the marsh. The thick drizzle which had hung over the land the day before was gone, and he faced a clear, bright morning, though the breeze had an icy snap. But it was a good morning to be alive and out in the open, and Ross's spirits rose. He tried to put to use all the woodlore he had learned at the base. But it was one thing to learn something academically and another to put that learning into practice. He was uncomfortably certain that Ashe would not have found his showing very good. The marsh was a series of pools between rank growths of leafless willows and coarse tufts of grass, with hillocks of firmer soil rising like islands. Ross, approaching with caution, was glad of it, for from one of those hillocks arose a trail of white smoke, and he saw a black blot which was probably a rude hut. Why one should choose to live in the midst of such country he could not guess, though it might be merely the temporary camp of some hunter. Ross also saw thousands of birds feeding greedily on the dried seed of the marsh grasses, paddling in the pools, and setting up a clamor to drive a man mad. They did not seem in the least disturbed by that distant camper. Ross had reason to be proud of his marksmanship that morning. He had in his quiver perhaps half a dozen of the lighter shafts made for shooting birds. In place of the finely chipped and wickedly barbed flint points used for heavier game, these were tipped with needle-sharp, light bone heads. He had a string of four birds looped together by their feet within almost as many minutes. For the flocks rose in their first alarm only to settle again to feast. Then he knocked over a hare—a fat giant of its race—that stared at him brazenly from a tussock. The hare kicked back into a pool in its death struggle, however, and Ross was forced to leave cover to retrieve its body. But he was alert and he stood up, dagger out and ready, to greet the man who parted the bushes to watch him. For a long minute gray eyes stared into brown ones, and then Ross noted the other's bedraggled and tattered dress. The kilt-tunic smudged with mud, scorched and charred along one edge, was styled like his own. The fellow wore his hair fastened back with a band, unlike the topknot of the local tribesman. Ross, his dagger still ready, broke the silence first. "I am a believer in the fire and the fashioned metal, the climbing sun, and the moving water." He repeated the recognition speech of the Beakermen. "The fire warms by the grace of Tulden, the metal is fashioned by the mystery of the smith, the sun climbs without our aid, and who can stop the water from running?" The stranger's voice was hoarse. Now that Ross had time to examine him more closely he saw the dark bruise on his exposed shoulder, the raw red mark of a burn running across the man's broad chest. He dared to test his surmise concerning the other. "I am of the kin of Assha. We returned to the hill——" "Ashe!" Not "Assha" but "Ashe!" Ross, though sure of that pronunciation, was still cautious. "You are from the hill place, where Lurgha smote with thunder and fire?" The man slid his long legs across the log which had been his shelter. The burn across his chest was not his only brand, for Ross noticed another red stripe, puffed and fiery looking, which swelled the calf of one leg. The man studied Ross closely, and then his fingers moved in a sign which to the uninitiated native might have been one for the warding off of evil, but which to Ross was the "thumbs up" of his own age. "Sanford?" At that name the man shook his head. "McNeil," he named himself. "Where is Ashe?" He might really be what he seemed, but on the other hand, he could be a Red spy. Ross had not forgotten Kurt. "What happened?" he parried one question with another. "Bomb. The Reds must have spotted us, and we didn't have a chance. We weren't expecting any trouble. I'd been down to see about a missing burden donkey and was about halfway back up the hill when she hit. When I came to I was all the way down the hill with part of the fort on top of me. The rest.... Well, you saw the place, didn't you?" Ross nodded. "What are you doing here?" McNeil spread his hands in a tired little gesture. "I tried to talk to Nodren, but they stoned me away. I knew that Ashe was coming through and hoped to reach him when he hit the beach, but I was too late. Then I figured he would pass here to make contact with the sub, so I was waiting it out until I saw you. Where is Ashe?" It all sounded logical enough. Still, with Ashe injured, Ross was taking no chances. He pushed his dagger back into its sheath and picked up the hare. "Stay here," he told McNeil, "I'll be back——" "But—wait! Where's Ashe, you young fool? We have to get together." Ross went on. He was sure that the stranger was in no shape to race after him, and he would lay a muddled trail before he returned to the cave valley. If this man was a Red plant, he would have to reckon with one who had already met Kurt Vogel. The laying of that muddled trail took time. It was past midday when Ross came back to Ashe, who was sitting up by the mouth of the cave at the fire, using his dagger to fashion a crutch out of a length of sapling. He surveyed Ross's burden with approval, but lost interest in the promise of food as soon as the other reported his meeting in the marsh. "McNeil—chap with brown hair, brown eyes, a right eyebrow which quirks up toward his hairline when he smiles?" "Brown hair and eyes, okay—and he didn't smile any." "Chip broken off a front tooth—upper right?" Ross shut his eyes to visualize the stranger. Yes, there had been a small break on a front tooth. He nodded. "That's McNeil. Not that you didn't do right not to bring him here without being sure. What made you so watchful? Kurt?" Again Ross nodded. "And what you said about the Reds' planting someone here to wait for us." Ashe scratched the bristles on his chin. "Never underrate them—we don't dare do that. But the man you met is McNeil, and we'd better get him here. Can you bring him?" "I think he's able to get about, in spite of that leg. From his story he's been stirring around." Ashe bit absent-mindedly into a piece of hare and swore mildly when he burned his tongue. "Odd that Cassca didn't tell us about him. Unless she thought there was no use causing trouble by admitting they had driven him away. You going now?" Ross moved around the fire. "Might as well. He didn't look too comfortable. And I'll bet he's hungry." He took the direct route back to the marsh, but this time no thread of smoke spiraled into the air. Ross hesitated. That shelter on the small island was surely the place where McNeil had holed up. Should he try to work his way out to it now? Or had something happened to the man while he was gone? Again that sixth sense of impending disaster, which is perhaps bred into some men, alerted Ross. Why he turned suddenly and backed against a bushy willow, he could not have explained. However, because he did so the loop of hide rope meant for his throat hit his shoulder harmlessly. It fell to the ground, and he stamped one boot down on it. Then it was the work of seconds to grasp it and give it a quick jerk. The surprised man who held the other end was brought sprawling into the open. Ross had seen that round face before. "Lal of the town of Nodren." He found words to greet the ropeman even as his knee came up against the fellow's jaw, jarring Lal so that he dropped a flint knife. Ross kicked it into the willows. "What do you hunt here, Lal?" "Traders!" The voice was weak, but it held heat. The tribesman did not try to struggle against Ross's hold, and Ross, gripping him by the nape of the neck, moved through a screen of brush to a hollow. Luckily there was no water cupped there, for McNeil lay in the bottom of that dip, his arms tied tightly behind him and his ankles lashed together with no thought for the pain of his burned leg. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Andre Alice Norton (2006). The Time Traders. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19145/pg19145-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

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