The Defiant Agents | Page 5

spaceship lacking the signal to
ward off the missiles the spheres could summon. This system for protecting the new
human settlers had been tested as well as possible, but not as yet put to the ultimate proof.
Still, the small bright globes spun undisturbed across a two-mooned sky at night and
made reassuring blips on an installation screen by day.
Then a thirteenth object winked into being and began the encircling, closing spiral of
descent. A sphere resembling the warden-globes, it was a hundred times their size, and its
orbit was controlled by instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot.
Four men were strapped down on cushioned sling-seats in the control cabin of the
Western Alliance ship, two hanging where their fingers might reach buttons and levers.
The two others were merely passengers, their own labor waiting for the time when they
would set down on the alien soil of Topaz. The planet hung there in their viewscreen,
richly beautiful in its amber gold, growing larger, nearer, so that they could pick out
features of seas, continents, mountain ranges, which had been studied on tape until they
were familiar--or as familiar as a world not Earth could be.
One of the warden-globes came alert and oscillated in its set path. It whirled faster as its
delicate interior mechanisms responded to the signal that would send it on its mission of
destruction. A relay clicked, but imperceptibly slow in setting the proper course. On the
instrument, far below, which checked the globe's new course the mistake was not noted.
The screen of the ship spiraling toward Topaz registered a path which would bring it into
violent contact with the globe. They were still some hundreds of miles apart when the
alarm rang. The pilot's hand clawed out at the bank of controls; under the almost
intolerable pressure of their descent, there was so little he could do. His crooked fingers

fell back powerlessly from the buttons and levers; his mouth was a twisted grimace of
bleak acceptance as the beat of the signal increased.
One of the passengers forced his head around on the padded rest, fought to form words,
to speak to his companion. The other was staring ahead at the screen, his thick lips wide
and flat against his teeth in a snarl of rage.
"They... are... here..."
Ruthven paid no attention to the obvious as stated by his fellow scientist. His fury was a
red, pulsing thing inside him, fed by his own helplessness. To be pinned here so near his
goal, set up as a target for a mere machine, ate into him like a stream of deadly acid. His
big gamble would puff out in a blast of fire to light up Topaz's sky, with nothing
left--nothing. On the armrest of his sling-seat his nails scratched deep.
The four men in the control cabin could only sit and watch, waiting for the rendezvous
which would blot them out. Ruthven's flaming anger was a futile blaze. His companion in
the passenger seat had closed his eyes, his lips moving soundlessly. The pilot and his
assistant divided their attention between the screen, with its appalling message, and the
controls they could not effectively use, feverishly seeking a way out in these last
moments.
Below them in the bowels of the ship were those who would not know the end
consciously--save in one compartment. In a padded cage a prick-eared head stirred where
it rested on forepaws, slitted eyes blinked, aware not only of familiar surroundings, but
also of the tension and fear generated by human minds and emotions levels above. A
pointed nose raised, and growling rose from a throat covered with thick buff-gray hair.
The growl aroused another similar captive. Knowing yellow eyes met yellow eyes. An
intelligence, which was not natural to the animal body which contained it, fought down
instinct raging to send both those bodies hurtling at the fastenings of the twin cages.
Curiosity and the ability to adapt had been bred into these creatures from time
immemorial. Then something else had been added to sly and cunning brains. A step up
had been taken--to weld intelligence to cunning, connect thought to instinct.
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. The natural desert dwellers, four-footed and winged,
could not be so controlled.
Thousands of years earlier, the first southward roving Amerindian tribes had met with
their kind, a hunter of the open country, a smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural
abilities had made an indelible impression on the human mind. He appeared in countless
Indian legends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy.
Godling