The Defiant Agents | Page 8

series of fixtures in those
coffin-beds. For five of the sleepers--nothing. The cabin which had held them was a
flattened smear against the mountain side. Three more half-roused, choked, fought for
life and breath in a nightmare that was mercifully short, and succumbed.
But in the cabin nearest the rent through which the coyotes had escaped, a young man sat
up abruptly, staring into the dark with wide-open, terror-haunted eyes. He clawed for
purchase against the smooth edge of the box in which he had lain and somehow got to his

knees. Weaving weakly back and forth, he half fell, half pushed to the floor where he
could stand only by keeping his hold on the box.
Dazed, sick, weak, he swayed there, aware only of himself and his own sensations. There
were small sounds in the dark, a stilled moan, a gasping sigh. But that meant nothing.
Within him grew a compulsion to be out of this place, his terror making him lurch
forward.
His flailing hand rapped painfully against an upright surface which his questing fingers
identified hazily as an exit. Unconsciously he fumbled along the surface of the door until
it gave under that weak pressure. Then he was out, his head swimming, drawn by light
behind the rent wall.
He scrabbled towards it at a crawl, making his way over the splintered skin of the globe.
Then he dropped with a jarring thud onto the mound of earth the ship had pushed before
it during its downward slide. Limply he tumbled on in a small cascade of clods and sand,
hitting a less movable rock with enough force to land him on his back and stun him again.
The second and smaller moon of Topaz swung brightly through the sky, its greenish light
making the blood-streaked face of the explorer an alien mask. It had passed well on to the
horizon, and its large yellow companion had risen, when yapping broke the small sounds
of the night.
As theyipp, yipp, yipp arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, putting one hand to his head.
His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him and sat up. Behind him was the torn and
ripped ship, but he did not look back at it.
Instead, he got to his feet and staggered out into the moonlight. Inside his brain there was
a whirl of thoughts, memories, emotions. Perhaps Ruthven or one of his assistants could
have sorted that chaotic mixture. But for all practical purposes Travis Fox--Amerindian
Time Agent, member of Team A, Operation Cochise--was far less of a thinking animal
now than the two coyotes paying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one
of their vanished homeland.
Travis wavered on, drawn somehow by that howling. It was familiar, a thread of
something real through all the broken clutter in his head. He stumbled, fell, crawled up
again, but he kept on.
Above, the female coyote lowered her head, drew a test sniff of a new scent. She
recognized that as part of the proper way of life. She yapped once at her mate, but he was
absorbed in his night song, his muzzle pointed moonward as he voiced a fine wail.
Travis tripped, pitched forward on his hands and knees, and felt the jar of such a landing
shoot up his stiffened forearms. He tried to get up, but his body only twisted, so he landed
on his back and lay looking up at the moon.
A strong, familiar odor... then a shadow looming above him. Hot breath against his cheek,
and the swift sweep on an animal tongue on his face. He flung up his hand, gripped thick

fur, and held on as if he had found one anchor of sanity in a world gone completely mad.

3
Travis, one knee braced against the red earth, blinked as he parted a screen of tall
rust-brown grass with cautious fingers. He looked out into a valley where golden mist
clouded most of the landscape. His head ached with dull persistence, the pain amplified
by his own bewilderment. To study the land ahead was like trying to see through one
picture interposed over another and far different one. He knew what ought to be there, but
what was before him was very dissimilar.
A buff-gray shape flitted through the tall cover grass, and Travis tensed. Mba'a --coyote?
Or were his companions actuallyga-n, spirits who could choose their shape at will and
had, oddly, this time assumed the bodies of man's tricky enemy? Were they
ndendai--enemies--or dalaanbiyat'i, allies? In this mad world he did not know.
Ei'dik'e? His mind formed a word he did not speak: Friend?
Yellow eyes met his directly. Dimly he had been aware, ever since awakening in this
strange wilderness with the coming