The Defiant Agents | Page 4

"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 Barren, 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 snooped tapes, but Topaz is waiting for the Apaches. And we may
have to move them there in a hurry. It's a rotten gamble any way you see it!"
"I'll appeal 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 want to beat Ruthven.
He's probably on a direct line now to Stanton, Reese, and Margate. This is what he has
been waiting for!"
But if we contacted the media, 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 hands down the fabric covering his
thighs as if to rub away some soil on his palms.
"No," he replied heavily, his voice dull. "I guess I don't. I'll contact Hough and hope for
the best."
"Meanwhile," Kelgarries 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?" Ashe asked with a trace of suspicion.
"Because I can't leave without acting directly against orders, and that would put us wrong
immediately. You see Hough 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." 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 side corridor, before
he moved on slowly to his own box of an office. Once inside he sat for a long 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 viewscreen set in his
desk. Punching a code, he relayed an order which might postpone trouble for a while.
Ashe was far too valuable a man to lose, and his emotions could boil him straight into
disaster over this.
"Bidwell--reschedule Team A. They are to go to the Hypno-Lab instead of the reserve in
ten minutes."
Releasing the mike, he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupt a hypno-training
period, and this one would last three hours. Ashe 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.
Kelgarries' mouth twisted sourly. He took no pride in what he was doing. And he was

perfectly certain that Ruthven would win and that Ashe's fears of Redax were well
founded. It all came back to the old basic tenet of the service: the end justified the means.
They must use every method and man under their control to make sure that Topaz would
remain a Western possession, even though that strange planet now swung far beyond the
sky which covered both Western Alliance and Greater Russia. Time had run out too fast;
they were being forced to play what cards they held, even though those might be low
ones. Ashe would be back, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this had been decided one way
or another. Not until this was finished.
Finished! Kelgarries blinked at the wall. Perhapsthey were finished, too. No one would
know until the transport ship landed on that other world, that jewellike disk of
gold-brown they had named Topaz.

2
There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians. Each swung in its own orbit just
beyond the atmosphere of a bronze-gold planet in the four-world system of a yellow star.
The globes had been launched to form a protective web around Topaz six months earlier.
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