Norton,Andre - Time Traders II

Time Traders II:

The Defiant Agents & Key Out of Time

Andre Norton

Fout! Onbekende schakeloptie-instructie.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents

is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original Omnibus

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31968-X

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First Baen printing, February 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Norton, Andre.

[Defiant agents]

Time traders II / by Andre Norton.

p. cm.

“A Baen Books original omnibus”—T.p. verso.

Contents: The defiant agents — Key out of time.

Summary: In two related adventures, Travis Fox and Ross Murdock are stranded on two separate planets where they discover that the

fate of those worlds, and possibly the galaxy itself, will be determined by their actions.

ISBN 0-671-31968-X

1. Science fiction, American. [1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Science fiction.] I. Norton, Andre. Key out of time. II. Title.

PZ7.N82 Tj 2001

[Fic]—dc21 00-049426

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

BAEN BOOKS BY ANDRE NORTON:

Time Traders

Time Traders II

The Defiant Agents

1

No windows broke the four plain walls of the office; no sunlight shone on the desk there. Yet the five

disks set out on its surface appeared to glow—perhaps the heat of the mischief they could

cause . . . had caused . . . blazed in them.

But fanciful imaginings did not change cold, hard fact. Dr. Gordon Ashe, one of the four men

peering unhappily at the display, shook his head slightly as if to free his mind of such cobwebs.

His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to ask harshly: “No chance of a

mistake?”

“You saw the detector.” The thin gray man behind the desk answered with chill precision. “No, no

possible mistake. These five have definitely been snooped.”

“And two choices among them,” Ashe murmured. That was the important point now.

“I thought these were under maximum security,” Kelgarries challenged the gray man.

Florian Waldour’s remote expression did not change. “Every possible precaution was in force.

There was a sleeper—a hidden agent—planted—”

“Who?” Kelgarries demanded.

Ashe glanced around at his three companions—Kelgarries, colonel in command of one sector of

Project Star, Florian Waldour, the security head on the station, Dr. James Ruthven . . .

“Camdon!” he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic had led him.

Waldour nodded.

It was the first time since he had known and worked with Kelgarries that Ashe saw him display

open astonishment.

“Camdon? But he was sent by—” The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “He must have been sent. . . .

There were too many cross checks to fake that!”

“Oh, he was sent, all right.” For the first time there was a note of emotion in Waldour’s voice. “He

was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. They must have planted him a full twenty-five or thirty years ago.

He’s been just what he claimed to be as long as that.”

“Well, he certainly was worth their time and trouble, wasn’t he?” James Ruthven’s voice was a

growling rumble. He sucked in thick lips, continuing to stare at the disks. “How long ago were these

snooped?”

Ashe’s thoughts turned swiftly from the enormity of the betrayal to that important point. The time

element—that was the primary concern now that the damage was done, and they knew it.

“That’s one thing we don’t know.” Waldour’s reply came slowly as if he hated the admission.

“We’ll be safer, then, if we presume the very earliest period.” Ruthven’s statement was as ruthless

in its implications as the shock they had had when Waldour announced the disaster.

“Eighteen months ago?” Ashe protested.

But Ruthven was nodding. “Camdon was in on this from the very first. We’ve had the tapes in and

out for study all that time, and the new detector against snooping was not put in service until two

weeks ago. This case came up on the first check, didn’t it?” he asked Waldour.

“First check,” the security man agreed. “Camdon left the base six days ago. But he has been in and

out on his liaison duties from the first.”

“He had to go through those search points every time,” Kelgarries protested. “Thought nothing

could get through those.” The colonel brightened. “Maybe he got his snooper films and then couldn’t

take them off base. Have his quarters been turned out?”

Waldour’s lips lifted in a grimace of exasperation. “Please, Colonel,” he said wearily, “this is not a

kindergarten exercise. In confirmation of his success, listen . . .” He touched a button on his desk and

out of the air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster.

“Fears for the safety of Lassiter Camdon, space expeditor for the Western Alliance Space Council,

have been confirmed by the discovery of burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr. Camdon was

returning from a mission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact with Ragnor Field.

Reports of a storm in that vicinity immediately raised concern—” Waldour snapped off the voice.

“True—or a cover for his escape?” Kelgarries wondered aloud.

“Could be either. They may have deliberately written him off when they had all they wanted,”

Waldour acknowledged. “But to get back to our troubles—Dr. Ruthven is right to assume the worst. I

believe we can only insure the recovery of our project by thinking that these tapes were snooped

anywhere from eighteen months ago to last week. And we must work accordingly!”

The room fell silent as they all considered that. Ashe slipped down in his chair, his thoughts

enmeshed in memories. First there had been Operation Retrograde, when specially trained “time

agents” had shuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate and track down the mysterious source

of alien knowledge which Greater Russia had suddenly—and ominously—begun to use.

Ashe himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdock, had been part of the final action which had

solved the mystery, having traced that source of knowledge not to an earlier and forgotten human

civilization but to wrecked spaceships from an eon-old galactic empire—an empire which had

flourished when glacial ice covered most of Europe and northern America and humans were cave-

dwelling primitives. Murdock, trapped by the Russians in one of those wrecked ships, had

inadvertently summoned its original owners. They had descended to trace—through the Russian time

stations—the looters of their wrecks, destroying the whole Russian time-travel system.

But the aliens had not chanced on the parallel western system. And a year later that had been put

into Project Folsom One. Again Ashe, Murdock, and a newcomer, the Apache Travis Fox, had gone

back into time to the Arizona of the Folsom hunters, discovering what they wanted—two ships, one

wrecked, the other intact. And when the project had attempted to bring the intact ship back into the

present, chance had triggered controls set by the dead alien commander. A party of four, Ashe,

Murdock, Fox, and a technician, had then made an involuntary space voyage, touching three worlds

on which the galactic civilization of the far past had left ruins.

Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and, when rewound, it had almost

miraculously returned them to Earth with a cargo of similar tapes found on a world which might have

been the capital for a government comprised of whole solar systems. Tapes—each one was the key to

another planet.

And that ancient galactic knowledge was treasure such as humans had never dreamed of

possessing, though many rightly feared that such discoveries could be weapons in hostile hands.

Tapes chosen at random had been shared with other nations at a great drawing. But each nation

secretly remained convinced that, in spite of the untold riches it might hold as a result of chance, its

rivals had done better. Right at this moment, Ashe knew there were Western agents trying to do at the

Russian project just what Camdon had done there. However, that did not help in solving their present

dilemma about Operation Cochise, now perhaps the most important part of their plan.

Some of the tapes were duds, either too damaged to be useful, or set for worlds hostile to humans

lacking the special equipment the earlier star-traveling race had had at its command. Of the five tapes

they now knew had been snooped, three would be useless to the enemy.

But one of the remaining two . . . Ashe frowned. One was the goal toward which they had been

working feverishly for a full twelve months. Their assignment was to plant a colony across the gulf of

space—a successful colony—later to be used as a steppingstone to other worlds . . .

“So we have to move faster.” Ruthven’s comment reached Ashe through his stream of memories.

“I thought you required at least three more months to conclude personnel training,” Waldour

observed.

Ruthven lifted a fat hand, running the nail of a broad thumb back and forth across his lower lip in a

habitual gesture Ashe had learned to mistrust. As the latter stiffened, bracing for a battle of wills, he

saw Kelgarries come alert too. At least the colonel more often than not was able to counter Ruthven’s

demands.

“We test and we test,” said the fat man. “Always we test. We move like turtles when it would be

better to race like greyhounds. There is such a thing as overcaution, as I have said from the first. One

would think”—his accusing glance included Ashe and Kelgarries—“that there had never been any

improvising in this project, that all had always been done by the book. I say that this is the time we

must take the big gamble, or else we may find we have been outbid for space entirely. Let those

others discover even one alien installation they can master and—” his thumb shifted from his lip,

grinding down on the desk top as if it were crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant

insect—“and we are finished before we really begin.”

There were a number of men in the project who would agree with that, Ashe knew. And a greater

number in the country and Alliance at large. The public was used to reckless gambles which paid off,

and there had been enough of those in the past to give an impressive argument for that point of view.

But Ashe, himself, could not agree to a speed-up. He had been out among the stars, shaved disaster

too closely because the proper training had not been given.

“I shall report that I advise a take-off within a week,” Ruthven was continuing. “To the council I

shall say that—”

“And I do not agree!” Ashe cut in. He glanced at Kelgarries for the quick backing he expected, but

instead there was a lengthening moment of silence. Then the colonel spread out his hands and said

sullenly:

“I don’t agree either, but I don’t have the final say-so. Ashe, what would be needed to speed up any

take-off?”

It was Ruthven who replied. “We can use the Redax, as I have said from the start.”

Ashe straightened, his mouth tight, his eyes hard and angry.

“And I’ll protest that . . . to the council! Man, we’re dealing with human beings—selected

volunteers, men who trust us—not with laboratory animals!”

Ruthven’s thick lips pouted into what was close to a smile of derision. “Always the sentimentalists,

you experts in the past! Tell me, Dr. Ashe, were you always so thoughtful of your men when you sent

agents back into time? And certainly a voyage into space is less risky than time travel. These

volunteers know what they have signed for. They will be ready—”

“Then you propose telling them about the use of Redax—what it does to a man’s mind?” countered

Ashe.

“Certainly. They will receive all necessary instructions.”

Ashe was not satisfied. He would have spoken again, except that Kelgarries interrupted:

“If it comes to that, none of us here has any right to make final decisions. Waldour has already sent

in his report about the snoop. We’ll have to await orders from the council.”

Ruthven levered himself out of his chair, his solid bulk stretching his uniform coveralls. “That is

correct, Colonel. In the meantime I would suggest we all check to see what can be done to speed up

each one’s portion of labor.” Without another word, he tramped to the door.

Waldour eyed the other two with mounting impatience. It was plain he had work to do and wanted

them to leave. But Ashe was reluctant. He had a feeling that matters were slipping out of his control,

that he was about to face a crisis which was somehow worse than just a major security leak. Was the

enemy always on the other side of the world? Or could he wear the same uniform, even pretend to

share the same goals?

In the outer corridor he still hesitated. Kelgarries, a step or so in advance, looked back over his

shoulder impatiently.

“There’s no use fighting—our hands are tied.” His words were slurred, almost as if he wanted to

disown them.

“Then you’ll agree to use the Redax?” For the second time within the hour Ashe felt as if he had

taken a step only to have firm earth turn into slippery, shifting sand underfoot.

“It isn’t a matter of my agreeing. It may be a matter of getting through or not getting through—

now. If they’ve had eighteen months, or even twelve . . . !” The colonel’s fingers balled into a fist.

“And they won’t be delayed by any humanitarian reasoning—”

“Then you believe Ruthven will win the council’s approval?”

“When you are dealing with frightened men, you’re talking to ears closed to anything except what

they want to hear. After all, we can’t prove that the Redax will be harmful.”

“But we’ve only used it under rigidly controlled conditions. To speed up the process would mean a

total disregard of those controls. Snapping a party of men and women back into their racial past and

holding them there for too long a period . . .” Ashe shook his head.

“You have been in Operation Retrograde from the start, and we’ve been remarkably successful—”

“Operating in a different way, educating picked men to return to certain points in history where

their particular temperaments and characteristics fitted the roles they were selected to play, yes. And

even then we had our percentage of failures. But to try this—returning people not physically into

time, but mentally and emotionally into prototypes of their ancestors—that’s something else again.

The Apaches have volunteered, and they’ve been passed by the psychologists and the testers. But

they’re Americans of today, not tribal nomads of two or three hundred years ago. If you break down

some barriers, you might just end up breaking them all.”

Kelgarries was scowling. “You mean—they might revert utterly, have no contact with the present

at all?”

“That’s just what I do mean. Education and training, yes, but full awakening of racial memories,

no. The two branches of conditioning should go slowly and hand in hand, otherwise—real trouble!”

“Only we no longer have the time to go slow. I’m certain Ruthven will be able to push this

through—with Waldour’s report to back him.”

“Then we’ll have to warn Fox and the rest. They must be given a choice in the matter.”

“Ruthven said that would be done.” The colonel did not sound convinced.

Ashe snorted. “If I hear him telling them, I’ll believe it!”

“I wonder whether we can . . .”

Ashe half turned and frowned at the colonel. “What do you mean?”

“You said yourself that we had our failures in time travel. We expected those, accepted them, even

when they hurt. When we asked for volunteers for this project we had to make them understand that

there was a heavy element of risk involved. Three teams of recruits—the Eskimos from Point Barren,

the Apaches, and the Islanders—all picked because their people had a high survival rating in the past,

to be colonists on widely different types of planets. Well, the Eskimos and the Islanders aren’t

matched to any of the worlds on those snooped tapes, but Topaz is waiting for the Apaches. And we

may have to move them there in a hurry. It’s a rotten gamble any way you see it!”

“I’ll appeal directly to the council.”

Kelgarries shrugged. “All right. You have my backing.”

“But you believe such an effort hopeless?”

“You know the red-tape merchants. You’ll have to move fast if you want to beat Ruthven. He’s

probably on a direct line now to Stanton, Reese, and Margate. This is what he has been waiting for!”

But if we contacted the media, public opinion would back us—”

“You don’t mean that, of course.” Kelgarries was suddenly coldly remote.

Ashe flushed under the heavy brown which overlay his regular features. To threaten a silence break

was near blasphemy here. He ran both hands down the fabric covering his thighs as if to rub away

some soil on his palms.

“No,” he replied heavily, his voice dull. “I guess I don’t. I’ll contact Hough and hope for the best.”

“Meanwhile,” Kelgarries spoke briskly, “we’ll do what we can to speed up the program as it now

stands. I suggest you take off for New York within the hour—”

“Me? Why?” Ashe asked with a trace of suspicion.

“Because I can’t leave without acting directly against orders, and that would put us wrong

immediately. You see Hough and talk to him personally—put it to him straight. He’ll have to have all

the facts if he’s going to counter any move from Stanton before the council. You know every

argument we can use and all the proof on our side, and you’re authority enough to make it count.”

“If I can do all that, I will.” Ashe was alert and eager. The colonel, seeing his change of expression,

felt easier.

But Kelgarries stood a moment watching Ashe as he hurried down a side corridor, before he moved

on slowly to his own box of an office. Once inside he sat for a long time staring at the wall and seeing

nothing but the pictures produced by his thoughts. Then he pressed a button and read off the symbols

which flashed on a small viewscreen set in his desk. Punching a code, he relayed an order which

might postpone trouble for a while. Ashe was far too valuable a man to lose, and his emotions could

boil him straight into disaster over this.

“Bidwell—reschedule Team A. They are to go to the Hypno-Lab instead of the reserve in ten

minutes.”

Releasing the mike, he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupt a hypno-training period, and

this one would last three hours. Ashe could not possibly see the trainees before he left for New York.

And that would remove one temptation from his path—he would not talk at the wrong time.

Kelgarries’ mouth twisted sourly. He took no pride in what he was doing. And he was perfectly

certain that Ruthven would win and that Ashe’s fears of Redax were well founded. It all came back to

the old basic tenet of the service: the end justified the means. They must use every method and man

under their control to make sure that Topaz would remain a Western possession, even though that

strange planet now swung far beyond the sky which covered both Western Alliance and Greater

Russia. Time had run out too fast; they were being forced to play what cards they held, even though

those might be low ones. Ashe would be back, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this had been decided

one way or another. Not until this was finished.

Finished! Kelgarries blinked at the wall. Perhaps they were finished, too. No one would know until

the transport ship landed on that other world, that jewellike disk of gold-brown they had named

Topaz.

2

There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians. Each swung in its own orbit just beyond the

atmosphere of a bronze-gold planet in the four-world system of a yellow star. The globes had been

launched to form a protective web around Topaz six months earlier. Just as contact mines sown in a

harbor could close that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was this world supposedly

closed to any spaceship lacking the signal to ward off the missiles the spheres could summon. This

system for protecting the new human settlers had been tested as well as possible, but not as yet put to

the ultimate proof. Still, the small bright globes spun undisturbed across a two-mooned sky at night

and made reassuring blips on an installation screen by day.

Then a thirteenth object winked into being and began the encircling, closing spiral of descent. A

sphere resembling the warden-globes, it was a hundred times their size, and its orbit was controlled

by instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot.

Four men were strapped down on cushioned sling-seats in the control cabin of the Western

Alliance ship, two hanging where their fingers might reach buttons and levers. The two others were

merely passengers, their own labor waiting for the time when they would set down on the alien soil of

Topaz. The planet hung there in their viewscreen, richly beautiful in its amber gold, growing larger,

nearer, so that they could pick out features of seas, continents, mountain ranges, which had been

studied on tape until they were familiar—or as familiar as a world not Earth could be.

One of the warden-globes came alert and oscillated in its set path. It whirled faster as its delicate

interior mechanisms responded to the signal that would send it on its mission of destruction. A relay

clicked, but imperceptibly slow in setting the proper course. On the instrument, far below, which

checked the globe’s new course the mistake was not noted.

The screen of the ship spiraling toward Topaz registered a path which would bring it into violent

contact with the globe. They were still some hundreds of miles apart when the alarm rang. The pilot’s

hand clawed out at the bank of controls; under the almost intolerable pressure of their descent, there

was so little he could do. His crooked fingers fell back powerlessly from the buttons and levers; his

mouth was a twisted grimace of bleak acceptance as the beat of the signal increased.

Norton, Andre - Time Traders II

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