The Defiant Agents

Time Traders II: The Defiant Agents
Andre Norton

1
No windows broke the four plain walls of the office; no sunlight shone on the desk there.
Yet the five disks set out on its surface appeared to glow--perhaps the heat of the
mischief they could cause... had caused... blazed in them.
But fanciful imaginings did not change cold, hard fact. Dr. Gordon Ashe, one of the four
men peering unhappily at the display, shook his head slightly as if to free his mind of
such cobwebs.
His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to ask harshly: "No chance
of a mistake?"
"You saw the detector." The thin gray man behind the desk answered with chill precision.
"No, no possible mistake. These five have definitely been snooped."
"And two choices among them," Ashe murmured. That was the important point now.
"I thought these were under maximum security," Kelgarries challenged the gray man.
Florian Waldour's remote expression did not change. "Every possible precaution was in
force. There was a sleeper--a hidden agent--planted--"
"Who?" Kelgarries demanded.
Ashe glanced around at his three companions--Kelgarries, colonel in command of one
sector of Project Star, Florian Waldour, the security head on the station, Dr. James
Ruthven...
"Camdon!" he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic had led him.
Waldour nodded.
It was the first time since he had known and worked with Kelgarries that Ashe saw him
display open astonishment.

"Camdon? But he was sent by--" The colonel's eyes narrowed. "He must have been sent...
There were too many cross checks to fake that!"
"Oh, he was sent, all right." For the first time there was a note of emotion in Waldour's
voice. "He was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. They must have planted him a full
twenty-five or thirty years ago. He's been just what he claimed to be as long as that."
"Well, he certainly was worth their time and trouble, wasn't he?" James Ruthven's voice
was a growling rumble. He sucked in thick lips, continuing to stare at the disks. "How
long ago were these snooped?"
Ashe's thoughts turned swiftly from the enormity of the betrayal to that important point.
The time element--that was the primary concern now that the damage was done, and they
knew it.
"That's one thing we don't know." Waldour's reply came slowly as if he hated the
admission.
"We'll be safer, then, if we presume the very earliest period." Ruthven's statement was as
ruthless in its implications as the shock they had had when Waldour announced the
disaster.
"Eighteen months ago?" Ashe protested.
But Ruthven was nodding. "Camdon was in on this from the very first. We've had the
tapes in and out for study all that time, and the new detector against snooping was not put
in service until two weeks ago. This case came up on the first check, didn't it?" he asked
Waldour.
"First check," the security man agreed. "Camdon left the base six days ago. But he has
been in and out on his liaison duties from the first."
"He had to go through those search points every time," Kelgarries protested. "Thought
nothing could get through those." The colonel brightened. "Maybe he got his snooper
films and then couldn't take them off base. Have his quarters been turned out?"
Waldour's lips lifted in a grimace of exasperation. "Please, Colonel," he said wearily,
"this is not a kindergarten exercise. In confirmation of his success, listen..." He touched a
button on his desk and out of the air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster.
"Fears for the safety of Lassiter Camdon, space expeditor for the Western Alliance Space
Council, have been confirmed by the discovery of burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr.
Camdon was returning from a mission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact
with Ragnor Field. Reports of a storm in that vicinity immediately raised concern--"
Waldour snapped off the voice.
"True--or a cover for his escape?" Kelgarries wondered aloud.

"Could be either. They may have deliberately written him off when they had all they
wanted," Waldour acknowledged. "But to get back to our troubles--Dr. Ruthven is right
to assume the worst. I believe we can only insure the recovery of our project by thinking
that these tapes were snooped anywhere from eighteen months ago to last week. And we
must work accordingly!"
The room fell silent as they all considered that. Ashe slipped down in his chair, his
thoughts enmeshed in memories. First there had been Operation Retrograde, when
specially trained "time agents" had shuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate
and track down the mysterious source of alien knowledge which Greater Russia had
suddenly--and ominously--begun to use.
Ashe himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdock, had been part of the final action