A Trace of Memory by Keith Laumer

A Trace of memory - Keith Laumer 1963

This is another of Laumer’s rattling good yarns that runs along at the speed of an express train. An uncomplicated entertaining read typical of Laumer at his fast paced best.

Legion, currently down on his luck, is picked up by the local cops. To escape them he pretends to take up an offer for a job with a strange seemingly immortal amnesiac named Foster who is looking for some hired help. Legion at first believes Foster is insane or deluded because he claims to be hunted by something that he is not too specific about but in the night strange glowing lights appear and scare Foster enough to abandon his multimillion dollar home. Legion escapes with him in a fast car, that outpaces the mysterious lights. After this narrow escape, Legion finally agrees to help Foster recover his lost memory.
From an ancient and indestructible hand written journal belonging to Foster containing centuries old entries written in his hand, they discover that Stonehenge in England is an ancient control centre and they guide a shuttle down from an orbiting mothership that has been in orbit for the last three thousand years.
On board the mothership Foster partially regains his memory from a reorientation device on the ship. He is still unaware of exactly who he is, but has now discovered he comes from the civilisation that produced the ancient ship and has been stranded on Earth for over three thousand years. Foster decides to return to his home star where he hopes to be able to recover his full memory but Legion wants to stay and exploit some of the gadgets he finds on the mother ship. Foster agrees to this and leaves Legion with a bag full of super tech goodies and a shuttle to get back to Earth.

Typical of many Laumer stories which appear to have ended too soon, Legion, having helped solve the mystery of Foster's origin, is about to reap his reward and live happily ever after, when the sky falls in on him and he has to start over.
After making a fortune from his alien treasure trove, Legion’s gadgets attract the attention of the super powers and suddenly he is raided by the CIA and KGB both at once. (This was written during the cold war) In the resulting firefight, he escapes to his shuttle which fortunately has interstellar capabilities and follows Foster to his home world. On arriving, instead of finding a thriving hi-tech society, he finds the place degenerated to a slave society. He is captured and made into a slave but rescues himself and Foster, who turns out to be the rightful ruler. Second happy ending as Foster now the ruler sets all to rights.

I like Laumer, his books are not intended to be taken too seriously and are always great entertainment, but I do have a tiny critisism of any author who uses Stonehenge as a remote and mysterious place. Stonehenge is mysterious and impressive, but it is a World heritage site and attracts thousands of visitors each year. It is constantly surveyed and delved into and is probably the most well understood megalith in Europe.
In the book, they discover there is an ancient but high tech control centre hidden under Stonehenge from a vague pre-historic description explaining how to find what is now called Salisbury Plain. Salisbury plain is not very plain-like, being undulating and frequently wooded, and I would never have recognised it from the description used in the book.
Heading west on the A303 you first see Stonehenge from the top of an admittedly low hill, but a hill nonetheless and within half a mile it is out of sight again hidden in a dip. Stonehenge is not as remote as Laumer imagined, many a commuter gets a good view of the site from the busy road as they sit patiently in the near stationary traffic queues that regularly build up there during rush hour.
Surprisingly, there are no pubs very close to Stonehenge and as far as I know none called the Ancient Sinner but that is OK it is just a story. The publican of the ‘Ancient Sinner’ in the book obviously mistook them for tourists because he speaks to them like Long John Silver. But despite this, it is an enjoyable story and I am often reminded of it when I drive by Stonehenge on my way to work, I have not seen any glowing spheres yet but I live in hopes.