FORGOTTEN BOOK: KEY OUT OF TIME

 Key Out of Time by Andre Norton (1963)

Last wek I reaveled in time.  A sunny day with soft breezes...a patio swing...a cold soft drink by my side...and a paperback science fiction novel by Andre Norton.  Suddenly, I was thrust back six decades to a time when I was reading that same novel, while gliding back and forth on a swing.  Because I was raised in Massachusetts, the cold soft drink was a "tonic," rather than a "soda," or even a "pop," or -- Gawd help us! -- a "phosphate."  But there I was, reliving my youth, and having a great time of it.

Call it memory if you like.  I call it time travel.

And time travel happens to have been the focus of Key Out of Time, the Andre Norton novel in question, the fourth and (for a long time, final) book of Norton's Time Traders series.  (Thirty-one years later, the series was revived [with co-writers] with Firehand [1994, with P. M. Griffin], Echoes in Time [1999, with Sherwood Smith], and Atlantis Endgame [2002, also with Sherwood Smith].  Sine the 1990s until her death in 2005, many of Norton's books were co-written, including new adventures featuring characters from some of her earlier series.)

Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe are Time Agents, currently trying to solve the mystery of the planet Hawaika, a world of ocean dotted by archipelagos.  With them is Karara, a telepathic Polynesian girl, who has a psychic link to two Earthly dolphins, Tino-rau and Tauao.

Hawaika holds no intelligent native life, nor is there any archaeological evidence of there ever having such.  But records retrieved from an ancient wrecked spacecraft that one belonged to the Baldies -- a long-vanished extra-galactic race of conquerors indicate that a civilization once exited on the watery world.  Using time probes, Murdock and Ashe hope to discover what this race may have been and why it vanished so completely.  The deadline for doing is fast approaching and if if they do not get results, the Time Traders will be moving on to another planet.

While exploring a part of the ocean, Murdock discovers a large saucer-like depression on the sea floor.  the sides of the structure have clearly been made by some intelligent species.  The crew hastily assembles a Time Gate to visually probe the past.  First calibrated for 10,000 years earlier, they got a dim view of a distant citadel under attack by a group of ships.  Calibrating the probe for 300 years later, the citadel and all signs of life are gone, replaced by giant metallic pylons stretching to the sky.  Another 330 years later -- a full half century from their first probe -- all signs of intelligent life having ever been on the planet have been erased.

A sudden storm, stronger than an Earthly typhoon, strikes, and Murdock and Ashe, along with Karara and the dolphins, are sucked into the Time Gate.  Murdock regains consciousness, aware that Ashe had been thrust into the past with him, but with no sign of his partner anywhere around, nor was he aware that Karara and the dolphins had also fallen into the time trap..  What is all about Murdock, are the shattered remnants of the Time Gate, totally destroyed.  Murdock and Ashe -- wherever he was -- are hopelessly trapped in the past.  Soon he stumbles upon the Polynesian girl and her dolphins.

The native of Hawaika of ten millennia ago fall into two warring groups:  the Raiders, seafarers who hunt dangerous ocean beasts, while also raiding the land-dwelling Wreckers, who try to lure the Raiders' ships to destruction to be looted.  There is a third group on the planet -- the ancient race of the Foanna, who had lived on the planet before the coming of the other Hawaikans.  The Foanna are secretive and powerful, using both super-science and their awesome psychic powers to lord it over the Wreckers.  (They couldn't be bothered with the Riders.)

Unknown to everyone, into this mix are thrown the Baldies, working behind the scenes to ignite a full-scale war between the Wreckers and the Raiders. in the hopes that such a conflict might spill over to the Foanna.  For some reason, the Baldies are terrified of the Foanna and are afraid to directly confront them.  The Baldies on the planet are evidently an exploratory group that have not yet informed their leaders of the existence of a new planet to be conquered and destroyed.

It's up to the Time Scouts to rally the natives of Hawaika and defeat the Baldies before they can relay their findings to their masters.  Will their efforts work?  Or will the existence of a destroyed civilization some 10,000 year in the future mean that the Time Agents failed?  Can Murdock and Ashe change a predetermined future and set up a new time stream? 

We don't know, but by the novel's end, there is hope.

When I was a kid, the gateway to adult SF was through the books of either Robert A. Heinlein or though the books of Andre Norton.  Andre Norton's importance in the development of the genre cannot be understated.  And she told a rousing good tale -- one that can still time travel you back to your youth if you let it.