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reason; and there was in others, like Nietzsche, who did not. To me, your industrial
     civilization, even in the countries that call themselves free, comes near to an ultimate horror; yet I use machines more powerful
     and subtle than you have dreamed. But in what spirit? There is the issue of battle!’
    Her voice dropped. She looked into the forest walling this meadow. ‘I often think,’ she said slowly, ‘that the downward turn
     started in this very millennium, when the earth gods and their Mother were swept aside by those who worshipped skyward.’
    She shook herself, as if to be rid of something, and continued in a level tone, ‘Well, Malcolm, accept for now that the Wardens
     are keepers of life – life in its wholeness, boundedness, splendor, and tragedy – while the Rangers would make the world over
     in the machine’s image. It is an oversimplification. I can perhaps explain better to you later on. But do you find my cause
     unworthy?’
    Lockridge regarded her, where she rested like a young wildcat, and said with a surge that drove out all terror, remorse, and
     aloneness: ‘No. I’ll go along, I already have.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘If you knew what the token meant, not only in words but in your blood, I would leap over the
     fire to you for that.’
    What does it mean? he wanted to ask. Dizzyingly: A man might hope. But before he could speak, Storm grinned and said: ‘The
     next few months should be interesting for you.’
    ‘Good Lord, yes!’ he realized. ‘Why, any anthropologist would give his right – uh – eye to be here. I still can’t believe
     I am.’
    ‘There are dangers,’ she warned.
    ‘So what is the situation anyway? What do we have to do?’
    ‘Let me begin at the first,’ Storm said. ‘As I told you, the struggle between Rangers and Wardens cannot be fought in our
     own time on any major scale. Instead, it has moved largely into the past. Bases are established at strategic points and –
     no matter now. I know the Rangers have a stronghold in HaraldBluetooth’s reign. Though the Asa religion was already one of Sky Father, still, the introduction of Christianity was another
     advance for them, laying the foundation for centralized monarchy and the eventual rationalist state. Then came the men we
     met.’
    ‘Huh? Wait! You mean you people
change
the past?’
    ‘Oh, no. Never. That is inherently impossible. If one tried, he would find events always frustrated him. What has been, is.
     We time travelers are ourselves part of the fabric. But let us say that we discover aspects of it which are useful to our
     respective causes, we get recruits, build up strength for the final contest.
    ‘Well. In my time, the Rangers hold the western hemisphere, the Wardens the eastern. I led a party into the twentieth century
     and overseas to America. We could not build anything important by ourselves without being observed by enemy agents, who are
     much more numerous in your age than ours are. But our plan was to organize a company whose ostensible purpose was something
     remarkable, to pose as ordinary citizens of the era. We picked yours because that was the first century in which such items
     as we needed – transistors, for instance – could be obtained locally and hence inconspicuously. In the guise of a mining enterprise
     in Colorado, we produced our underground installations, manufactured an activator, and drove a new passage.
    ‘The plan was to strike through it, emerging in our own time, in the Rangers’ heartland. But the moment the corridor was finished,
     Brann came down it with an overwhelmingly superior force. I do not know how he got word. Only I escaped. For more than a year,
     then, I wandered about in the United States, seeking a way of return. Every futureward corridor would be guarded, I knew,
     the Rangers being so strong in the Early Industrial civilization. Nowhere could I find a Warden.’
    ‘How’d you live?’ Lockridge inquired.
    ‘You