Audiobook Leinster, Murray This star shall be free

In prehistoric England, a young cave-dweller named Tork encounters a colossal silver spacecraft belonging to aquatic visitors from Antares. As part of a casual ecological experiment, the aliens gift Tork a mysterious device that magically compels animals to approach him for slaughter, alongside superior stone weapons to ensure his survival. Intoxicated by boundless food and newfound dominance over his tribe, Tork shares the spoils and tools, sparking a rapid cultural and demographic boom among early humans.

The experiment soon creates a dangerous imbalance as neighboring savages vie for the coveted weapons, leading to widespread conflict and theft. When Tork's own spear is stolen, he seeks a way to summon the Antareans back for more supplies. Remembering their appearance, Tork and his tribe draw crude pictures of the aliens on cave walls while concentrating on the device, unwittingly trapping the technologically advanced visitors in an inescapable psychic summons.

Trapped by their own technology and harassed by the cavemen's relentless demands for more flint, the furious Antareans negotiate a release. They trade more weapons in exchange for the destruction of the drawings, abandon their century-long survey, and flee the planet to avoid further human interference. Unbeknownst to them, the cave-folk simply recreate the drawings to keep calling animals, preserving both their weapons and their new artistic traditions.

Millennia pass as the consequences of the Antarean experiment ripple outward through human history. Descendants of Tork's tribe spread across the globe, developing metallurgy, advanced weaponry, and sophisticated art while passing down the ancient cave-painting traditions. The original alien device is eventually buried and forgotten beneath accumulating rubble in the ancestral cave.

Thirty thousand years later, an Antarean colonizing fleet returns to claim Earth's oceans for their expanding civilization. Expecting a pristine, unpopulated world suitable for settlement, the bewildered aliens are instead intercepted and obliterated by the technologically advanced descendants of Tork. Although human scientists salvage interstellar travel from the wreckage, the final outcome of the original scientific experiment remains deliberately open-ended.