The Defiant Agents Read online

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  There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians, each following theswing of its own orbital path just within the atmospheric envelope ofthe planet which glowed as a great bronze-golden gem in the four-worldsystem of a yellow star. The globes had been launched to form a web ofprotection around Topaz six months earlier, and the highest skill hadgone into their production. Just as contact mines sown in a harbor couldclose that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was thisworld supposedly closed to any spaceship not equipped with the signal toward off the sphere missiles.

  That was the theory of the new off-world settlers whose protection theywere to be, already tested as well as possible, but as yet not put tothe ultimate proof. The small bright globes spun undisturbed across atwo-mooned sky at night and made reassuring blips on an installationscreen by day.

  Then a thirteenth object winked into being, began the encircling,closing spiral of descent. A sphere resembling the warden-globes, it wasa hundred times their size, and its orbit was purposefully controlledby instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot.

  Four men were strapped down on cushioned sling-seats in the controlcabin of the Western Alliance ship, two hanging where their fingersmight reach buttons and levers, the others merely passengers, their ownlabor waiting for the time when they would set down on the alien soil ofTopaz. The planet hung there in their visa-screen, richly beautiful inits amber gold, growing larger, nearer, so that they could pick outfeatures of seas, continents, mountain ranges, which had been studied ontape until they were familiar, yet now were strangely unfamiliar too.

  One of the warden-globes alerted, oscillated in its set path, whirledfaster as its delicate interior mechanisms responded to the awakeningspark which would send it on its mission of destruction. A relayclicked, but for the smallest fraction of a millimeter failed to set theproper course. On the instrument, far below, which checked the globe'snew course the mistake was not noted.

  The screen of the ship spiraling toward Topaz registered a path whichwould bring it into violent contact with the globe. They were still somehundreds of miles apart when the alarm rang. The pilot's hand clawed outat the bank of controls; under the almost intolerable pressure of theirdescent, there was so little he could do. His crooked fingers fell backpowerlessly from the buttons and levers; his mouth was a twisted grimaceof bleak acceptance as the beat of the signal increased.

  One of the passengers forced his head around on the padded rest, foughtto form words, to speak to his companion. The other was staring ahead atthe screen, his thick lips wide and flat against his teeth in a snarlof rage.

  "They ... are ... here...."

  Ruthven paid no attention to the obvious as stated by his fellowscientist. His fury was a red, pulsing thing inside him, fed by his ownhelplessness. To be pinned here so near his goal, fastened up as atarget for an inanimate but cunningly fashioned weapon, ate into himlike a stream of deadly acid. His big gamble would puff out in a blastof fire to light up Topaz's sky, with nothing left--nothing. On thearmrest of his sling-seat his nails scratched deep.

  The four men in the control cabin could only sit and watch, waiting forthe rendezvous which would blot them out. Ruthven's flaming anger was afutile blaze. His companion in the passenger seat had closed his eyes,his lips moving soundlessly in an expression of his own scatteredthoughts. The pilot and his assistant divided their attention betweenthe screen, with its appalling message, and the controls they could noteffectively use, feverishly seeking a way out in these last moments.

  Below them in the bowl of the ship were those who would not know the endconsciously--save in one compartment. In a padded cage a prick-earedhead stirred where it rested on forepaws, slitted eyes blinked, awarenot only of familiar surroundings, but also of the tension and feargenerated by human minds and emotions levels above. A pointed noseraised, and there was a growling deep in a throat covered with thickbuff-gray hair.

  The growl aroused another similar captive. Knowing yellow eyes metyellow eyes. An intelligence, which was certainly not that of the animalbody which contained it, fought down instinct raging to send both thosebodies hurtling at the fastenings of the twin cages. Curiosity and theability to adapt had been bred into both from time immemorial. Thensomething else had been added to sly and cunning brains. A step up hadbeen taken--to weld intelligence to cunning, connect thought toinstinct.

  More than a generation earlier mankind had chosen barren desert--the"white sands" of New Mexico--as a testing ground for atomic experiments.Humankind could be barred, warded out of the radiation limits; thenatural desert dwellers, four-footed and winged, could not be socontrolled.

  For thousands of years, since the first southward roving Amerindiantribes had met with their kind, there had been a hunter of the opencountry, a smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural abilities had madean undeniable impression on the human mind. He was in countless Indianlegends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimesenemy. Godling for some tribes, father of all evil for others. In thewealth of tales the coyote, above all other animals, had a firm place.

  Driven by the press of civilization into the badlands and deserts,fought with poison, gun, and trap, the coyote had survived, adapting tonew ways with all his legendary cunning. Those who had reviled him asvermin had unwillingly added to the folklore which surrounded him,telling their own tales of robbed traps, skillful escapes. He continuedto be a trickster, laughing on moonlit nights from the tops of ridges atthose who would hunt him down.

  Then, close to the end of the twentieth century, when myths werescoffed at, the stories of the coyote's slyness began once more on afantastic scale. And finally scientists were sufficiently intrigued toseek out this creature that seemed to display in truth all the abilitiescredited to his immortal namesake by pre-Columbian tribes.

  What they discovered was indeed shattering to certain closed minds. Forthe coyote had not only adapted to the country of the white sands; hehad evolved into something which could not be dismissed as an animal,clever and cunning, but limited to beast range. Six cubs had beenbrought back on the first expedition, coyote in body, their developingminds different. The grandchildren of those cubs were now in the ship'scages, their mutated senses alert, ready for the slightest chance ofescape. Sent to Topaz as eyes and ears for less keenly endowed humans,they were not completely under the domination of man. The range of theirmental powers was still uncomprehended by those who had bred, trained,and worked with them from the days their eyes had opened and they hadtaken their first wobbly steps away from their dams.

  The male growled again, his lips wrinkling back in a snarl as theemanations of fear from the men he could not see reached panic peak. Hestill crouched, belly flat, on the protecting pads of his cage; but hestrove now to wriggle closer to the door, just as his mate made the sameeffort.

  Between the animals and those in the control cabin lay the others--fortyof them. Their bodies were cushioned and protected with every ingeniousdevice 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 nottrod before, a territory potentially more dangerous than any solid earthcould ever be.

  Operation Retrograde had returned men bodily into the past, sendingagents to hunt mammoths, follow the roads of the Bronze Age traders,ride with Attila and Genghis Khan, pull bows among the archers ofancient Egypt. But Redax returned men in mind to the paths of theirancestors, or this was the theory. And those who slept here and now intheir narrow boxes, lay under its government, while the men who hadarbitrarily set them so could only assume they were actually relivingthe lives of Apache nomads in the wide southwestern wastes of the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

  Above, the pilot's hand pushed out again, fighting the pressure to reachone particular button. That, too, had been a last-minute addition, anexperiment which had only had partial testing. To use it was the finalmove he could make, and he was already half convinced of itsuselessness.

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nbsp; With no faith and only a very wan hope, he sent that round of metalflush with the board. What followed no one ever lived to explain.

  On the planet the installation which tracked the missiles flashed on ascreen bright enough to blind momentarily the duty man on watch, and itstracker was shaken off course. When it jiggled back into line it was nolonger the efficient eye-in-the-sky it had been, though its tenders werenot to realize that for an important minute or two.

  While the ship, now out of control, sped in dizzy whirls toward Topaz,engines fought blindly to stabilize, to re-establish their functions.Some succeeded, some wobbled in and out of the danger zone, two failed.And in the control cabin three dead men spun in prisoning seats.

  Dr. James Ruthven, blood bubbling from his lips with every shallowbreath he could draw, fought the stealthy tide of blackness which creptup 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 werecorrecting, relays clicking, striving to bring it to a landing underauto-pilot. All the ingenuity built into a mechanical brain was nowcentered in landing the globe.

  It was not a good landing, in fact a very bad one, for the spheretouched a mountain side, scraped down rocks, shearing away a portion ofits outer bulk. But the mountain barrier was now between it and the basefrom which the missiles had been launched, and the crash had not beenrecorded on that tracking instrument. So far as the watchers severalhundred miles away knew, the warden in the sky had performed aspromised. Their first line of defense had proven satisfactory, and therehad been no unauthorized landing on Topaz.

  In the wreckage of the control cabin Ruthven pawed at the fastenings ofhis sling-chair. He no longer tried to suppress the moans every efforttore out of him. Time held the whip, drove him. He rolled from his seatto the floor, lay there gasping, as again he fought doggedly to remainabove the waves--those frightening, fast-coming waves of dark faintness.

  Somehow he was crawling, crawling along a tilted surface until he gainedthe well where the ladder to the lower section hung, now at an acuteangle. It was that angle which helped him to the next level.

  He was too dazed to realize the meaning of the crumpled bulkheads. Therewas a spur of bare rock under his hands as he edged over and aroundtwisted metal. The moans were now a gobbling, burbling, almostcontinuous cry as he reached his goal--a small cabin still intact.

  For long moments of anguish he paused by the chair there, afraid that hecould not make the last effort, raise his almost inert bulk up to thepoint where he could reach the Redax release. For a second of unusualclarity he wondered if there was any reason for this supreme ordeal,whether any of the sleepers could be aroused. This might now be a shipof the dead.

  His right hand, his arm, and finally his bulk over the seat, he bracedhimself and brought his left hand up. He could not use any of thefingers; it was like lifting numb, heavy weights. But he lurchedforward, swept the unfeeling lump of cold flesh down against the releasein a gesture which he knew must be his final move. And, as he fell backto the floor, Dr. Ruthven could not be certain whether he had succeededor failed. He tried to screw his head around, to focus his eyes upwardat that switch. Was it down or still stubbornly up, locking the sleepersinto confinement? But there was a fog between; he could not see it--oranything.

  The light in the cabin flickered, was gone as another circuit in thebroken ship failed. It was dark, too, in the small cubby below whichhoused the two cages. Chance, which had snuffed out nineteen lives inthe space globe, had missed ripping open that cabin on the mountainside. Five yards down the corridor the outside fabric of the ship wassplit wide open, the crisp air native to Topaz entering, sending amessage to two keen noses through the combination of odors now pervadingthe wreckage.

  And the male coyote went into action. Days ago he had managed to workloose the lower end of the mesh which fronted his cage, but his mind hadtold him that a sortie inside the ship was valueless. The odd rapporthe'd had with the human brains, unknown to them, had operated to keephim to the old role of cunning deception, which in the past had savedcountless of his species from sudden and violent death. Now with teethand paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his mate,that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling their nostrils--awild world, lacking the taint of man-places.

  He slipped under the loosened mesh and stood up to paw at the front ofthe female's cage. One forepaw caught in the latch and pressed it down,and the weight of the door swung against him. Together they were freenow to reach the corridor and see ahead the subdued light of a strangemoon beckoning them on into the open.

  The female, always more cautious than her mate, lingered behind as hetrotted forward, his ears a-prick with curiosity. Their training hadbeen the same since cubhood--to range and explore, but always in thecompany and at the order of man. This was not according to the patternshe knew, and she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the smell ofthe ship was an offense, and the puffs of breeze from without enticing.Her mate had already slipped through the break; now he barked withexcitement and wonder, and she trotted on to join him.

  Above, the Redax, which had never been intended to stand rough usage,proved to be a better survivor of the crash than most of the otherinstallations. Power purred along a network of lines, activated beams,turned off and on a series of fixtures in those coffin-beds. For five ofthe sleepers--nothing. The cabin which had held them was a flattenedsmear against the mountain side. Three more half aroused, choked, foughtfor life and breath in a darkness which was a mercifully shortnightmare, and succumbed.

  But in the cabin nearest the rent through which the coyotes had escaped,a young man sat up abruptly, looking into the dark with wide-open,terror-haunted eyes. He clawed for purchase against the smooth edge ofthe box in which he had lain, somehow got to his knees, weaving weaklyback and forth, and half fell, half pushed to the floor where he couldstand only by keeping his hold on the box.

  Dazed, sick, weak, he swayed there, aware only of himself and his ownsensations. There were small sounds in the dark, a stilled moan, agasping sigh. But that meant nothing. Within him grew a compulsion to beout of this place, his terror making him lurch forward.

  His flailing hand rapped painfully against an upright surface which hisquesting fingers identified hazily as an exit. Unconsciously he fumbledalong 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 wallrent.

  He progressed toward that in a scrambling crawl, making his way over thesplintered skin of the globe. Then he dropped with a jarring thud ontothe mound of earth the ship had pushed before it during its downwardslide. Limply he tumbled on in a small cascade of clods and sand,hitting against a less movable rock with force enough to roll him overon his back and stun him again.

  The second and smaller moon of Topaz swung brightly through the sky, itsweird green rays making the blood-streaked face of the explorer an alienmask. It had passed well on to the horizon, and its large yellowcompanion had risen when a yapping broke the small sounds of the night.

  As the _yipp, yipp, yipp_ arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, puttingone hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him andsat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not lookback at it.

  Instead, he got to his feet and staggered out into the direct path ofthe moonlight. Inside his brain there was a whirl of thoughts, memories,emotions. Perhaps Ruthven or one of his assistants could have explainedthat chaotic mixture for what it was. But for all practical purposesTravis Fox--Amerindian Time Agent, member of Team A, OperationCochise--was far less of a thinking animal now than the two coyotespaying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one of theirvanished homeland.

  Travis wavered on, drawn somehow by that howling. It was familiar, athread of something real through all the broken clutter in his head. Hestumbled, fell, crawled up again, but he kept on.
r />   Above, the female coyote lowered her head, drew a test sniff of a newscent. She recognized that as part of the proper way of life. She yappedonce at her mate, but he was absorbed in his night song, his muzzlepointed moonward as he voiced a fine wailing.

  Travis tripped, pitched forward on his hands and knees, and felt the jarof such a landing shoot up his stiffened forearms. He tried to get up,but his body only twisted, so he landed on his back and lay looking upat the moon.

  A strong, familiar odor ... then a shadow looming above him. Hot breathagainst his cheek, and the swift sweep of an animal tongue on his face.He flung up his hand, gripped thick fur, and held on as if he had foundone anchor of sanity in a world gone completely mad.