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The Defiant Agents

Andre Norton
Contents (21)
  1. THE DEFIANT AGENTS
  2. by
  3. ANDRE NORTON
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CONTEST FOR A PLANET

Operation Cochise: a carefully planned move to colonize a planet ahead of the Reds.

Travis Fox had been an eager volunteer, but the morning he dragged himself half-conscious from the wrecked spaceship on the planet Topaz, he sensed the terror which would threaten the project. Travis never learned why the ship had crashed, nor why he and the other Apache agents had been shot into space without warning and under Redax control, a machine which had returned them to ancestral mentality.

But the dangers on Topaz demanded free minds, for Travis soon realized that if the Reds already encamped beyond the mountains—a horde of barbaric Mongols completely dominated by their masters—discovered the secret of the eerie underground chamber in the towers hidden in a valley of mist, not only Topaz but Terra itself would be destroyed.

Books by Andre Norton available in Ace Editions:

PLAGUE SHIP (D-345)

SECRET OF THE LOST RACE (D-381)

THE SIOUX SPACEMAN (D-437)

THE TIME TRADERS (D-461)

GALACTIC DERELICT (D-498)

THE BEAST MASTER (D-509)

STAR GUARD (D-527)

DAYBREAK: 2250 A.D. (D-534)

THE LAST PLANET (D-542)

THE CROSSROADS OF TIME (D-546)

SEA SIEGE (F-147)

CATSEYE (F-167)

THE DEFIANT AGENTS

by

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ANDRE NORTON

ACE BOOKS, INC.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York 36, N.Y.

THE DEFIANT AGENTS

Copyright ©, 1962 by Andre Norton

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The World Publishing Co.

All Rights Reserved

For P. Schuyler Miller

who expressed a wish for some Apache colonists,

and Charles F. Kelley

who has a liking for “time agent” tales.

Printed in U.S.A.

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1

No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was no focus of outer-world sunlight 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 cushion or veil 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 string of a 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.