WP262_The Defiant Agents

in any form without written permission from the publisher,

except for brief passages included in a review appearing in

a newspaper or magazine. Printed in the United States of America.

_FOR P. SCHUYLER MILLER

who expressed a wish

for some Apache colonists,

and CHARLES F. KELLEY

who has a liking

for "time agent" tales._

_THE DEFIANT AGENTS_

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 ... 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, shook

his head slightly as if to free his mind of such cobwebs.

His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to ask

harshly: "No chance of a mistake?"

"You saw the detector." The thin gray string of a man behind the desk

answered with chill precision. "No, no possible mistake. These five have

definitely been snooped."

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

point now.

"I thought these were under maximum security," Kelgarries challenged the

gray man.

Florian Waldour's remote expression did not change. "Every possible

precaution was in force. There was a sleeper--a hidden

agent--planted----"

"Who?" Kelgarries demanded.

Ashe glanced around at his three companions--Kelgarries, colonel in

command of one sector of Project Star, Florian Waldour, the security

head on the station, Dr. James Ruthven....

"Camdon!" he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic had

led him.

Waldour nodded.

For the first time since he had known and worked with Kelgarries Ashe

saw him display open astonishment.

"Camdon? 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 Waldour's voice. "He was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. They

must have planted him a full twenty-five or thirty years ago. He's been

just what he claimed to be as long as that."

"Well, he certainly was worth their time and trouble, wasn't he?" James

Ruthven's voice was a growling rumble. He sucked in thick lips,

continuing to stare at the disks. "How long ago were these snooped?"

Ashe's thoughts turned swiftly from the enormity of the betrayal to that

important point. The time element--that was the primary concern now that

the damage was done, and they knew it.

"That's one thing we don't know." Waldour's reply came slowly as if he

hated the admission.

"We'll be safer, then, if we presume the very earliest period."

Ruthven's statement was as ruthless in its implications as the shock

they had had when Waldour announced the disaster.

"Eighteen months ago?" Ashe protested.

But Ruthven was nodding. "Camdon was in on this from the very first.

We've had the tapes in and out for study all that time, and the new

detector against snooping was not put in service until two weeks ago.

This case came up on the first checking round, didn't it?" he asked

Waldour.

"First check," the security man agreed. "Camdon left the base six days

ago. But he has been in and out on his liaison duties from the first."

"He had to go through those search points every time," Kelgarries

protested. "Thought nothing could get through those." The colonel

brightened. "Maybe he got his snooper films and then couldn't take them

off base. Have his quarters been turned out?"

Waldour's lips lifted in a grimace of exasperation. "Please, Colonel,"

he said wearily, "this is not a kindergarten exercise. In confirmation

of his success, listen...." He touched a button on his desk and out of

the air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster.

"Fears for the safety of Lassiter Camdon, space expediter for the

Western Conference Space Council, have been confirmed by the discovery

of burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr. Camdon was returning from a

mission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact with Ragnor

Field. Reports of a storm in that vicinity immediately raised concern--"

Waldour snapped off the voice.

"True--or a cover for his escape?" Kelgarries wondered aloud.

"Could be either. They may have deliberately written him off when they

had all they wanted," Waldour acknowledged. "But to get back to our

troubles--Dr. Ruthven is right to assume the worst. I believe we can

only insure the recovery of our project by thinking that these tapes

were snooped anywhere from eighteen months ago to last week. And we must

work accordingly!"

There was silence in the room as they all considered that. Ashe slipped

down in his chair, his thoughts enmeshed in memories. First there had

been Operation Retrograde, when specially trained "time agents" had

shuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate and track down

the mysterious source of alien knowledge which the eastern Communistic

nations had suddenly begun to use.

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

final action which had solved the mystery, having traced that source of

knowledge not to an earlier and forgotten Terran civilization but to

wrecked spaceships from an eon-old galactic empire--an empire which had

flourished when glacial ice covered most of Europe and northern America

and Terrans were cave-dwelling primitives. Murdock, trapped by the Reds

in one of those wrecked ships, had inadvertently summoned its original

owners, who had descended to trace--through the Russian time

stations--the looters of their 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 Folsom One. Again Ashe,

Murdock, and a newcomer, the Apache Travis Fox, had gone back into time

to the Arizona of the Folsom hunters, discovering what they wanted--two

ships, one wrecked, the other intact. And when the full efforts of the

project had been centered on bringing the intact ship back into the

present, chance had triggered controls set by the dead alien commander.

A party of four, Ashe, Murdock, Fox, and a technician, had then made an

involuntary 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 the men, 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 was treasure such as the Terrans had

never dreamed of possessing, though there were the attendant fears that

such discoveries could be weapons in 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, Ashe did not in the least doubt,

there were agents of his own party intent on accomplishing at the Red

project just what Camdon had done there. However, that did not help in

solving their present dilemma concerning Operation Cochise, one part of

their project, but perhaps the most important now.

Some of the tapes were duds, 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. Of the five tapes they now

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

But one of the remaining two.... Ashe frowned. One was the goal toward

which they had been working feverishly for a full twelve months. To

plant a colony across the gulf of space--a successful colony--later to

be used as a steppingstone to other worlds....

"So we have to move faster." Ruthven's comment reached Ashe through his

stream of memories.

"I thought you required at least three more months to conclude personnel

training," Waldour observed.

Ruthven lifted a fat hand, running the nail of a broad thumb back and

forth across his lower lip in a habitual gesture Ashe had learned to

mistrust. As the latter stiffened, bracing for a battle of wills, he saw

Kelgarries come alert too. At least the colonel more often than not was

ready to counter Ruthven's demands.

"We test and we test," said the fat man. "Always we test. We move like

turtles when it would be better to race like greyhounds. There is such a

thing as overcaution, as I have said from the first. One would

think"--his accusing glance included Ashe and Kelgarries--"that there

had never been any improvising in this project, that all had always been

done by the book. I say that this is the time we must take the big

gamble, or else we may find we have been outbid for space entirely. Let

those others discover even one alien installation they can master and--"

his thumb shifted from his lip, grinding down on the desk top as if it

were crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant insect--"and we

are finished before we really begin."

There were a number of men in the project who would agree with that,

Ashe knew. And a greater number in the country and 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 Ashe, himself, could not agree to a speed-up. He

had been out among the stars, shaved disaster too closely because the

proper training had not been given.

"I shall report that I advise a take-off within a week," Ruthven was

continuing. "To the council I shall say that--"

"And I do not agree!" Ashe cut in. He glanced at Kelgarries for the

quick backing he expected, but instead there was a lengthening moment of

silence. Then the colonel spread out his hands and said sullenly:

"I don't agree either, but I don't have the final say-so. Ashe, what

would be needed to speed up any take-off?"

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

the start."

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

"And I'll protest that ... to the council! Man, we're dealing with human

beings--selected volunteers, men who trust us--not with laboratory

animals!"

Ruthven's thick lips pouted into what was close to a smile of derision.

"Always the sentimentalists, you experts in the past! Tell me, Dr. Ashe,

were you always so thoughtful of your men when you sent agents back into

time? And certainly a voyage into space is less 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 a

man's mind?" countered Ashe.

"Certainly. They will receive all necessary instructions."

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

interrupted:

"If it comes to that, none of us here has any right to make final

decisions. Waldour has already sent in his report about the snoop. We'll

have to await orders from the council."

Ruthven levered himself out of his chair, his solid bulk stretching his

uniform coveralls. "That is correct, Colonel. In the meantime I would

suggest we all check to see what can be done to speed up each one's

portion of labor." Without another word, he tramped to the door.

Waldour eyed the other two with mounting impatience. It was plain he had

work to do and wanted them to leave. But Ashe was reluctant. He had a

feeling that matters were slipping out of his control, that he was about

to face a crisis which was somehow worse than just a major security

leak. Was the enemy always on the other side of the world? Or could he

wear the same uniform, even share the same goals?

In the outer corridor he still hesitated, and Kelgarries, a step or so

in advance, looked back over his shoulder impatiently.

"There's no use fighting--our hands are tied." His words were slurred,

almost as if he wanted to disown them.

"Then you'll agree to use the Redax?" For the second time within the

hour Ashe felt as if he had taken a step only to have firm earth turn

into slippery, shifting sand underfoot.

"It isn't a matter of my agreeing. It may be a matter of getting through

or not getting through--now. If they've had eighteen months, or even

twelve...!" The colonel's fingers balled into a fist. "And _they_ won't

be delayed by any humanitarian reasoning----"

"Then you believe Ruthven will win the council's approval?"

"When you are dealing with frightened men, you're talking to ears closed

to anything but what they want to hear. After all, we can't prove that

the Redax will be harmful."

"But we've only used it under rigidly controlled conditions. To speed up

the process would mean a total disregard of those controls. Snapping a

party of men and women back into their racial past and holding them

there for too long a period...." Ashe shook his head.

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

remarkably successful----"

"Operating in a different way, educating picked men to return to certain

points in history where their particular temperaments and

characteristics fitted the roles they were selected to play, yes. And

even then we had our percentage of failures. But to try this--returning

people not physically into time, but _mentally and emotionally_ into

prototypes of their ancestors--that's something else again. The Apaches

have volunteered, and they've been passed by the psychologists and the

testers. But they're Americans of today, not tribal nomads of two or

three hundred years ago. If you break down some barriers, you might just

end up breaking them all."

Kelgarries was scowling. "You mean--they might revert utterly, have no

contact with the present at all?"

"That's just what I do mean. Education and training, yes, but full

awakening of racial memories, no. The two branches of conditioning

should go slowly and hand in hand, otherwise--real trouble!"

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

able to push this through--with Waldour's report to back him."

"Then we'll have to warn Fox and the rest. They must be given a choice

in the matter."

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

of that.