HARD TIMES That's what leads Manson Everard to answer an ad offering "high pay and foreign travel for men and women with military experience." But compared to where - and when - he's going, "hard times" in the 20th-century U.S.A. are easy! Contents 1 • Time Patrol • [Time Patrol • 1] • (1955) • novelette by Poul Anderson 36 • Brave to Be a King • [Time Patrol • 2] • (1959) • novelette by Poul Anderson 75 • The Only Game in Town • [Time Patrol • 4] • (1960) • novelette by Poul Anderson 104 • Delenda Est • [Time Patrol • 5] • (1955) • novelette by Poul Anderson

Contents 7 • Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks • [Time Patrol • 6] • novella by Poul Anderson 117 • The Sorrow of Odin the Goth • [Time Patrol • 7] • novella by Poul Anderson

SF veteran Anderson revives his Time Patrol series for this brisk, intricate tale of crime and pursuit across the centuries. The trouble starts when bandits from the far future stage a raid on the fabulous ransom that Francisco Pizarro demanded in 1533 for the Inca Emperior Atahuallpa. In the confusion, a resourceful conquistador steals a time machine, maroons a Time Patrol agent in the distant past and ends up kidnapping the agent's niece in 1985. Anderson's mosaic of interlocking episodes allows readers to fit the puzzle together for themselves. He also has some thought-provoking ideas on our own cultural myth of historical progress and on the foolishness and danger of underestimating people from other cultures or eras.

Contents: 1 • The Stranger That Is Within Thy Gates • (1990) • short story by Poul Anderson 9 • Women and Horses and Power and War • (1990) • novella by Poul Anderson 125 • Before the Gods That Made the Gods • (1990) • short story by Poul Anderson 137 • Beringia • (1990) • novella by Poul Anderson 257 • Riddle Me This • (1990) • short story by Poul Anderson 267 • Amazement of the World • (1990) • novella by Poul Anderson