Andre Norton - Ross Murdock 03 - The Defiant Agents

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Time Traders II

LOST IN TIME

Exploring space and time is a dangerous business, and no one knows this

better than Time Agents Travis Fox and Ross Murdock. So when both men are

stranded on far-off planets with no hope of rescue from Earth, they must

rely on their wits and their training to survive. But survival is only the

beginning. To better handle the rigors of the alien world of Topaz, Fox and

his crewmates have been implanted with the memories of their Apache

ancestors -- but the Opposition has sent its own team with the reawakened

memories of their Mongol ancestors! Meanwhile, Murdock is trapped in the

ancient past of the water world of Hawaika, facing terrifying wizards in a

kingdom he knows will soon be utterly annihilated by an alien empire that is

bent on the conquest of the entire galaxy. The fates of two worlds, and

possibly the galaxy itself, will be determined by the actions of these

castaways in time -- and whatever happens, the lives of Time Agents

everywhere will be changed forever. . . . ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Called "a superb talent" by The New York Times, Andre Norton is a living

legend in science fiction, and one of our greatest storytellers. She has

been writing science fiction novels for nearly five decades, beginning with

the now-classic Star Man's Son in 1952. Many of today's top writers,

including C.J. Cherryh and Joan D. Vinge, have cited her as a primary

influence on their own work. She was Guest of Honor at the 1989 World

Science Fiction Convention, is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers

of America and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the World

Fantasy Convention. Though unpublished recently, she has been astoundingly

prolific, with over thirty books in her celebrated "Witch World" series

alone. She has introduced three generations of SF readers to SF and fantasy,

both through her critically acclaimed YA novels and her adult works, and

stands today as one of the most popular authors in both fields. Illustration

by Stephen Hickman Cover design by Carol Russo

Hardcover

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. First Baen printing, February 2001

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-671-31968X

this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

http://www.baen.com

Typeset by Windhaven Press

Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights

http://www.webwrights.com

Time Traders II

Table of Contents

The Defiant Agents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Key Out of Time

1: Lotus World

2: Lair of Mano-Nui

3: The Ancient: Mariners

4: Storm Menace

5: Time Wrecked

6: Loketh the Useless

7: Witches' Meat

8: The Free Rovers

9: Battle Test

10: Death at Kyn Add

11: Weapon from the Depths

12: Baldies

13: The Sea Gate of the Foanna

14: The Foanna

15: Return to the Battle

16: The Opening of the Great Door

17: Shades Against Shadow

18: World in Doubt?

- Chapter 1

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.

- Chapter 2

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. One of the passengers

forced his head around on the padded rest, fought to form words, to speak to

his companion. The other was staring ahead at the screen, his thick lips

wide and flat against his teeth in a snarl of rage.

"They . . . are . . . here. . . ."

Ruthven paid no attention to the obvious as stated by his fellow scientist.

His fury was a red, pulsing thing inside him, fed by his own helplessness.

To be pinned here so near his goal, set up as a target for a mere machine,

ate into him like a stream of deadly acid. His big gamble would puff out in

a blast of fire to light up Topaz's sky, with nothing left -- nothing. On

the armrest of his sling-seat his nails scratched deep. The four men in the

control cabin could only sit and watch, waiting for the rendezvous which

would blot them out. Ruthven's flaming anger was a futile blaze. His

companion in the passenger seat had closed his eyes, his lips moving

soundlessly. The pilot and his assistant divided their attention between the

screen, with its appalling message, and the controls they could not

effectively use, feverishly seeking a way out in these last moments. Below

them in the bowels of the ship were those who would not know the end

consciously -- save in one compartment. In a padded cage a prick-eared head

stirred where it rested on forepaws, slitted eyes blinked, aware not only of

familiar surroundings, but also of the tension and fear generated by human

minds and emotions levels above. A pointed nose raised, and growling rose

from a throat covered with thick buff-gray hair. The growl aroused another

similar captive. Knowing yellow eyes met yellow eyes. An intelligence, which

was not natural to the animal body which contained it, fought down instinct

raging to send both those bodies hurtling at the fastenings of the twin

cages. Curiosity and the ability to adapt had been bred into these creatures

from time immemorial. Then something else had been added to sly and cunning

brains. A step up had been taken -- to weld intelligence to cunning, connect

thought to instinct. More than a generation earlier mankind had chosen

barren desert -- the "white sands" of New Mexico -- as a testing ground for

atomic experiments. Humankind could be barred, warded out of the radiation

limits. The natural desert dwellers, four-footed and winged, could not be so

controlled. Thousands of years earlier, the first southward roving

Amerindian tribes had met with their kind, a hunter of the open country, a

smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural abilities had made an indelible

impression on the human mind. He appeared in countless Indian legends as the

Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy. Godling for some

tribes, father of all evil for others. In the wealth of tales the coyote,

above all other animals, held pride of place. Driven by the press of

civilization into the badlands and deserts, fought with poison, gun, and

trap, the coyote had survived, adapting to new ways with all his legendary

cunning. Those who had reviled him as vermin had unwillingly added to the

folklore which surrounded him, telling their own tales of robbed traps,

skillful escapes. He continued to be a trickster, laughing on moonlit nights

from the tops of ridges at those who would hunt him down. Then, in the early

twenty-first century, when myths were scoffed at, the stories of the

coyote's slyness began once more on a fantastic scale. And finally

scientists were sufficiently intrigued to seek out this creature that seemed

to display in truth all the abilities credited to his immortal namesake by

pre-Columbian tribes. What they discovered was indeed shattering to certain

closed minds. For the coyote had not only adapted to the country of the

white sands; he had evolved into something which could not be dismissed as

an animal, clever and cunning, but limited to beast range. Six cubs had been

brought back on the first expedition, coyote in body, their developing minds

different. The descendants of those cubs were now in the ship's cages, their

mutated senses alert, ready for the slightest chance of escape. Sent to

Topaz as eyes and ears for less keenly endowed humans, they were not

completely under the domination of man. The range of their mental powers was

still uncomprehended by those who had bred, trained, and worked with them

from the days their eyes had opened and they had taken their first wobbly

steps away from their dams. The male growled again, his lips wrinkling back

in a snarl as the emanations of fear from the men he could not see reached

panic peak. He still crouched, belly flat, on the protecting pads of his

cage; but he strove now to wriggle closer to the door, just as his mate made

the same effort. Between the animals and those in the control cabin lay the

others -- forty of them. Their bodies were cushioned and protected with

every ingenious device known to those who had placed them there so many

weeks earlier. Their minds were free of the ship, roving into places where

men had not trod before, a territory potentially more dangerous than any

solid earth could ever be. Operation Retrograde had returned men bodily into

the past, sending agents to hunt mammoths, follow the roads of the Bronze

Age traders, ride with Attila and Genghis Khan, pull bows among the archers

of ancient Egypt. But Redax returned men in mind to the paths of their

ancestors, or this was the theory. And those who slept here and now in their

narrow boxes, lay under its influence. The men who had arbitrarily set them

on this course could only assume they were actually reliving the lives of

Apache nomads in the wide southwestern wastes of the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries. Above, the pilot's hand pushed out again,

fighting the pressure to reach one particular button. That, too, had been a

last-minute addition, an experiment which had only received partial testing.

To use it was the final move he could make, although he was already half

convinced of its uselessness. With no faith and only a wan hope, he

depressed that round of metal flush with the board. What followed no one

ever lived to explain. At the planetside installation that tracked the

missiles, a screen flared brightly enough to blind momentarily the man on

watch, and the warden-globe was shaken off course. When it jiggled back into

line it was no longer the efficient eye-in-the-sky it had been, though its

tenders were not to realize that for an important minute or two. While the

ship, now out of control, sped in dizzy whirls toward Topaz, engines fought

blindly to stabilize, to re-establish their functions. Some succeeded, some

wobbled in and out of the danger zone, two failed. And in the control cabin

three dead men spun imprisoned in their seats. Dr. James Ruthven, blood

bubbling from his lips with every shallow breath he could draw, fought the

stealthy tide of blackness which crept up his brain, his stubborn will

holding to rags of consciousness, refusing to acknowledge the pain of his

fatally injured body. The orbiting ship spun on an erratic path. Slowly its

mechanisms were correcting, relays clicking, striving to bring it to a

landing under auto-pilot. All the ingenuity built into its computer was now

centered in landing the globe. It was not a good landing. The sphere touched

a mountain side, scraped down rocks, shearing away a portion of its outer

bulk. But the mountain barrier was now between it and the base from which

the missiles had been launched, and the crash had not been recorded. As far

as the watchers several hundred miles away knew, the warden in the sky had

performed as promised. Their first line of defense had proven satisfactory.

There had been no unauthorized landing on Topaz. In the wreckage of the

control cabin Ruthven pawed at the fastenings of his sling-chair. He no

longer tried to suppress the moans every effort tore out of him. Time held

the whip, drove him. He rolled from his seat to the floor, lay there

gasping, as again he fought doggedly to remain above the waves -- those

frightening, fast-coming waves of darkness. Somehow he was crawling,

crawling along a tilted surface until he gained the well where the ladder to

the lower section hung, now at an acute angle. That angle made it possible

for him to reach the next level. He was too dazed to realize the meaning of

the crumpled bulkheads. There was a spur of bare rock under his hands as he

edged over and around twisted metal. The moans were now a gobbling,

burbling, almost continuous cry as he reached his goal -- a small cabin

still intact. For long moments of anguish he paused by the chair there,

afraid that he could not make the last effort, raise his almost inert bulk

up to the point where he could reach the Redax release. For a second of

unusual clarity he wondered if there was any reason for this supreme ordeal,

whether any of the sleepers could be aroused. This might now be a ship of

the dead. His right hand, his arm, and finally his bulk over the seat, he

braced himself and brought his left hand up. He could not use any of the

fingers; it was like lifting numb, heavy weights. But he lurched forward,

swept the unfeeling cold flesh down against the release in a gesture which

he knew must be his final move. And, as he fell back to the floor, Dr.

Ruthven could not be certain whether he had succeeded or failed. He tried to

twist his head around, to focus his eyes upward at that switch. Was it down

or still stubbornly up, locking the sleepers into confinement? But fog

drifted between; he could not see it -- or anything else. The light in the

cabin flickered and went out as another circuit in the broken ship failed.

It was dark, too, in the small cubby below which housed the two cages.

Chance, which had snuffed out nineteen lives in the space globe, had missed

ripping open that cabin on the mountain side. Five yards down the corridor

the outside fabric of the ship was split wide open, the crisp air native to

Topaz entering, sending a message to two keen noses through the combination

of odors now pervading the wreckage. And the male coyote went into action.

Days ago he had managed to work loose the lower end of the mesh which

fronted his cage, but his mind had told him that a sortie inside the ship

was valueless. The odd rapport he'd had with the human brains, unknown to

them, had operated to keep him to the old role of cunning deception, which

in the past had saved countless of his species from sudden and violent

death. Now with teeth and paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the

whines of his mate, that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling

their nostrils -- a wild world, lacking the taint of man-places. He slipped

under the loosened mesh and stood up to paw at the front of the female's

cage. One forepaw caught in the latch and pressed it down, and the weight of

the door swung against him. Together they were free now to reach the

corridor and see ahead the subdued light of a strange moon beckoning them on

into the open. The female, always more cautious than her mate, lingered

behind as he trotted forward, his ears a-prick with curiosity. Their

training had been the same since cub-hood -- to range and explore, but

always in the company and at the order of man. This was not according to the

pattern she knew, and she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the

smell of the ship was offensive and the puffs of breeze from outside

enticing. Her mate had already slipped through the break. Now he barked with

excitement and wonder, and she trotted on to join him. Above, the Redax,

which had never been intended to stand rough usage, proved to be a better

survivor of the crash than most of the other installations. Power purred

along a network of lines, activated beams, turned off and on a series of

fixtures in those coffin-beds. For five of the sleepers -- nothing. The

cabin which had held them was a flattened smear against the mountain side.

Three more half-roused, choked, fought for life and breath in a nightmare

that was mercifully short, and succumbed. But in the cabin nearest the rent

through which the coyotes had escaped, a young man sat up abruptly, staring

into the dark with wide-open, terror-haunted eyes. He clawed for purchase

against the smooth edge of the box in which he had lain and somehow got to

his knees. Weaving weakly back and forth, he half fell, half pushed to the

floor where he could stand only by keeping his hold on the box. Dazed, sick,

weak, he swayed there, aware only of himself and his own sensations. There

were small sounds in the dark, a stilled moan, a gasping sigh. But that

meant nothing. Within him grew a compulsion to be out of this place, his

terror making him lurch forward. His flailing hand rapped painfully against

an upright surface which his questing fingers identified hazily as an exit.

Unconsciously he fumbled along the surface of the door until it gave under

that weak pressure. Then he was out, his head swimming, drawn by light

behind the rent wall. He scrabbled towards it at a crawl, making his way

over the splintered skin of the globe. Then he dropped with a jarring thud

Andre Norton - Ross Murdock 03 - The Defiant Agents

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