The Defiant Agents | Page 7

outer bulk. But the mountain barrier was now between it
and the base from which the missiles had been launched, and the crash had not been
recorded. As far as the watchers several hundred miles away knew, the warden in the sky
had performed as promised. Their first line of defense had proven satisfactory. There had
been no unauthorized landing on Topaz.
In the wreckage of the control cabin Ruthven pawed at the fastenings of his sling-chair.
He no longer tried to suppress the moans every effort tore out of him. Time held the whip,
drove him. He rolled from his seat to the floor, lay there gasping, as again he fought
doggedly to remain above the waves--those frightening, fast-coming waves of darkness.
Somehow he was crawling, crawling along a tilted surface until he gained the well where
the ladder to the lower section hung, now at an acute angle. That angle made it possible
for him to reach the next level.
He was too dazed to realize the meaning of the crumpled bulkheads. There was a spur of
bare rock under his hands as he edged over and around twisted metal. The moans were
now a gobbling, burbling, almost continuous cry as he reached his goal--a small cabin
still intact.
For long moments of anguish he paused by the chair there, afraid that he could not make
the last effort, raise his almost inert bulk up to the point where he could reach the Redax
release. For a second of unusual clarity he wondered if there was any reason for this
supreme ordeal, whether any of the sleepers could be aroused. This might now be a ship
of the dead.

His right hand, his arm, and finally his bulk over the seat, he braced himself and brought
his left hand up. He could not use any of the fingers; it was like lifting numb, heavy
weights. But he lurched forward, swept the unfeeling cold flesh down against the release
in a gesture which he knew must be his final move. And, as he fell back to the floor, Dr.
Ruthven could not be certain whether he had succeeded or failed. He tried to twist his
head around, to focus his eyes upward at that switch. Was it down or still stubbornly up,
locking the sleepers into confinement? But fog drifted between; he could not see it--or
anything else.
The light in the cabin flickered and went out as another circuit in the broken ship failed. It
was dark, too, in the small cubby below which housed the two cages. Chance, which had
snuffed out nineteen lives in the space globe, had missed ripping open that cabin on the
mountain side. Five yards down the corridor the outside fabric of the ship was split wide
open, the crisp air native to Topaz entering, sending a message to two keen noses through
the combination of odors now pervading the wreckage.
And the male coyote went into action. Days ago he had managed to work loose the lower
end of the mesh which fronted his cage, but his mind had told him that a sortie inside the
ship was valueless. The odd rapport he'd had with the human brains, unknown to them,
had operated to keep him to the old role of cunning deception, which in the past had
saved countless of his species from sudden and violent death. Now with teeth and paws
he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his mate, that tantalizing smell of
an outside world tickling their nostrils--a wild world, lacking the taint of man-places.
He slipped under the loosened mesh and stood up to paw at the front of the 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 free now to reach the corridor and see ahead the subdued
light of a strange moon beckoning them on into the open.
The female, always more cautious than her mate, lingered behind as he trotted forward,
his ears a-prick with curiosity. Their training had been the same since cub-hood--to range
and explore, but always in the company and at the order of man. This was not according
to the pattern she knew, and she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the smell of the
ship was offensive and the puffs of breeze from outside enticing. Her mate had already
slipped through the break. Now he barked with excitement 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 other installations. Power purred along a
network of lines, activated beams, turned off and on a