The Defiant Agents Read online

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  _THEDEFIANTAGENTS_

  _By Andre Norton_

  RIDE PROUD, REBEL! STORM OVER WARLOCK GALACTIC DERELICT THE TIME TRADERS STAR BORN YANKEE PRIVATEER THE STARS ARE OURS!

  _Edited by Andre Norton_

  SPACE PIONEERS SPACE SERVICE

  _THEDEFIANTAGENTS_

  _BYANDRENORTON_

  THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

  CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

  _Published by_ The World Publishing Company2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio

  _Published simultaneously in Canada by_Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-9063

  FIRST EDITION

  WP262

  Copyright (C) 1962 by Andre NortonAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproducedin any form without written permission from the publisher,except for brief passages included in a review appearing ina newspaper or magazine. Printed in the United States of America.

  _FOR P. SCHUYLER MILLERwho expressed a wishfor some Apache colonists,and CHARLES F. KELLEYwho has a likingfor "time agent" tales._

  _THE DEFIANT AGENTS_

  1

  No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was nofocus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks setout on its surface appeared to glow--perhaps the heat of the mischiefthey could cause ... had caused ... blazed in them.

  But fanciful imaginings did not cushion or veil cold, hard fact. Dr.Gordon Ashe, one of the four men peering unhappily at the display, shookhis head slightly as if to free his mind of such cobwebs.

  His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to askharshly: "No chance of a mistake?"

  "You saw the detector." The thin gray string of a man behind the deskanswered with chill precision. "No, no possible mistake. These five havedefinitely been snooped."

  "And two choices among them," Ashe murmured. That was the importantpoint now.

  "I thought these were under maximum security," Kelgarries challenged thegray man.

  Florian Waldour's remote expression did not change. "Every possibleprecaution was in force. There was a sleeper--a hiddenagent--planted----"

  "Who?" Kelgarries demanded.

  Ashe glanced around at his three companions--Kelgarries, colonel incommand of one sector of Project Star, Florian Waldour, the securityhead on the station, Dr. James Ruthven....

  "Camdon!" he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic hadled him.

  Waldour nodded.

  For the first time since he had known and worked with Kelgarries Ashesaw him display open astonishment.

  "Camdon? But he was sent us by--" The colonel's eyes narrowed. "He musthave 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 ofemotion in Waldour's voice. "He was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. Theymust have planted him a full twenty-five or thirty years ago. He's beenjust what he claimed to be as long as that."

  "Well, he certainly was worth their time and trouble, wasn't he?" JamesRuthven'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 thatimportant point. The time element--that was the primary concern now thatthe damage was done, and they knew it.

  "That's one thing we don't know." Waldour's reply came slowly as if hehated 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 shockthey 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 newdetector against snooping was not put in service until two weeks ago.This case came up on the first checking round, didn't it?" he askedWaldour.

  "First check," the security man agreed. "Camdon left the base six daysago. But he has been in and out on his liaison duties from the first."

  "He had to go through those search points every time," Kelgarriesprotested. "Thought nothing could get through those." The colonelbrightened. "Maybe he got his snooper films and then couldn't take themoff 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 confirmationof his success, listen...." He touched a button on his desk and out ofthe air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster.

  "Fears for the safety of Lassiter Camdon, space expediter for theWestern Conference Space Council, have been confirmed by the discoveryof burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr. Camdon was returning from amission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact with RagnorField. 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 theyhad all they wanted," Waldour acknowledged. "But to get back to ourtroubles--Dr. Ruthven is right to assume the worst. I believe we canonly insure the recovery of our project by thinking that these tapeswere snooped anywhere from eighteen months ago to last week. And we mustwork accordingly!"

  There was silence in the room as they all considered that. Ashe slippeddown in his chair, his thoughts enmeshed in memories. First there hadbeen Operation Retrograde, when specially trained "time agents" hadshuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate and track downthe mysterious source of alien knowledge which the eastern Communisticnations had suddenly begun to use.

  Ashe himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdock, had been part of thefinal action which had solved the mystery, having traced that source ofknowledge not to an earlier and forgotten Terran civilization but towrecked spaceships from an eon-old galactic empire--an empire which hadflourished when glacial ice covered most of Europe and northern Americaand Terrans were cave-dwelling primitives. Murdock, trapped by the Redsin one of those wrecked ships, had inadvertently summoned its originalowners, who had descended to trace--through the Russian timestations--the looters of their wrecks, destroying the whole Redtime-travel system.

  But the aliens had not chanced on the parallel western system. And ayear later that had been put into Project Folsom One. Again Ashe,Murdock, and a newcomer, the Apache Travis Fox, had gone back into timeto the Arizona of the Folsom hunters, discovering what they wanted--twoships, one wrecked, the other intact. And when the full efforts of theproject had been centered on bringing the intact ship back into thepresent, chance had triggered controls set by the dead alien commander.A party of four, Ashe, Murdock, Fox, and a technician, had then made aninvoluntary voyage into space, touching three worlds on which thegalactic civilization of the far past was now marked only by ruins.

  Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and,when rewound, had--by a miracle--returned them to Terra with a cargo ofsimilar tapes found in a building on a world which might have been thecentral capital for a government comprised not of countries or of worldsbut of solar systems. Tapes--each one the key to another planet.

  And that ancient galactic knowledge was treasure such as the Terrans hadnever dreamed of possessing, though there were the attendant fears thatsuch discoveries could be weapons in enemy hands. There had been a
nenforced sharing with other nations of tapes chosen at random at a greatdrawing. And each nation secretly remained convinced that, in spite ofthe untold riches it might hold as a result of chance, its rivals haddone better. Right at this moment, Ashe did not in the least doubt,there were agents of his own party intent on accomplishing at the Redproject just what Camdon had done there. However, that did not help insolving their present dilemma concerning Operation Cochise, one part oftheir project, but perhaps the most important now.

  Some of the tapes were duds, either too damaged to be useful, or set forworlds hostile to Terrans lacking the equipment the earlierstar-traveling race had had at its command. Of the five tapes they nowknew had been snooped, three would be useless to the enemy.

  But one of the remaining two.... Ashe frowned. One was the goal towardwhich they had been working feverishly for a full twelve months. Toplant a colony across the gulf of space--a successful colony--later tobe used as a steppingstone to other worlds....

  "So we have to move faster." Ruthven's comment reached Ashe through hisstream of memories.

  "I thought you required at least three more months to conclude personneltraining," Waldour observed.

  Ruthven lifted a fat hand, running the nail of a broad thumb back andforth across his lower lip in a habitual gesture Ashe had learned tomistrust. As the latter stiffened, bracing for a battle of wills, he sawKelgarries come alert too. At least the colonel more often than not wasready to counter Ruthven's demands.

  "We test and we test," said the fat man. "Always we test. We move liketurtles when it would be better to race like greyhounds. There is such athing as overcaution, as I have said from the first. One wouldthink"--his accusing glance included Ashe and Kelgarries--"that therehad never been any improvising in this project, that all had always beendone by the book. I say that this is the time we must take the biggamble, or else we may find we have been outbid for space entirely. Letthose others discover even one alien installation they can master and--"his thumb shifted from his lip, grinding down on the desk top as if itwere crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant insect--"and weare 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 conference at large.The public was used to reckless gambles which paid off, and there hadbeen enough of those in the past to give an impressive argument forthat point of view. But Ashe, himself, could not agree to a speed-up. Hehad been out among the stars, shaved disaster too closely because theproper training had not been given.

  "I shall report that I advise a take-off within a week," Ruthven wascontinuing. "To the council I shall say that--"

  "And I do not agree!" Ashe cut in. He glanced at Kelgarries for thequick backing he expected, but instead there was a lengthening moment ofsilence. 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, whatwould be needed to speed up any take-off?"

  It was Ruthven who replied. "We can use the Redax, as I have said fromthe start."

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

  "And I'll protest that ... to the council! Man, we're dealing with humanbeings--selected volunteers, men who trust us--not with laboratoryanimals!"

  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 intotime? 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 propose telling them about the use of Redax--what it does to aman's mind?" countered Ashe.

  "Certainly. They will receive all necessary instructions."

  Ashe was not satisfied and he would have spoken again, but Kelgarriesinterrupted:

  "If it comes to that, none of us here has any right to make finaldecisions. Waldour has already sent in his report about the snoop. We'llhave to await orders from the council."

  Ruthven levered himself out of his chair, his solid bulk stretching hisuniform coveralls. "That is correct, Colonel. In the meantime I wouldsuggest we all check to see what can be done to speed up each one'sportion of labor." Without another word, he tramped to the door.

  Waldour eyed the other two with mounting impatience. It was plain he hadwork to do and wanted them to leave. But Ashe was reluctant. He had afeeling that matters were slipping out of his control, that he was aboutto face a crisis which was somehow worse than just a major securityleak. Was the enemy always on the other side of the world? Or could hewear the same uniform, even share the same goals?

  In the outer corridor he still hesitated, and Kelgarries, a step or soin 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 thehour Ashe felt as if he had taken a step only to have firm earth turninto slippery, shifting sand underfoot.

  "It isn't a matter of my agreeing. It may be a matter of getting throughor not getting through--now. If they've had eighteen months, or eventwelve...!" The colonel's fingers balled into a fist. "And _they_ won'tbe 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 closedto anything but what they want to hear. After all, we can't prove thatthe Redax will be harmful."

  "But we've only used it under rigidly controlled conditions. To speed upthe process would mean a total disregard of those controls. Snapping aparty of men and women back into their racial past and holding themthere for too long a period...." Ashe shook his head.

  "You have been in Operation Retrograde from the start, and we've beenremarkably successful----"

  "Operating in a different way, educating picked men to return to certainpoints in history where their particular temperaments andcharacteristics fitted the roles they were selected to play, yes. Andeven then we had our percentage of failures. But to try this--returningpeople not physically into time, but _mentally and emotionally_ intoprototypes of their ancestors--that's something else again. The Apacheshave volunteered, and they've been passed by the psychologists and thetesters. But they're Americans of today, not tribal nomads of two orthree hundred years ago. If you break down some barriers, you might justend up breaking them all."

  Kelgarries was scowling. "You mean--they might revert utterly, have nocontact with the present at all?"

  "That's just what I do mean. Education and training, yes, but fullawakening of racial memories, no. The two branches of conditioningshould go slowly and hand in hand, otherwise--real trouble!"

  "Only we no longer have the time to go slow. I'm certain Ruthven will beable 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 choicein the matter."

  "Ruthven said that would be done." The colonel did not sound convincedof that.

  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 expectedthose, accepted them, even when they hurt. When we asked for volunteersfor this project we had to make them understand that there was a heavyelement of risk involved. Three teams of recruits--the Eskimos fromPoint Barren, the Apaches, and the Islanders--all picked because theirpeople had a high survival rating in the past, to be colonists on widelydifferent types of planets. Well, the Eskimos and the Islanders aren'tmatched to any of the worlds on those snooped tapes, but Topaz iswaiting for the Apaches. And we may have to move them in there in ahurry. It's a rotten gamble any way you see it!"

  "I'll appe
al 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 wantto beat Ruthven. He's probably on a straight line now to Stanton,Reese, and Margate. This is what he has been waiting for!"

  "There are the news syndicates; 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 handsdown the fabric covering his thighs as if to rub away some soil on hispalms.

  "No," he replied heavily, his voice dull. "I guess I don't. I'll contactHough and hope for the best."

  "Meanwhile," Kelgarries spoke briskly, "we'll do what we can to speed upthe program as it now stands. I suggest you take off for New York withinthe hour----"

  "Me? Why?" Ashe asked with a trace of suspicion.

  "Because I can't leave without acting directly against orders, and thatwould put us wrong immediately. You see Hough and talk to himpersonally--put it to him straight. He'll have to have all the facts ifhe's going to counter any move from Stanton before the council. You knowevery argument we can use and all the proof on our side, and you'reauthority 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 sidecorridor, before he moved on slowly to his own box of office. Onceinside he sat for a long unhappy time staring at the wall and seeingnothing but the pictures produced by his thoughts. Then he pressed abutton and read off the symbols which flashed on a small visa-screenset in his desk. Another button pushed, and he picked up a hand mike torelay an order which might postpone trouble for a while. Ashe was fartoo valuable a man to lose, and his emotions could boil him straightinto disaster over this.

  "Bidwell--reschedule Team A. They are to go to the Hypno-Lab instead ofthe reserve in ten minutes."

  Releasing the mike, he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupta hypno-training period, and this one would last three hours. Ashe couldnot possibly see the trainees before he left for New York. And thatwould remove one temptation from his path--he would not talk at thewrong time.

  Kelgarries' mouth twisted sourly. He had no pride in what he was doing.And he was perfectly certain that Ruthven would win and that Ashe'sfears of Redax were well founded. It all came back to the old basictenet of the service: the end justified the means. They must use everymethod and man under their control to make sure that Topaz would remaina western possession, even though that strange planet now swung farbeyond the sky which covered both the western and eastern alliances onTerra. Time had run out too fast; they were being forced to play whatcards they held, even though those might be very low ones. Ashe would beback, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this had been decided one way oranother. 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 otherworld which appeared on the direction tape symbolized by a jewellikedisk of gold-brown which had given it the code name of Topaz.