LORD TEDRIC

By Edward E. Smith, Ph. D.

Illustrated by Lawrence

Skandos One (The Skandos of Time Track Number One, numberedfor reasons which will become clear) showed, by means of thechronoviagraph, that civilization would destroy itself in one hundredeighty-seven years. To prevent this catastrophe he went back to the keypoint in time and sought out the key figure—one Tedric, a Lomarrianironmaster who had lived and died a commoner; unable, ever, to doanything about his fanatical detestation of human sacrifice.

Skandos One taught Tedric how to make one batch of super-steel;watched him forge armor and arms from that highly anachronistic alloy.He watched him do things that Tedric of Time Track One had never done.

Time, then, did fork. Time Track One was probably no longer inexistence. He must have been saved by his "traction" on the realityof Time Track Two. He'd snap back up to his own time and see whatthe situation was. If he found his assistant Furmin alone in thelaboratory, the extremists would have been proved wrong. If not....

Furmin was not alone. Instead, Skandos Two and Furmin Two were at workon a tri-di of Tedric's life: so like, and yet so wildly unlike, theone upon which Skandos One and Furmin One had labored so long!

Shaken and undecided, Skandos One held his machine at the very vergeof invisibility and watched and listened.

"But it's so maddeningly incomplete!" Skandos Two snorted. "When itgoes into such fine detail on almost everything else, why can't weget how he stumbled onto one lot, and never any other, of high-alloysteel—chrome-nickel-vanadium-molybdenum-tungsten steel—Mortensen'ssuper-steel, to be specific—which wasn't rediscovered for thousands ofyears?"

"Why, it was revealed to him by his personal god Llosir—don't youremember?" Furmin snickered.

"Poppycock!"

"To us, yes; but not to them. Hence, no detail, and you know why wecan't go back and check."

"Of course. We simply don't know enough about time ... but I would solike to study this Lord of the Marches at first hand! Nowhere else inall reachable time does any other one entity occupy such a uniquely keyposition!"

"So would I, chief. If we knew just a little more I'd say go. In themeantime, let's run that tri-di again, to see if we've overlooked anylittle thing!"

In the three-dimensional, full-color projection Armsmaster LordTedric destroyed the principal images of the monstrous god Sarpedionand killed Sarpedion's priests. He rescued Lady Rhoann, King Phagon'seldest daughter, from the sacrificial altar. The king made him Lord ofthe Marches, the Highest of the High.

"This part I like." Furmin pressed a stud; the projector stopped. Ablood-smeared armored giant and a blood-smeared naked woman stood, armsaround each other, beside a blood-smeared altar of green stone. "Talkabout being STACKED! If I hadn't checked the data myself I'd swear youwent overboard there, chief."

"Exact likenesses—life size," Skandos Two grunted. "Tedric: six-fou