The Time Traders (Ross Murdock, Book 1)

220 pp. Virgil Finlay jacket art. Small-time criminal Ross Murdock and Apache rancher Travis Fox stumble separately onto America's secret time travel project, Operation Retrograde. In separate missions, the new agents journey to find how Reds have obtained super-technology beyond present human abilities, and where the Russians have their central base. The Americans will battle the enemy, from ancient Britain to prehistoric America, and finally to the farthest reaches of interstellar space. Ross starts as a real Beakerman Bronze Age trader, faces a ruined outpost, wounded colleagues. And aliens! "The Time Traders is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton (pseudonym, nee Alice Mary Norton), the first in The Time Traders series. It was first published in 1958, and has been printed in several editions. It was updated by Norton in 2000 to account for real world changes. It is part of Norton's Forerunner universe. The Time Traders introduces the premise: a confrontation between Western heroes and the "Reds", AKA the Soviets, plus the "Baldies", a mysterious alien race that has used time travel to alter Earth. This novel alternates among the present day, a trading tribal society in Britain, 2000 B.C., and a glacial outpost in the last ice age."