The Time Traders Series

by Andre Norton

(aka) Time Travel, Time War or Ross Murdock

 

In Earth's future, when time travel has become possible, the Time Patrol is the top secret government agency that protects Earth's past, so that our history will not become corrupted by invaders from either our future or from other worlds. For many years, Murdock, Ashe, and other members of the Time Patrol have contended with threats to our time continuum, none more deadly than the alien Baldies, who hate other high-tech civilizations and want to destroy Earth.

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The Time Traders ~ 1958;

Ross Murdock, a convicted criminal, is a “volunteer” for a secret government project: Operation Retrograde. Unwillingly at first, but with increasing fervor, Murdock becomes a member of the team fighting the strangest battle of the Cold War.
The Russians have infiltrated an unknown era of the past and developed powerful new weapons by utilizing some lost technology. American scientists also have the means to transport men into the past, and it becomes imperative that Operation Retrograde succeed in finding and tapping the source of the Russian’s secret weapons.
Murdock and the other members of his team embark on a dangerous and frantic search of almost forgotten time periods in a Cold War where the Past has become the battlefield of the future!

 

Galactic Derelict ~ 1959;

Time-travel for archaeologists was a well-guarded secret: But when the remains of an interstellar spaceship are uncovered along with the usual fossils, the time agents must call on a modern Apache Indian, Travis Fox, to guide then in the ways of his ancestors in their trip to the past.

But the explorers become trapped in space as well as time, on a mad journey in an automatic starship; not even Travis Fox can tell whether any of them will ever see Earth again.

 

The Defiant Agents ~ 1962;

Travis Fox, once the unwilling captive of the runaway spaceship Galactic Derelict, has volunteered - eagerly this time - for the mission to colonize Topaz. But when he and his fellow Apaches find themselves reverting to the ways their ancient warrior-race, just as the expedition from Russia has been transformed into a Mongol Horde encamped across the mountains, it becomes clear that more than their own lives is at stake...

 

Key Out of Time ~ 1963;

Time Agents Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe, aided by a Polynesian girl and her team of telepathic dolphins, probe the mystery of the sea-planet men have named Hawaika. Its cities and civilizations have vanished, but our agents are snatched back through a Time Gate and marooned in the midst of the struggle for power that must have destroyed the planet.

 

Firehand ~ 1994;

Ross Murdock was a petty criminal when he first time-traveled but now he is a hero, about to leap once again into the breach, to face a time-traveling band of predatory aliens, the same ones who made his hand a charred ruin.

The aliens have destroyed the civilization known as the Dominion of Virgin. Murdoch’s team is traveling back to a much earlier, feudal period of Dominion, to help win a war so the Dominionites can defeat the aliens four centuries later.

With a minor noble’s small but loyal force, they face a foe of much greater size. What they need is a hero of legendary proportions. They need Firehand.

Can Ross Murdoch live up to the legend he’s created?

 

Echoes in Time ~ 1999;

Time Agent Ross Murdock and Eveleen Riorden just wanted a little time off to enjoy their honeymoon. but when a team of Russian scientists vanishes without a trace, the couple is recalled to action and thrust headlong into danger on a distant planet.

Confronted with mysteries from the moment they arrive, Ross and Eveleen encounter natives with customs so alien as to defy understanding, and strange icons with a possible secret. Plagued by a bizarre malady sapping their energy, they begin to piece together the fate of the missing scientist. Suddenly, their mission is a race against time: if the Time Agents can't find answers to the puzzles that surround them, they too may vanish forever....

 

Atlantis Endgame ~ 2002;

On the island of Crete - the reputed site of legendary Atlantis - the Time Patrol that guards Earth's history from potentially world-ending change has discovered evidence of time travel dating back to the time before Atlantis sank beneath the waves. Time Agents Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe lead a team investigating why time travelers would be on the ancient ground. The time agents arrive on Crete to discover that Atlantis was real, a thriving, cosmopolitan society bustling with trade and commerce. Disguised as Egyptian traders, the time agents spot alien Baldies, enemies of human progress, who must be up to no good on the fabled island continent.

 

Time Traders 1 ~ 2000;

Omnibus featuring The Time Traders and Galactic Derelict

 

Time Traders II ~ 2001;

Omnibus featuring The Defiant Agents and Key Out of Time

 

Time Traders III ~ 2002;

Omnibus featuring Echoes in Time and Atlantis Endgame