 Chapter 1 of the Defiant Agents This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by RJ Davis The Defiant Agent by Andre Norton Chapter 1 No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office. There was no focus of outer-world sunlight 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 blaze in them. But fanciful imagines did not cushion or veil cold hard facts. Dr. Gordon Ash, one of the four men, unhappily at the display, shook his head slightly as if to free his mind of six cobwebs. His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kilgarys, leaned forward to ask harshly. No chance of a mistake? You saw the detector, the thin gray string of a man behind the desk answered, with chill precision. No, no possible mistake. These five have definitely been snooked. And two choices among them, asked murmured. That was the important point now. I thought these were under maximum security. Kilgarys challenged the gray man. Boy and Waldorf's remote expression did not change. Every possible precaution was enforced. There was a sleeper, a hidden agent planted. Who Kilgarys demanded? Ash plants around at his three companions. Kilgarys, Colonel in command of one section of Project Star. Gloria and Waldorf, the security head on the station. Dr. James Ruthman. Camden, he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic had led him. Waldorf nodded. It was the first time since he had known and worked with Kilgarys, I saw him display open astonishment. Camden, but he was sent us 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 Waldorf's voice. He was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. They must have planted him a full 25 or 30 years ago. He's been just what he claims to be as long as that. Well, he certainly was worth their time in trouble, wasn't he? James Ruthman's voice was a growling rumble. He sucked in thick lips, continuing to stare at the disc. How long ago were these snooped? Ashes thoughts turned swiftly from the enormity of the betrayal to that important point. The time element. That was a primary concern now that the damage was done and they knew it. That's one thing we don't know. Waldorf's reply came slowly as if he hated the admission. We'll be safer then if we presume the very earliest period. Ruthman's statement was as ruthless in its implications as a shock they had had when Waldorf announced the disaster. 18 months ago, ice protested. But Ruthman was naughty. Camden was in on this from the very first. We've had the tapes in and out for study all that time. And a new detector against snooping was not put in service until two weeks ago. This case came up on the first checking round, didn't it? He asked Waldorf. First check, the security man agreed. Camden left the base six days ago. But he has been in and out on his lies and duties from the first. He had to go through those search points every time Kilgarry protested. But nothing could get through those, the Colonel Brighton. Maybe he got his snooper films and then couldn't take them off base. Have his quarters been turned out? Waldorf's lips lifted in a grimace of exasperation. Please, Colonel, he said weirdly, this is not a kindergarten exercise. In confirmation of his success, listen. He touched the button on his desk and out of the air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster. Spears for the safety of Westerter Camden, space expediter for the Western Conference Space Council, have been confirmed by the discovery of burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr. Camden was returning from a mission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact with Ragnar Fields. Reports of a storm in that vicinity immediately raised concern. Waldorf snapped off the voice. Crew, for a cover for his escape, Kilgarry's wondered aloud. Could be either. They may have deliberately written him off when they had all they wanted, Waldorf acknowledged. But to get back to our troubles, Dr. Ruth Vinn is right to assume the worst. I believe we can only ensure the recovery of our project by thinking that these tapes were snooped anywhere from 18 months ago to last week. And we must work accordingly. There was silence in the room as they all considered that. Ash 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 the eastern communistic nations had suddenly begun to use. Ash himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdoch, had been part of the final action which had solved the mystery. Having traced that source of knowledge not to an earlier and forgotten Terran civilization, but direct space ships from an eon old galactic empire, an empire which had flourished when glacier ice covered most of Europe and northern America, and Terrans were cave dwelling primitives. Murdoch, trapped by the Reds in one of those wreck ships, had inadvertently summoned its original owners, who had descended to trace through the Russian time stations, the looters of the wrecks, destroying the whole Red time travel system. But the aliens had not chanced on the parallel western system, and a year later that had been put into project for some one. Again Ash Murdoch 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 full efforts of the project had been centered on bringing the intact ship back into the present, chance had triggered control set by the dead alien commander. A party of four, Ash, Murdoch, Fox, and a technician, and they'd made an involuntary voyage into space. Touching three worlds on which the galactic civilization of the far past was now marked only by ruins. Voyage tape, fed into the controls of the ship, had taken them in, and when rewound, had by a miracle, returned them to Terra with a cargo of similar tapes found in a building on a world, which might have been the central capital for a government comprised not of countries, or of worlds, but of solar systems. Tapes, each one the key to another planet, and that ancient galactic knowledge with treasure such as the Terrans had never dreamed of possessing, though there were the attendant fears that such discoveries could be weapons and enemy hands. There had been an enforced sharing with other nations of tapes chosen at random at a great drawing, and 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, Ash did not in the least doubt there were agents of his own party intent on accomplishing at the Red Project, just what Camden had done there. However, that did not help in solving the present dilemma concerning Operation Coaches. One part of their project, but perhaps the most important now, some of the tapes were Dutch, either too damaged to be useful, or set for worlds hostile to Terrans lacking the equipment the earlier Star Traveling race had had at its command. But the five tapes they now knew had been snooped, three would be useless to the enemy. But one of the remaining two, Ash's Round, one was the goal towards which they had been working feverishly for a full 12 months. To plant a colony across the Gulf of Space, a successful colony, later to be used as a stepping stone to other worlds. So we have to move faster. Ruthven's comment raced ash through his stream of memories. I thought he required at least three more months to conclude personal training, Waldor observed. Ruthven lifted a fat hand, running the nail of a broad thumb back and forth across his lower lip in a habitual gesture Ash had learned to mistrust. As a latter stiffened, racing for a battle of wills, he saw Kilgiris come alert too. At least the Colonel, more often than not, was ready to counter Ruthven's demands. We test and we test, said the fat man, always we test. We moved 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 is accusing Lance included Ash and Kilgiris that there had never been any improvising in this project. That all had always been done by the books. I say that this is a 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 desktop as if it were crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant insects. And we are finished before we really begin. There were a number of men in the project who would agree with that, Ash knew, and a greater number in the country and conference 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 Ash himself could not agree to his 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 takeoff within a week, Ruthman was continuing, to the council I shall say that. And I do not agree, Ash cut in. He glanced at Kilgiris for the quick backing he expected, but instead there was a lengthening moment of silence. Then the Colonel spread out his hands and said solemnly, I don't agree either, but I don't have the final say so. Ash, what would be needed to speed up any takeoff? It was Ruthman who replied, we can use the redaxe, as I have said from the start. Ash straightened his mouth tight, his eyes hard and angry. And I'll protest that to the council. And we're dealing with human beings, selected volunteers, men who trust us, not with lavatory animals. Ruthman's thick lips pouted into what was close to a smile of derisor. Always a sentimentalist, you experts in the past. Tell me Dr. Ash, were you always so thoughtful of your men when you sent agents back into time? And certainly a voyage into space is less a risk than time travel. These volunteers know what they have signed for, they will be ready. Then you proposed telling them about the use of redaxe, what it does to a man's mind, countered Ash? Certainly, they will receive all necessary instructions. Ash was not satisfied, and he would have spoken again, but Kilgiris interrupted. If it comes to that, none of us here has a right to make final decisions. Waldar has already sent in his report about the snoop. We'll have to await orders from the council. Ruthman 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. Waldar eyed the other two with mounting impatience. It was plain he had worked to do and wanted them to leave. But Ash 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 share the same goals? In the outer corridor, he still hesitated, and Kilgiris, 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 redacks. For the second time within an hour, Ash 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 18 months or even 12, the Colonel's fingers balled into a fist. And they won't be delayed by any humanitarian reasoning. Then you believe Ruthman will win the council's approval? When you're dealing with frightened men, you're talking to ears closed to anything but what they want to hear. After all, we can't prove that the redacks 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 the racial path and holding them there for too long a period. Ash 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 ports 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 voters. 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 no bands of two or three hundred years ago. If you break down some barriers, you might just end up breaking them all. Kilgarries with Scali. You mean they might revert utterly? Have no contact with the president 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 Ruth Fenn will be able to push this through with Waldorff's report to back him. Then we'll have to warn Fox and the rest. They must be given a choice in the matter. Ruth Fenn said that would be done. The colonel did not sound convinced of that. Ash snorted. If I hear him telling them, I'll believe it. I wonder whether we can. Ash 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 Baron, 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 stoop tapes. But Topes is waiting for the Apaches. And we may have to move them in there in a hurry. It's a rotten gamble any way you see it. I'll appeal directly to the council. Kilgarry 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 Ruthless. He's probably on a straight line now to Stam, Rhys and Margate. This is what he has been waiting for. There are the new syndicates. Public opinion would back us. You don't mean that, of course. Kilgarry's was suddenly coldly remote. Ash flushed under the heavy brown, which overlay his regular features. To threaten a silence break with 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 dulled. I guess I don't. I'll contact Hal and hope for the best. Meanwhile, Kilgarry 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? I ask with a trace of suspicion. Because I can't leave without acting directly against orders. And that would put us wrong immediately. You see Hal 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. Ash was alert and eager. The Colonel seeing his change of expression felt easier. But Kilgarry stood a moment watching Ash as he hurried down his side corridor. Before he moved on slowly to his own box of office. Once inside he set for a long unhappy 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 visa screen set in his desk. Another button pushed and he picked up a hand mic to relay an order which might postpone trouble for a while. Ash was far too valuable a man to lose and his emotions could boil him straight into disaster over this. Bidwell rescheduled teammate. They are to go to the hypo lab instead of the reserve in ten minutes. Releasing the mic he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupt the hypo training period and this one would last three hours. Ash 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. Kilgarry's mouth twisted sourly. He had no pride in what he was doing. And he was perfectly certain that Ruffin would win and that Ash's fears of redacks were well founded. It all came back to the old basic tenet of the service. The ends justified the means. They must use every method in man under their control to make sure that Topiz would remain a Western possession. Even though that strange planet now swung far beyond the sky which covered both the western and eastern alliances on terror. Time had run out too fast. They were being forced to play what cards they held even though those might be very low ones. Ash would be back but not Kilgarry's hoped until this had been decided one way or another. Not until this was finished. Finished? Kilgarry's blinked at the wall. Perhaps they were finished too. No one would know until the transport ship landed on that other world which appeared on the direction tape symbolized by a jewel like disc of gold brown. Which had given it the code name of Topaz. This concludes the reading of chapter one. Chapter two of the Defiant Agents. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by RJ Davis. The Defiant Agent by Andre Norton. Chapter two. There were an even dozen of the airborne guardians. Each following the swing of its own orbit path just within the atmospheric envelope of the planet. Which glowed as a great bronze golden gem in the four world system of a yellow star. The globes had been launched to form a web of protection around Topaz six months earlier. And the highest skill had gone into their production. 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 not equipped with the signal to ward off the spared missiles. That was a theory of the new off-world settlers whose protection they were to be already tested as well as possible. But as yet not put to the ultimate proof. The small bright globes spun undisturbed across a two moon sky at night and made reassuring blips on an installation screen by day. Then a 13th object winked into being. Began the encircling closing spiral of descent. A spare resembling the warden globes. It was a hundred times their size and its orbits was purposely controlled by instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot. Four men were strapped down on cushioned swing seats in the control cabin of the western alliance ship. Two hanging where their fingers might reach buttons and levers. The others 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 visa screen. Richly beautiful in its amber gold growing larger near so that they could pick out features of seas, continents, mountain ranges. Which had been studied on tape until they were familiar. Yet now we're strangely unfamiliar too. One of the warden globes alerted, oscillated in a set path. The spiral faster as its delicate interior mechanisms responded to the awakening spark which would send its honest mission of destruction. A relay clicked but for the smallest fraction of a millimeter failed to set the proper course. On an instrument far below which checked the globe's new course the mistake was not noted. The screen of the ship spiraling towards Topaz registered a path which would bring it into pilot 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 crypt fingers fell back powerlessly from the buttons and levers. His mouth was a twisted grimace of relief acceptance as the beat of the signal increased. One of the passengers forced his head around on the padded rest. Bought 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 and a snarl of rage. They are here. Ruthman 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 fastened up as a target for an inanimate, machiningly-factioned weapon, 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 foreman in the control cabin could only sit and watch, waiting for the rendezvous which would blot them out. Ruthman's flaming anger was a futile blaze. His companion in the passenger seat had closed his eyes. His lips moving soundlessly in an expression of his own scattered thoughts. The pilot and his assistant divided their attention between the screen with its appalling message and the controls they could not effectively use. Feverously seeking a way out of these last moments. Below them in the bowl of the ship were those who would not know the end consciously. Save in one compartment. In a padded cage a prickier's head stirred where it rested on four paws. Splitted 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 raced and there was a growling deep in a throat covered with thick, buff gray hair. The growl aroused another similar captain. Knowing yellow eyes met yellow eyes. An intelligence which was certainly not that of the animal body which contained it. Fought down in strength, raging to send both those bodies hurtling at the fastenings of the twin cages. Curiosity and the ability to adapt had been bred into both from time immoral. 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 and chosen barren desert, the White Sands of New Mexico as a testing ground for atomic experiments. Human kind could be barred, warded out of the radiation limits. The natural desert dwellers, forefooted and waned, could not be so controlled. For thousands of years since the first southward roving and merry Indian tribes had met with their kind, there had been a hunter of the open country. A smaller cousin of the wolf whose natural abilities had made an undeniable impression on the human mind. He was in countless Indian legends as a 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 had a firm place. Driven by the press of civilization into the badlands and deserts, bought 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 rob traps, skillful escapes. He continued to be a trickster, lapping on moonlit nights from the tops of ridges at those who would hunt him down. Then close to the end of the 20th century, when missed for scoffed at, the stories of the coyote's slainess 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 free Colombian 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 be strange. Six cubs had been brought back on the first expedition. Coyote and body, the developing minds differed. The grandchildren of those cubs were now in the ship's cages. Their mutated senses alerted, ready for the slightest chance of escape. Sent to topes 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 immunations 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 wiggle closer to the door just as his mate made the same effort. Between the animals and those in the control room 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. Following the roads of the Bronze Age traitors, ride with Attila and Genghis Khan, pull bows among the archers of ancient Egypt, but redacts returned men in mind to the past of their ancestors, or this was a theory. And those who slept here and now in their narrow boxes lay under his government. While the men who had arbitrarily set them so could only assume they were actually reliving the lives of Apache nomads in the wide southwestern waist of the late 18th and early 19th 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 had partial testing. To use it was the final move he could make, and he was already half convinced of his uselessness. With no faith and only a very wan hope, he sent that round of metal flush with the board, what followed no one ever lived to explain. On the planet, the insulation would track the metal splashed on his screen right enough to blind momentarily the duty man on watch, and his tracker was shaken off course. When it jiggled back into line, it was no longer the efficient eye in the sky it had been, though his tenders were not to realize that for an important minute or two. While the ship, now out of control, sped in dizzy whirls towards Topaz, engines fought blindly to stabilize, to reestablish their functions. Some succeeded, some wobbled in and out of the danger zone, two failed, and in the control cabin three dead men spun in prisoning seats. Dr. James Ruthman, blood bubbling from his lips with every shallow breath he could draw, bought 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 was on an erratic path. Slowly the machines were correcting, relays clicking, striving to bring it to a landing under autopilot. All the ingenuity built into a mechanical brain was now centered in landing the globe. It was not a good landing, in fact a very bad one. For the spear touched the mountainside, scraped down rocks, shearing away a portion of a solder bulk. But the mountain barrier was now between it and the base from which the missiles had been launched, and a crash had not been recorded on that tracking instrument. So 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, and there had been no unauthorized landing on Topes. In the wreckage of the control cabin, Ruthman 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 dark faintness. Somehow he was crawling, crawling along a tilted surface until he gained the well for the ladder to the lower section home. Now at an acute angle. It was that angle which helped him to the next level. He was two days 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. Raised his almost inert bulk up to the point where he could reach the redacted 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 around. 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 see any of the fingers. It was like lifting numb heavy weights. But he lurched forward, swept the unfeeling lump of cold flesh down across the release and a gesture which he knew must be his final move. And as he fell back to the floor, Dr. Ruthman could not be certain whether he had succeeded or failed. He tried to screw his head around to focus his eyes upward at that switch. Was it down or still stubbornly up? Locking the sleepers into confinement. But there was a fog between. He could not see it or anything. The light in the cabin flickered. Was gone as another circuit in the broken ship failed. It was dark, too, in a small cubby below which housed the two cages. Chance, which is stuffed out 19 lives in the space globe, had missed ripping open that cabin on the mountainside. Five yards down the corridor, the outside fabric of the ship was split wide open. The Chris Air native to Topes 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 mess which fronted his cage. But his mind had told him that a shorty inside the ship was valueless. The odd rapport he had had with the human brains, unknown to them, had operated to keep him in a role of cunning deception. Quitting a passage saved countenance 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 loose and mess and stood up to paw the front of the female's cage. One paw paw caught in the latch and pressed it down. And the weight of the door swung against him. Together they were freed out to reach the quarter 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 are pricked with curiosity. Their training had been the same since cubhood, to range and explore, but always in accompanying and at the order of man. This was not according to the pattern she knew, as she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the smell of the ship was an offense. And the puffs of breeze from without 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 redacks 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 purged along a network of lines. Activated beams turned off and on a series of pictures 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 haparals choked, bought for life and breath in a darkness which was a mercifully short nightmare and succumbed. But in the cabin nearest the rent, through which the coyote had escaped, a young man set up abruptly. Looking into the dark with wide open horror haunted eyes, he clogged for purchase against the smooth edge of the box in which he had lain. Got to his knees, weaving weakly back and forth, and 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 still bone, 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 wrapped 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 the light behind the wall rim. He regressed towards that in a scrambling crawl, making his way over the splintered skin of the globe. Then he dropped with a jarring thud onto the mound of earth, the ship had pushed before him, during his downward slide. Liftly he tumbled on in a small cascade of clouds and sand, hitting a less movable rock with enough force to land him on his back and stun him again. The second and smaller moon of Topes swung brightly through the sky, his green slight making the blood smeared face of the explorer and alien mass. He passed well onto the horizon and his large yellow companion had risen, when yapping broke the small sound of the night. As a yip-yip-yip arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and set up. Behind him was a torn and ripped ship, but he did not look back at him. Instead he got to his feet and staggered out into the moonlight. Inside his brain there was a whirl of thoughts, memories, emotions. Perhaps Ruthland or one of his assistants could have sorted that chaotic mixture. But for all practical purposes, Travis Fox, a merry Indian time agent, member of team A, Operation Cochise, was far less of a thinking animal now than the two coyotes paying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one other vanished homeland. Travis wavered on, drawn somehow by that howling. He was familiar, a thread of something real, through all the broken clutter in his head. He stumbled, fell, crawled up again, but he kept on. Above the female coyote lowered her head, drew a test snip of a new scent. She recognized as part of the proper way of life. She gapped once at her mate, but he was absorbed in his night song. His muzzle pointed moodward as he voiced to find Whaley. Travis stripped, pitched forward on his hands and knees, and felt the jar assist the landing shoot up his stiffened forearm. He tried to get up, but his body only twisted, so he landed on his back and lay looking up at the moon. A strong familiar odor, then a shadow loomed above him, hot breath against his cheek and a swift sweep of an animal tongue on his face. He flung up his hand, ripped thick fur and held on, as if he had found one anchor of sanity in a world gone completely mad. This concludes the reading of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 of The Defiant Agents. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by R.J. Davis The Defiant Agent by Andre Norton Chapter 3 Travis, one knee braced against the red earth, blinked as he parted a screen of tall, rust-brown grass with cautious fingers. To look out into a valley where golden mist clouded most of the landscape. His head ached with dull persistence. The pain fostered in some way by his own bewilderment. To study the land ahead was like trying to see through one picture interposed over another and far different one. He knew what ought to be there, but what was before him was very dissimilar. A buffed gray shape plitted through the tall covered grass and Travis tense. Imbala coyote. Or were these companions of his actual gods, spirits who could choose their shape at will and head? Oddly, this time assumed the bodies of man's tricky enemy. Were they endendai, enemies? Or dali and bayakai, allies? In this mad world he did not know. Hideki? His mind formed a word he did not speak. Friend. Yellow eyes met his directly. Dimly he had been aware ever since awakening in this strange wilderness with the coming of morning light, that the forefooted ones trotted with them as he walked aimlessly at unbeased like traits. Not only did they face him eye to eye, but in some ways they appeared able to read his thoughts. He had longed for water to ease the burning in his throat. The ever-present pain in his head, and the creatures had nudged him in another direction, bringing him to a pool where he had mouth liquid with a strange sweet but not unpleasant taste. Now he had given them names. Names which had come out of the welter of dreams which shadowed his stumbling journey across this weird country. Nalikidegu, maiden who walks ridges, was a female who continued to shepherd him alone, never venturing too far from his side. Najintah, he who scouts ahead, was a male who did just that, disappearing at long intervals and then returning to face the man and his mate as if conveying some report necessary to their journey. He was Nalikidegu who sought out Travis now, her red tongue loiling from her mouth as she patted. Not from exertion, he was certain of that. No, she was excited and eager on the hunt. That was it. A hunt. Travis' own tongue ran across his lips as an impression hit him with feral force. There was meat, rich, fresh, just ahead. Meat that lived, waiting to be killed. Inside him his own avid hunger roused, shaking him further out of the crusting dream. His hands went to his waist, but the groping fingers did not find what vague memory told him should be there. A belt, heavy with knife and sheath. He examined his own body with attention to find he was adequately covered by breeches of a smooth, dull brown material which blended well with the vegetation about him. He wore a loose shirt, belted in at the narrow waist by a folded strip of cloth, the ends of which fluttered free. On his feet were tall moccasins, the leg pieces extending some distance up his couch, the toes turned up in rounded points. Some of this he found familiar, but these were fragments of memory. Again his mind fitted one picture above another. One thing he did know for sure, he had no weapons, and that realization struck home with a thrust of real and terrible fear which tore away more of the bewilderment cloaking his mind. Now Licky J.U. was impatient, having advanced a step or two. She now looked back at him over her shoulder. Yellow eyes slid him. Her demand on him as instant and real as if she had voiced understandable words meet was waiting and she was hungry. Also she expected Travis to aid in the hunt at once. Though he could not match her fluid grace in moving through the grass, Travis followed her, keeping to cover. He shook his head vigorously in spite of the stab of pain the motion cost him and paid more attention to his surroundings. It was apparent that the earth under him, the grass around the valley of the golden haze were all real, not part of a dream. Therefore that other countryside which he kept seeing in a ghostly fashion was a hallucination. Even the air which he drew into his lungs unexpelled again had a strange smell or was it taste. He could not be sure which. He knew that hypnotraining could produce queer side effects. But this? Travis paused staring unseemly before him at the grass still waving from the coyotes passage. Hypnotraining? What was that? Now three pictures fought to focus in his mind. The two landscapes which did not match and a shadowy third. He shook his head again. His hands to his temples. This? This only was real. The ground, the grass, the valley, the hunger in him, the hunt waiting. He forced himself to concentrate on the immediate present and the portion of world he could see, feel, sense, which lay here and now about him. The grass grew shorter as he proceeded in Naikidu's wake. But the haze was not thinning. It seemed to hang in patches and when he ventured to the edge of a patch of it was like creeping through a fog of golden dancing moats with here and there a glittery speck whirling and darting like a living thing. Masked by the stuff, Travis reached a line of brush and sniffed. It was a warm scent, a heavy odor he could not identify and yet one he associated with a living creature. Flat to earth, he pushed head and shoulders under the low limbs of the brush to look ahead. Here was a space where the fog did not hold. A pocket of earth clear under the morning sun and grazing there with three animals. Again shock cleared a portion of Travis' bemused brain. They were about the size he thought of antelopes and they had a general resemblance to those beasts in that they had four slender legs, a rounded body and a head. But they had alien features, so alien as to hold him in open mouth amazement. The bodies had bare spots here and there and patches of creamy fur or was it hair which hung in strips as if the creatures had been partially plucked in a careless fashion. The necks were long and moved about in a serpentine motion as though their spines were as limber as reptiles. On the end of those long and twisting necks were heads which also appeared more suitable to another species. Brogd, rather flat with a singular toed-like look. But furnished with horns said halfway down the nose, horns which began in a single route and then rushed into two sharp points. They were unearthly. Again Travis' planks brought his hand up to his head as he continued to view the browsers. There were three of them, two larger and with horns, the other a smaller beast with less of a ragged fur and only the beginning button of a protrubance on the nose. It was probably a cat. One of those mental alerts from the coyote broke his absorption. The Licky Day U was not interested in the odd appearance of the grazing creatures. She was intent upon their usefulness in another way as a full and satisfying meal and she was again impatient with him for his dull response. His examination took a more practical turn and analog defense was speed though it could be tricked into hunting range through his inordinate curiosity. The slender legs of these beasts suggested a light degree of speed and Travis had no weapons at all. Those nose horns had an ugly look. This thing might be a fighter rather than a runner but the suggestion which had flashed from coyote to him had taken root. Travis was hungry. He was a hunter and here was meat on the hook. Queers it looked. Again he received a message. Nagenta was on the opposite side of the clearing. If the creatures depended on speed then Travis believed they would probably outrun not only him but the coyotes as well which left cunning and some sort of plans. Travis glanced at the cover where he knew Nalikide Yu's crouch and from which had come that flash of agreement. He shivered. These were truly no animals but Gaian, Gaian of power. As Gaian he must treat them, accede to their will. Spurred by that the Apache gave only flicks of attention to the browsers while at the same time he studied the part of the landscape uncovered by mist. Without weapons or speed they must conceive a trap. Again Travis sensed that agreement which was Gaian magic and with it the strong impression urging him to the right. He was making progress with skill he did not even recognize and which he had never been conscious of learning. The bushes and small group limb trees the branches not closed with leaves from proper twigs but with a reddish bristly growth protruding directly from their surfaces made a partial wall for the pocket-sized meadow. That screen reached a rocky cliff where the mist curled in a long tongue through a wall twice Travis' height. If the browsers could be maneuvered into taking the path through that cliff Travis searched about him and his hands closed upon the oldest weapon of his species a stone full from an earth pocket and balanced neatly in the palm of his hand. It was a long chance but his best one. The Apache took the first step on a new and fearsome road. These Gaian had put their thoughts or their desires into his mind. Could he so contact him in return? With the stone clutched in his fist his shoulders back against the wall not too far from the cleft opening Travis drove to think out clearly and simply this poor plan of his. He did not know that he was reaching the way scientists deep space away had hoped he might nor did Travis guess that at this point he had already traveled far beyond the expectation to the men who had bred and trained the two mutant cures. He only believed that this might be the one way he could obey the whooshes of the two spirits he thought far more powerful than any man. So he pictured in his mind the cleft the running creatures and the part the Gaian could play if they so willed. A scent in its way as loud and clear as if shouted the man fingered the stone, weighed it there would probably be just one moment when he could use it to effect and he must be ready. From this point he could no longer see the small meadow where the grazers were but Travis knew as well as if he watched the scene that the coyotes were creeping in belly flat to earth, adding a feline stealth and patience to their own cunning. There, Travis just had jerked. The alert had come, the drive was beginning he tensed gripping his stone. A yapping bark was answered by a sound that was not described. A noise which was neither cough nor grunt but a combination of both. Again a yap-yap. A toad head burst through the screen of brush the double horn on his nose festooned with a length of grass torn up by the roots. White eyes, milky and seeming to be without pupils fastened on Travis but he could not be sure the thing saw him cap on picking up speed as it approached the cleft. Behind it ran the cap and that guttural cry was bubbling from his broad flat lips. The long neck of the adult rib. The frog head swung closer to the ground so that the twin points of the horn were at a slant aimed now at Travis. He had been right in his guess at their deadliness but he had only a fleeting chance to recognize that fact as the thing bore down its whole attitude expressing the firm attention of goring him. He hurled his stone and then flung his body to one side stumbling and rolling into the brush where he fought madly to regain his speed expecting at any moment to feel traveling hooves and thrusting horns. There was a crash to his right and the bushes and grass were wisely shaken. On his hands and knees the patch he retreated. His head turned to watch behind him. He saw the flip of a triangular flap tail in the mouth of the cleft. The calf had escaped and now the thrushing and the bushes stilled. Was the thing stalking him? He got to his feet for the first time hearing clearly the continued yapping as if a battle was in progress. Then the second of the adult beast came into view backing and turning trying to keep lowered his head with menacing double horn always pointed to the coyotes dancing a teasing worrying circle about it. One of the coyotes flung up his head looked up slope and bark. Then as one both rushed the fighting beast but for the first time from the same side leaving it a clear path to retreat. It made a rush before which they fled easily and then it whirled with a speed and grace which did not fit its ungainly ill proportioned body and jumped towards the cleft. The coyotes making no effort to hinder its escape. Travis came out of cover approaching the brush which had concealed the crash of the other animal. The actions of the coyotes had convinced him that there was no danger now. They would never have allowed the escape of their prey had the first beast not been in difficulties. His shot with the stone the Apache decided as he stood moments later surveying the twitching crumbled body must have hit the thing in the head stunning it. Then the momentum of its charge had carried it full force against the rock to kill it. Blind luck for the power of the gun. People back as the coyotes came patting up shoulder to shoulder to inspect the kill. It was truly more theirs than his. Their prey yielded not only food but a weapon for Travis. Instead of the belt knife he had remembered having he was now equipped with two. The double horn had been eased to free from the shattered skull and some careful work with stones had broken off one prong at just the angle he wanted. So now he had a short and a longer tool defense. At least they were better than the stone with which he had entered the hunt. Naliki day you push past him to lap daily at the water. Then she set up on her hunches watching Travis as he smoothed the horn with a stone. A knife he said to her this will be a knife and he glanced up measuring the value of the wood represented by trees and bushes then a bow with a bow we shall hunt better. The coyote yawned her yellow eyes half closed her whole poise won with satisfaction and contempt. A knife Travis repeated and a bow. He needed weapons he had to have them. Why? His hand stopped scraping. Why? The toad's face double horn had been quick to attack but Travis could have avoided it and it had not hunted him first. Why was he ridden by this fear that he must not be unarmed? He dipped his hand into the pool of the spring and lifted the water to cool his sweating face. The coyote moved turned over in the grass crushing down the growth into a nest in which he curled up head on pause. But Travis set back on his heels his now idle hands hanging down between his knees and forced himself to the task of sorting out jumbled memories. This landscape was wrong. Totally unlike what it should be but it was real. He had helped kill this alien creature. He had eaten this meat raw. His horn lay within touch now. All that was real and unchangeable which meant that the rest of it that other desert world in which he had wandered with his kind ridden horses, raiding invading men of another race that was not real or else far, far removed from where he now sat. Yet there had been no dividing line between those two worlds. One moment he had been in the desert place returning from a successful foray against the Mexicans. Mexicans? Travis caught at that identification tried to use it as a thread to the beginning of his mystery. Mexicans? And he was an Apache one of the eagle people one who rode with Cochise. No. Sweat again beaded his face where the water had cooled him. He was not of that past. He was Travis Fox of the very late 20th century not a nomad of the middle 19th. He was of team A of the project. He had been in Arizona's desert at then this from one to the other in an instant. He looked about him in rising fear. Wait! He had been in the dark when he got out of the desert lying in a box. Getting out he had crawled down a passage to reach moonlight, strange moonlight. A box in which he had laid a passage with smooth metallic walls in the middle of it. The coyoteers twist. Her head came up. She was staring at the man's drawn face at his eyes with the core of fear. She whined. Travis caught up the two pieces of horn, thrust them into his safe belt and got to his feet. Narikide used setup. Her head cocked a little to one side. As a man turned to seek his own back trail, he walked along in his weight and whined for a magenta. But Travis was more intent now on what he must prove to himself than he was on the actions of the two animals. It was a wandering trail and now he did not question his skill in being able to follow it so unerringly. The sun was hot. Winged things buzzed from the bushes. Small scuttling things fled from him through the tall grass. And I growled a warning which led them all to a deter and Travis might not have picked up the proper trace again had not the coyote scout led him to it. Who are you? He asked once and then guessed it would have been better been said. What are you? These were not animals or rather they were more than the animals he had always known and one part of him for coachees had ruled said they were spirits. Yet that other part of him Travis shook his head accepted them now for what they were welcome company in an alien place. The day wore on close to sunset and still Travis followed that wandering trail. The need which drove him kept him going through the rough country of hills and ravines. Now the mist lifted above towering walls of mountains very near him. Yet not the mountains of his memory. These were dull brown with a forbidding look like sun dried skulls bearing teeth and warning against all comers. With great difficulty Travis topped the rise. A head against the skyline stood both coyotes and as a man joined them first one and then the other flung back his head and sounded the sobbing shattering cry which had been a part of that other life. The Apache looked down. His puzzle was answered in part. The wreckage crumbled on the mountainside was identifiable. A spaceship cold fear gripped him and his own head went back from between his tight lips came a cry as desolate and despairing as the one the animals had voiced. This concludes the reading of chapter 3 chapter 4 of the Defiant Agents. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by R.J. Davis The Defiant Agents by Andre Norton Chapter 4 Fire Mankind's oldest ally Weapon 2 Stone of the Mountainside Men set cross-legged about it, 15 of them and behind, guarded by the flames in that somber circle were the women. There was a uniformity in this gathering. The members were plainly all of the same racial stock of medium height, stocky yet fine down to the peak of stamina and endurance. Their skin brown, their shoulder length hair black and they were all young. None over 30. Some still in their late teens. The like too was a certain drawn look in their faces. A tenseness of the eyes and mouth as they listened to Travis. So we must be on top of this. Do any of you remember boarding the ship? No. Only that we awoke within it. Across the fire one chin lifted. The eyes which caught Travis's held a deep, smoldering anger. This is more trickery of the Pendelicchio eye, the white eyes. Between us there has never been fair dealing. They have broken their promise as a man breaks a rotten stick. For their words are as rotten. And it was you, Fox, who brought us to listen to them. They stir about the circle. A murmur from the women. And do I not also sit here with you in this strange wilderness? He countered. I do not understand another of the men held out his hand to palm up in a gesture of asking what has happened to us. We were in the old Apache world. I, Jill Lee, was riding with Githillo Negro as we went down to the taking of Ramos. I was here in a broken ship and beside me a dead man who was once my brother. How did I come out of the past of our people into another world across the stars? Pendelicchio eye tricks, the first speakers fed into the fire. It was a redact, I think, Travis replied. I heard Dr. Ice discuss this. A new machine which could make a man remember not the past, but the past of his ancestors. While we were on that ship, we must have been under its influence. So we lived as our people lived a hundred years or more ago. And the purpose of such a thing, Julie asked, to make us more like our ancestors, perhaps. It is part of what they told us at the project to venture into these new worlds requires a different type of man than lives today. Traits we have forgotten are needed to face the dangers of wild places. You, Fox, have been beyond the stars before. And you found there were such dangers to face. It is true. You have heard of the three worlds I saw when the ship from the old days took us off unwilling to the stars. Did you not all volunteer to pioneer in this manner to change in new things? But we did not agree to be returned to the past in medicine dreams and be set unknowingly into space. Travis nodded. Declay is right, but I know no more than you why we were so sent or why the ship crashed. We have found Dr. Ruthland's body in the cabin with a new installation. Only we have discovered nothing else which tells us why we were so sent with the ship broken. We must stay. They were silent now, men and women alike. Behind them lay several days of activity, nights of exhausted slumber. Against the cliff wall lay the packs of supplies they had salvaged from the wreck. By mutual consent they had left the vicinity of the broken globe following their old custom speedily withdrawing from a wreck. This is a world empty of men, Gealee wanted to know. So far we have found only animal signs and again have not warned us of anything else. Those devil ones again Declay spat into the fire. I say we should have no dealings with them. The embassy is no friend to the people. Again a murmur which seemed one piece. Travis stiffened. Just how much influence had the redacts had over them. He knew from his own experience that sometimes he had an odd double reaction. Two different feelings which almost sickened him when they struck simultaneously. And he was beginning to suspect that with some of the others the return to the past had been far more deep and lasting. And he had no reason out what had happened. While Declay had reverted to an ancestor who had ridden with Victoria or Magnus Colorado. Travis had a flash of premonition. A chill which made him half foresee a time when the past and the present might well split them apart fatally. Devil again. A man with a quiet face we are in two minds because of this redact. So let us not do anything in haste. Back in the desert world of the people I have seen the Embia and he was very clever. With a badger he went hunting and when the badger had dug up the rat's nest so did the Embia wait on the other side of the thorny bush and catch those who had escaped that way. Between him and the badger there was no war. These two who set over yonder now they are also hunters and they seem friendly to us. In a strange place a man needs all the help he can find. Let us not call names out of old tales which may mean nothing in fact. Buck speaks straightly. Jillie agreed we seek a camp which can be defended for perhaps there are men here whose hunting territory we have invaded though we have not yet seen them. We are a people small in number and alone. Let us walk softly on trails which are strange to our feet. Inwardly Travis sighed in relief Buck, Jillie for the moment their sensible words appeared to swing the opinions of the party. If either of them could be established as head sale or clan leader they would all be safer. He himself had no aspirations in that direction and dared not push too hard. It had been his initial urging which had brought them as volunteers into the project. Now he was doubly suspect and especially by those who thought as deck play. He was considered too alien to their old ways. So far their protest had been fewer than he anticipated although brothers and sisters had followed each other into the team after the immoral desire of apaches to cling to family ties. They were not a true clan with the ability of that to back them but representatives of happy dozen. Basically back on terror they had all been among the most progressive of their people progressive that is in the white man's sense of the word. Travis had a fleeting recognition of his now oblique way of thinking. He too had been marked by the redacks. They had all been educated in the modern fashion and all possessed a spirit of adventure which marked them over their fellows. They had volunteered for the team and successfully passed the test to weed out the temperamentally unfit or faint-hearted but all that was before redacks. Why had they been submitted to that and why this flight? Why did Pooce, Dr. Ash and Murdock and Colonel Kilgarry's time agency knew entrusted into dispatching them without warning to Topaz? Something had happened something which had given Dr. Ruthman ascendancy over those others and who started them on this wild trip. Travis was conscious of a stir about the fire lit circle. The men were rising moving back into the shadows stretching out on the blankets they had found among other stores on the ship. They had discovered weapons there knives, bows, quivers of arrows all of which they had been trained to use in the intensive schooling of the project and which needed no more repair than they themselves could give. And the horizons they carried were field supplies, few of them. Tomorrow they must begin hunting and urges. Why has this thing been done to us but was beside Travis those quiet eyes sliding past him to seek the fire once more? I do not think you were told when the rest of us were not. Travis seized upon them. There are those who say that I knew agreed. That is so. Once we stood at the same place in time in our thoughts, our desires. Now we stand at many places as if we climbed a stairway each at his own speed. A stairway the pendulicto eye has set us upon. Some here, some there, some yet further above. He's got the series of step outlines in the air. And in this there is trouble. The truth Travis agreed. Yet it is also true that I knew nothing of this. That I climbed with you on these stairs. So I believe but there comes a time when it is best not to be a woman stirring a pot of boiling stew but rather one who stands quietly at a distance. You mean, Travis Press? I say that alone among us you have crossed the stars before. Therefore new things are not so hard to understand. Now we need a scout. Also the coyotes run in your footsteps and you do not fear them. It made good sense. Let him scout ahead of the party taking the coyotes with him. Stay away from the camp for a while and speak small until the people in Buck's stairway were more closely united. I go in the morning, Travis agreed. He could slip away tonight but just now he could not force himself away from the fire from the companionship. You might take Tassay with you but continued. Travis waited for him to enlarge on that suggestion. Tassay was one of the youngest of their group. Buck's own cross cousin and near brother. It is well, Buck explained, that we learned this land and it has always been our custom that the younger walk in the footprints of the older. Also not only should trails be learned but also men. Travis caught the thought behind that perhaps by taking the younger men as scouts one after another he could build up among them a following of sorts. Among the Apaches leadership was wholly a matter of personality. Until the reservation days chieftains had gained their position by force of character alone. Though they might come successfully from one family clan over several generations. He did not want the chieftainship here. No, but neither did he want growing whispers working about him to cut him off from his people. To every Apache, severance from a clan was a little debt. He must have those who would back him if the K or those who thought like that K turned rumbling into open hostility. Tassay is one quick to learn. Travis agreed. We go at dawn. Along the mountain range, Buck inquired. If we seek a protected place for the ranchera, yes. The mountains have always provided good strongholds for the people. And you think there is need for a fort? Travis shrugged. I have been one day's journey out into this world. I saw nothing but animals. But that is no promise that elsewhere there are no enemies. The planet is on the tapes we brought back from that other world. And so it was known to the others who once rode between star and star as we rode between ranch and town. If they had this world set on a journey tape, it was for a reason. That reason may still be enforced. Yet it was long ago that these star people rode so, Buck News. Would the reason last so long? Travis remembered two other worlds. One of weird desert inhabited by beast things. Or had they once been human? Human to the point of possessing intelligence. That had come out of sand burrows at night to attack a spaceship. And the second world for the ruins of a giant city had stood choked with jungle vegetation. For he had made a blowgun from tubes of rustless metal as a weapon gift for small winged men. Both had been remnants of that ancient galactic empire. Some things could so remain, he answered soberly. If we find them we must be careful, but first a good sight for the rancherra. There is no return to home for us, Buck stated flatly. Why do you say that? There could be a rescue ship later. The other raised his eyes again to Travis. When you slept under the redacks how did you ride? As a warrior, raiding, living and I, I was one of the go and die. Buck returned simply but the white man has assured us that since power, the power of a chief does not exist. Yes, the Pendelikki has told us so many things. He is busy, busy with his tools, his machine always busy and those who think in another fashion cannot be measured by his rulers so they are truly streamers. Not all white men think so. There was Dr. Ashe, he was beginning to understand a little. Perhaps I too am standing still halfway up the stairway of the past but at this I am sure for us there will be no return to our own place and a time will come when something new shall grow from the seed of the past. Also it is necessary that you be one of the tenders of that growth. So I urge you, take Tase and the next time, loopy for the young who may be swayed this way and that by words as the wind shakes a small tree must be given firm roots. In Travis education just as a picture redacted planted in his mind had warred with his awakening to this alien landscape yet now he believed he must be guided by what he felt and he knew that no man of his race would claim go nigh the power of spirit known only to a great chief unless he had actually felt it swell within him. It might have been fostered by hallucination in the past the power of it carried into the here and now and Travis had no doubts that Buck believed empathically in what he said and that belief carried crudity to others. This is wisdom Nantan Buck shook his head I am no Nantan no chief but of some things I am sure you also be sure of what lies within you younger brother on the third day ranging eastward along the base of the mountain range Travis found what he believed would be an acceptable campsite there was a canyon with a good spring of water cut round by well marked game trails a series of ledges brought him up to a small plateau where scrub wood could be used to build a wiki up water and food lay within reach and the ledge approach was easy to defend while malcontents were forced to concede the value of the site his duty to the clan accomplished Travis returned to his own concern one which had haunted him for days Topes had been taped by men of the Vanish star empire therefore the planet was important but why as yet he had found no indication that anything above the intelligence level of the split arms was native to this world but he was gnawed by the certainty that there was something here waiting and the desire to learn what it was became an ever-burning ache perhaps he was what Declay had accused him of being one who had come to follow the road of the Pinkalica lie too closely for Travis was content to scout with only the coyotes for company and he did not find the loneliness of the unknown planet as intimidating as most of the others he was checking his small trail pack on the fourth day after they had settled on the plateau when Buck and Jill Lee hunkered down beside him you go to hunt Buck broke the silence first knocked her meat what do you fear that then didn't I enemy people and mark this as their land Jill Lee questions that may be true but now I hunt what this world was at one time the reason why the ancient star men marked it as their own and this knowledge may be of value to us Jill Lee asks slowly will it bring food to our mouths shelter for our bodies mean life for us all that is possible it is the unknowing which is bad true unknowing is always bad Buck agreed but the bow which is fitted with hand and strength of arm may not be suited to another remember that younger brother also do you go alone with magenta Naliki I do you I am not alone take Tosay with you also the four-footed ones are indeed Guyon for the service of those they like but it is not good that man walks alone from his kind there it was again the feeling of planned solidarity which Travis did not always share on the other hand Tosay would not be a hinders on other scouts the boy had proved to have a keen eye for the country and a liking for experimentation which was not a universal attribute even among those of his own age I would go to find a path through the mountains it may be a long trail Travis have protested you believe what you seek may lie to the north Travis shrugged I do not know how can I but it will be another way of seeking Tosay shall go he keeps sign up before older warriors as is proper for the untried but his thoughts fly free as do yours Buck replied it is in him also this need to see new places there is this Jill Lee got to his feet do not go so far brother that you may not easily find a way to return this is a wide land and within it we are but a handful of men alone that too I know Travis thought he could read more than one kind of warning in Jill Lee's words they were the second day away from the plateau camp and climbing when they chanced upon the past Travis had hoped might exist before them lay in a rough descent to what appeared to be open plains country cloaked in a dusky amber Travis now knew was a thick grass found in the southern valleys Tosay pointed with his camp wide land good for horses cattle wrenches but all those lay far beyond the black space surrounding them Travis wondered if there was any native animal which could serve man in place of the horse do we go down Tosay asked from this point Travis could see no break far out on the amber plain no sign of any building or any disturbance of a smooth emptiness yet it drew him we go he decided closest it had looked from the past the plain was yet a day and a night spending careful watching by turns ahead of them it was mid-morning of the second day that they left but he'll break and the grass of the open country was waist high about them Travis could see it rippling where the coyotes treaded ahead then he was conscious of a persistent buzzing a noise which irritated faintly until he was compelled to trace it to its source the grass had been trampled flat for an irregular patch with a trail of broken stocks out of the heart of the plain at one side was a buzzing seething mass of glitter winged insects which Travis already knew as carrion eaters they arose reluctantly from their feast as he approached he drew a short breath which was close to a grunt of astounded recognition what lay there was so impossible that he could not believe the evidence of his eyes Tosay gave a sharp explanation went down on one knee for a closer examination then looked at Travis over his shoulder his eyes wide more than a trace of excitement in his voice or stung and fresh this concludes the reading of chapter 4 chapter 5 of the Defiant Agents this is a lever box recording all lever box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit leverbox.org recording by R.J. Davis Defiant Agents by Andre Norton chapter 5 there was one horse unshod but ridden it came here from the plains and it had been ridden hard going length there was a rest here maybe shortly after dawn Travis sorted out what they had learned by a careful examination of the ground now look at the day view in Nagenta Tosay watched and listened as if the coyotes as well as a boy could understand every word there is that also Tosay indicated the one trace left by the unknown writer an impression blurred as if some attempt had been made to conceal it small and light the writer is both also in fear I think we follow we ask we follow Travis ascended he looked to the coyotes and as he had learned to do thought out his message this trail was the one to be followed when the writer was cited they were to report back if the Apaches had not yet caught up there was no visible agreement the coyotes simply vanished through this wall of grass then there are others here Tosay said as he and Travis went down the road hills perhaps there was a second ship that horse Travis said, checking his head there was no provision in the project for the shipping of horses perhaps they have always been here not so to each world his own species of beasts but we shall know the truth when we look upon that horse and this writer it was warmer this side of the mountains the planes beat at them Travis thought that the horse might well be seeking water if allowed his head where did he come from and why had his writer gone in haste to in fear this was rough broken country and a tired, limping horse seemed to have picked the easiest way through it without any hindrance from the man with him Travis spotted a soft patch of ground with a deep set impression this time there had been no attempt at erasure the boot track was plain the writer had dismounted and was leading the horse yet he was moving swiftly they followed the tracks around the bend of a shallow cut and found Nalikieiu waiting for them between her four feet was a bundle still covered with smears of soft earth and behind her were drag marks from a hole under the overhang of a boot the coyote had plainly just distintered her fine Travis squatted down to examine it using his eyes before his hands it was a bag made of hide probably the hide of one of the split horns by its color and the scrapes of long hair which had been left in a simple decorative fringe along the bottle the sides had been laced together neatly by someone used to working in leather the closing flap laced down tightly with braided song loops as the Apache leaned closer to it he could smell a mixture of odors the hide itself horse wood smoke and other scents strange to him he undid the fastenings and pulled out the contents there was a shirt with long pull sleeves of a grey wool undied from the sheet then a very bulky short jacket after frangering it doubtfully Travis's side was made of felt it was elaborately decorated with highly colorful and ruddery and there was no mistakingly design a heavy antlered tear and deer in mortal combat with what might be a puma it was bordered with a geometric pattern of beautiful oddly familiar work Travis smoothed it flat over his knee and tried to remember where he had seen it like before a book an illustration in a book but which book? not recently and it was not a pattern known to his own people twisted into the interior of the jacket was a silk like scarf clear like blue the blue of terraced cloudless skies on certain days so different from the yellow shield now hanging above them a small case of leather cut from hide and affixed to it designs as intricate and complex as the embroidery on the jacket art of a high standard in the case a knife and spoon the bow and blade of dull metal the handles of horn carved with horses head the tiny wide open eyes set with glittering stones personal possessions dear to the owner so that when they must be abandoned for flight they were hidden with some hope of recovery Travis slowly repacked them trying to fold the garments into their original creases he was still puzzled by those designs who? Tossé touched the edge of the jacket with one finger his admiration for it plain to read I don't know but it is of our own world that is a deer but the horns are wrong and the fuma is very well done the one who made this knows animals well Travis pushed the jacket back into the bag and laced it shut but he did not return it to the hiding place instead he made it a part of his own pack if they did not succeed in running down the fugitive he wondered an opportunity for closer study a chance to remember just where he had seen that picture before in a narrow valley where they had discovered the bag sloped upward and there were signs that their quarry found the ground harder to cover the second discard lay in open sight again a leather bag which the licky are you sniffed and then began to lick eagerly thrusting her nose into his flakert's interior Travis picked it up finding it damp to the touch it had an odd smell he ran his finger around inside brought it out wet yet this was neither water bag nor canteen and he was completely mystified when he turned it inside out for though the inner surface was wet the bag was empty he offered it to the coyote and she took it promptly holding it firmly to the earth with her fore paws she licked the surface though Travis could see no deposit from my detractor it was clear that the bag had once held some sort of food here they rested to say said not too far ahead now but now they were in a kind of country where a man could hide in order to check on his back trail Travis studied the terrain and then made his own plans they would leave the plainly marked trace of the fugitive strike out up slope to the east and try to parallel the other's route in that maze of rock outcrops and wood copes us there was tricky going now Licky Adu gave the last lick to the bag as Travis signaled her she regarded him then turned her head to survey the country before them at last she trotted on her buff coat melting into the vegetation with the gentile she would scout the quarry and keep watch leaving the men take the longer way around Travis pulled off his shirt folding it into a packet and tucking it beneath the foals of his safe belt just as his ancestors has always done before a fight then he cast his packs and tosses as they begin the stiff climb they carried only their bows the quiver slung on their shoulders and the long-bladed knives but they flitted like shadows and like the coyotes the red brown bodies became indistinguishable against the bronze of the land they should be Travis judge not more than an hour away from sundown and they had to locate the stranger before the dark closed in his respect for the quarry had grown the unknown might have been driven by fear but he held a good pace and headed intellectually for just the kind of country which would serve him best but Travis could only remember where he had seen the like of that in Braugry it had a meaning which might be important now the safe slipped behind a wind-nurl tree and disappeared Travis stooped under a line of bush limbs both were working their way south using the peak ahead as an agreed landmark pausing at intervals to examine the landscape for any hint of a man and horse Travis squirmed snake-fashioned into an opening between two rock pillars and lay there the westerly sky hot on his bare shoulders and back his chin propped on his forearm in the band holding back his hair he had inserted some concealing puffs of wiry mountain grass the ends of which drooped over his rugged features only seconds earlier he had caught that fragmentary warning from one of the coyotes what they sought was very close it was right down there both animals were in ambush awaiting orders and what they found was familiar another confirmation that the fugitive was tearing, not native to Topes with searching eyes Travis examined the site indicated by the coyotes his respect for the stranger was raised another notch in time either he or Torce might have sighted that hideaway the age of the animal scouts on the other hand they might have failed for the fugitive had truly gone to earth using some pocket or crevice in the mountain wall there was no sign of the horse but a brush here and there had been pulled out of place the scars of the removal readable when one knew where to look odd Travis began to puzzle over what he saw it was almost as if the stranger feared would come not at ground level but from above the precautions the stranger had taken were to veil his retreat to the reaches of the mountain site had he expected any trailer to make a flanking move from up that slope for the Apaches now lay Travis's teeth nipped the weather skin of his forearm could it be that at some time during today's journey having seen his trackers but there had been no traces of any such scouting and the coyotes would surely have warned him human eyes and ears could be tricked but Travis trusted the senses of Najinta and Nikiaketu far above his own no he did not believe that the rider expected the Apaches but the man did expect someone or something which would come upon him from the heights the heights Travis rolled his head slightly to look at the upper reaches of the hills above him with suspicion in their own journey across the mountains and through the past they had found nothing threatening dangerous animals might roam there there had been some paupers once the trail the coyotes had warned against but the type of precautions the stranger had taken were against intelligent thinking beings not against animals more likely to track by scent than by sight and if the stranger expected an attack from above then Travis and Tosei must be alert Travis analyzed each feature of the hillside setting in his mind a picture of every inch of ground they must cross just that he had won daylight as an ally before so now he was willing to wait for the shadows of twilight he closed his eyes in a final check able to recall the details of the hiding place knowing that he could reach it when the conditions favored without mistake bending his back from his vantage point and raised his fingers to his lips made a small angry killery three times repeated one of the species inhabiting these heights that they had noted earlier was a creature about as big as the palm of a mantan resembling nothing so much as a round ball of ruffle feathers though its covering might actually have been a silky fluffy fur its short legs could cover ground at an amazing speed and it had the bold and prudence of a creature with few natural enemies this was its usual cry Tosei's hand weighed Travis on to where the younger man had taken position behind the bleached trunk of a fallen tree he hiked Tosei whispered I get trouble from above Travis added his own observation but not us I think Tosei had come to that conclusion too Travis tried to gauge the nearness of twilight there was a period after the passing of Topei's son when the dusky light played odd tricks with shadows that would be the first time for their move he said as much and Tosei nodded eagerly they sat with their backs to a boulder the tree trunk serving as a screen and chewed methodically on ration tablets there was energy and substance in the tasteless squares which would support men even though their stomachs continued to demand the satisfaction of fresh meat taking turns they dozed a little but the last banners of Topei's son were still in the sky when Travis judged the shadows covered enough he had no way of knowing how the stranger was armed though he used a horse for transportation he might well carry a rifle and the most modern parent sidearm the Apache's bows were little used for infighting but they had their knives however Travis wanted to take the fugitive unharmed if he could there was information he must have so he did not even draw his knife and started downhill when he reached a pool of violet dusk at the bottom of the small ravine Nagenta's eyes regarded him knowingly Travis signaled with his hand and brought out what would be the coyotes' park in the surprise attack the prick-deared silhouette vanished uphill the chitter of a tough bird sounded twice Tosei was in position a howling heard one of the keening songs of the emblem Travis started forward he heard the nicker of a frightened horse a clicking which could have marked the pawing of hoof on gravel saw the brush hiding the stranger's whole tremble a portion of it fall away Travis sped on his moccasins making no sound on the ground one of the coyotes gave tongue for the second time the eerie wiggling rising in a yapping which echoed from the rocks above him Travis poised for a dive another section of those artfully heaped branches that given way and a horse rare its up-lung head plainly marked against the sky a bird figured we'd back and forth before it trying to control the mount the stranger had his hands full certainly no weapon drawn this was it his hands found the mark the shoulders of the stranger there was a seal cry from the other as he tried to turn in the apache's hole to face his attacker but Travis bore them both on rolling almost under the feet of the horse sliding down hill the unknown's writhing body pinned down by the apache's weight and his clasp tight as an iron grip about the other's chest and upper arms he felt his opponent go limp but was suspicious enough not to release that hold for the heavy breathing of the stranger but not that of an unconscious man they lay so the unknown still tight in Travis's hold but no longer fighting the apache could hear Tassay soothing the horse with the purring words of a practice horseman still the stranger did not resume the struggle they could not lie in this position all night Travis spot with a wide twist of amusement he shifted his hold and got the lightning quick response he had expected but it was not quite quick enough for Travis had the other's hands behind his back cupping slender almost delicate wrists together throw me a cord he called to Tassay the younger man ran up with an extra bow cord and in a moment they had bonds on the struggling captain Travis rolled a catch over reaching down for a fistful of hair to pull the head into a patch of clear light in his grasp that hair came loose a braid unwinding he grunted as he looked down into the stranger's face dust marks were streaked now with tear rolls but the gray eyes which turned fiercely on him said that their owner cried more in rage than fear his captain might be wearing home trousers tucked into curved towed boots and a loose over blouse but he was certainly not only a woman but a very young and attractive one also at the present moment an exceedingly angry one and behind that anger was fear the fear of one fighting hopelessly against insurmountable odds but as he eyed Travis now for expression change he felt she had expected another captor altogether and was astounded at the sight of him her tongue touched her lips moistening them and now the fear in her was another kind the wary fear of one facing a totally new and perhaps dangerous thing who are you Travis spoke in English for he had no doubts that she was tearing now she sucked in her breath with a gasp of pure astonishment who are you she parroted his question marked accent English was not her native language he was sure Travis reached out and again his hands closed on her shoulders she started to twist and then realize he was merely pulling her up to a setting position some of the fear had left her eyes an intent interest taking his place you are not sons of the blue wolf she stated in her heavily accented speech Travis smiled I am the fox not the wolf he returned and the coyote is my brother he snapped his fingers at the shadows and the two animals came noiselessly into sight her gaze widened even more at Najita the licky adieu and she deduced the bond which must exist between her captor and the beast this woman is also of our world Tassay spoke in Apache looking over their prisoner with frank interest only she is not of the people sons of the blue wolf Travis thought again of the embroidery designs on the jacket who had called themselves by that picture skew title where and when in time what do you fear daughter of the blue wolf he asked and with that question he seemed to touch some button activating terror you can see the darkening sky the flyer her voice was muted as if more than a whisper could carry to the stars just coming in the breeze above them they will come tracking I did not reach the inner mountains in time there was a despairing note in that which cut through to Travis who found that he too was searching the sky not knowing what he looked for only that it was real danger this concludes the reading of chapter 5