Transcriber's Notes:Obvious printer errors have been corrected (including switched lines). Ellipses have been standardised. Otherwise the text is as printed. 

_THEDEFIANTAGENTS_

_By Andre Norton_

 RIDE PROUD, REBEL! STORM OVER WARLOCK GALACTIC DERELICT THE TIME TRADERS STAR BORN YANKEE PRIVATEER THE STARS ARE OURS!

_Edited by Andre Norton_

 SPACE PIONEERS SPACE SERVICE

_THEDEFIANTAGENTS_

_BYANDRENORTON_

[Illustration]

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY

CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK

_Published by_ The World Publishing Company2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio

_Published simultaneously in Canada by_Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd. 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-9063

FIRST EDITION

WP262

Copyright © 1962 by Andre NortonAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproducedin any form without written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a review appearing ina newspaper or magazine. Printed in the United States of America. 

_FOR P. SCHUYLER MILLERwho expressed a wishfor some Apache colonists, and CHARLES F. KELLEYwho has a likingfor "time agent" tales. _

_THE DEFIANT AGENTS_

1

No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was nofocus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks setout on its surface appeared to glow--perhaps the heat of the mischiefthey 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, shookhis head slightly as if to free his mind of such cobwebs. 

His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to askharshly: "No chance of a mistake?"

"You saw the detector. " The thin gray string of a man behind the deskanswered with chill precision. "No, no possible mistake. These five havedefinitely been snooped. "

"And two choices among them, " Ashe murmured. That was the importantpoint now. 

"I thought these were under maximum security, " Kelgarries challenged thegray man. 

Florian Waldour's remote expression did not change. "Every possibleprecaution was in force. There was a sleeper--a hiddenagent--planted----"

"Who?" Kelgarries demanded. 

Ashe glanced around at his three companions--Kelgarries, colonel incommand of one sector of Project Star, Florian Waldour, the securityhead on the station, Dr. James Ruthven. .. . 

"Camdon!" he said, hardly able to believe this answer to which logic hadled him. 

Waldour nodded. 

For the first time since he had known and worked with Kelgarries Ashesaw him display open astonishment. 

"Camdon? But he was sent us by--" The colonel's eyes narrowed. "He musthave been sent. .. . There were too many cross checks to fake that!"

"Oh, he was sent, all right. " For the first time there was a note ofemotion in Waldour's voice. "He was a sleeper, a very deep sleeper. Theymust have planted him a full twenty-five or thirty years ago. He's beenjust what he claimed to be as long as that. "

"Well, he certainly was worth their time and trouble, wasn't he?" JamesRuthven's voice was a growling rumble. He sucked in thick lips, continuing to stare at the disks. "How long ago were these snooped?"

Ashe's thoughts turned swiftly from the enormity of the betrayal to thatimportant point. The time element--that was the primary concern now thatthe damage was done, and they knew it. 

"That's one thing we don't know. " Waldour's reply came slowly as if hehated the admission. 

"We'll be safer, then, if we presume the very earliest period. "Ruthven's statement was as ruthless in its implications as the shockthey had had when Waldour announced the disaster. 

"Eighteen months ago?" Ashe protested. 

But Ruthven was nodding. "Camdon was in on this from the very first. We've had the tapes in and out for study all that time, and the newdetector against snooping was not put in service until two weeks ago. This case came up on the first checking round, didn't it?" he askedWaldour. 

"First check, " the security man agreed. "Camdon left the base six daysago. But he has been in and out on his liaison duties from the first. "

"He had to go through those search points every time, " Kelgarriesprotested. "Thought nothing could get through those. " The colonelbrightened. "Maybe he got his snooper films and then couldn't take themoff base. Have his quarters been turned out?"

Waldour's lips lifted in a grimace of exasperation. "Please, Colonel, "he said wearily, "this is not a kindergarten exercise. In confirmationof his success, listen. .. . " He touched a button on his desk and out ofthe air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster. 

"Fears for the safety of Lassiter Camdon, space expediter for theWestern Conference Space Council, have been confirmed by the discoveryof burned wreckage in the mountains. Mr. Camdon was returning from amission to the Star Laboratory when his plane lost contact with RagnorField. Reports of a storm in that vicinity immediately raised concern--"Waldour snapped off the voice. 

"True--or a cover for his escape?" Kelgarries wondered aloud. 

"Could be either. They may have deliberately written him off when theyhad all they wanted, " Waldour acknowledged. "But to get back to ourtroubles--Dr. Ruthven is right to assume the worst. I believe we canonly insure the recovery of our project by thinking that these tapeswere snooped anywhere from eighteen months ago to last week. And we mustwork accordingly!"

There was silence in the room as they all considered that. Ashe slippeddown in his chair, his thoughts enmeshed in memories. First there hadbeen Operation Retrograde, when specially trained "time agents" hadshuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate and track downthe mysterious source of alien knowledge which the eastern Communisticnations had suddenly begun to use. 

Ashe himself and a younger partner, Ross Murdock, had been part of thefinal action which had solved the mystery, having traced that source ofknowledge not to an earlier and forgotten Terran civilization but towrecked spaceships from an eon-old galactic empire--an empire which hadflourished when glacial ice covered most of Europe and northern Americaand Terrans were cave-dwelling primitives. Murdock, trapped by the Redsin one of those wrecked ships, had inadvertently summoned its originalowners, who had descended to trace--through the Russian timestations--the looters of their wrecks, destroying the whole Redtime-travel system. 

But the aliens had not chanced on the parallel western system. And ayear later that had been put into Project Folsom One. Again Ashe, Murdock, and a newcomer, the Apache Travis Fox, had gone back into timeto the Arizona of the Folsom hunters, discovering what they wanted--twoships, one wrecked, the other intact. And when the full efforts of theproject had been centered on bringing the intact ship back into thepresent, chance had triggered controls set by the dead alien commander. A party of four, Ashe, Murdock, Fox, and a technician, had then made aninvoluntary voyage into space, touching three worlds on which thegalactic civilization of the far past was now marked only by ruins. 

Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and, when rewound, had--by a miracle--returned them to Terra with a cargo ofsimilar tapes found in a building on a world which might have been thecentral capital for a government comprised not of countries or of worldsbut of solar systems. Tapes--each one the key to another planet. 

And that ancient galactic knowledge was treasure such as the Terrans hadnever dreamed of possessing, though there were the attendant fears thatsuch discoveries could be weapons in enemy hands. There had been anenforced sharing with other nations of tapes chosen at random at a greatdrawing. And each nation secretly remained convinced that, in spite ofthe untold riches it might hold as a result of chance, its rivals haddone better. Right at this moment, Ashe did not in the least doubt, there were agents of his own party intent on accomplishing at the Redproject just what Camdon had done there. However, that did not help insolving their present dilemma concerning Operation Cochise, one part oftheir project, but perhaps the most important now. 

Some of the tapes were duds, either too damaged to be useful, or set forworlds hostile to Terrans lacking the equipment the earlierstar-traveling race had had at its command. Of the five tapes they nowknew had been snooped, three would be useless to the enemy. 

But one of the remaining two. .. . Ashe frowned. One was the goal towardwhich they had been working feverishly for a full twelve months. Toplant a colony across the gulf of space--a successful colony--later tobe used as a steppingstone to other worlds. .. . 

"So we have to move faster. " Ruthven's comment reached Ashe through hisstream of memories. 

"I thought you required at least three more months to conclude personneltraining, " Waldour observed. 

Ruthven lifted a fat hand, running the nail of a broad thumb back andforth across his lower lip in a habitual gesture Ashe had learned tomistrust. As the latter stiffened, bracing for a battle of wills, he sawKelgarries come alert too. At least the colonel more often than not wasready to counter Ruthven's demands. 

"We test and we test, " said the fat man. "Always we test. We move liketurtles when it would be better to race like greyhounds. There is such athing as overcaution, as I have said from the first. One wouldthink"--his accusing glance included Ashe and Kelgarries--"that therehad never been any improvising in this project, that all had always beendone by the book. I say that this is the time we must take the biggamble, or else we may find we have been outbid for space entirely. Letthose others discover even one alien installation they can master and--"his thumb shifted from his lip, grinding down on the desk top as if itwere crushing some venturesome but entirely unimportant insect--"and weare finished before we really begin. "

There were a number of men in the project who would agree with that, Ashe knew. And a greater number in the country and conference at large. The public was used to reckless gambles which paid off, and there hadbeen enough of those in the past to give an impressive argument forthat point of view. But Ashe, himself, could not agree to a speed-up. Hehad been out among the stars, shaved disaster too closely because theproper training had not been given. 

"I shall report that I advise a take-off within a week, " Ruthven wascontinuing. "To the council I shall say that--"

"And I do not agree!" Ashe cut in. He glanced at Kelgarries for thequick backing he expected, but instead there was a lengthening moment ofsilence. Then the colonel spread out his hands and said sullenly:

"I don't agree either, but I don't have the final say-so. Ashe, whatwould be needed to speed up any take-off?"

It was Ruthven who replied. "We can use the Redax, as I have said fromthe start. "

Ashe straightened, his mouth tight, his eyes hard and angry. 

"And I'll protest that . .. To the council! Man, we're dealing with humanbeings--selected volunteers, men who trust us--not with laboratoryanimals!"

Ruthven's thick lips pouted into what was close to a smile of derision. "Always the sentimentalists, you experts in the past! Tell me, Dr. Ashe, were you always so thoughtful of your men when you sent agents back intotime? And certainly a voyage into space is less a risk than time travel. These volunteers know what they have signed for. They will be ready----"

"Then you propose telling them about the use of Redax--what it does to aman's mind?" countered Ashe. 

"Certainly. They will receive all necessary instructions. "

Ashe was not satisfied and he would have spoken again, but Kelgarriesinterrupted:

"If it comes to that, none of us here has any right to make finaldecisions. Waldour has already sent in his report about the snoop. We'llhave to await orders from the council. "

Ruthven levered himself out of his chair, his solid bulk stretching hisuniform coveralls. "That is correct, Colonel. In the meantime I wouldsuggest we all check to see what can be done to speed up each one'sportion of labor. " Without another word, he tramped to the door. 

Waldour eyed the other two with mounting impatience. It was plain he hadwork to do and wanted them to leave. But Ashe was reluctant. He had afeeling that matters were slipping out of his control, that he was aboutto face a crisis which was somehow worse than just a major securityleak. Was the enemy always on the other side of the world? Or could hewear the same uniform, even share the same goals?

In the outer corridor he still hesitated, and Kelgarries, a step or soin advance, looked back over his shoulder impatiently. 

"There's no use fighting--our hands are tied. " His words were slurred, almost as if he wanted to disown them. 

"Then you'll agree to use the Redax?" For the second time within thehour Ashe felt as if he had taken a step only to have firm earth turninto slippery, shifting sand underfoot. 

"It isn't a matter of my agreeing. It may be a matter of getting throughor not getting through--now. If they've had eighteen months, or eventwelve. .. !" The colonel's fingers balled into a fist. "And _they_ won'tbe delayed by any humanitarian reasoning----"

"Then you believe Ruthven will win the council's approval?"

"When you are dealing with frightened men, you're talking to ears closedto anything but what they want to hear. After all, we can't prove thatthe Redax will be harmful. "

"But we've only used it under rigidly controlled conditions. To speed upthe process would mean a total disregard of those controls. Snapping aparty of men and women back into their racial past and holding themthere for too long a period. .. . " Ashe shook his head. 

"You have been in Operation Retrograde from the start, and we've beenremarkably successful----"

"Operating in a different way, educating picked men to return to certainpoints in history where their particular temperaments andcharacteristics fitted the roles they were selected to play, yes. Andeven then we had our percentage of failures. But to try this--returningpeople not physically into time, but _mentally and emotionally_ intoprototypes of their ancestors--that's something else again. The Apacheshave volunteered, and they've been passed by the psychologists and thetesters. But they're Americans of today, not tribal nomads of two orthree hundred years ago. If you break down some barriers, you might justend up breaking them all. "

Kelgarries was scowling. "You mean--they might revert utterly, have nocontact with the present at all?"

"That's just what I do mean. Education and training, yes, but fullawakening of racial memories, no. The two branches of conditioningshould go slowly and hand in hand, otherwise--real trouble!"

"Only we no longer have the time to go slow. I'm certain Ruthven will beable to push this through--with Waldour's report to back him. "

"Then we'll have to warn Fox and the rest. They must be given a choicein the matter. "

"Ruthven said that would be done. " The colonel did not sound convincedof that. 

Ashe snorted. "If I hear him telling them, I'll believe it!"

"I wonder whether we can. .. . "

Ashe half turned and frowned at the colonel. "What do you mean?"

"You said yourself that we had our failures in time travel. We expectedthose, accepted them, even when they hurt. When we asked for volunteersfor this project we had to make them understand that there was a heavyelement of risk involved. Three teams of recruits--the Eskimos fromPoint Barren, the Apaches, and the Islanders--all picked because theirpeople had a high survival rating in the past, to be colonists on widelydifferent types of planets. Well, the Eskimos and the Islanders aren'tmatched to any of the worlds on those snooped tapes, but Topaz iswaiting for the Apaches. And we may have to move them in there in ahurry. 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 wantto beat Ruthven. He's probably on a straight line now to Stanton, Reese, and Margate. This is what he has been waiting for!"

"There are the news syndicates; 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 handsdown the fabric covering his thighs as if to rub away some soil on hispalms. 

"No, " he replied heavily, his voice dull. "I guess I don't. I'll contactHough and hope for the best. "

"Meanwhile, " Kelgarries spoke briskly, "we'll do what we can to speed upthe program as it now stands. I suggest you take off for New York withinthe hour----"

"Me? Why?" Ashe asked with a trace of suspicion. 

"Because I can't leave without acting directly against orders, and thatwould put us wrong immediately. You see Hough and talk to himpersonally--put it to him straight. He'll have to have all the facts ifhe's going to counter any move from Stanton before the council. You knowevery argument we can use and all the proof on our side, and you'reauthority 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 sidecorridor, before he moved on slowly to his own box of office. Onceinside he sat for a long unhappy time staring at the wall and seeingnothing but the pictures produced by his thoughts. Then he pressed abutton and read off the symbols which flashed on a small visa-screenset in his desk. Another button pushed, and he picked up a hand mike torelay an order which might postpone trouble for a while. Ashe was fartoo valuable a man to lose, and his emotions could boil him straightinto disaster over this. 

"Bidwell--reschedule Team A. They are to go to the Hypno-Lab instead ofthe reserve in ten minutes. "

Releasing the mike, he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupta hypno-training period, and this one would last three hours. Ashe couldnot possibly see the trainees before he left for New York. And thatwould remove one temptation from his path--he would not talk at thewrong time. 

Kelgarries' mouth twisted sourly. He had no pride in what he was doing. And he was perfectly certain that Ruthven would win and that Ashe'sfears of Redax were well founded. It all came back to the old basictenet of the service: the end justified the means. They must use everymethod and man under their control to make sure that Topaz would remaina western possession, even though that strange planet now swung farbeyond the sky which covered both the western and eastern alliances onTerra. Time had run out too fast; they were being forced to play whatcards they held, even though those might be very low ones. Ashe would beback, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this had been decided one way oranother. Not until this was finished. 

Finished! Kelgarries blinked at the wall. Perhaps _they_ were finished, too. No one would know until the transport ship landed on that otherworld which appeared on the direction tape symbolized by a jewellikedisk of gold-brown which had given it the code name of Topaz. 

2

There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians, each following theswing of its own orbital path just within the atmospheric envelope ofthe planet which glowed as a great bronze-golden gem in the four-worldsystem of a yellow star. The globes had been launched to form a web ofprotection around Topaz six months earlier, and the highest skill hadgone into their production. Just as contact mines sown in a harbor couldclose that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was thisworld supposedly closed to any spaceship not equipped with the signal toward off the sphere missiles. 

That was the theory of the new off-world settlers whose protection theywere to be, already tested as well as possible, but as yet not put tothe ultimate proof. The small bright globes spun undisturbed across atwo-mooned sky at night and made reassuring blips on an installationscreen by day. 

Then a thirteenth object winked into being, began the encircling, closing spiral of descent. A sphere resembling the warden-globes, it wasa hundred times their size, and its orbit was purposefully controlledby instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot. 

Four men were strapped down on cushioned sling-seats in the controlcabin of the Western Alliance ship, two hanging where their fingersmight reach buttons and levers, the others merely passengers, their ownlabor waiting for the time when they would set down on the alien soil ofTopaz. The planet hung there in their visa-screen, richly beautiful inits amber gold, growing larger, nearer, so that they could pick outfeatures of seas, continents, mountain ranges, which had been studied ontape until they were familiar, yet now were strangely unfamiliar too. 

One of the warden-globes alerted, oscillated in its set path, whirledfaster as its delicate interior mechanisms responded to the awakeningspark which would send it on its mission of destruction. A relayclicked, but for the smallest fraction of a millimeter failed to set theproper course. On the instrument, far below, which checked the globe'snew course the mistake was not noted. 

The screen of the ship spiraling toward Topaz registered a path whichwould bring it into violent contact with the globe. They were still somehundreds of miles apart when the alarm rang. The pilot's hand clawed outat the bank of controls; under the almost intolerable pressure of theirdescent, there was so little he could do. His crooked fingers fell backpowerlessly from the buttons and levers; his mouth was a twisted grimaceof bleak acceptance as the beat of the signal increased. 

One of the passengers forced his head around on the padded rest, foughtto form words, to speak to his companion. The other was staring ahead atthe screen, his thick lips wide and flat against his teeth in a snarlof rage. 

"They . .. Are . .. Here. .. . "

Ruthven paid no attention to the obvious as stated by his fellowscientist. His fury was a red, pulsing thing inside him, fed by his ownhelplessness. To be pinned here so near his goal, fastened up as atarget for an inanimate but cunningly fashioned weapon, ate into himlike a stream of deadly acid. His big gamble would puff out in a blastof fire to light up Topaz's sky, with nothing left--nothing. On thearmrest of his sling-seat his nails scratched deep. 

The four men in the control cabin could only sit and watch, waiting forthe rendezvous which would blot them out. Ruthven's flaming anger was afutile blaze. His companion in the passenger seat had closed his eyes, his lips moving soundlessly in an expression of his own scatteredthoughts. The pilot and his assistant divided their attention betweenthe screen, with its appalling message, and the controls they could noteffectively use, feverishly seeking a way out in these last moments. 

Below them in the bowl of the ship were those who would not know the endconsciously--save in one compartment. In a padded cage a prick-earedhead stirred where it rested on forepaws, slitted eyes blinked, awarenot only of familiar surroundings, but also of the tension and feargenerated by human minds and emotions levels above. A pointed noseraised, and there was a growling deep in a throat covered with thickbuff-gray hair. 

The growl aroused another similar captive. Knowing yellow eyes metyellow eyes. An intelligence, which was certainly not that of the animalbody which contained it, fought down instinct raging to send both thosebodies hurtling at the fastenings of the twin cages. Curiosity and theability to adapt had been bred into both from time immemorial. Thensomething else had been added to sly and cunning brains. A step up hadbeen taken--to weld intelligence to cunning, connect thought toinstinct. 

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; thenatural desert dwellers, four-footed and winged, could not be socontrolled. 

For thousands of years, since the first southward roving Amerindiantribes had met with their kind, there had been a hunter of the opencountry, a smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural abilities had madean undeniable impression on the human mind. He was in countless Indianlegends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimesenemy. Godling for some tribes, father of all evil for others. In thewealth of tales the coyote, above all other animals, had a firm place. 

Driven by the press of civilization into the badlands and deserts, fought with poison, gun, and trap, the coyote had survived, adapting tonew ways with all his legendary cunning. Those who had reviled him asvermin had unwillingly added to the folklore which surrounded him, telling their own tales of robbed traps, skillful escapes. He continuedto be a trickster, laughing on moonlit nights from the tops of ridges atthose who would hunt him down. 

Then, close to the end of the twentieth century, when myths werescoffed at, the stories of the coyote's slyness began once more on afantastic scale. And finally scientists were sufficiently intrigued toseek out this creature that seemed to display in truth all the abilitiescredited to his immortal namesake by pre-Columbian tribes. 

What they discovered was indeed shattering to certain closed minds. Forthe coyote had not only adapted to the country of the white sands; hehad evolved into something which could not be dismissed as an animal, clever and cunning, but limited to beast range. Six cubs had beenbrought back on the first expedition, coyote in body, their developingminds different. The grandchildren of those cubs were now in the ship'scages, their mutated senses alert, ready for the slightest chance ofescape. Sent to Topaz as eyes and ears for less keenly endowed humans, they were not completely under the domination of man. The range of theirmental powers was still uncomprehended by those who had bred, trained, and worked with them from the days their eyes had opened and they hadtaken their first wobbly steps away from their dams. 

The male growled again, his lips wrinkling back in a snarl as theemanations of fear from the men he could not see reached panic peak. Hestill crouched, belly flat, on the protecting pads of his cage; but hestrove now to wriggle closer to the door, just as his mate made the sameeffort. 

Between the animals and those in the control cabin lay the others--fortyof them. Their bodies were cushioned and protected with every ingeniousdevice known to those who had placed them there so many weeks earlier. Their minds were free of the ship, roving into places where men had nottrod before, a territory potentially more dangerous than any solid earthcould ever be. 

Operation Retrograde had returned men bodily into the past, sendingagents to hunt mammoths, follow the roads of the Bronze Age traders, ride with Attila and Genghis Khan, pull bows among the archers ofancient Egypt. But Redax returned men in mind to the paths of theirancestors, or this was the theory. And those who slept here and now intheir narrow boxes, lay under its government, while the men who hadarbitrarily set them so could only assume they were actually relivingthe lives of Apache nomads in the wide southwestern wastes of the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 

Above, the pilot's hand pushed out again, fighting the pressure to reachone particular button. That, too, had been a last-minute addition, anexperiment which had only had partial testing. To use it was the finalmove he could make, and he was already half convinced of itsuselessness. 

With no faith and only a very wan hope, he sent that round of metalflush with the board. What followed no one ever lived to explain. 

On the planet the installation which tracked the missiles flashed on ascreen bright enough to blind momentarily the duty man on watch, and itstracker was shaken off course. When it jiggled back into line it was nolonger the efficient eye-in-the-sky it had been, though its tenders werenot to realize that for an important minute or two. 

While the ship, now out of control, sped in dizzy whirls toward Topaz, engines fought blindly to stabilize, to re-establish their functions. Some succeeded, some wobbled in and out of the danger zone, two failed. And in the control cabin three dead men spun in prisoning seats. 

Dr. James Ruthven, blood bubbling from his lips with every shallowbreath he could draw, fought the stealthy tide of blackness which creptup his brain, his stubborn will holding to rags of consciousness, refusing to acknowledge the pain of his fatally injured body. 

The orbiting ship was on an erratic path. Slowly the machines werecorrecting, relays clicking, striving to bring it to a landing underauto-pilot. All the ingenuity built into a mechanical brain was nowcentered in landing the globe. 

It was not a good landing, in fact a very bad one, for the spheretouched a mountain side, scraped down rocks, shearing away a portion ofits outer bulk. But the mountain barrier was now between it and the basefrom which the missiles had been launched, and the crash had not beenrecorded on that tracking instrument. So far as the watchers severalhundred miles away knew, the warden in the sky had performed aspromised. Their first line of defense had proven satisfactory, and therehad been no unauthorized landing on Topaz. 

In the wreckage of the control cabin Ruthven pawed at the fastenings ofhis sling-chair. He no longer tried to suppress the moans every efforttore out of him. Time held the whip, drove him. He rolled from his seatto the floor, lay there gasping, as again he fought doggedly to remainabove the waves--those frightening, fast-coming waves of dark faintness. 

Somehow he was crawling, crawling along a tilted surface until he gainedthe well where the ladder to the lower section hung, now at an acuteangle. It was that angle which helped him to the next level. 

He was too dazed to realize the meaning of the crumpled bulkheads. Therewas a spur of bare rock under his hands as he edged over and aroundtwisted metal. The moans were now a gobbling, burbling, almostcontinuous cry as he reached his goal--a small cabin still intact. 

For long moments of anguish he paused by the chair there, afraid that hecould not make the last effort, raise his almost inert bulk up to thepoint where he could reach the Redax release. For a second of unusualclarity he wondered if there was any reason for this supreme ordeal, whether any of the sleepers could be aroused. This might now be a shipof the dead. 

His right hand, his arm, and finally his bulk over the seat, he bracedhimself and brought his left hand up. He could not use any of thefingers; it was like lifting numb, heavy weights. But he lurchedforward, swept the unfeeling lump of cold flesh down against the releasein a gesture which he knew must be his final move. And, as he fell backto the floor, Dr. Ruthven could not be certain whether he had succeededor failed. He tried to screw his head around, to focus his eyes upwardat that switch. Was it down or still stubbornly up, locking the sleepersinto confinement? But there was a fog between; he could not see it--oranything. 

The light in the cabin flickered, was gone as another circuit in thebroken ship failed. It was dark, too, in the small cubby below whichhoused the two cages. Chance, which had snuffed out nineteen lives inthe space globe, had missed ripping open that cabin on the mountainside. Five yards down the corridor the outside fabric of the ship wassplit wide open, the crisp air native to Topaz entering, sending amessage to two keen noses through the combination of odors now pervadingthe wreckage. 

And the male coyote went into action. Days ago he had managed to workloose the lower end of the mesh which fronted his cage, but his mind hadtold him that a sortie inside the ship was valueless. The odd rapporthe'd had with the human brains, unknown to them, had operated to keephim to the old role of cunning deception, which in the past had savedcountless of his species from sudden and violent death. Now with teethand paws he went diligently to work, urged on by the whines of his mate, that tantalizing smell of an outside world tickling their nostrils--awild world, lacking the taint of man-places. 

He slipped under the loosened mesh and stood up to paw at the front ofthe 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 freenow to reach the corridor and see ahead the subdued light of a strangemoon beckoning them on into the open. 

The female, always more cautious than her mate, lingered behind as hetrotted forward, his ears a-prick with curiosity. Their training hadbeen the same since cubhood--to range and explore, but always in thecompany and at the order of man. This was not according to the patternshe knew, and she was suspicious. But to her sensitive nose the smell ofthe ship was an offense, and the puffs of breeze from without enticing. Her mate had already slipped through the break; now he barked withexcitement 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 otherinstallations. Power purred along a network of lines, activated beams, turned off and on a series of fixtures in those coffin-beds. For five ofthe sleepers--nothing. The cabin which had held them was a flattenedsmear against the mountain side. Three more half aroused, choked, foughtfor life and breath in a darkness which was a mercifully shortnightmare, and succumbed. 

But in the cabin nearest the rent through which the coyotes had escaped, a young man sat up abruptly, looking into the dark with wide-open, terror-haunted eyes. He clawed for purchase against the smooth edge ofthe box in which he had lain, somehow got to his knees, weaving weaklyback and forth, and half fell, half pushed to the floor where he couldstand only by keeping his hold on the box. 

Dazed, sick, weak, he swayed there, aware only of himself and his ownsensations. There were small sounds in the dark, a stilled moan, agasping sigh. But that meant nothing. Within him grew a compulsion to beout of this place, his terror making him lurch forward. 

His flailing hand rapped painfully against an upright surface which hisquesting fingers identified hazily as an exit. Unconsciously he fumbledalong the surface of the door until it gave under that weak pressure. Then he was out, his head swimming, drawn by the light behind the wallrent. 

He progressed toward that in a scrambling crawl, making his way over thesplintered skin of the globe. Then he dropped with a jarring thud ontothe mound of earth the ship had pushed before it during its downwardslide. Limply he tumbled on in a small cascade of clods and sand, hitting against a less movable rock with force enough to roll him overon his back and stun him again. 

The second and smaller moon of Topaz swung brightly through the sky, itsweird green rays making the blood-streaked face of the explorer an alienmask. It had passed well on to the horizon, and its large yellowcompanion had risen when a yapping broke the small sounds of the night. 

As the _yipp, yipp, yipp_ arose in a crescendo, the man stirred, puttingone hand to his head. His eyes opened, he looked vaguely about him andsat up. Behind him was the torn and ripped ship, but he did not lookback at it. 

Instead, he got to his feet and staggered out into the direct path ofthe moonlight. Inside his brain there was a whirl of thoughts, memories, emotions. Perhaps Ruthven or one of his assistants could have explainedthat chaotic mixture for what it was. But for all practical purposesTravis Fox--Amerindian Time Agent, member of Team A, OperationCochise--was far less of a thinking animal now than the two coyotespaying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one of theirvanished homeland. 

Travis wavered on, drawn somehow by that howling. It was familiar, athread of something real through all the broken clutter in his head. Hestumbled, fell, crawled up again, but he kept on. 

Above, the female coyote lowered her head, drew a test sniff of a newscent. She recognized that as part of the proper way of life. She yappedonce at her mate, but he was absorbed in his night song, his muzzlepointed moonward as he voiced a fine wailing. 

Travis tripped, pitched forward on his hands and knees, and felt the jarof 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 upat the moon. 

A strong, familiar odor . .. Then a shadow looming above him. Hot breathagainst his cheek, and the swift sweep of an animal tongue on his face. He flung up his hand, gripped thick fur, and held on as if he had foundone anchor of sanity in a world gone completely mad. 

3

Travis, one knee braced against the red earth, blinked as he parted ascreen of tall rust-brown grass with cautious fingers to look out into avalley where golden mist clouded most of the landscape. His head achedwith dull persistence, the pain fostered in some way by his ownbewilderment. To study the land ahead was like trying to see through onepicture interposed over another and far different one. He knew whatought to be there, but what was before him was very dissimilar. 

A buff-gray shape flitted through the tall cover grass, and Travistensed. _Mba'a_--coyote? Or were these companions of his actually_ga-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 didnot 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 sinceawaking in this strange wilderness with the coming of morning light, that the four-footed ones trotting with him as he walked aimlessly hadunbeastlike traits. Not only did they face him eye-to-eye, but in someways they appeared able to read his thoughts. 

He had longed for water to ease the burning in his throat, theever-present pain in his head, and the creatures had nudged him inanother direction, bringing him to a pool where he had mouthed liquidwith a strange sweet, but not unpleasant taste. 

Now he had given them names, names which had come out of the welter ofdreams which shadowed his stumbling journey across this weird country. 

Nalik'ideyu (Maiden-Who-Walks-Ridges) was the female who continued toshepherd him along, never venturing too far from his side. Naginlta(He-Who-Scouts-Ahead) was the male who did just that, disappearing atlong intervals and then returning to face the man and his mate as ifconveying some report necessary to their journey. 

It was Nalik'ideyu who sought out Travis now, her red tongue lollingfrom her mouth as she panted. Not from exertion, he was certain of that. No, she was excited and eager . .. On the hunt! That was it--a hunt!

Travis' own tongue ran across his lips as an impression hit him withferal force. There was meat--rich, fresh--just ahead. Meat that lived, waiting to be killed. Inside him his own avid hunger roused, shaking himfarther out of the crusting dream. 

His hands went to his waist, but the groping fingers did not find whatvague memory told him should be there--a belt, heavy with knife insheath. 

He examined his own body with attention to find he was adequatelycovered by breeches of a smooth, dull brown material which blended wellwith the vegetation about him. He wore a loose shirt, belted in at thenarrow waist by a folded strip of cloth, the ends of which flutteredfree. On his feet were tall moccasins, the leg pieces extending somedistance up his calves, the toes turned up in rounded points. 

Some of this he found familiar, but these were fragments of memory;again his mind fitted one picture above another. One thing he did knowfor sure--he had no weapons. And that realization struck home with athrust of real and terrible fear which tore away more of thebewilderment cloaking his mind. 

Nalik'ideyu was impatient. Having advanced a step or two, she now lookedback at him over her shoulder, yellow eyes slitted, her demand on him asinstant and real as if she had voiced understandable words. Meat waswaiting, and she was hungry. Also she expected Travis to aid in thehunt--at once. 

Though he could not match her fluid grace in moving through the grass, Travis followed her, keeping to cover. He shook his head vigorously, inspite of the stab of pain the motion cost him, and paid more attentionto his surroundings. It was apparent that the earth under him, the grassaround, the valley of the golden haze, were all real, not part of adream. Therefore that other countryside which he kept seeing in aghostly fashion was a hallucination. 

Even the air which he drew into his lungs and expelled again, had astrange smell, or was it taste? He could not be sure which. He knew thathypno-training could produce queer side effects, but . .. This. .. . 

Travis paused, staring unseeingly before him at the grass still wavingfrom the coyote's passage. Hypno-training! What was that? Now threepictures fought to focus in his mind: the two landscapes which did notmatch and a shadowy third. He shook his head again, his hands to histemples. This--this only was real: the ground, the grass, the valley, the hunger in him, the hunt waiting. .. . 

He forced himself to concentrate on the immediate present and theportion of world he could see, feel, scent, which lay here and now abouthim. 

The grass grew shorter as he proceeded in Nalik'ideyu's wake. But thehaze was not thinning. It seemed to hang in patches, and when heventured through the edge of a patch it was like creeping through a fogof golden, dancing motes with here and there a glittering speck whirlingand darting like a living thing. Masked by the stuff, Travis reached aline of brush and sniffed. 

It was a warm scent, a heavy odor he could not identify and yet one heassociated with a living creature. Flat to earth, he pushed head andshoulders under the low limbs of the bush to look ahead. 

Here was a space where the fog did not hold, a pocket of earth clearunder the morning sun. And grazing there were three animals. Again shockcleared a portion of Travis' bemused brain. 

They were about the size, he thought, of antelopes, and they had ageneral resemblance to those beasts in that they had four slender legs, a rounded body, and a head. But they had alien features, so alien as tohold him in open-mouthed amazement. 

The bodies had bare spots here and there, and patches of creamy--fur? Orwas it hair which hung in strips, as if the creatures had been partiallyplucked in a careless fashion? The necks were long and moved about in aserpentine motion, as though their spines were as limber as reptiles'. On the end of those long and twisting necks were heads which alsoappeared more suitable to another species--broad, rather flat, with asingular toadlike look--but furnished with horns set halfway down thenose, horns which began in a single root and then branched into twosharp points. 

They were unearthly! Again Travis blinked, brought his hand up to hishead as he continued to view the browsers. There were three of them: twolarger and with horns, the other a smaller beast with less of the raggedfur and only the beginning button of a protuberance on the nose; it wasprobably a calf. 

One of those mental alerts from the coyotes broke his absorption. Nalik'ideyu was not interested in the odd appearance of the grazingcreatures; she was intent upon their usefulness in another way--as afull and satisfying meal--and she was again impatient with him for hisdull response. 

His examination took a more practical turn. An antelope's defense wasspeed, though it could be tricked into hunting range through itsinordinate curiosity. The slender legs of these beasts suggested a likedegree of speed, and Travis had no weapons at all. 

Those nose horns had an ugly look; this thing might be a fighter ratherthan a runner. But the suggestion which had flashed from coyote to himhad taken root. Travis was hungry, he was a hunter, and here was meat onthe hoof, queer as it looked. 

Again he received a message. Naginlta was on the opposite side of theclearing. If the creatures depended on speed, then Travis believed theycould probably outrun not only him but the coyotes as well--which leftcunning and some sort of plan. 

Travis glanced at the cover where he knew Nalik'ideyu crouched and fromwhich had come that flash of agreement. He shivered. These were truly noanimals, but _ga-n_, _ga-n_ of power! And as _ga-n_ he must treat them, accede to their will. Spurred by that, the Apache gave only flicks ofattention to the browsers while at the same time he studied the part ofthe landscape uncovered by mist. 

Without weapons or speed, they must conceive a trap. Again Travis sensedthat agreement which was _ga-n_ magic, and with it the strong impressionurging him to the right. He was making progress with skill he did noteven recognize and which he had never been conscious of learning. 

The bushes and small, droop-limbed trees, their branches not clothedwith leaves from proper twigs but with a reddish bristly growthprotruding directly from their surfaces, made a partial wall for thepocket-sized meadow. That screen reached a rocky cleft where the mistcurled in a long tongue through a wall twice Travis' height. If thebrowsers could be maneuvered into taking the path through that cleft. .. . 

Travis searched about him, and his hands closed upon the oldest weaponof his species, a stone pulled from an earth pocket and balanced neatlyin the palm of his hand. It was a long chance but his best one. 

The Apache took the first step on a new and fearsome road. These _ga-n_had put their thoughts--or their desires--into his mind. Could he socontact them in return?

With the stone clenched in his fist, his shoulders back against the wallnot too far from the cleft opening, Travis strove to think out, clearlyand simply, this poor plan of his. He did not know that he was reactingthe way scientists deep space away had hoped he might. Nor did Travisguess that at this point he had already traveled far beyond theexpectations of the men who had bred and trained the two mutant coyotes. He only believed that this might be the one way he could obey the wishesof the two spirits he thought far more powerful than any man. So hepictured in his mind the cleft, the running creatures, and the part the_ga-n_ could play if they so willed. 

Assent--in its way as loud and clear as if shouted. The man fingered thestone, weighed it. There would probably be just one moment when he coulduse it to effect, and he must be ready. 

From this point he could no longer see the small meadow where thegrazers were. But Travis knew, as well as if he watched the scene, thatthe coyotes were creeping in, belly flat to earth, adding a felinestealth and patience to their own cunning. 

There! Travis' head jerked, the alert had come, the drive was beginning. He tensed, gripping his stone. 

A yapping bark was answered by a sound he could not describe, a noisewhich was neither cough nor grunt but a combination of both. Again ayap-yap. .. . 

A toad-head burst through the screen of brush, the double horn on itsnose festooned with a length of grass torn up by the roots. Wideeyes--milky and seeming to be without pupils--fastened on Travis, but hecould not be sure the thing saw him, for it kept on, picking up speedas it approached the cleft. Behind it ran the calf, and that gutturalcry was bubbling from its broad flat lips. 

The long neck of the adult writhed, the frog-head swung closer to theground so that the twin points of the horn were at a slant--aimed now atTravis. He had been right in his guess at their deadliness, but he hadonly a fleeting chance to recognize that fact as the thing bore down, its whole attitude expressing the firm intention of goring him. 

He hurled his stone and then flung his body to one side, stumbling androlling into the brush where he fought madly to regain his feet, expecting at any moment to feel trampling hoofs and thrusting horns. There was a crash to his right, and the bushes and grass were wildlyshaken. 

On his hands and knees the Apache retreated, his head turned to watchbehind him. He saw the flirt of a triangular flap-tail in the mouth ofthe cleft. The calf had escaped. And now the threshing in the bushesstilled. 

Was the thing stalking him? He got to his feet, for the first timehearing clearly the continued yapping, as if a battle was in progress. Then the second of the adult beasts came into view, backing and turning, trying to keep lowered head with menacing double horn always pointed tothe coyotes dancing a teasing, worrying circle about it. 

One of the coyotes flung up its head, looked upslope, and barked. Then, as one, both rushed the fighting beast, but for the first time from thesame side, leaving it a clear path to retreat. It made a rush beforewhich they fled easily, and then it whirled with a speed and grace, which did not fit its ungainly, ill-proportioned body, and jumpedtoward the cleft, the coyotes making no effort to hinder its escape. 

Travis came out of cover, approaching the brush which had concealed thecrash of the other animal. The actions of the coyotes had convinced himthat there was no danger now; they would never have allowed the escapeof their prey had the first beast not been in difficulties. 

His shot with the stone, the Apache decided as he stood moments latersurveying the twitching crumpled body, must have hit the thing in thehead, stunning it. Then the momentum of its charge had carried it fullforce against the rock to kill it. Blind luck--or the power of the_ga-n_? He pulled back as the coyotes came padding up shoulder toshoulder to inspect the kill. It was truly more theirs than his. 

Their prey yielded not only food but a weapon for Travis. Instead of thebelt knife he had remembered having, he was now equipped with two. Thedouble horn had been easy to free from the shattered skull, and somecareful work with stones had broken off one prong at just the angle hewanted. So now he had a short and a longer tool, defense. At least theywere better than the stone with which he had entered the hunt. 

Nalik'ideyu pushed past him to lap daintily at the water. Then she satup on her haunches, watching Travis as he smoothed the horn with astone. 

"A knife, " he said to her, "this will be a knife. And--" he glanced up, measuring the value of the wood represented by trees and bushes--"then abow. With a bow we shall hunt better. "

The coyote yawned, her yellow eyes half closed, her whole pose one ofsatisfaction and contentment. 

"A knife, " Travis repeated, "and a bow. " He needed weapons; he had tohave them!

Why? His hand stopped scraping. Why? The toad-faced double horn had beenquick to attack, but Travis could have avoided it, and it had not huntedhim first. Why was he ridden by this fear that he must not be unarmed?

He dipped his hand into the pool of the spring and lifted the water tocool his sweating face. The coyote moved, turned around in the grass, crushing down the growth into a nest in which she curled up, head onpaws. But Travis sat back on his heels, his now idle hands hanging downbetween his knees, and forced himself to the task of sorting out jumbledmemories. 

This landscape was wrong--totally unlike what it should be--but it wasreal. He had helped kill this alien creature. He had eaten its meat, raw. Its horn lay within touch now. All that was real and unchangeable. Which meant that the rest of it, that other desert world in which he hadwandered with his kind, ridden horses, raided invading men of anotherrace, that was not real--or else far, far removed from where he now sat. 

Yet there had been no dividing line between those two worlds. One momenthe had been in the desert place, returning from a successful forayagainst the Mexicans. Mexicans! Travis caught at that identification, tried to use it as a thread to draw closer to the beginning of hismystery. 

Mexicans. .. . And he was an Apache, one of the Eagle people, one who rodewith Cochise. No!

Sweat again beaded his face where the water had cooled it. He was not ofthat past. He was Travis Fox, of the very late twentieth century, not anomad of the middle nineteenth! He was of Team A of the project!

The Arizona desert and then this! From one to the other in an instant. He looked about him in rising fear. Wait! He had been in the dark whenhe got out of the desert, lying in a box. Getting out, he had crawleddown a passage to reach moonlight, strange moonlight. 

A box in which he had lain, a passage with smooth metallic walls, and analien world at the end of it. 

The coyote's ears twitched, her head came up, she was staring at theman's drawn face, at his eyes with their core of fear. She whined. 

Travis caught up the two pieces of horn, thrust them into his sash belt, and got to his feet. Nalik'ideyu sat up, her head cocked a little to oneside. As the man turned to seek his own back trail she padded along inhis wake and whined for Naginlta. But Travis was more intent now on whathe must prove to himself than he was on the actions of the two animals. 

It was a wandering trail, and now he did not question his skill in beingable to follow it so unerringly. The sun was hot. Winged things buzzedfrom the bushes, small scuttling things fled from him through the tallgrass. Once Naginlta growled a warning which led them all to a detour, and Travis might not have picked up the proper trace again had not thecoyote scout led him to it. 

"Who are you?" he asked once, and then guessed it would have better beensaid, "What are you?" These were not animals, or rather they were morethan the animals he had always known. And one part of him, the partwhich remembered the desert rancherias where Cochise had ruled, saidthey were spirits. Yet that other part of him. .. . Travis shook hishead, accepting them now for what they were--welcome company in an alienplace. 

The day wore on close to sunset, and still Travis followed thatwandering trail. The need which drove him kept him going through therough country of hills and ravines. Now the mist lifted above toweringwalls of mountains very near him, yet not the mountains of his memory. These were dull brown, with a forbidding look, like sun-dried skullsbaring teeth in warning against all comers. 

With great difficulty, Travis topped a rise. Ahead against the skylinestood both coyotes. And, as the man joined them, first one and then theother flung back its head and sounded the sobbing, shattering cry whichhad been a part of that other life. 

The Apache looked down. His puzzle was answered in part. The wreckagecrumpled on the mountain side was identifiable--a spaceship! Cold feargripped him and his own head went back; from between his tight lips camea cry as desolate and despairing as the one the animals had voiced. 

4

Fire, mankind's oldest ally, weapon, tool, leaped high before the nakedstone of the mountain side. Men sat cross-legged about it, fifteen ofthem. And behind, guarded by the flames and that somber circle, were thewomen. There was a uniformity in this gathering. The members wereplainly all of the same racial stock, of medium height, stocky yet fineddown to the peak of stamina and endurance, their skin brown, theirshoulder-length hair black. And they were all young--none over thirty, some still in their late teens. Alike, too, was a certain drawn look intheir faces, a tenseness of the eyes and mouth as they listened toTravis. 

"So we must be on Topaz. Do any of you remember boarding the ship?"

"No. Only that we awoke within it. " Across the fire one chin lifted; theeyes which caught Travis' held a deep, smoldering anger. "This is moretrickery of the Pinda-lick-o-yi, the White Eyes. Between us there hasnever been fair dealing. They have broken their promise as a man breaksa rotten stick, for their words are as rotten. And it was you, Fox, whobrought us to listen to them. "

A stir about the circle, a murmur from the women. 

"And do I not also sit here with you in this strange wilderness?" hecountered. 

"I do not understand, " another of the men held out his hand, palm up, ina gesture of asking--"what has happened to us. We were in the old Apacheworld. .. . I, Jil-Lee, was riding with Cuchillo Negro as we went down tothe taking of Ramos. And then I was here, in a broken ship and beside mea dead man who was once my brother. How did I come out of the past ofour people into another world across the stars?"

"Pinda-lick-o-yi tricks!" The first speaker spat into the fire. 

"It was the Redax, I think, " Travis replied. "I heard Dr. Ashe discussthis. A new machine which could make a man remember not his own past, but the past of his ancestors. While we were on that ship we must havebeen under its influence, so we lived as our people lived a hundredyears or more ago--"

"And the purpose of such a thing?" Jil-Lee asked. 

"To make us more like our ancestors perhaps. It is part of what theytold us at the project. To venture into these new worlds requires adifferent type of man than lives on Terra today. Traits we haveforgotten are needed to face the dangers of wild places. "

"You, Fox, have been beyond the stars before, and you found there weresuch dangers to face?"

"It is true. You have heard of the three worlds I saw when the ship fromthe old days took us off, unwilling, to the stars. Did you not allvolunteer to pioneer in this manner so you could also see strange andnew things?"

"But we did not agree to be returned to the past in medicine dreams andbe sent unknowingly into space!"

Travis nodded. "Deklay is right. But I know no more than you why we wereso sent, or why the ship crashed. We have found Dr. Ruthven's body inthe cabin with that new installation. Only we have discovered nothingelse which tells us why we were brought here. With the ship broken, wemust stay. "

They were silent now, men and women alike. Behind them lay several daysof activity, nights of exhausted slumber. Against the cliff wall lay thepacks of supplies they had salvaged from the wreck. By mutual consentthey had left the vicinity of the broken globe, following their oldcustom of speedily withdrawing from a place of death. 

"This is a world empty of men?" Jil-Lee wanted to know. 

"So far we have found only animal signs, and the _ga-n_ have not warnedus of anything else----"

"Those devil ones!" Again Deklay spat into the fire. "I say we shouldhave no dealings with them. The _mba'a_ is no friend to the People. "

Again a murmur which seemed one of agreement answered that outburst. Travis stiffened. Just how much influence had the Redax had over them?He knew from his own experience that sometimes he had an odd doublereaction--two different feelings which almost sickened him when theystruck simultaneously. And he was beginning to suspect that with some ofthe others the return to the past had been far more deep and lasting. Now Jil-Lee was actually to reason out what had happened. While Deklayhad reverted to an ancestor who had ridden with Victorio or MagnusColorado! Travis had a flash of premonition, a chill which made himhalf foresee a time when the past and the present might well split themapart--fatally. 

"Devil or _ga-n_. " A man with a quiet face, rather deeply sunken eyes, spoke for the first time. "We are in two minds because of this Redax, solet us not do anything in haste. Back in the desert world of the PeopleI have seen the _mba'a_, and he was very clever. With the badger he wenthunting, and when the badger had dug up the rat's nest, so did the_mba'a_ wait on the other side of the thorny bush and catch those whowould escape that way. Between him and the badger there was no war. These two who sit over yonder now--they are also hunters and they seemfriendly to us. In a strange place a man needs all the help he can find. Let us not call names out of old tales, which may mean nothing in fact. "

"Buck speaks straightly, " Jil-Lee agreed. "We seek a camp which can bedefended. For perhaps there are men here whose hunting territory we haveinvaded, though we have not yet seen them. We are a people small innumber and alone. Let us walk softly on trails which are strange to ourfeet. "

Inwardly Travis sighed in relief. Buck, Jil-Lee . .. For the moment theirsensible words appeared to swing the opinions of the party. If either ofthem could be established as _haldzil_, or clan leader, they would allbe safer. He himself had no aspirations in that direction and dared notpush too hard. It had been his initial urging which had brought them asvolunteers into the project. Now he was doubly suspect, and especiallyby those who thought as Deklay, he was considered too alien to their oldways. 

So far their protests had been fewer than he anticipated. Althoughbrothers and sisters had followed each other into the team after theimmemorial desire of Apaches to cling to family ties, they were not atrue clan with solidity of that to back them, but representatives ofhalf a dozen. 

Basically, back on Terra, they had all been among the most progressiveof their people--progressive, that is, in the white man's sense of theword. Travis had a fleeting recognition of his now oblique way ofthinking. He, too, had been marked by the Redax. They had all beeneducated in the modern fashion and all possessed a spirit of adventurewhich marked them over their fellows. They had volunteered for the teamand successfully passed the tests to weed out the temperamentally unfitor fainthearted. But all that was before Redax. .. . 

Why had they been submitted to that? And why this flight? What hadpushed Dr. Ashe and Murdock and Colonel Kelgarries, time agents he knewand trusted, into dispatching them without warning to Topaz? Somethinghad happened, something which had given Dr. Ruthven ascendancy overthose others and had started them on this wild trip. 

Travis was conscious of a stir about the firelit circle. The men wererising, moving back into the shadows, stretching out on the blanketsthey had found among other stores on the ship. They had discoveredweapons there--knives, bows, quivers of arrows, all of which they hadbeen trained to use in the intensive schooling of the project and whichneeded no more repair than they themselves could give. And the rationsthey carried were field supplies, few of them. Tomorrow they must beginhunting in earnest. .. . 

"Why has this thing been done to us?" Buck was beside Travis, thosequiet eyes sliding past him to seek the fire once more. "I do not thinkyou were told when the rest of us were not----"

Travis seized upon that. "There are those who say that I knew, agreed?"

"That is so. Once we stood at the same place in time--in our thoughts, our desires. Now we stand at many places, as if we climbed a stairway, each at his own speed--a stairway the Pinda-lick-o-yi has set us upon. Some here, some there, some yet farther above. .. . " He sketched a seriesof step outlines in the air. "And in this there is trouble--"

"The truth, " Travis agreed. "Yet it is also true that I knew nothing ofthis, that I climb with you on these stairs. "

"So I believe. But there comes a time when it is best not to be a womanstirring a pot of boiling stew but rather one who stands quietly at adistance--"

"You mean?" Travis pressed. 

"I say that alone among us you have crossed the stars before, thereforenew things are not so hard to understand. And we need a scout. Also thecoyotes run in your footsteps, and you do not fear them. "

It made good sense. Let him scout ahead of the party, taking the coyoteswith him. Stay away from the camp for a while and speak small--until thepeople on Buck's stairway were more closely united. 

"I go in the morning, " Travis agreed. He could slip away tonight, butjust now he could not force himself away from the fire, from thecompanionship. 

"You might take Tsoay with you, " Buck continued. 

Travis waited for him to enlarge on that suggestion. Tsoay was one ofthe youngest of their group, Buck's own cross-cousin and near-brother. 

"It is well, " Buck explained, "that we learn this land, and it hasalways been our custom that the younger walk in the footprints of theolder. Also, not only should trails be learned, but also men. "

Travis caught the thought behind that. Perhaps by taking the younger menas scouts, one after another, he could build up among them a followingof sorts. Among the Apaches, leadership was wholly a matter ofpersonality. Until the reservation days, chieftains had gained theirposition by force of character alone, though they might comesuccessively from one family clan over several generations. 

He did not want the chieftainship here. No, but neither did he wantgrowing whispers working about him to cut him off from his people. Toevery Apache severance from the clan was a little death. He must havethose who would back him if Deklay, or those who thought like Deklay, turned grumbling into open hostility. 

"Tsoay is one quick to learn, " Travis agreed. "We go at dawn--"

"Along the mountain range?" Buck inquired. 

"If we seek a protected place for the rancheria, yes. The mountains havealways provided good strongholds for the People. "

"And you think there is need for a fort?"

Travis shrugged. "I have been one day's journey out into this world. Isaw nothing but animals. But that is no promise that elsewhere there areno enemies. The planet was on the tapes we brought back from that otherworld, and so it was known to the others who once rode between star andstar as we rode between ranch and town. If they had this world set on ajourney tape, it was for a reason; that reason may still be in force. "

"Yet it was long ago that these star people rode so. .. . " Buck mused. "Would the reason last so long?"

Travis remembered two other worlds, one of weird desert inhabited bybeast things--or had they once been human, human to the point ofpossessing intelligence?--that had come out of sand burrows at night toattack a spaceship. And the second world where the ruins of a giant cityhad stood choked with jungle vegetation, where he had made a blowgunfrom tubes of rustless metal as a weapon gift for small winged men--butwere they men? Both had been remnants of that ancient galactic empire. 

"Some things could so remain, " he answered soberly. "If we find them, wemust be careful. But first a good site for the rancheria. "

"There is no return to home for us, " Buck stated flatly. 

"Why do you say that? There could be a rescue ship later--"

The other raised his eyes again to Travis. "When you slept under theRedax how did you ride?"

"As a warrior--raiding . .. Living. .. . "

"And I--I was one with _go'ndi_, " Buck returned simply. 

"But--"

"But the white man has assured us that such power--the power of achief--does not exist? Yes, the Pinda-lick-o-yi has told us so manythings. He is busy, busy with his tools, his machines, always busy. Andthose who think in another fashion cannot be measured by his rules, sothey are foolish dreamers. Not all white men think so. There was Dr. Ashe--he was beginning to understand a little. 

"Perhaps I, too, am standing still, halfway up the stairway of the past. But of this I am very sure: For us, there will be no return to our ownplace. And the time will come when something new shall grow from theseed of the past. Also it is necessary that you be one of the tenders ofthat growth. So I urge you, take Tsoay, and the next time, Lupe. For theyoung who may be swayed this way and that by words--as the wind shakes asmall tree--must be given firm roots. "

In Travis education warred with instinct, just as the picture Redax hadplanted in his mind had warred with his awaking to this alien landscape. Yet now he believed he must be guided by what he felt. And he knew thatno man of his race would claim _go'ndi_, the power of spirit known onlyto a great chief, unless he had actually felt it swell within him. Itmight have been fostered by hallucination in the past, but the aura ofit carried into the here and now. And Travis had no doubts that Buckbelieved implicitly in what he said, and that belief carried credulityto others. 

"This is wisdom, _Nantan_--"

Buck shook his head. "I am no _nantan_, no chief. But of some things Iam sure. You also be sure of what lies within you, younger brother!"

On the third day, ranging eastward along the base of the mountain range, Travis found what he believed would be an acceptable camp site. Therewas a canyon with a good spring of water cut round by well-marked gametrails. A series of ledges brought him up to a small plateau where scrubwood could be used to build the wickiups. Water and food lay withinreach, and the ledge approach was easy to defend. Even Deklay and hisfellow malcontents were forced to concede the value of the site. 

His duty to the clan accomplished, Travis returned to his own concern, one which had haunted him for days. Topaz had been taped by men of thevanished star empire. Therefore, the planet was important, but why? Asyet he had found no indication that anything above the intelligencelevel of the split horns was native to this world. But he was gnawed bythe certainty that there _was_ something here, waiting. .. . And thedesire to learn what it was became an ever-burning ache. 

Perhaps he was what Deklay had accused him of being, one who had come tofollow the road of the Pinda-lick-o-yi too closely. For Travis wascontent to scout with only the coyotes for company, and he did not findthe loneliness of the unknown planet as intimidating as most of theothers. 

He was checking his small trail pack on the fourth day after they hadsettled on the plateau when Buck and Jil-Lee hunkered down beside him. 

"You go to hunt--?" Buck broke the silence first. 

"Not for meat. "

"What do you fear? That _ndendai_--enemy people--have marked this astheir land?" Jil-Lee questioned. 

"That may be true, but now I hunt for what this world was at one time, the reason why the ancient star men marked it as their own. "

"And this knowledge may be of value to us?" Jil-Lee asked slowly. "Willit bring food to our mouths, shelter for our bodies--mean life for us?"

"All that is possible. It is the unknowing which is bad. "

"True. Unknowing is always bad, " Buck agreed. "But the bow which isfitted to one hand and strength of arm, may not be suited to another. Remember that, younger brother. Also, do you go alone?"

"With Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu I am not alone. "

"Take Tsoay with you also. The four-footed ones are indeed _ga-n_ forthe service of those they like, but it is not good that man walks alonefrom his kind. "

There it was again, the feeling of clan solidarity which Travis did notalways share. On the other hand, Tsoay would not be a hindrance. Onother scouts the boy had proved to have a keen eye for the country and aliking for experimentation which was not a universal attribute evenamong those of his own age. 

"I would go to find a path through the mountains; it may be a longtrail, " Travis half protested. 

"You believe what you seek may lie to the north?"

Travis shrugged. "I do not know. How can I? But it will be another wayof seeking. "

"Tsoay shall go. He keeps silent before older warriors as is proper forthe untried, but his thoughts fly free as do yours, " Buck replied. "Itis in him also, this need to see new places. "

"There is this, " Jil-Lee got to his feet, "--do not go so far, brother, that you may not easily find a way to return. This is a wide land, andwithin it we are but a handful of men alone----"

"That, too, I know. " Travis thought he could read more than one kind ofwarning in Jil-Lee's words. 

 * * * * *

They were the second day away from the plateau camp, and climbing, whenthey chanced upon the pass Travis had hoped might exist. Before them layan abrupt descent to what appeared to be open plains country cloaked ina dusky amber Travis now knew was the thick grass found in the southernvalleys. Tsoay pointed with his chin. 

"Wide land--good for horses, cattle, ranches. .. . "

But all those lay far beyond the black space surrounding them. Traviswondered if there was any native animal which could serve man in placeof the horse. 

"Do we go down?" Tsoay asked. 

From this point Travis could sight no break far out on the amber plain, no sign of any building or any disturbance of its smooth emptiness. Yetit drew him. "We go, " he decided. 

Close as it had looked from the pass, the plain was yet a day and anight, spent in careful watching by turns, ahead of them. It wasmidmorning of the second day that they left the foothill breaks, and thegrass of the open country was waist high about them. Travis could see itrippling where the coyotes threaded ahead. Then he was conscious of apersistent buzzing, a noise which irritated faintly until he wascompelled to trace it to its source. 

The grass had been trampled flat for an irregular patch, with a trailof broken stalks out of the heart of the plain. At one side was abuzzing, seething mass of glitter-winged insects which Travis alreadyknew as carrion eaters. They arose reluctantly from their feast as heapproached. 

He drew a short breath which was close to a grunt of astoundedrecognition. What lay there was so impossible that he could not believethe evidence of his eyes. Tsoay gave a sharp exclamation, went down onone knee for a closer examination, then looked at Travis over hisshoulder, his eyes wide, more than a trace of excitement in his voice. 

"Horse dung--and fresh!"

5

"There was one horse, unshod but ridden. It came here from the plainsand it had been ridden hard, going lame. There was a rest here, maybeshortly after dawn. " Travis sorted out what they had learned by acareful examination of the ground. 

Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta, Tsoay, watched and listened as if the coyotesas well as the boy could understand every word. 

"There is that also--" Tsoay indicated the one trace left by the unknownrider, an impression blurred as if some attempt had been made to concealit. 

"Small and light, the rider is both. Also in fear, I think--"

"We follow?" Tsoay asked. 

"We follow, " Travis assented. He looked to the coyotes, and as he hadlearned to do, thought out his message. This trail was the one to befollowed. When the rider was sighted they were to report back if theApaches had not yet caught up. 

There was no visible agreement; the coyotes simply vanished through thewall of grass. 

"Then there are others here, " Tsoay said as he and Travis began theirreturn to the foothills. "Perhaps there was a second ship--"

"That horse, " Travis said, shaking his head. "There was no provision inthe project for the shipping of horses. "

"Perhaps they have always been here. "

"Not so. To each world its own species of beasts. But we shall know thetruth when we look upon that horse--and its rider. "

It was warmer this side of the mountains, and the heat of the plainsbeat at them. Travis thought that the horse might well be seeking waterif allowed his head. Where did he come from? And why had his rider gonein haste and fear?

This was rough, broken country and the tired, limping horse seemed tohave picked the easiest way through it, without any hindrance from theman with him. Travis spotted a soft patch of ground with a deep-setimpression. This time there had been no attempt at erasure; the boottrack was plain. The rider had dismounted and was leading the horse--yethe was moving swiftly. 

They followed the tracks around the bend of a shallow cut and foundNalik'ideyu waiting for them. Between her forefeet was a bundle stillcovered with smears of soft earth, and behind her were drag marks from ahole under the overhang of a bush. The coyote had plainly justdisinterred her find. Travis squatted down to examine it, using his eyesbefore his hands. 

It was a bag made of hide, probably the hide of one of the split hornsby its color and the scraps of long hair which had been left in asimple decorative fringe along the bottom. The sides had been lacedtogether neatly by someone used to working in leather, the closing flaplashed down tightly with braided thong loops. 

As the Apache leaned closer to it he could smell a mixture of odors--thehide itself, horse, wood smoke, and other scents--strange to him. Heundid the fastenings and pulled out the contents. 

There was a shirt, with long full sleeves, of a gray wool undyed fromthe sheep. Then a very bulky short jacket which, after fingering itdoubtfully, Travis decided was made of felt. It was elaboratelydecorated with highly colorful embroidery, and there was no mistakingthe design--a heavy antlered Terran deer in mortal combat with whatmight be a puma. It was bordered with a geometric pattern of beautiful, oddly familiar work. Travis smoothed it flat over his knee and tried toremember where he had seen its like before . .. A book! An illustrationin a book! But which book, when? Not recently, and it was not a patternknown to his own people. 

Twisted into the interior of the jacket was a silklike scarf, clear, light blue--the blue of Terra's cloudless skies on certain days, sodifferent from the yellow shield now hanging above them. A small case ofleather, with silhouetted designs cut from hide and affixed to it, designs as intricate and complex as the embroidery on the jacket--art ofa high standard. In the case a knife and spoon, the bowl and blade ofdull metal, the handles of horn carved with horse heads, the tinywide-open eyes set with glittering stones. 

Personal possessions dear to the owner, so that when they must beabandoned for flight they were hidden with some hope of recovery. Travisslowly repacked them, trying to fold the garments into their originalcreases. He was still puzzled by those designs. 

"Who?" Tsoay touched the edge of the jacket with one finger, hisadmiration for it plain to read. 

"I don't know. But it is of our own world. "

"That is a deer, though the horns are wrong, " Tsoay agreed. "And thepuma is very well done. The one who made this knows animals well. "

Travis pushed the jacket back into the bag and laced it shut. But he didnot return it to the hiding place. Instead, he made it a part of his ownpack. If they did not succeed in running down the fugitive, he wanted anopportunity for closer study, a chance to remember just where he hadseen that picture before. 

The narrow valley where they had discovered the bag sloped upward, andthere were signs that their quarry found the ground harder to cover. Thesecond discard lay in open sight--again a leather bag which Nalik'ideyusniffed and then began to lick eagerly, thrusting her nose into itsflaccid interior. 

Travis picked it up, finding it damp to the touch. It had an odd smell, like that of sour milk. He ran a finger around inside, brought it outwet; yet this was neither water bag nor canteen. And he was completelymystified when he turned it inside out, for though the inner surface waswet, the bag was empty. He offered it to the coyote, and she took itpromptly. 

Holding it firmly to the earth with her forepaws, she licked thesurface, though Travis could see no deposit which might attract her. Itwas clear that the bag had once held some sort of food. 

"Here they rested, " Tsoay said. "Not too far ahead now--"

But now they were in the kind of country where a man could hide in orderto check on his back trail. Travis studied the terrain and then made hisown plans. They would leave the plainly marked trace of the fugitive, strike out upslope to the east and try to parallel the other's route. Inthat maze of rock outcrops and wood copses there was tricky going. 

Nalik'ideyu gave a last lick to the bag as Travis signaled her. Sheregarded him, then turned her head to survey the country before them. Atlast she trotted on, her buff coat melting into the vegetation. WithNaginlta she would scout the quarry and keep watch, leaving the men totake the longer way around. 

Travis pulled off his shirt, folding it into a packet and tucking itbeneath the folds of his sash-belt, just as his ancestors had alwaysdone before a fight. Then he cached his pack and Tsoay's. As they beganthe stiff climb they carried only their bows, the quivers slung on theirshoulders, and the long-bladed knives. But they flitted like shadowsand, like the coyotes, their red-brown bodies became indistinguishableagainst the bronze of the land. 

They should be, Travis judged, not more than an hour away from sundown. And they had to locate the stranger before the dark closed in. Hisrespect for their quarry had grown. The unknown might have been drivenby fear, but he held to a good pace and headed intelligently for justthe kind of country which would serve him best. If Travis could onlyremember where he had seen the like of that embroidery! It had ameaning which might be important now. .. . 

Tsoay slipped behind a wind-gnarled tree and disappeared. Travis stoopedunder a line of bush limbs. Both were working their way south, using thepeak ahead as an agreed landmark, pausing at intervals to examine thelandscape for any hint of a man and horse. 

Travis squirmed snake fashion into an opening between two rock pillarsand lay there, the westering sun hot on his bare shoulders and back, hischin propped on his forearm. In the band holding back his hair he hadinserted some concealing tufts of wiry mountain grass, the ends of whichdrooped over his rugged features. 

Only seconds earlier he had caught that fragmentary warning from one ofthe coyotes. What they sought was very close, it was right down there. Both animals were in ambush, awaiting orders. And what they found wasfamiliar, another confirmation that the fugitive was Terran, not nativeto Topaz. 

With searching eyes, Travis examined the site indicated by the coyotes. His respect for the stranger was raised another notch. In time either heor Tsoay might have sighted that hideaway without the aid of the animalscouts; on the other hand, they might have failed. For the fugitive hadtruly gone to earth, using some pocket or crevice in the mountain wall. 

There was no sign of the horse, but a branch here and there had beenpulled out of place, the scars of their removal readable when one knewwhere to look. Odd, Travis began to puzzle over what he saw. It wasalmost as if whatever pursuit the stranger feared would come not atground level but from above; the precautions the stranger had taken wereto veil his retreat to the reaches of the mountain side. 

Had he expected any trailer to make a flanking move from up that slopewhere the Apaches now lay? Travis' teeth nipped the weathered skin ofhis forearm. Could it be that at some time during the day's journeyingthe fugitive had doubled back, having seen his trackers? But there hadbeen no traces of any such scouting, and the coyotes would surely havewarned them. Human eyes and ears could be tricked, but Travis trustedthe senses of Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu far above his own. 

No, he did not believe that the rider expected the Apaches. But the mandid expect someone or something which would come upon him from theheights. The heights. .. . Travis rolled his head slightly to look at theupper reaches of the hills about him--with suspicion. 

In their own journey across the mountains and through the pass they hadfound nothing threatening. Dangerous animals might roam there. There hadbeen some paw marks, one such trail the coyotes had warned against. Butthe type of precautions the stranger had taken were against intelligent, thinking beings, not against animals more likely to track by scent thanby sight. 

And if the stranger expected an attack from above, then Travis and Tsoaymust be alert. Travis analyzed each feature of the hillside, setting inhis mind a picture of every inch of ground they must cross. Just as hehad wanted daylight as an ally before, so now was he willing to wait forthe shadows of twilight. 

He closed his eyes in a final check, able to recall the details of thehiding place, knowing that he could reach it when the conditionsfavored, without mistake. Then he edged back from his vantage point, andraising his fingers to his lips, made a small angry chittering, threetimes repeated. One of the species inhabiting these heights, as they hadnoted earlier, was a creature about as big as the palm of a man's hand, resembling nothing so much as a round ball of ruffled feathers, thoughits covering might actually have been a silky, fluffy fur. Its shortlegs could cover ground at an amazing speed, and it had the boldimpudence of a creature with few natural enemies. This was its usualcry. 

Tsoay's hand waved Travis on to where the younger man had taken positionbehind the bleached trunk of a fallen tree. 

"He hides, " Tsoay whispered. 

"Against trouble from above. " Travis added his own observation. 

"But not us, I think. "

So Tsoay had come to that conclusion too? Travis tried to gauge thenearness of twilight. There was a period after the passing of Topaz' sunwhen the dusky light played odd tricks with shadows. That would be thefirst time for their move. He said as much, and Tsoay nodded eagerly. They sat with their backs to a boulder, the tree trunk serving as ascreen, and chewed methodically on ration tablets. There was energy andsustenance in the tasteless squares which would support men, even thoughtheir stomachs continued to demand the satisfaction of fresh meat. 

Taking turns, they dozed a little. But the last banners of Topaz' sunwere still in the sky when Travis judged the shadows cover enough. Hehad no way of knowing how the stranger was armed. Though he used a horsefor transportation, he might well carry a rifle and the most modernTerran sidearms. 

The Apaches' bows were little use for infighting, but they had theirknives. However, Travis wanted to take the fugitive unharmed if hecould. There was information he must have. So he did not even draw hisknife as he started downhill. 

When he reached a pool of violet dusk at the bottom of the small ravineNaginlta's eyes regarded him knowingly. Travis signaled with his handand thought out what would be the coyotes' part in this surprise attack. The prick-eared silhouette vanished. Uphill the chitter of a fluff-fursounded twice--Tsoay was in position. 

A howl . .. Wailing . .. Sobbing . .. Was heard, one of the keening songsof the _mba'a_. Travis darted forward. He heard the nicker of afrightened horse, a clicking which could have marked the pawing of hoofon gravel, saw the brush hiding the stranger's hole tremble, a portionof it fall away. 

Travis sped on, his moccasins making no sound on the ground. One of thecoyotes gave tongue for the second time, the eerie wailing rising to ayapping which echoed from the rocks about them. Travis poised for adive. 

Another section of those artfully heaped branches had given way and ahorse reared, its upflung head plainly marked against the sky. A blurredfigure weaved back and forth before it, trying to control the mount. Thestranger had his hands full, certainly no weapon drawn--this was it!

Travis leaped. His hands found their mark, the shoulders of thestranger. There was a shrill cry from the other as he tried to turn inthe Apache's hold, to face his attacker. But Travis bore them both on, rolling almost under the feet of the horse, sliding downhill, theunknown's writhing body pinned down by the Apache's weight and hisclasp, tight as an iron grip, about the other's chest and upper arms. 

He felt his opponent go limp, but was suspicious enough not to releasethat hold, for the heavy breathing of the stranger was not that of anunconscious man. They lay so, the unknown still tight in Travis' holdbut no longer fighting. The Apache could hear Tsoay soothing the horsewith the purring words of a practiced horseman. 

Still the stranger did not resume the struggle. They could not lie inthis position all night, Travis thought with a wry twist of amusement. He shifted his hold, and got the lightning-quick response he hadexpected. But it was not quite quick enough, for Travis had the other'shands behind his back, cupping slender, almost delicate wrists together. 

"Throw me a cord!" he called to Tsoay. 

The younger man ran up with an extra bow cord, and in a moment they hadbonds on the struggling captive. Travis rolled their catch over, reaching down for a fistful of hair to pull the head into a patch ofclearer light. 

In his grasp that hair came loose, a braid unwinding. He grunted as helooked down into the stranger's face. Dust marks were streaked now withtear runnels, but the gray eyes which turned fiercely on him said thattheir owner cried more in rage than fear. 

His captive might be wearing long trousers tucked into curved, toedboots, and a loose overblouse, but she was certainly not only a woman, but a very young and attractive one. Also, at the present moment, anexceedingly angry one. And behind that anger was fear, the fear of onefighting hopelessly against insurmountable odds. But as she eyed Travisnow her expression changed. 

He felt she had expected another captor altogether and was astounded atthe sight of him. Her tongue touched her lips, moistening them, and nowthe fear in her was another kind--the wary fear of one facing a totallynew and perhaps dangerous thing. 

"Who are you?" Travis spoke in English, for he had no doubts that shewas Terran. 

Now she sucked in her breath with a gasp of pure astonishment. 

"Who are _you_?" she parroted his question in a marked accent. Englishwas not her native tongue, he was sure. 

Travis reached out, and again his hands closed on her shoulders. Shestarted to twist and then realized he was merely pulling her up to asitting position. Some of the fear had left her eyes, an intent interesttaking its place. 

"You are not Sons of the Blue Wolf, " she stated in her heavily accentedspeech. 

Travis smiled. "I am the Fox, not the Wolf, " he returned. "And theCoyote is my brother. " He snapped his fingers at the shadows, and thetwo animals came noiselessly into sight. Her gaze widened even more atNaginlta and Nalik'ideyu, and she deduced the bond which must existbetween her captor and the beasts. 

"This woman is also of our world. " Tsoay spoke in Apache, looking overtheir prisoner with frank interest. "Only she is not of the People. "

Sons of the Blue Wolf? Travis thought again of the embroidery designs onthe jacket. Who had called themselves by that picturesquetitle--where--and when in time?

"What do you fear, Daughter of the Blue Wolf?" he asked. 

And with that question he seemed to touch some button activating terror. She flung back her head so that she could see the darkening sky. 

"The flyer!" Her voice was muted as if more than a whisper would carryto the stars just coming into brilliance above them. "They will come . .. Tracking. I did not reach the inner mountains in time. "

There was a despairing note in that which cut through to Travis, whofound that he, too, was searching the sky, not knowing what he lookedfor or what kind of menace it promised, only that it was real danger. 

6

"The night comes, " Tsoay spoke slowly in English. "Do these you fearhunt in the dark?"

She shook her head to free her forehead from a coil of braid, pulledloose in her struggle with Travis. 

"They do not need eyes or such noses as those four-footed hunters ofyours. They have a machine to track--"

"Then what purpose is this brush pile of yours?" Travis raised his chinat the disturbed hiding place. 

"They do not constantly use the machine, and one can hope. But at nightthey can ride on its beam. We are not far enough into the hills to losethem. Bahatur went lame, and so I was slowed. .. . "

"And what lies in these mountains that those you fear dare not invadethem?" Travis continued. 

"I do not know, save if one can climb far enough inside, one is safefrom pursuit. "

"I ask it again: Who are you?" The Apache leaned forward, his face inthe fast-fading light now only inches away from hers. She did not shrinkfrom his close scrutiny but met him eye to eye. This was a woman ofproud independence, truly a chief's daughter, Travis decided. 

"I am of the People of the Blue Wolf. We were brought across the starlanes to make this world safe for . .. For . .. The. .. . " She hesitated, and now there was a shade of puzzlement on her face. "There is areason--a dream. No, there is the dream and there is reality. I amKaydessa of the Golden Horde, but sometimes I remember otherthings--like this speech of strange words I am mouthing now----"

"The Golden Horde!" Travis knew now. The embroidery, Sons of the BlueWolf, all fitted into a special pattern. But what a pattern! Scythianart, the ornament that the warriors of Genghis Khan bore so proudly. Tatars, Mongols--the barbarians who had swept from the fastness of thesteppes to change the course of history, not only in Asia but across theplains of middle Europe. The men of the Emperor Khans who had riddenbehind the yak-tailed standards of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Tamerlane--!

"The Golden Horde, " Travis repeated once again. "That lies far back inthe history of another world, Wolf Daughter. "

She stared at him, a queer, lost expression on her dust-grimed face. 

"I know. " Her voice was so muted he could hardly distinguish the words. "My people live in two times, and many do not realize that. "

Tsoay had crouched down beside them to listen. Now he put out his hand, touching Travis' shoulder. 

"Redax?"

"Or its like. " For Travis was sure of one point. The project, which hadbeen training three teams for space colonization--one of Eskimos, one ofPacific Islanders, and one of his own Apaches--had no reason or chanceto select Mongols from the wild past of the raiding Hordes. There wasonly one nation on Terra which could have picked such colonists. 

"You are Russian. " He studied her carefully, intent on noting the effectof his words. 

But she did not lose that lost look. "Russian . .. Russian . .. " sherepeated, as if the very word was strange. 

Travis was alarmed. Any Russian colony planted here could well possesstechnicians with machines capable of tracking a fugitive, and ifmountain heights were protection against such a hunt, he intended togain them, even by night traveling. He said this to Tsoay, and the otheremphatically agreed. 

"The horse is too lame to go on, " the younger man reported. 

Travis hesitated for a long second. Since the time they had stolen theirfirst mounts from the encroaching Spanish, horses had always been wealthto his people. To leave an animal which could well serve the clan wasnot right. But they dared not waste time with a lame beast. 

"Leave it here, free, " he ordered. 

"And the woman?"

"She goes with us. We must learn all we can of these people and whatthey do here. Listen, Wolf Daughter, " again Travis leaned close to makesure she was listening to him as he spoke with emphasis--"you willtravel with us into these high places, and there will be no trouble fromyou. " He drew his knife and held the blade warningly before her eyes. 

"It was already in my mind to go to the mountains, " she told him evenly. "Untie my hands, brave warrior, you have surely nothing to fear from awoman. "

His hand made a swift sweep and plucked a knife as long and keen as hisfrom the folds of the sash beneath her loose outer garment. 

"Not now, Wolf Daughter, since I have drawn your fangs. "

He helped her to her feet and slashed the cord about her wrists with herknife, which he then fastened to his own belt. Alerting the coyotes, hedispatched them ahead; and the three started on, the Mongol girl betweenthe two Apaches. The abandoned horse nickered lonesomely and then beganto graze on tufts of grass, moving slowly to favor his foot. 

The two moons rode the sky as the hours advanced, their beams fightingthe shadows. Travis felt reasonably safe from any attack at groundlevel, depending upon the coyotes for warning. But he held them all to asteady pace. And he did not question the girl again until all three ofthem hunkered down at a small mountain spring, to dash icy water overtheir faces and drink from cupped hands. 

"Why do you flee your own people, Wolf Daughter?"

"My name is Kaydessa, " she corrected him. 

He chuckled with laughter at the prim tone of her voice. "And you seehere Tsoay of the People--the Apaches--while I am Fox. " He was givingher the English equivalent of his tribal name. 

"Apaches. " She tried to repeat the word with the same accent he hadused. "And what are Apaches?"

"Indians--Amerindians, " he explained. "But you have not answered myquestion, Kaydessa. Why do you run from your own people?"

"Not from my people, " she said, shaking her head determinedly. "Fromthose others. It is like this--Oh, how can I make you understandrightly?" She spread her wet hands out before her in the moonlight, thedamp patches on her sleeves clinging to her arms. "There are my peopleof the Golden Horde, though once we were different and we can rememberbits of that previous life. Then there are also the men who live in thesky ship and use the machine so that we think only the thoughts theywould have us think. Now why, " she looked at Travis intently--"do I wishto tell you all this? It is strange. You say you areIndian--American--are we then enemies? There is a part memory which saysthat we are . .. Were. .. . "

"Let us rather say, " he corrected her, "that the Apaches and the Hordeare not enemies here and now, no matter what was before. " That was thetruth, Travis recognized. By all accounts his people had come out ofAsia in the very dim beginnings of migrating peoples. For all herdark-red hair and gray eyes, this girl who had been arbitrarily returnedto a past just as they had been by Redax, could well be a distantclan-cousin. 

"You--" Kaydessa's fingers rested for a moment on his wrist--"you, too, were sent here from across the stars. Is this not so?"

"It is so. "

"And there are those here who govern you now?"

"No. We are free. "

"How did you become free?" she demanded fiercely. 

Travis hesitated. He did not want to tell of the wrecked ship, the factthat his people possessed no real defenses against theRussian-controlled colony. 

"We went to the mountains, " he replied evasively. 

"Your governing machine failed?" Kaydessa laughed. "Ah, they are sogreat, those men of the machines. But they are smaller and weaker whentheir machines cannot obey them. "

"It is so with your camp?" Travis probed gently. He was not quite sureof her meaning, but he dared not ask more detailed questions withoutdangerously revealing his own ignorance. 

"In some manner their control machine--it can only work upon thosewithin a certain distance. They discovered that in the days of the firstlanding, when hunters went out freely and many of them did not return. After that when hunters were sent out to learn how lay this land, theywent along in the flyer with a machine so that there would be no moreescapes. But we knew!" Kaydessa's fingers curled into small fists. "Yes, we knew that if we could get beyond the machines, there was freedom forus. And we planned--many of us--planned. Then nine or ten sleeps agothose others were very excited. They gathered in their ship, watchingtheir machines. And something happened. For a while all those machineswent dead. 

"Jagatai, Kuchar, my brother Hulagur, Menlik. .. . " She was counting thenames off on her fingers. "They raided the horse herd, rode out. .. . "

"And you?"

"I, too, should have ridden. But there was Aljar, my sister--Kuchar'swife. She was very near her time and to ride thus, fleeing and fast, might kill her and the child. So I did not go. Her son was born thatnight, but the others had the machine at work once more. We might longto go here, " she brought her fist up to her breast, and then raised itto her head--"but there was that _here_ which kept us to the camp andtheir will. We only knew that if we could reach the mountains, we mightfind our people who had already gained their freedom. "

"But you are here. How did you escape?" Tsoay wanted to know. 

"They knew that I would have gone had it not been for Aljar. So theysaid they would make her ride out with them unless I played guide tolead them to my brother and the others. Then I knew I must take up thesword of duty and hunt with them. But I prayed that the spirits of theupper air look with favor upon me, and they granted aid. .. . " Her eyesheld a look of wonder. "For when we were out on the plains and well awayfrom the settlement, a grass devil attacked the leader of the searchingparty, and he dropped the mind control and so it was broken. Then Irode. Blue Sky Above knows how I rode. And those others are not withtheir horses as are the people of the Wolf. "

"When did this happen?"

"Three suns ago. "

Travis counted back in his mind. Her date for the failure of the machinein the Russian camp seemed to coincide with the crash landing of theAmerican ship. Had one thing any connection with the other? It was verypossible. The planeting spacer might have fought some kind of weird duelwith the other colony before it plunged to earth on the other side ofthe mountain range. 

"Do you know where in these mountains your people hide?"

Kaydessa shook her head. "Only that I must head south, and when I reachthe highest peak make a signal fire on the north slope. But that Icannot do now, for those in the flyer may see it. I know they are on mytrail, for twice I have seen it. Listen, Fox, I ask this of you--I, Kaydessa, who am eldest daughter to the Khan--for you are like unto us, a warrior and a brave man, that I believe. It may be that you cannot begoverned by their machine, for you have not rested under their spell, nor are of our blood. Therefore, if they come close enough to send forththe call, the call I must obey as if I were a slave dragged upon a horserope, then do you bind my hands and feet and hold me here, no matter howmuch I struggle to follow that command. For that which is truly me doesnot want to go. Will you swear this by the fires which expel demons?"

The utter sincerity of her tone convinced Travis that she was pleadingfor aid against a danger she firmly believed in. Whether she was rightabout his immunity to the Russian mental control was another matter, andone he would rather not put to the test. 

"We do not swear by your fires, Blue Wolf Maiden, but by the Path of theLightning. " His fingers moved as if to curl about the sacred charredwood his people had once carried as "medicine. " "So do I promise!"

She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded in satisfaction. 

They left the pool and pushed on toward the mountain slopes, workingtheir way back to the pass. A low growl out of the dark brought them toan instant halt. Naginlta's warning was sharp; there was danger ahead, acute danger. 

The moonlight from the moons made a weird pattern of light and dark onthe stretch ahead. Anything from a slinking four-footed hunter to a warparty of intelligent beings might have been lying in wait there. 

A flitting shadow out of shadows. Nalik'ideyu pressed against Travis'legs, making a barrier of her warm body, attracting his attention to aspot at the left perhaps a hundred yards on. There was a great splotchof dark there, large enough to hide a really formidable opponent; thatwordless communication between animal and man told Travis that such anopponent was just what was lurking there. 

Whatever lay in ambush beside the upper track was growing impatient asits destined prey ceased to advance, the coyotes reported. 

"Your left--beyond that pointed rock--in the big shadow--"

"Do you see it?" Tsoay demanded. 

"No. But the _mba'a_ do. "

The men had their bows ready, arrows set to the cords. But in this lightsuch weapons were practically useless unless the enemy moved into thepath of the moon. 

"What is it?" Kaydessa asked in a half whisper. 

"Something waits for us ahead. "

Before he could stop her, she set her fingers to her lips and gave apiercing whistle. 

There was answering movement in the shadow. Travis shot at that, hisarrow followed instantly by one from Tsoay. There was a cry, scaling upin a throat-scalding scream which made Travis flinch. Not because ofthe sound, but because of the hint which lay behind it--could it havebeen a human cry?

The thing flopped out into a patch of moonlight. It was four-limbed, itsbody silvery--and it was large. But the worst was that it had beengroveling on all fours when it fell, and now it was rising on its hindfeet, one forepaw striking madly at the two arrows dancing head-deep inits upper shoulder. Man? No! But something sufficiently manlike to chillthe three downtrail. 

A whirling four-footed hunter dashed in, snapped at the creature's legs, and it squalled again, aiming a blow with a forepaw; but the attackingcoyote was already gone. Together Naginlta and Nalik'ideyu wereharassing the creature, just as they had fought the split horn, givingthe hunters time to shoot. Travis, although he again felt that touch ofhorror and disgust he could not account for, shot again. 

Between them the Apaches must have sent a dozen arrows into the ravingbeast before it went to its knees and Naginlta sprang for its throat. Even then the coyote yelped and flinched, a bleeding gash across itshead from the raking talons of the dying thing. When it no longer moved, Travis approached to see more closely what they had brought down. Thatsmell. .. . 

Just as the embroidery on Kaydessa's jacket had awakened memories fromhis Terran past, so did this stench remind him of something. Where--when--had he smelled it before? Travis connected it with dark, dark and danger. Then he gasped in a half exclamation. 

Not on this world, no, but on two others: two worlds of that brokenstellar empire where he had been an involuntary explorer two planetyears ago! The beast things which had lived in the dark of the desertworld the Terrans' wandering galactic derelict had landed upon. Yes, thebeast things whose nature they had never been able to deduce. Were theythe degenerate dregs of a once intelligent species? Or were theyanimals, akin to man, but still animals?

The ape-things had controlled the night of the desert world. And theyhad been met again--also in the dark--in the ruins of the city which hadbeen the final goal of the ship's taped voyage. So they were a part ofthe vanished civilization. And Travis' own vague surmise concerningTopaz was proven correct. This had not been an empty world for thelong-gone space people. This planet had a purpose and a use, or elsethis beast would not have been here. 

"Devil!" Kaydessa made a face of disgust. 

"You know it?" Tsoay asked Travis. "What is it?"

"That I do not know, but it is a thing left over from the star people'stime. And I have seen it on two other of their worlds. "

"A man?" Tsoay surveyed the body critically. "It wears no clothes, hasno weapons, but it walks erect. It looks like an ape, a very big ape. Itis not a good thing, I think. "

"If it runs with a pack--as they do elsewhere--this could be a very badthing. " Travis, remembering how these creatures had attacked in force onthe other worlds, looked about him apprehensively. Even with the coyoteson guard, they could not stand up to such a pack closing in through thedark. They had better hole up in some defendable place and wait out therest of the night. 

Naginlta brought them to a cliff overhang where they could set theirbacks to the hard rock of the mountain, face outward to a space theycould cover with arrow flight if the need arose. And the coyotes, lyingbefore them with their noses resting on paws, would, Travis knew, alertthem long before the enemy could close in. 

They huddled against the rock, Kaydessa between them, alert at first toevery sound of the night, their hearts beating faster at a small scrapeof gravel, the rustle of a bush. Slowly, they began to relax. 

"It is well that two sleep while one guards, " Travis observed. "Bymorning we must push on, out of this country. "

So the two Apaches shared the watch in turn, the Tatar girl at firstprotesting, and then falling exhausted into a slumber which left herbreathing heavily. 

Travis, on the dawn watch, began to speculate about the ape-thing theyhad killed. The two previous times he had met this creature it had beenin ruins of the old empire. Were there ruins somewhere here? He wantedto make sure about that. On the other hand, there was the problem of theTatar-Mongol settlement controlled by the Reds. There was no doubt inhis mind that, were the Reds to suspect the existence of the Apachecamp, they would make every attempt to hunt down and kill or capture thesurvivors from the American ship. A warning must be carried to therancheria as quickly as they could make the return trip. 

Beside him the girl stirred, raising her head. Travis glanced at her andthen watched with attention. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes asfixed as if she were in a trance. Now she inched forward from themountain wall, wriggling out of its shelter. 

"What--?" Tsoay had awakened again. But Travis was already moving. Hepushed on, rushing up to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder. 

"What is it? Where do you go?" he asked. 

She made no answer, did not even seem aware of his voice. He caught ather arm and she pulled to free herself. When he tightened his grip shedid not fight him actively as during their first encounter, but merelypulled and twisted as if she were being compelled to go ahead. 

Compulsion! He remembered her plea the night before, asking his helpagainst recapture by the machine. Now he deliberately tripped her, twisted her hands behind her back. She swayed in his hold, trying to winto her feet, paying no attention to him save as a hindrance against heranswering that demanding call he could not hear. 

7

"What happened?" Tsoay took a swift stride, stood over the writhing girlwhose strength was now such that Travis had to exert all his efforts tocontrol her. 

"I think that the machine she spoke about is holding her. She is beingdrawn to it out of hiding as one draws a calf on a rope. "

Both coyotes had arisen and were watching the struggle with interest, but there was no warning from them. Whatever called Kaydessa into suchmindless and will-less answer did not touch the animals. And neitherApache felt it. So perhaps only Kaydessa's people were subject to it, asshe had thought. How far away was that machine? Not too near, forotherwise the coyotes would have traced the man or men operating it. 

"We cannot move her, " Tsoay brought the problem into the open--"unlesswe bind and carry her. She is one of their kind. Why not let her go tothem, unless you fear she will talk. " His hand went to the knife in hisbelt, and Travis knew what primitive impulse moved in the younger man. 

In the old days a captive who was likely to give trouble wasefficiently eliminated. In Tsoay that memory was awake now. Travis shookhis head. 

"She has said that others of her kin are in these hills. We must not settwo wolf packs hunting us, " Travis said, giving the more practicalreason which might better appeal to that savage instinct forself-preservation. "But you are right, since she has tried to answerthis summons, we cannot force her with us. Therefore, do you take theback trail. Tell Buck what we have discovered and have him make thenecessary precautions against either these Mongol outlaws or a Redthrust over the mountains. "

"And you?"

"I stay to discover where the outlaws hide and learn all I can of thissettlement. We may have reason to need friends----"

"Friends!" Tsoay spat. "The People need no friends! If we have warning, we can hold our own country! As the Pinda-lick-o-yi have discoveredbefore. "

"Bows and arrows against guns and machines?" Travis inquired bitingly. "We must know more before we make any warrior boasts for the future. Tell Buck what we have discovered. Also say I will join you before, "Travis calculated--"ten suns. If I do not, send no search party; theclan is too small to risk more lives for one. "

"And if these Reds take you--?"

Travis grinned, not pleasantly. "They shall learn nothing! Can theirmachines sort out the thoughts of a dead man?" He did not intend hisfuture to end as abruptly as that, but also he would not be easy meatfor any Red hunting party. 

Tsoay took a share of their rations and refused the company of thecoyotes. Travis realized that for all his seeming ease with the animals, the younger scout had little more liking for them than Deklay and theothers back at the rancheria. Tsoay went at dawn, aiming at the pass. 

Travis sat down beside Kaydessa. They had bound her to a small tree, andshe strove incessantly to free herself, turning her head at an acute andpainful angle, only to face the same direction in which she had beentied. There was no breaking the spell which held her. And she would soonwear herself out with that struggling. Then he struck an expert blow. 

The girl sagged limply, and he untied her. It all depended now on therange of the beam or broadcast of that diabolical machine. From theattitude of the coyotes, he assumed that those using the machine had notmade any attempt to come close. They might not even know where theirquarry was; they would simply sit and wait in the foothills for thecaller to reel in a helpless captive. 

Travis thought that if he moved Kaydessa farther away from that point, sooner or later they would be out of range and she would awake from theknockout, free again. Although she was not light, he could manage tocarry her for a while. So burdened, Travis started on, with the coyotesscouting ahead. 

He speedily discovered that he had set himself an ambitious task. Thegoing was rough, and carrying the girl reduced his advance to asnail-paced crawl. But it gave him time to make careful plans. 

As long as the Reds held the balance of power on this side of themountain range, the rancheria was in danger. Bows and knives againstmodern armament was no contest at all. And it would only be a matter oftime before exploration on the part of the northern settlement--or sometracking down of Tatar fugitives--would bring the enemy across the pass. 

The Apaches could move farther south into the unknown continent belowthe wrecked ship, thus prolonging the time before they were discovered. But that would only postpone the inevitable showdown. Whether Traviscould make his clan believe that, was also a matter of concern. 

On the other hand, if the Red overlords could be met in some practicalway. .. . Travis' mind fastened on that more attractive idea, worrying itas Naginlta worried a prey, tearing out and devouring the more delicateportions. Every bit of sense and prudence argued against such anapproach, whose success could rest only between improbability andimpossibility; yet that was the direction in which he longed to move. 

Across his shoulder Kaydessa stirred and moaned. The Apache doubled hisefforts to reach the outcrop of rock he could see ahead, chiseled intohigh relief by the winds. In its lee they would have protection from anysighting from below. Panting, he made it, lowering the girl into theguarded cup of space, and waited. 

She moaned again, lifted one hand to her head. Her eyes were half open, and still he could not be sure whether they focused on him and hersurroundings intelligently or not. 

"Kaydessa!"

Her heavy eyelids lifted, and he had no doubt she could see him. Butthere was no recognition of his identity in her gaze, only surprise andfear--the same expression she had worn during their first meeting in thefoothills. 

"Daughter of the Wolf, " he spoke slowly. "Remember!" Travis made that anorder, an emphatic appeal to the mind under the influence of the caller. 

She frowned, the struggle she was making naked on her face. Then sheanswered:

"You--Fox--"

Travis grunted with relief, his alarm subsiding. Then she _could_remember. 

"Yes, " he responded eagerly. 

But she was gazing about, her puzzlement growing. "Where is this--?"

"We are higher in the mountains. "

Now fear was pushing out bewilderment. "How did I come here?"

"I brought you. " Swiftly he outlined what had happened at their nightcamp. 

The hand which had been at her head was now pressed tight across herlips as if she were biting furiously into its flesh to still some panicof her own, and her gray eyes were round and haunted. 

"You are free now, " Travis said. 

Kaydessa nodded, and then dropped her hand to speak. "You brought meaway from the hunters. You did not have to obey them?"

"I heard nothing. "

"You do not hear--you feel!" She shuddered. "Please. " She clawed at thestone beside her, pulling up to her feet. "Let us go--let us go quickly!They will try again--move farther in--"

"Listen, " Travis had to be sure of one thing--"have they any way ofknowing that they had you under control and that you have againescaped?"

Kaydessa shook her head, some of the panic again shadowing her eyes. 

"Then we'll just go on--" his chin lifted to the wastelands beforethem--"try to keep out of their reach. "

And away from the pass to the south, he told himself silently. He darednot lead the enemy to that secret, so he must travel west or hole upsomewhere in this unknown wilderness until they could be sure Kaydessawas no longer susceptible to that call, or that they were safely beyondits beamed radius. There was the chance of contacting her outlaw kin, just as there was the chance of stumbling into a pack of the ape-things. Before dark they must discover a protected camp site. 

They needed water, food. He had a bare half dozen ration tablets. Butthe coyotes could locate water. 

"Come!" Travis beckoned to Kaydessa, motioning her to climb ahead of himso that he could watch for any indication of her succumbing once againto the influence of the enemy. But his burdened early morning flight hadtold on Travis more than he thought, and he discovered he could not spurhimself on to a pace better than a walk. Now and again one of thecoyotes, usually Nalik'ideyu, would come into view, express impatiencein both stance and mental signal, and then be gone again. The Apache wasincreasingly aware that the animals were disturbed, yet to his tentativegropings at contact they did not reply. Since they gave no warning ofhostile animal or man, he could only be on constant guard, watching thecountryside about him. 

They had been following a ledge for several minutes before Travis wasaware of some strange features of that path. Perhaps he had actuallynoted them with a trained eye before his archaeological studies of therecent past gave him a reason for the faint marks. This crack in themountain's skin might have begun as a natural fault, but afterward ithad been worked with tools, smoothed, widened to serve the purpose ofsome form of intelligence!

Travis caught at Kaydessa's shoulder to slow her pace. He could not havetold why he did not want to speak aloud here, but he felt the need forsilence. She glanced around, perplexed, more so when he went down on hisknees and ran his fingers along one of those ancient tool marks. He wascertain it was very old. Inside of him anticipation bubbled. A road madewith such labor could only lead to something of importance. He was goingto make the discovery, the dream which had first drawn him into thesemountains. 

"What is it?" Kaydessa knelt beside him, frowning at the ledge. 

"This was cut by someone, a long time ago, " Travis half whispered andthen wondered why. There was no reason to believe the road makers couldhear him when perhaps a thousand years or more lay between the chippingof that stone and this day. 

The Tatar girl looked over her shoulder. Perhaps she too was troubled bythe sense that here time was subtly telescoped, that past and presentmight be meeting. Or was that feeling with them both because of theirenforced conditioning?

"Who?" Now her voice sank in turn. 

"Listen--" he regarded her intently--"did your people or the Reds everfind any traces of the old civilization here--ruins?"

"No. " She leaned forward, tracing with her own finger the samealmost-obliterated marks which had intrigued Travis. "But I think theyhave looked. Before they discovered that we could be free, they sent outparties--to hunt, they said--but afterward they always asked manyquestions about the country. Only they never asked about ruins. Is thatwhat they wished us to find? But why? Of what value are old stones piledon one another?"

"In themselves, little, save for the knowledge they may give us of thepeople who piled them. But for what the stones might contain--muchvalue!"

"And how do you know what they might contain, Fox?"

"Because I have seen such treasure houses of the star men, " he returnedabsently. To him the marks on the ledge were a pledge of greaterdiscoveries to come. He must find where that carefully constructed roadran--to what it led. "Let us see where this will take us. "

But first he gave the chittering signal in four sharp bursts. And thetawny-gray bodies came out of the tangled brush, bounding up to theledge. Together the coyotes faced him, their attention all for hishalting communication. 

Ruins might lie ahead; he hoped that they did. But on another planetsuch ruins had twice proved to be deadly traps, and only good fortunehad prevented their closing on Terran explorers. If the ape-things orany other dangerous form of life had taken up residence before them, hewanted good warning. 

Together the coyotes turned and loped along the now level way of theledge, disappearing around a curve fitted to the mountain side whileTravis and Kaydessa followed. 

They heard it before they saw its source--a waterfall. Probably not alarge one, but high. Rounding the curve, they came into a fine mist ofspray where sunlight made rainbows of color across a filmy veil ofwater. 

For a long moment they stood entranced. Kaydessa then gave a little cry, held out her hands to the purling mist and brought them to her lipsagain to suck the gathered moisture. 

Water slicked the surface of the ledge, and Travis pushed her backagainst the wall of the cliff. As far as he could discern, their roadcontinued behind the out-flung curtain of water, and footing on the wetstone was treacherous. With their backs to the solid security of thewall, facing outward into the solid drape of water, they edged behind itand came out into rainbowed sunlight again. 

Here either provident nature or ancient art had hollowed a pocket in thestone which was filled with water. They drank. Then Travis filled hiscanteen while Kaydessa washed her face, holding the cold freshness ofthe moisture to her cheeks with both palms. 

She spoke, but he could not hear her through the roar. She leaned closerand raised her voice to a half shout:

"This is a place of spirits! Do you not also feel their power, Fox?"

Perhaps for a space out of time he did feel something. This was awatering place, perhaps a never-ceasing watering place--and to hisdesert-born-and-bred race all water was a spirit gift never to be takenfor granted. The rainbow--the Spirit People's sacred sign--old beliefsstirred in Travis, moving him. "I feel, " he said, nodding in emphasis tohis agreement. 

They followed the ledge road to a section where a landslide of anearlier season had choked it. Travis worked a careful way across thedebris, Kaydessa obeying his guidance in turn. Then they were on asloping downward way which led to a staircase--the treads weather-wornand crumbling, the angle so steep Travis wondered if it had ever beenintended for beings with a physique approximating the Terrans'. 

They came to a cleft where an arch of stone was chiseled out as aroofing. Travis thought he could make out a trace of carving on thecapstone, so worn by years and weather that it was now only a faintshadow of design. 

The cleft was a door into another valley. Here, too, golden mist swirledin tendrils to disguise and cloak what stood there. Travis had found hisruins. Only the structures were intact, not breached by time. 

Mist flowed in lapping tongues back and forth, confusing outlines, nowshuttering, now baring oval windows which were spaced in diamonds offour on round tower surfaces. There were no visible cracks, no cloakingof climbing vegetation, nothing to suggest age and long roots in thevalley. Nor did the architecture he could view match any he had seen onthose other worlds. 

Travis strode away from the cleft doorway. Under his moccasins was ablock pavement, yellow and green stone set in a simple pattern ofchecks. This, too, was level, unchipped and undisturbed, save for adrift or two of soil driven in by the wind. And nowhere could he see anyvegetation. 

The towers were of the same green stone as half the pavement blocks, aglassy green which made him think of jade--if jade could be mined insuch quantities as these five-story towers demanded. 

Nalik'ideyu padded to him, and he could hear the faint click of herclaws on the pavement. There was a deep silence in this place, as if theair itself swallowed and digested all sound. The wind which had beenwith them all the day of their journeying was left beyond the cleft. 

Yet there was life here. The coyote told him that in her own way. Shehad not made up her mind concerning that life--wariness and curiositywarred in her now as her pointed muzzle lifted toward the windowsoverhead. 

The windows were all well above ground level, but there was no openingin the first stories as far as Travis could see. He debated moving intothe range of those windows to investigate the far side of the towers fordoorways. The mist and the message from Nalik'ideyu nourished hissuspicions. Out in the open he would be too good a target for whateveror whoever might be standing within the deep-welled frames. 

The silence was shattered by a boom. Travis jumped, slewed half around, knife in hand. 

Boom-boom . .. A second heavy beat-beat . .. Then a clangor with aswelling echo. 

Kaydessa flung back her head and called, her voice rising up as iftunneled by the valley walls. She then whistled as she had done whenthey fronted the ape-thing and ran on to catch at Travis' sleeve, herface eager. 

"My people! Come--it is my people!"

She tugged him on before breaking into a run, weaving fearlessly aroundthe base of one of the towers. Travis ran after her, afraid he mightlose her in the mist. 

Three towers, another stretch of open pavement, and then the mist liftedto show them a second carved doorway not two hundred yards ahead. Theboom-boom seemed to pull Kaydessa, and Travis could do nothing but trailher, the coyotes now trotting beside him. 

8

They burst through a last wide band of mist into a wilderness of tallgrass and shrubs. Travis heard the coyotes give tongue, but it was toolate. Out of nowhere whirled a leather loop, settling about his chest, snapping his arms tight to his body, taking him off his feet with a jerkto be dragged helplessly along the ground behind a galloping horse. 

A tawny fury sprang in the air to snap at the horse's head. Traviskicked fruitlessly, trying to regain his feet as the horse reared, andfought against the control of his shouting rider. All through the meleethe Apache heard Kaydessa shrilly screaming words he did not understand. 

Travis was on his knees, coughing in the dust, exerting the muscles inhis chest and shoulders to loosen the lariat. On either side of him thecoyotes wove a snarling pattern of defiance, dashing back and forth topresent no target for the enemy, yet keeping the excited horses sostirred up that their riders could use neither ropes nor blades. 

Then Kaydessa ran between two of the ringing horses to Travis and jerkedat the loop about him. The tough, braided leather eased its hold, and hewas able to gasp in full lungfuls of air. She was still shouting, butthe tone had changed from one of recognition to a definite scolding. 

Travis won to his feet just as the rider who had lassoed him finally gothis horse under rein and dismounted. Holding the rope, the man walkedhand over hand toward them, as Travis back on the Arizona range wouldhave approached a nervous, unschooled pony. 

The Mongol was an inch or so shorter than the Apache, and his face wasyoung, though he had a drooping mustache bracketing his mouth withslender spear points of black hair. His breeches were tucked into highred boots, and he wore a loose felt jacket patterned with the sameelaborate embroidery Travis had seen on Kaydessa's. On his head was ahat with a wide fur border--in spite of the heat--and that too boretouches of scarlet and gold design. 

Still holding his lariat, the Mongol reached Kaydessa and stood for amoment, eying her up and down before he asked a question. She gave animpatient twitch to the rope. The coyotes snarled, but the Apachethought the animals no longer considered the danger immediate. 

"This is my brother Hulagur. " Kaydessa made the introduction over hershoulder. "He does not have your speech. "

Hulagur not only did not understand, he was also impatient. He jerked atthe rope with such sudden force that Travis was almost thrown. ThenKaydessa dragged as fiercely on the lariat in the other direction andburst into a soaring harangue which drew the rest of the men closer. 

Travis flexed his upper arms, and the slack gained by Kaydessa's actionmade the lariat give again. He studied the Tatar outlaws. There werefive of them beside Hulagur, lean men, hard-faced, narrow-eyed, theragged clothing of three pieced out with scraps of hide. Besides theswords with the curved blades, they were armed with bows, two to eachman, one long, one shorter. One of the riders carried a lance, longtassels of woolly hair streaming from below its head. Travis saw in thema formidable array of barbaric fighting men, but he thought that man forman the Apaches could not only take on the Mongols with confidence, butmight well defeat them. 

The Apache had never been a hot-headed, ride-for-glory fighter like theCheyenne, the Sioux, and the Comanche of the open plains. He estimatedthe odds against him, used ambush, trick, and every feature of thecountryside as weapon and defense. Fifteen Apache fighting men underChief Geronimo had kept five thousand American and Mexican troops in thefield for a year and had come off victorious for the moment. 

Travis knew the tales of Genghis Khan and his formidable generals whoswept over Asia into Europe, unbeaten and seemingly undefeatable. Butthey had been a wild wave, fed by a reservoir of manpower from thesteppes of their homeland, utilizing driven walls of captives to protecttheir own men in city assaults and attacks. He doubted if even thatendless sea of men could have won the Arizona desert defended by Apachesunder Cochise, Victorio, or Magnus Colorado. The white man had doneit--by superior arms and attrition; but bow against bow, knife againstsword, craft and cunning against craft and cunning--he did not thinkso. .. . 

Hulagur dropped the end of the lariat, and Kaydessa swung around, loosening the loop so that the rope fell to Travis' feet. The Apachestepped free of it, turned and passed between two of the horsemen togather up the bow he had dropped. The coyotes had gone with him and whenhe turned again to face the company of Tatars, both animals crowded pasthim to the entrance of the valley, plainly urging him to retire there. 

The horsemen had faced about also, and the warrior with the lancebalanced the shaft of the weapon in his hand as if considering thepossibility of trying to spear Travis. But just then Kaydessa came up, towing Hulagur by a firm hold on his sash-belt. 

"I have told this one, " she reported to Travis, "how it is between usand that you also are enemy to those who hunt us. It is well that yousit together beside a fire and talk of these things. "

Again that boom-boom broke her speech, coming from farther out in theopen land. 

"You will do this?" She made of it a half question, half statement. 

Travis glanced about him. He could dodge back into the misty valley ofthe towers before the Tatars could ride him down. However, if he couldpatch up some kind of truce between his people and the outlaws, theApaches would have only the Reds from the settlement to watch. Too manytimes in Terran past had war on two fronts been disastrous. 

"I come--carrying this--and not pulled by your ropes. " He held up hisbow in an exaggerated gesture so that Hulagur could understand. 

Coiling the lariat, the Mongol looked from the Apache bow to Travis. Slowly, and with obvious reluctance, he nodded agreement. 

At Hulagur's call the lancer rode up to the waiting Apache, stretchedout a booted foot in the heavy stirrup, and held down a hand to bringTravis up behind him riding double. Kaydessa mounted in the same fashionbehind her brother. 

Travis looked at the coyotes. Together the animals stood in the door tothe tower valley, and neither made any move to follow as the horsestrotted off. He beckoned with his hand and called to them. 

Heads up, they continued to watch him go in company with the Mongols. Then without any reply to his coaxing, they melted back into the mists. For a moment Travis was tempted to slide down and run the risk of takinga lance point between the shoulders as he followed Naginlta andNalik'ideyu into retreat. He was startled, jarred by the new awarenessof how much he had come to depend on the animals. Ordinarily, Travis Foxwas not one to be governed by the wishes of a _mba'a_, intelligent andun-animallike as it might be. This was an affair of men, and coyotes hadno part in it!

Half an hour later Travis sat in the outlaw camp. There were fifteenMongols in sight, a half dozen women and two children adding to thecount. On a hillock near their yurts, the round brush-and-hideshelters--not too different from the wickiups of Travis' own people--wasa crude drum, a hide stretched taut over a hollowed section of log. Andnext to that stood a man wearing a tall pointed cap, a red robe, and agirdle from which swung a fringe of small bones, tiny animal skulls, andpolished bits of stone and carved wood. 

It was this man's efforts which sent the boom-boom sounding at intervalsover the landscape. Was this a signal--part of a ritual? Travis was notcertain, though he guessed that the drummer was either medicine man orshaman, and so of some power in this company. Such men were creditedwith the ability to prophesy and also endowed with mediumship betweenman and spirit in the old days of the great Hordes. 

The Apache evaluated the rest of the company. As was true of his ownparty, these men were much the same age--young and vigorous. And it wasalso apparent that Hulagur held a position of some importance amongthem--if he were not their chief. 

After a last resounding roll on the drum, the shaman thrust the sticksinto his girdle and came down to the fire at the center of the camp. Hewas taller than his fellows, pole thin under his robes, his face narrow, clean-shaven, with brows arched by nature to give him an unchangingexpression of scepticism. He strode along, his tinkling collection ofcharms providing him with a not unmusical accompaniment, and came tostand directly before Travis, eying him carefully. 

Travis copied his silence in what was close to a duel of wills. Therewas that in the shaman's narrowed green eyes which suggested that ifHulagur did in fact lead these fighting men, he had an advisor ofdetermination and intelligence behind him. 

"This is Menlik. " Kaydessa did not push past the men to the fireside, but her voice carried. 

Hulagur growled at his sister, but his admonition made no impression onher, and she replied in as hot a tone. The shaman's hand went up, silencing both of them. 

"You are--who?" Like Kaydessa, Menlik spoke a heavily accented English. 

"I am Travis Fox, of the Apaches. "

"The Apaches, " the shaman repeated. "You are of the West, the AmericanWest, then. "

"You know much, man of spirit talk. "

"One remembers. At times one remembers, " Menlik answered almostabsently. "How does an Apache find his way across the stars?"

"The same way Menlik and his people did, " Travis returned. "You weresent to settle this planet, and so were we. "

"There are many more of you?" countered Menlik swiftly. 

"Are there not many of the Horde? Would one man, or three, or four, besent to hold a world?" Travis fenced. "You hold the north, we the southof this land. "

"But _they_ are not governed by a machine!" Kaydessa cut in. "They arefree!"

Menlik frowned at the girl. "Woman, this is a matter for warriors. Keepyour tongue silent between your jaws!"

She stamped one foot, standing with her fists on her hips. 

"I am a Daughter of the Blue Wolf. And we are all warriors--men andwomen alike--so shall we be as long as the Horde is not free to ridewhere we wish! These men have won their freedom; it is well that welearn how. "

Menlik's expression did not change, but his lids drooped over his eyesas a murmur of what might be agreement came from the group. More thanone of them must have understood enough English to translate for theothers. Travis wondered about that. Had these men and women who hadoutwardly reverted to the life of their nomad ancestors once been welleducated in the modern sense, educated enough to learn the basiclanguage of the nation their rulers had set up as their principal enemy?

"So you ride the land south of the mountains?" the shaman continued. 

"That is true. "

"Then why did you come hither?"

Travis shrugged. "Why does anyone ride or travel into new lands? Thereis a desire to see what may lie beyond----"

"Or to scout before the march of warriors!" Menlik snapped. "There is nopeace between your rulers and mine. Do you ride now to take the herdsand pastures of the Horde--or to try to do so?"

Travis turned his head deliberately from side to side, allowing them allto witness his slow and openly contemptuous appraisal of their camp. 

"_This_ is your Horde, Shaman? Fifteen warriors? Much has changed sincethe days of Temujin, has it not?"

"What do you know of Temujin--you, who are a man of no ancestors, out ofthe West?"

"What do I know of Temujin? That he was a leader of warriors and becameGenghis Khan, the great lord of the East. But the Apaches had theirwarlords also, rider of barren lands. And I am of those who raided overtwo nations when Victorio and Cochise scattered their enemies as a manscatters a handful of dust in the wind. "

"You talk bold, Apache. .. . " There was a hint of threat in that. 

"I speak as any warrior, Shaman. Or are you so used to talking withspirits instead of men that you do not realize that?"

He might have been alienating the shaman by such a sharp reply, butTravis thought he judged the temper of these people. To face them boldlywas the only way to impress them. They would not treat with an inferior, and he was already at a disadvantage coming on foot, without any backingin force, into a territory held by horsemen who were suspicious andjealous of their recently acquired freedom. His only chance was toestablish himself as an equal and then try to convince them that Apacheand Tatar-Mongol had a common cause against the Reds who controlled thesettlement on the northern plains. 

Menlik's right hand went to his sash-girdle and plucked out a carvedstick which he waved between them, muttering phrases Travis could notunderstand. Had the shaman retreated so far along the road to his pastthat he now believed in his own supernatural powers? Or was this toimpress his watching followers?

"You call upon your spirits for aid, Menlik? But the Apache has thecompanionship of the _ga-n_. Ask of Kaydessa: Who hunts with the Fox inthe wilds?" Travis' sharp challenge stopped that wand in mid-air. Menlik's head swung to the girl. 

"He hunts with wolves who think like men. " She supplied the informationthe shaman would not openly ask for. "I have seen them act as hisscouts. This is no spirit thing, but real and of this world!"

"Any man may train a dog to his bidding!" Menlik spat. 

"Does a dog obey orders which are not said aloud? These brown wolvescome and sit before him, look into his eyes. And then he knows what lieswithin their heads, and they know what he would have them do. This isnot the way of a master of hounds with his pack!"

Again the murmur ran about the camp as one or two translated. Menlikfrowned. Then he rammed his sorcerer's wand back into his sash. 

"If you are a man of power--such powers, " he said slowly, "then you maywalk alone where those who talk with spirits go--into the mountains. " Hethen spoke over his shoulder in his native tongue, and one of the womenreached behind her into a hut, brought out a skin bag and a horn cup. Kaydessa took the cup from her and held it while the other woman poureda white liquid from the bag to fill it. 

Kaydessa passed the cup to Menlik. He pivoted with it in his hand, dribbling expertly over its brim a few drops at each point of thecompass, chanting as he moved. Then he sucked in a mouthful of thecontents before presenting the vessel to Travis. 

The Apache smelled the same sour scent that had clung to the emptied bagin the foothills. And another part of memory supplied him with thenature of the drink. This was kumiss, a fermented mare's milk which wasthe wine and water of the steppes. 

He forced himself to swallow a draft, though it was alien to his taste, and passed the cup back to Menlik. The shaman emptied the horn and, with that, set aside ceremony. With an upraised hand he beckoned Travisto the fire again, indicating a pot set on the coals. 

"Rest . .. Eat!" he bade abruptly. 

Night was gathering in. Travis tried to calculate how far Tsoay musthave backtracked to the rancheria. He thought that he could have alreadymade the pass and be within a day and a half from the Apache camp if hepushed on, as he would. As to where the coyotes were, Travis had noidea. But it was plain that he himself must remain in this encampmentfor the night or risk rousing the Mongols' suspicion once more. 

He ate of the stew, spearing chunks out of the pot with the point of hisknife. And it was not until he sat back, his hunger appeased, that theshaman dropped down beside him. 

"The Khatun Kaydessa says that when she was slave to the caller, you didnot feel its chains, " he began. 

"Those who rule you are not my overlords. The bonds they set upon yourminds do not touch me. " Travis hoped that that was the truth and hisescape that morning had not been just a fluke. 

"This could be, for you and I are not of one blood, " Menlik agreed. "Tell me--how did you escape your bonds?"

"The machine which held us so was broken, " Travis replied with a portionof the truth, and Menlik sucked in his breath. 

"The machines, always the machines!" he cried hoarsely. "A thing whichcan sit in a man's head and make him do what it will against his will;it is demon sent! There are other machines to be broken, Apache. "

"Words will not break them, " Travis pointed out. 

"Only a fool rides to his death without hope of striking a single blowbefore he chokes on the blood in his throat, " Menlik retorted. "Wecannot use bow or tulwar against weapons which flame and kill quickerthan any storm lightning! And always the mind machines can make a mandrop his knife and stand helplessly waiting for the slave collar to beset on his neck!"

Travis asked a question of his own. "I know that they can bring a callerpart way into this mountain, for this very day I saw its effect upon themaiden. But there are many places in the hills well set for ambushes, and those unaffected by the machine could be waiting there. Would therebe many machines so that they could send out again and again?"

Menlik's bony hand played with his wand. Then a slow smile curved hislips into the guise of a hunting cat's noiseless snarl. 

"There is meat in that pot, Apache, rich meat, good for the filling of alean belly! So men whose minds the machine could not trouble--such mento be waiting in ambush for the taking of the men who use such amachine--yes. But here would have to be bait, very good bait for such atrap, Lord of Wiles. Never do those others come far into the mountains. Their flyer does not lift well here, and they do not trust traveling onhorseback. They were greatly angered to come so far in to reachKaydessa, though they could not have been too close, or you would nothave escaped at all. Yes, strong bait. "

"Such bait as perhaps the knowledge that there were strangers across themountains?"

Menlik turned his wand about in his hands. He was no longer smiling, andhis glance at Travis was sharp and swift. 

"Do you sit as Khan in your tribe, Lord?"

"I sit as one they will listen to. " Travis hoped that was so. WhetherBuck and the moderates would hold clan leadership upon his return was afact he could not count upon as certain. 

"This is a thing which we must hold council over, " Menlik continued. "But it is an idea of power. Yes, one to think about, Lord. And I shallthink. .. . "

He got up and moved away. Travis blinked at the fire. He was very tired, and he disliked sleeping in this camp. But he must not go without therest his body needed to supply him with a clear head in the morning. Andnot showing uneasiness might be one way of winning Menlik's confidence. 

9

Travis settled his back against the spire of rock and raised his righthand into the path of the sun, cradling in his palm a disk of glisteningmetal. Flash . .. Flash . .. He made the signal pattern just as hisancestors a hundred years earlier and far across space had used trademirrors to relay war alerts among the Chiricahua and White Mountainranges. If Tsoay had returned safely, and if Buck had kept the agreedlookout on that peak a mile or so ahead, then the clan would know thathe was coming and with what escort. 

He waited now, rubbing the small metal mirror absently on the loosesleeve of his shirt, waiting for a reply. Mirrors were best, not smokefires which would broadcast too far the presence of men in the hills. Tsoay must have returned. .. . 

"What is it that you do?"

Menlik, his shaman's robe pulled up so that his breeches and boots weredark against the golden rock, climbed up beside the Apache. Menlik, Hulagur, and Kaydessa were riding with Travis, offering him one oftheir small ponies to hurry the trip. He was still regarded warily bythe Tatars, but he did not blame them for their cautious attitude. 

"Ah--" A flicker of light from the point ahead. One . .. Two . .. Threeflashes, a pause, then two more together. He had been read. Buck haddispatched scouts to meet them, and knowing his people's skill at thebusiness, Travis was certain the Tatars would never suspect theirflanking unless the Apaches purposefully revealed themselves. Also theTatars were not to go to the rancheria, but would be met at a mid-pointby a delegation of Apaches. This was no time for the Tatars to learnjust how few the clan numbered. 

Menlik watched Travis flash an acknowledgment to the sentry ahead. "Inthis way you speak to your men?"

"This way I speak. "

"A thing good and to be remembered. We have the drum, but that is forthe ears of all with hearing. This is for the eyes only of those onwatch for it. Yes, a good thing. And your people--they will meet withus?"

"They wait ahead, " Travis confirmed. 

It was close to midday and the heat, gathered in the rocky ways, waslike a heaviness in the air itself. The Tatars had shucked their heavyjackets and rolled the fur brims of their hats far up their heads awayfrom their sweat-beaded faces. And at every halt they passed from handto hand the skin bag of kumiss. 

Now even the ponies shuffled on with drooping heads, picking a way in acut which deepened into a canyon. Travis kept a watch for the scouts. And not for the first time he thought of the disappearance of thecoyotes. Somehow, back in the Tatar camp, he had counted confidently onthe animals' rejoining him once he had started his return over themountains. 

But he had seen nothing of either beast, nor had he felt thatunexplainable mental contact with them which had been present since hisfirst awakening on Topaz. Why they had left him so unceremoniously afterdefending him from the Mongol attack, and why they were keepingthemselves aloof now, he did not know. But he was conscious of a threadof alarm for their continued absence, and he hoped he would find theyhad gone back to the rancheria. 

The ponies thudded dispiritedly along a sandy wash which bottomed thecanyon. Here the heat became a leaden weight and the men were pantinglike four-footed beasts running before hunters. Finally Travis sightedwhat he had been seeking, a flicker of movement on the wall well above. He flung up his hand, pulling his mount to a stand. Apaches stood infull view, bows ready, arrows on cords. But they made no sound. 

Kaydessa cried out, booted her mount to draw equal with Travis. 

"A trap!" Her face, flushed with heat, was also stark with anger. 

Travis smiled slowly. "Is there a rope about you, Wolf Daughter?" heinquired softly. "Are you now dragged across this sand?"

Her mouth opened and then closed again. The quirt she had half raised toslash at him, flopped across her pony's neck. 

The Apache glanced back at the two men. Hulagur's hand was on his swordhilt, his eyes darting from one of those silent watchers to the next. But the utter hopelessness of the Tatar position was too plain. OnlyMenlik made no move toward any weapon, even his spirit wand. Instead, hesat quietly in the saddle, displaying no emotion toward the Apaches savehis usual self-confident detachment. 

"We go on. " Travis pointed ahead. 

Just as suddenly as they had appeared from the heart of the goldencliffs, so did the scouts vanish. Most of them were already on their wayto the point Buck had selected for the meeting place. There had beenonly six men up there, but the Tatars had no way of knowing just howlarge a portion of the whole clan that number was. 

Travis' pony lifted his head, nickered, and achieved a stumbling trot. Somewhere ahead was water, one of those oases of growth and life whichpocked the whole mountain range--to the preservation of all animals andall men. 

Menlik and Hulagur pushed on until their mounts were hard on the heelsof the two ridden by the girl and Travis. Travis wondered if they stillwaited for some arrow to strike home, though he saw that both men rodewith outward disregard for the patrolling scouts. 

A grass-leaf bush beckoned them on and again the ponies quickened pace, coming out into a tributary canyon which housed a small pool and a goodstand of grass and brush. To one side of the water Buck stood, his armsfolded across his chest, armed only with his belt knife. Grouped behindhim were Deklay, Tsoay, Nolan, Manulito--Travis tabulated hurriedly. Manulito and Deklay were to be classed together--or had been when he waslast in the rancheria. On Buck's stairway from the past, both hadhalted more than halfway down. Nolan was a quiet man who seldom spoke, and whose opinion Travis could not foretell. Tsoay would back Buck. 

Probably such a divided party was the best Travis could have hoped togather. A delegation composed entirely of those who were ready to leavethe past of the Redax--a collection of Bucks and Jil-Lees--was outsidethe bounds of possibility. But Travis was none too happy to have Deklayin on this. 

Travis dismounted, letting the pony push forward by himself to dip noseinto the pool. 

"This is, " Travis pointed politely with his chin--"Menlik, one who talkswith spirits. .. . Hulagur, who is son to a chief . .. And Kaydessa, who isdaughter to a chief. They are of the horse people of the north. " He madethe introduction carefully in English. 

Then he turned to the Tatars. "Buck, Deklay, Nolan, Manulito, Tsoay, " henamed them all, "these stand to listen, and to speak for the Apaches. "

But sometime later when the two parties sat facing each other, hewondered whether a common decision could come from the clansmen on hisside of that irregular circle. Deklay's expression was closed; he hadeven edged a short way back, as if he had no desire to approach thestrangers. And Travis read into every line of Deklay's body his distrustand antagonism. 

He himself began to speak, retelling his adventures since they hadfollowed Kaydessa's trail, sketching in the situation at theTatar-Mongol settlement as he had learned it from her and from Menlik. He was careful to speak in English so that the Tatars could hear all hewas reporting to his own kind. And the Apaches listened blank-faced, though Tsoay must already have reported much of this. When Travis wasdone it was Deklay who asked a question:

"What have we to do with these people?"

"There is this--" Travis chose his words carefully, thinking of whatmight move a warrior still conditioned to riding with the raiders of ahundred years earlier, "the Pinda-lick-o-yi (whom we call 'Reds, ') arenever willing to live side by side with any who are not of their mind. And they have weapons such as make our bow cords bits of rotten string, our knives slivers of rust. They do not kill; they enslave. And whenthey discover that we live, then they will come against us--"

Deklay's lips moved in a wolf grin. "This is a large land, and we knowhow to use it. The Pinda-lick-o-yi will not find us--"

"With their eyes maybe not, " Travis replied. "With their machines--thatis another matter. "

"Machines!" Deklay spat. "Always these machines. .. . Is that all you cantalk about? It would seem that you are bewitched by these machines, which we have not seen--none of us!"

"It was a machine which brought you here, " Buck observed. "Go you backand look upon the spaceship and remember, Deklay. The knowledge of thePinda-lick-o-yi is greater than ours when it deals with metal and wireand things which can be made with both. Machines brought us along theroad of the stars, and there is no tracker in the clan who could hope todo the same. But now I have this to ask: Does our brother have a plan?"

"Those who are Reds, " Travis answered slowly, "they do not number many. But more may later come from our own world. Have you heard of sucharriving?" he asked Menlik. 

"Not so, but we are not told much. We live apart and no one of us goesto the ship unless he is summoned. For they have weapons to guard them, or long since they would have been dead. It is not proper for a man toeat from the pot, ride in the wind, sleep easy under the same sky withhim who has slain his brother. "

"They have then killed among your people?"

"They have killed, " Menlik returned briefly. 

Kaydessa stirred and muttered a word or two to her brother. Hulagur'shead came up, and he exploded into violent speech. 

"What does he say?" Deklay demanded. 

The girl replied: "He speaks of our father who aided in the escape ofthree and so afterward was slain by the leader as a lesson to us--sincehe was our 'white beard, ' the Khan. "

"We have taken the oath in blood--under the Wolf Head Standard--thatthey will also die, " Menlik added. "But first we must shake them out oftheir ship-shell. "

"That is the problem, " Travis elaborated for the benefit of hisclansmen. "We must get these Reds away from their protected camp--outinto the open. When they now go they are covered by this 'caller' whichkeeps the Tatars under their control, but it has no effect on us. "

"So, again I say: What is all this to us?" Deklay got to his feet. "Thismachine does not hunt us, and we can make our camps in this land whereno Pinda-lick-o-yi can find them----"

"We are not _dobe-gusndhe-he_--invulnerable. Nor do we know the fullrange of machines they can use. It does no one well to say'_doxa-da_'--this is not so--when he does not know all that lies in anenemy's wickiup. "

To Travis' relief he saw agreement mirrored on Buck's face, Tsoay's, Nolan's. From the beginning he had had little hope of swaying Deklay; hecould only trust that the verdict of the majority would be the acceptedone. It went back to the old, old Apache institution of prestige. A_nantan_-chief had the _go'ndi_, the high power, as a gift from birth. Common men could possess horse power or cattle power; they might havethe gift of acquiring wealth so they could make generous gifts--be_ikadntl'izi_, the wealthy ones who spoke for their family groups withinthe loose network of the tribe. But there was no hereditarychieftainship or even an undivided rule within a rancheria. The_nagunlka-dnat'an_, or war chief, often led only on the warpath and hadno voice in clan matters save those dealing with a raid. 

And to have a split now would fatally weaken their small clan. Deklayand those of a like mind might elect to withdraw and not one of the restcould deny him that right. 

"We shall think on this, " Buck said. "Here is food, water, pasturage forhorses, a camp for our visitors. They will wait here. " He looked atTravis. "You will wait with them, Fox, since you know their ways. "

Travis' immediate reaction was objection, but then he realized Buck'swisdom. To offer the proposition of alliance to the Apaches needed animpartial spokesman. And if he himself did it, Deklay mightautomatically oppose the idea. Let Buck talk and it would be a statementof fact. 

"It is well, " Travis agreed. 

Buck looked about, as if judging time from the lie of sun and shadow onthe ground. "We shall return in the morning when the shadow lies here. "With the toe of his high moccasin he made an impression in the softearth. Then, without any formal farewell, he strode off, the others faston his heels. 

"He is your chief, that one?" Kaydessa asked, pointing after Buck. 

"He is one having a large voice in council, " Travis replied. He setabout building up the cooking fire, bringing out the body of asplit-horn calf which had been left them. Menlik sat on his heels by thepool, dipping up drinking water with his hand. Now he squinted his eyesagainst the probe of the sun. 

"It will require much talking to win over the short one, " he observed. "That one does not like us or your plan. Just as there will be thoseamong the Horde who will not like it either. " He flipped water dropsfrom his fingers. "But this I do know, man who calls himself Fox, if wedo not make a common cause, then we have no hope of going against theReds. It will be for them as a man crushing fleas. " He brought his handdown on his knee in emphatic slaps. "So . .. And so . .. And so!"

"This do I think also, " Travis admitted. 

"So let us both hope that all men will be as wise as we, " Menlik said, smiling. "And since we can take a hand in that decision, this remains atime for rest. "

The shaman might be content to sleep the afternoon away, but after hehad eaten, Hulagur wandered up and down the valley, making a lengthybusiness of rubbing down their horses with twists of last season'sgrass. Now and then he paused beside Kaydessa and spoke, his uneasinessplain to Travis although he could not understand the words. 

Travis had settled down in the shade, half dozing, yet alert to everymovement of the three Tatars. He tried not to think of what might behappening in the rancheria by switching his mind to that misty valley ofthe towers. Did any of those three alien structures contain such a grabbag of the past as he, Ashe, and Murdock had found on that other worldwhere the winged people had gathered together for them the artifacts ofan older civilization? At that time he had created for their hosts a newweapon of defense, turning metal tubes into blow-guns. It had beenthere, too, where he had chanced upon the library of tapes, one of whichhad eventually landed Travis and his people here on Topaz. 

Even if he did find racks of such tapes in one of those towers, therewould be no way of using them--with the ship wrecked on the mountainside. Only--Travis' fingers itched where they lay quiet on hisknees--there might be other things waiting. If he were only free toexplore!

He reached out to touch Menlik's shoulder. The shaman half turned, opening his eyes with the languid effort of a sleepy cat. But the sparkof intelligence awoke in them quickly. 

"What is it?"

For a moment Travis hesitated, already regretting his impulse. He didnot know how much Menlik remembered of the present. Remember of thepresent--one part of the Apache's mind was wryly amused at that snarledestimate of their situation. Men who had been dropped into their racialand ancestral pasts until the present time was less real than thedreams conditioning them had a difficult job evaluating any situation. But since Menlik had clung to his knowledge of English, he must be lessfar down that stairway. 

"When we met you, Kaydessa and I, it was outside that valley. " Traviswas still of two minds about this questioning, but the Tatar camp hadbeen close to the towers and there was a good chance the Mongols hadexplored them. "And inside were buildings . .. Very old. .. . "

Menlik was fully alert now. He took his wand, played with it as hespoke:

"That is, or was, a place of much power, Fox. Oh, I know that youquestion my kinship with the spirits and the powers they give. But onelearns not to dispute what one feels here--and here--" His long, somewhat grimy fingers went to his forehead and then to the bare brownchest where his shirt fell open. "I have walked the stone path in thatvalley, and there have been the whispers--"

"Whispers?"

Menlik twirled the wand. "Whispers which are too low for many ears todistinguish. You can hear them as one hears the buzzing of an insect, but never the words--no, never the words! But that is a place of greatpower!"

"A place to explore!"

But Menlik watched only his wand. "That I wonder, Fox, truly do Iwonder. This is not our world. And here there may be that which does notwelcome us. "

Tricks-in-trade of a shaman? Or was it true recognition of somethingbeyond human description? Travis could not be sure, but he knew that hemust return to the valley and see for himself. 

"Listen, " Menlik said, leaning closer, "I have heard your tale, thatyou were on that first ship, the one which brought you unwilling alongthe old star paths. Have you ever seen such a thing as this?"

He smoothed a space of soft earth and with the narrow tip of his wandbegan to draw. Whatever role Menlik had played in the present before hehad been reconditioned into a shaman of the Horde, he had had theability of an artist, for with a minimum of lines he created a figure inthat sketch. 

It was a man or at least a figure with general human outlines. But theround, slightly oversized skull was bare, the clothing skintight toreveal unnaturally thin limbs. There were large eyes, small nose andmouth, rather crowded into the lower third of the head, giving animpression of an over-expanded brain case above. And it was familiar. 

Not the flying men of the other world, certainly not the nocturnalape-things. Yet for all its alien quality Travis was sure he had seenits like before. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize it apart fromlines in the soil. 

Such a head, white, almost like the bone of a skull laid bare, such ahead lying face down on a bone-thin arm clad in a blue-purple skintightsleeve. Where had he seen it?

The Apache gave a sharp exclamation as he remembered fully. The derelictspaceship as he had first found it--the dead alien officer had stillbeen seated at its controls! The alien who had set the tape which tookthem out into that forgotten empire--he was the subject of Menlik'sdrawing!

"Where? When did you see such a one?" The Apache bent down over theTatar. 

Menlik looked troubled. "He came into my mind when I walked the valley. I thought I could almost see such a face in one of the tower windows, but of that I am not sure. Who is it?"

"Someone from the old days--those who once ruled the stars, " Travisanswered. But were they still here then, the remnant of a civilizationwhich had flourished ten thousand years ago? Were the Baldies, whocenturies ago had hunted down so ruthlessly the Russians who had daredto loot their wrecked ships, still on Topaz?

He remembered the story of Ross Murdock's escape from those aliens inthe far past of Europe, and he shivered. Murdock was tough, steel tough, yet his own description of that epic chase and the final meeting hadcarried with it his terror. What could a handful of primitively armedand almost primitively minded Terrans do now if they had to disputeTopaz with the Baldies?

10

"Beyond this--" Menlik worked his way to the very lip of a drop, raisinga finger cautiously--"beyond this we do not go. "

"But you say that the camp of your people lies well out in the plains--"Jil-Lee was up on one knee, using the field glasses they had broughtfrom the stores of the wrecked ship. He passed them along to Travis. There was nothing to be sighted but the rippling amber waves of the tallgrasses, save for an occasional break of a copse of trees near thefoothills. 

They had reached this point in the early morning, threading through thepass, making their way across the section known to the outlaws. Fromhere they could survey the debatable land where their temporary alliesinsisted the Reds were in full control. 

The result of the conference in the south had been this uneasy alliance. From the start Travis realized that he could not hope to commit the clanto any set plan, that even to get this scouting party to come againstthe stubborn resistance of Deklay and his reactionaries was a majorachievement. There was now an opening wedge of six Apaches in thenorth. 

"Beyond this, " Menlik repeated, "they keep watch and can control us withthe caller. "

"What do you think?" Travis passed the glasses to Nolan. 

If they were ever to develop a war chief, this lean man, tall for anApache and slow to speak, might fill that role. He adjusted the lensesand began a detailed study-sweep of the open territory. Then hestiffened; his mouth, below the masking of the glasses, was tight. 

"What is it?" Jil-Lee asked. 

"Riders--two . .. Four . .. Five. .. . Also something else--in the air. "

Menlik jerked back and grabbed at Nolan's arm, dragging him down by theweight of his body. 

"The flyer! Come back--back!" He was still pulling at Nolan, prodding atTravis with one foot, and the Apaches stared at him with amazement. 

The shaman sputtered in his own language, and then, visibly regainingcommand of himself, spoke English once more. 

"Those are hunters, and they carry a caller. Either some others haveescaped or they are determined to find our mountain camp. "

Jil-Lee looked at Travis. "You did not feel anything when the woman wasunder that spell?"

Travis shook his head. Jil-Lee nodded and then said to the shaman: "Weshall stay here and watch. But since it is bad for you--do you go. Andwe shall meet you near this place of the towers. Agreed?"

For a moment Menlik's face held a shadowy expression Travis tried toread. Was it resentment--resentment that he was forced to retreat whenthe others could stand their ground? Did the Tatar believe that he lostface this way? But the shaman gave a grunt of what they took as assentand slipped over the edge of the lookout point. A moment later theyheard him speaking the Mongol tongue, warning Hulagur and Lotchu, hiscompanions on the scout. Then came the clatter of pony hoofs as theyrode their mounts away. 

The Apaches settled back in the cup, which gave them a wide view overthe plains. Soon it was not necessary to use the glasses in order tosight the advancing party of hunters--five riders, four wearing Tatardress. The fifth had such an odd outline that Travis was reminded ofMenlik's sketch of the alien. Under the sharper vision of the glasses hesaw that the rider was equipped with a pack strapped between hisshoulders and a bulbous helmet covering most of his head. Highlyspecialized equipment for communication, Travis guessed. 

"That is a 'copter up above, " Nolan said. "Different shape from ours. "

They had been familiar with helicopters back on Terra. Ranchers usedthem for range inspection, and all of the Apache volunteers had flown inthem. But Nolan was correct; this one possessed several unfamiliarfeatures. 

"The Tatars say they don't bring those very far into the mountains, "Jil-Lee mused. "That could explain their man on horseback; he gets inwhere they don't fly. "

Nolan fingered his bow. "If these Reds depend upon their machine tocontrol what they seek, then they may be taken by surprise----"

"But not yet!" Travis spoke sharply. Nolan frowned at him. 

Jil-Lee chuckled. "The way is not so dark for us, younger brother, thatwe need your torch held for our feet!"

Travis swallowed back any retort, accepting the fairness of that rebuke. He had no right to believe that he alone knew the best way of handlingthe enemy. Biting on the sourness of that realization, he lay quietlywith the others, watching the riders enter the foothills perhaps aquarter of a mile to the west. 

The helicopter was circling now over the men riding into a cut betweentwo rises. When they were lost to view, the pilot made wider casts, andTravis thought the flyer's crew were probably in communication with thehelmeted one of the quintet on the ground. 

He stirred. "They are heading for the Tatar camp, just as if they knowexactly where it is--"

"That also may be true, " Nolan replied. "What do we know of theseTatars? They have freely said that the Reds can hold them in mind ropeswhen they wish. Already they may be so bound. I say--let us go back toour own country. " He added to the decisiveness of that by handingJil-Lee the glasses and sliding down from their perch. 

Travis looked at the other. In a way he could understand the wisdom ofNolan's suggestion. But he was sure that withdrawal now would onlypostpone trouble. Sooner or later the Apaches would have to standagainst the Reds, and if they could do it now while the enemy wasoccupied with trouble from the Tatars, so much the better. 

Jil-Lee was following Nolan. But something in Travis rebelled. Hewatched the circling helicopter. If it was overhanging the action areaof the horsemen, they had either reined in or were searching arelatively small section of the foothills. 

Reluctantly Travis descended to the hollow where Jil-Lee stood withNolan. Tsoay and Lupe and Rope were a little to one side as if the finalorders would come from their seniors. 

"It would be well, " Jil-Lee said slowly, "if we saw what weapons theyhave. I want a closer look at the equipment of that one in the helmet. Also, " he smiled straight at Nolan--"I do not think that they can detectthe presence of warriors of the People unless we will it so. "

Nolan ran a finger along the curve of his bow, shot a measuring glanceright and left at the general contours of the country. 

"There is wisdom in what you say, elder brother. Only this is a trail weshall take alone, not allowing the men with fur hats to know where wewalk. " He looked pointedly in Travis' direction. 

"That is wisdom, _Ba'is'a_, " Travis promptly replied, giving Nolan theold title accorded the leader of a war party. Travis was grateful forthat much of a concession. 

They swung into action, heading southeast at an angle which should bringthem across the track of the enemy hunting party. The path was theirs atlast, only moments after the passing of their quarry. None of the fiveriders was taking any precautions to cover his trail. Each moved withthe confidence of one not having to fear any attack. 

From cover the Apaches looked aloft. They could hear the faint hum ofthe helicopter. It was still circling, Tsoay reported from a highercheck point, but those circles remained close over the plains area--theriders had already passed beyond the limits of that aerial sentry. 

Three to a side, the Apaches advanced with the trail between them. Theywere carefully hidden when they caught up with the hunters. The fourTatars were grouped together; the fifth man, heavily burdened by hispack, had climbed from the saddle and was sitting on the ground, hishands busy with a flat plate which covered him from upper chest to belt. 

Now that he had a chance to see them closely, Travis noted the lack ofexpression on the broad Tatar faces. The four men were blank of eye, astride their mounts with no apparent awareness of their presentsurroundings. Then as one, their heads swung around to the helmetedleader before they dismounted and stood motionless for a long moment ina way which reminded Travis of the coyotes' attitude when theyendeavored to pass some message to him. But these men even lacked thesigns of thinking intelligence the animals had. 

The helmeted man's hand moved across his chest plate, and instantly hisfollowers came into a measure of life. One put his hand to his foreheadwith an odd, half-dazed gesture. Another half crouched, his lipswrinkling back in a snarl. And the leader, watching him, laughed. Thenhe snapped an order, his hand poised over his control plate. 

One of the four took the horse reins, made the mounts fast to near-bybushes. Then as one they began to walk forward, the Red bringing up therear several paces behind the nearest Tatar. They were going upslope tothe crest of a small ridge. 

The Tatar who first reached the crest put his hands to cup his mouth, sent a ringing cry southward, and the faint "hu-hu-hu" echoed on and onthrough the hills. 

Either Menlik had reached the camp in time, or his people were not to beso easily enticed. For though the hunters waited for a long time, therewas no answer to that hail. At last the helmeted man called hiscaptives, bringing them sullenly down to mount and ride again--a movewhich suited the Apaches. 

They could not tell how close was the communication between the riderand the helicopter. And they were still too near the plains to attackunless it was necessary for their own protection. Travis dropped back tojoin Nolan. 

"He controls them by that plate on his chest, " he said. "If we wouldtake them, we must get at that--"

"These Tatars use lariats in fighting. Did they not rope you as a calfis roped for branding? Then why do they not so take this Red, bindinghis arms to his sides?" The suspicion in Nolan's voice was plain. 

"Perhaps in them is some conditioned control making it so that theycannot attack their rulers--"

"I do not like this matter of machines which can play this way and thatwith minds and bodies!" flared Nolan. "A man should only _use_ a weapon, not be one!"

Travis could agree to that. Had they by the wreck of their own ship andthe death of Ruthven, escaped just such an existence as these Tatars nowendured? If so, why? He and all the Apaches were volunteers, eager andwilling to form new world colonies. What had happened back on Terra thatthey had been so ruthlessly sent out without warning and under Redax?Another small piece of that puzzle, or maybe the heart of the wholepicture snapped into place. Had the project learned in some way of theTatar settlement on Topaz and so been forced to speed up thattranslation from late twentieth-century Americans to primitives? Thatwould explain a lot!

Travis returned abruptly to the matter now at hand as he saw a peakahead. The party they were trailing was heading directly for the outlawhide-out. Travis hoped Menlik had warned them in time. There--that wallof cliff to his left must shelter the valley of the towers, though itwas still miles ahead. Travis did not believe the hunters would be ableto reach their goal unless they traveled at night. They might not knowof the ape-things which could menace the dark. 

But the enemy, whether he knew of such dangers or not, did not intend topress on. As the sun pulled away, leaving crevices and crannies shadowdark, the hunters stopped to make camp. The Apaches, after their customon the war trail, gathered on the heights above. 

"This Red seems to think that he shall find those he seeks sittingwaiting for him, as if their feet were nipped tight in a trap, " Tsoayremarked. 

"It is the habit of the Pinda-lick-o-yi, " Lupe added, "to believe theyare greater than all others. Yet this one is a stupid fool walking intothe arms of a she-bear with a cub. " He chuckled. 

"A man with a rifle does not fear a man armed only with a stick, " Traviscut in quickly. "This one is armed with a weapon which he has goodreason to believe makes him invulnerable to attack. If he rests tonight, he probably leaves his machine on guard. "

"At least we are sure of one thing, " Nolan said in half agreement. "Thisone does not suspect that there are any in these hills save those he canmaster. And his machine does not work against us. Thus at dawn--" Hemade a swift gesture, and they smiled in concert. 

At dawn--the old time of attack. An Apache does not attack at night. Travis was not sure that any of them could break that old taboo andcreep down upon the camp before the coming of new light. 

But tomorrow morning they would take over this confident Red, strip himof his enslaving machine. 

Travis' head jerked. It had come as suddenly as a blow between hiseyes--to half stun him. What . .. What was it? Not any physicalimpact--no, something which was dazing but still immaterial. He bracedhis whole body, awaiting its return, trying frantically to understandwhat had happened in that instant of vertigo and seeming disembodiment. Never had he experienced anything like it--or had he? Two years or moreago when he had gone through the time transfer to enter the Arizona ofthe Folsom Men some ten thousand years earlier--that moment of transferhad been something like this, a sensation of being awry in space andtime with no stable footing to be found. 

Yet he was lying here on very tangible rock and soil, and nothing abouthim in the shadow-hung landscape of Topaz had changed in the slightest. But that blow had left behind it a quivering residue of panic buried farinside him, a tender spot like an open wound. 

Travis drew a deep breath which was almost a sob, levered himself up onone elbow to stare intently down into the enemy camp. Was this someattack from the other's unknown weapon? Suddenly he was not at all surewhat might happen when the Apaches made that dawn rush. 

Jil-Lee was in station on his right. Travis must compare notes with himto be sure that this was not indeed a trap. Better to retreat now thanto be taken like fish in a net. He crept out of his place, gave thechittering signal call of the fluff-ball, and heard Jil-Lee's answer ina cleverly mimicked trill of a night insect. 

"Did you feel something just now--in your head?" Travis found itdifficult to put that sensation into words. 

"Not so. But you did?"

He had--of course, he had! The remains of it were still in him, thatpoint of panic. "Yes. "

"The machine?"

"I don't know. " Travis' confusion grew. It might be that he alone of theparty had been struck. If so, he could be a danger to his own kind. 

"This is not good. I think we had better hold council, away from here. "Jil-Lee's whisper was the merest ghost of sound. He chirped again to beanswered from Tsoay upslope, who passed on the signal. 

The first moon was high in the sky as the Apaches gathered together. Again Travis asked his question: Had any of the others felt that oddblow? He was met by negatives. 

But Nolan had the final word: "This is not good, " he echoed Jil-Lee'scomment. "If it was the Red machine at work, then we may all be sweptinto his net along with those he seeks. Perhaps the longer one remainsclose to that thing, the more influence it gains over him. We shall stayhere until dawn. If the enemy would reach the place they seek, then theymust pass below us, for that is the easiest road. Burdened with hismachine, that Red has ever taken the easiest way. So, we shall see if healso has a defense against these when they come without warning. " Hetouched the arrows in his quiver. 

To kill from ambush meant that they might never learn the secret of themachine, but after his experience Travis was willing to admit thatNolan's caution was the wise way. Travis wanted no part of a secondattack like that which had shaken him so. And Nolan had not ordered ageneral retreat. It must be in the war chief's thoughts as it was inTravis' that if the machine could have an influence over Apaches, itmust cease to function. 

They set their ambush with the age-old skill the Redax had grafted intotheir memories. Then there was nothing to do but wait. 

It was an hour after dawn when Tsoay signaled that the enemy was coming, and shortly after, they heard the thud of ponies' hoofs. The first Tatarplodded into view, and by the stance of his body in the saddle, Travisknew the Red had him under full control. Two, then three Tatars passedbetween the teeth of the Apache trap. The fourth one had allowed a widergap to open between himself and his fellows. 

Then the Red leader came. His face below the bulge of the helmet was nothappy. Travis believed the man was not a horseman by inclination. TheApache set arrow to bow cord, and at the chirp from Nolan, fired inconcert with his clansmen. 

Only one of those arrows found a target. The Red's pony gave a shrillscream of pain and terror, reared, pawing at the air, toppled back, pinning its shouting rider under it. 

The Red had had a defense right enough, one which had somehow deflectedthe arrows. But he neither had protection against his own awkward seatin the saddle nor the arrow which had seriously wounded the nowthreshing pony. 

Ahead the Tatars twisted and writhed, mouthed tortured cries, thendropped out of their saddles to lie limply on the ground as if thearrows aimed at the master had instead struck each to the heart. 

11

Either the Red was lucky, or his reactions were quick. He had somehowrolled clear of the struggling horse as Lupe leaped from behind aboulder, knife out and ready. To the eyes of the Apaches the helmetedman lay easy prey to Lupe's attack. Nor did he raise an arm to defendhimself, though one hand lay free across the plate on his chest. 

But the young Apache stumbled, rebounding back as if he had run into anunseen wall--when his knife was still six inches away from the other. Lupe cried out, shook under a second impact as the Red fired anautomatic with his other hand. 

Travis dropped his bow, returned to the most primitive weapon of all. His hand closed around a stone and he hurled the fist-sized ovalstraight at the helmet so clearly outlined against the rocks below. 

But even as Lupe's knife had never touched flesh, so was the rockdeflected; the Red was covered by some protective field. This wascertainly nothing the Apaches had seen before. Nolan's whistle summonedthem to draw back. 

The Red fired again, the sharp bark of the hand gun harsh and loud. Hedid not have any real target, for with the exception of Lupe the Apacheshad gone to earth. Between the rocks the Red was struggling to his feet, but he moved slowly, favoring his side and one leg; he had not cometotally unharmed from his tumble with the pony. 

An armed enemy who could not be touched--one who knew there were morethan outlaws in this region. The Red leader was far more of a threat tothe Apaches now than he had ever been. He must not be allowed to escape. 

He was holstering his gun, moving along with one hand against the rocksto steady himself, trying to reach one of the ponies that stood withtrailing reins beside the inert Tatars. 

But when the enemy reached the far side of that rock he would have tosacrifice either his steadying hold, or his touch on the chest platewhere his other hand rested. Would he, then, for an instant bevulnerable?

The pony!

Travis put an arrow on bow cord and shot. Not at the Red, who hadreleased his hold of the rock, preferring to totter instead of losecontrol of the chest plate--but into the air straight before the nose ofthe mount. 

The pony neighed wildly, tried to turn, and its shoulder caught thefree, groping hand of the Red and spun the man around and back, so thathe flung up both hands in an effort to ward himself off the rocks. Thenthe pony stampeded down the break, its companions catching the samefever, trailing in a mad dash which kept the Red hard against theboulders. 

He continued to stand there until the horses, save for the wounded onestill kicking fruitlessly, were gone. Travis felt a sense of reprieve. They might not be able to get at the Red, but he was hurt and afoot, twostrikes which might yet reduce him to a condition the Apaches couldhandle. 

Apparently the other was also aware of that, for now he pushed out fromthe rocks and stumbled along after the ponies. But he went only a stepor two. Then, settling back once more against a convenient boulder, hebegan to work at the plate on his chest. 

Nolan appeared noiselessly beside Travis. "What does he do?" His lipswere very close to the younger man's ear, his voice hardly more than abreath. 

Travis shook his head slightly. The Red's actions were a completemystery. Unless, now disabled and afoot, he was trying to summon aid. Though there was no landing place for a helicopter here. 

Now was the time to try and reach Lupe. Travis had seen a slightmovement in the fallen Apache's hand, the first indication that theenemy's shot had not been as fatal as it had looked. He touched Nolan'sarm, pointed to Lupe; and then, discarding his bow and quiver beside thewar leader, he stripped for action. There was cover down to the woundedApache which would aid him. He must pass one of the Tatars on the way, but none of the tribesmen had shown any signs of life since they hadfallen from their saddles at the first attack. 

With infinite care, Travis lowered himself into a narrow passage, took alizard's way between brush and boulder, pausing only when he reached theTatar for a quick check on the potential enemy. 

The lean brown face was half turned, one cheek in the sand, but theslack mouth, the closed eyes were those, Travis believed, of a dead man. By some action of his diabolic machine the Red must have snuffed out hisfour captives--perhaps in the belief that they were part of the Apacheattack. 

Travis reached the rock where Lupe lay. He knew that Nolan was watchingthe Red and would give him warning if he suddenly showed an interest inanything but his machine. The Apache reached out, his hands closing onLupe's ankles. Beneath his touch, flesh and muscle tensed. Lupe's eyeswere open, focused now on Travis. There was a bleeding furrow above hisright ear. The Red had tried a difficult head shot, failing in his aimby a mere fraction of an inch. 

Lupe made a swift move for which Travis was ready. His grip on theother's body helped to tumble them both around a rock which lay betweenthem and the Red. There was the crack of another shot and dust spurtedfrom the side of the boulder. But they lay together, safe for thepresent, as Travis was sure the enemy would not risk an open attack ontheir small fortress. 

With Travis' aid Lupe struggled back up to the site where Nolan waited. Jil-Lee was there to make competent examination of the boy's wound. 

"Creased, " he reported. "A sore head, but no great damage. Perhaps ascar later, warrior!" He gave Lupe an encouraging thump on the shoulder, before plastering an aid pack over the cut. 

"Now we go!" Nolan spoke with emphatic decision. 

"He saw enough of us to know we are not Tatars. "

Nolan's eyes were cold, his mouth grim as he faced Travis. 

"And how can we fight him--?"

"There is a wall--a wall you cannot see--about him, " Lupe broke in. "When I would strike at him, I could not!"

"A man with invisible protection and a gun, " Jil-Lee took up theargument. "How would you deal with him, younger brother?"

"I don't know, " Travis admitted. Yet he also believed that if theywithdrew, left the Red here to be found by his own people, the enemywould immediately begin an investigation of the southern country. Perhaps, pushed by their need for learning more about the Apaches, theywould bring the helicopter in over the mountains. The answer to allApache dangers, for now, lay in the immediate future of this one man. 

"He is hurt, he cannot go far on foot. And even if he calls the 'copter, there is no landing place. He will have to move elsewhere to be pickedup. " Travis thought aloud, citing the thin handful of points in theirfavor. 

Tsoay nodded toward the rim of the ravine. "Rocks up there and rocks canroll. Start an earthslide. .. . "

Something within Travis balked at that. From the first he had beenwilling enough to slug it out with the Red, weapon to weapon, man toman. Also, he had wanted to take a captive, not stand over a body. Butto use the nature of the country against the enemy, that was the oldestApache trick of all and one they would have to be forced to employ. 

Nolan had already nodded in assent, and Tsoay and Jil-Lee started off. Even if the Red did possess a protective wall device, could it operatein full against a landslide? They all doubted that. 

The Apaches reached the cliff rim without exposing themselves to theenemy's fire. The Red still sat there calmly, his back against the rock, his hands busy with his equipment as if he had all the time in theworld. 

Then suddenly came a scream from more than one throat. 

"_Dar-u-gar_!" The ancient war cry of the Mongol Hordes. 

Then over the lip of the other slope rose a wave of men--their curvedswords out, a glazed set to their eyes--heading for the Amerindians withutter disregard for any personal safety. Menlik in the lead, hisshaman's robe flapping wide below his belt like the wings of someoversized predatory bird. Hulagur . .. Jagatai . .. Men from the outlaws'camp. And they were not striving to destroy their disabled overlord inthe vale below, but to wipe out the Apaches!

Only the fact that the Apaches were already sheltered behind the rocksthey were laboring to dislodge gave them a precious few moments ofgrace. There was no time to use their bows. They could only use knivesto meet the swords of the Tatars, knives and the fact that they couldfight with unclouded minds. 

"He has them under control!" Travis pawed at Jil-Lee's shoulder. "Gethim--they'll stop!"

He did not wait to see if the other Apache understood. Instead, he threwthe full force of his own body against the rock they had made the centerstone of their slide. It gave, rolled, carrying with it and before itthe rest of the piled rubble. Travis stumbled, fell flat, and then abody thudded down upon him, and he was fighting for his life to keep ablade from his throat. Around him were the shouts and cries of embroiledwarriors; then all was silenced by a roar from below. 

Glazed eyes in a face only a foot from his own, the twisted, pantingmouth sending gusts of breath into his nostrils. Suddenly there wasreason back in those eyes, a bewilderment, which became fear . .. Panic. .. . The Tatar's body twisted in Travis' hold, striving now not toattack, but to win free. As the Apache loosened his grip the otherjerked away, so that for a moment or two they lay gasping, side by side. 

Men sat up to look at men. There was a spreading stain down Jil-Lee'sside and one of the Tatars sprawled near him, both his hands on hischest, coughing violently. 

Menlik clawed at the trunk of a wind-twisted mountain tree, pulledhimself to his feet, and stood swaying as might a man long ill andrecovering from severe exertion. 

Insensibly both sides drew apart, leaving a space between Tatar andApache. The faces of the Amerindians were grim, those of the Mongolsbewildered and then harsh as they eyed their late opponents with dawningreason. What had begun in compulsion for the Tatars might well flare nowinto rational combat--and from that to a campaign of extermination. 

Travis was on his feet. He looked over the lip of the drop. The Red wasstill in his place down there, a pile of rubble about him. Hisprotection must have failed, for his head was back at an unnatural angleand the dent in his helmet could be easily seen. 

"That one is dead--or helpless!" Travis cried out. "Do you still wish tofight for him, Shaman?"

Menlik came away from the tree and walked to the edge of the drop. Theothers, too, were moving forward. After the shaman looked down hestooped, picked up a small stone, and flung it at the motionless Red. There was a crack of sound. They all saw the tiny spurt of flame, a curlof smoke from the plate on the Red's chest. Not only the man, but hiscontrol was finished now. 

A wolfish growl and two of the Tatars swung over, started down to theRed. Menlik shouted and they slackened pace. 

"We want that, " he cried in English. "Perhaps so we can learn--"

"The learning is yours, " Jil-Lee replied. "Just as this land is yours, Shaman. But I warn you, from this day do not ride south!"

Menlik turned, the charms on his belt clicking. "So that is the way itis to be, Apache?"

"That is the way it shall be, Tatar! We do not ride to war with allieswho may turn their knives against our backs because they are slaves to amachine the enemy controls. "

The Tatar's long, slender-fingered hands opened and closed. "You are awise man, Apache, but sometimes more than wisdom alone is needed----"

"We are wise men, Shaman, let it rest there, " Jil-Lee replied somberly. 

Already the Apaches were on their way, putting two cliff ridges behindthem before they halted to examine and cover their wounds. 

"We go. " Nolan's chin lifted, indicating the southern route. "Here wedo not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place. "

Travis stirred, saw that Jil-Lee was frowning at him. 

"Go--?" he repeated. 

"Yes, younger brother? You would continue to run with these who aregoverned by a machine?"

"No. Only, eyes are needed on this side of the mountains. "

"Why?" This time Jil-Lee was plainly on the side of the conservatives. "We have now seen this machine at work. It is fortunate that the Red isdead. He will carry no tales of us back to his people as you feared. Thus, if we remain south from now on, we are safe. And this fightbetween Tatar and Red is none of ours. What do you seek here?"

"I must go again to the place of the towers, " Travis answered with thetruth. But his friends were facing him with heavy disapproval--now afull row of Deklays. 

"Did you not tell us that you felt this strange thing during the nightwe waited about the camp? What if you become one with these Tatars andare also controlled by the machine? Then you, too, can be made into aweapon against us--your clansmen!" Jil-Lee was almost openly hostile. 

Sense was on his side. But in Travis was this other desire of which hewas becoming more conscious by the minute. There was a reason for thosetowers, perhaps a reason important enough for him to discover and runthe risk of angering his own people. 

"There may be this--" Nolan's voice was remote and cold, "you mayalready be a piece of this thing, bound to the machines. If so, we donot want you among us. "

There it was--an open hostility with more power behind it than Deklay'smotiveless disapproval had carried. Travis was troubled. The family, theclan--they were important. If he took the wrong step now and wasoutlawed from that tight fortress, then as an Apache he would indeed bea lost man. In the past of his people there had been renegades from thetribe--men such as the infamous Apache Kid who had killed and killedagain, not only white men but his own people. Wolf men living wolves'lives in the hills. Travis was threatened with that. Yet--up the ladderof civilization, down the ladder--why did this feverish curiosity ridehim so cruelly now?

"Listen, " Jil-Lee, his side padded with bandages, stepped closer--"andtell me, younger brother, what is it that you seek in these towers?"

"On another world there were secrets of the old ones to be found in suchancient buildings. Here that might also be true. "

"And among the secrets of those old ones, " Nolan's voice was stillharsh--"were those which brought us to this world, is that not so?"

"Did any man drive you, Nolan, or you, Tsoay, or you, Jil-Lee, or any ofus, to promise to go beyond the stars? You were told what might be done, and you were eager to try it. You were all volunteers!"

"Save for this voyage when we were told nothing, " Jil-Lee answered, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. "Yet, Nolan, I do notbelieve that it is for more voyage tapes that our younger brother nowsearches, nor would those do us any good--as our ship will not riseagain from here. What is it that you do seek?"

"Knowledge--weapons, maybe. Can we stand against these machines of theReds? Yet many of the devices they now use are taken from the star shipsthey have looted through time. To every weapon there is a defense. "

Nolan blinked and for the first time a hint of interest touched the maskof his face. "To the bow, the rifle, " he said softly, "to the rifle, themachine gun, to the cannon, the big bomb. The defense can be far worsethan the first weapon. So you think that in these towers there may bethings which shall be to the Reds' machines as the bomb is to the cannonof the Horse Soldiers?"

Travis had an inspiration. "Did not our people lay aside the bow for therifle when we went up against the Bluecoats?"

"We do not so go up against these Reds!" protested Lupe. 

"Not now. But what if they come across the mountains, perhaps drivingthe Tatars before them to do their fighting--?"

"And you believe that if you find weapons in these towers, you will knowhow to use them?" Jil-Lee asked. "What will give you that knowledge, younger brother?"

"I do not claim such knowledge, " Travis countered. "But this much I dohave: Once I studied to be an archaeologist and I have seen otherstorehouses of these star people. Who else among us can say as much asthat?"

"That is the truth, " Jil-Lee acknowledged. "Also there is good sense inthis seeking out of the tower things. Let the Reds find such first--ifthey exist at all--and then we may truly be caught in a box canyon withonly death at our heels. "

"And you would go to these towers now?" Nolan demanded. 

"I can cut across country and then rejoin you on the other side of thepass!" The feeling of urgency which had been mounting in Travis was nowso demanding that he wanted to race ahead through the wilderness. He wassurprised when Jil-Lee put out his palm up as if to warn the youngerman. 

"Take care, younger brother! This is not a lucky business. And remember, if one goes too far down a wrong trail, there is sometimes noreturning--"

"We shall wait on the other side of the pass for one day, " Nolan added. "Then--" he shrugged--"where you go will be your own affair. "

Travis did not understand that promise of trouble. He was already twosteps down his chosen path. 

12

Travis had taken a direct cross route through the heights, but notswiftly enough to reach his objective before nightfall. And he had nowish to enter the tower valley by moonlight. In him two emotions nowwarred. There was the urge to invade the towers, to discover theirsecret, and flaring higher and higher the beginnings of a new fear. Washe now a battlefield for the superstitions of his race reborn by theRedax and his modern education in the Pinda-lick-o-yi world--half Apachebrave of the past, half modern archaeologist with a thirst forknowledge? Or was the fear rooted more deeply and for another reason?

Travis crouched in a hollow, trying to understand what he felt. Why wasit suddenly so overwhelmingly important for him to investigate thetowers? If he only had the coyotes with him. .. . Why and where had theygone?

He was alive to every noise out of the night, every scent the windcarried to him. The night had its own life, just as the daylight hoursheld theirs. Only a few of those sounds could he identify, even less didhe see. There was one wide-winged, huge flying thing which passedacross the green-gold plate of the nearer moon. It was so large that foran instant Travis believed the helicopter had come. Then the wingsflapped, breaking the glide, and the creature merged in the shadows ofthe night--a hunter large enough to be a serious threat, and one he hadnever seen before. 

Relying on his own small defense, the strewing of brittle sticks alongthe only approach to the hollow, Travis dozed at intervals, his headdown on his forearm across his bent knees. But the cold cramped him andhe was glad to see the graying sky of pre-dawn. He swallowed two rationtablets and a couple of mouthfuls of water from his canteen and startedon. 

By sunup he had reached the ledge of the waterfall, and he hurried alongthe ancient road at a pace which increased to a run the closer he drewto the valley. Deliberately he slowed, his native caution now incontrol, so that he was walking as he passed through the gateway intothe swirling mists which alternately exposed and veiled the towers. 

There was no change in the scene from the time he had come there withKaydessa. But now, rising from a comfortable sprawl on theyellow-and-green pavement, was a welcoming committee--Nalik'ideyu andNaginlta showing no more excitement at his coming than if they hadparted only moments before. 

Travis went down on one knee, holding out his hand to the female, whohad always been the more friendly. She advanced a step or two, touched acold nose to his knuckles, and whined. 

"Why?" He voiced that one word, but behind it was a long list ofquestions. Why had they left him? Why were they here where there was nohunting? Why did they meet him now as if they had calmly expected hisreturn?

Travis glanced from the animals to the towers, those windows set indiamond pattern. And again he was visited by the impression that he wasunder observation. With the mist floating across those openings, itwould be easy for a lurker to watch him unseen. 

He walked slowly on into the valley, his moccasins making no sound onthe pavement, but he could hear the faint click of the coyotes' claws asthey paced beside him, on each hand. The sun did not penetrate here, making merely a gilt fog of the mist. As he approached within touchingdistance of the first tower, it seemed to Travis that the mist wascurling about him; he could no longer see the archway through which hehad entered the valley. 

"Naye'nezyani--Slayer of Monsters--give strength to the bow arm, to theknife wrist!" Out of what long-buried memory did that ancient plea come?Travis was hardly aware of the sense of the words until he spoke themaloud. "You who wait--_shi inday to-dah ishan_--an Apache is not foodfor you! I am Fox of the Itcatcudnde'yu--the Eagle People; and beside mewalk _ga'ns_ of power. .. . "

Travis blinked and shook his head as one waking. Why had he spoken so, using words and phrases which were not part of any modern speech?

He moved on, around the base of the first tower, to find no door, nobreak in its surface below the second-story windows--to the nextstructure and the next, until he had encircled all three. If he were toenter any, he must find a way of reaching the lowest windows. 

On he went to the other opening of the valley, the one which gave uponthe territory of the Tatar camp. But he did not sight any of the Mongolsas he hacked down a sapling, trimmed, and smoothed it into ablunt-pointed lance. His sash-belt, torn into even strips and knottedtogether, gave him a rope which he judged would be barely long enoughfor his purpose. 

Then Travis made a chancy cast for the lower window of the nearesttower. On the second try the lance slipped in, and he gave a quick jerk, jamming the lance as a bar across the opening. It was a frail ladder butthe best he could improvise. He climbed until the sill of the window waswithin reach and he could pull himself up and over. 

The sill was a wide one, at least a twenty-four-inch span between theinner and outer surface of the tower. Travis sat there for a minute, reluctant to enter. Near the end of his dangling scarf-rope the twocoyotes lay on the pavement, their heads up, their tongues lolling fromtheir mouths, their expressions ones of detached interest. 

Perhaps it was the width of the outer wall that subdued the amount oflight in the room. The chamber was circular, and directly opposite himwas a second window, the lowest of the matching diamond pattern. He tookthe four-foot drop from the sill to the floor but lingered in the lightas he surveyed every inch of the room. There were no furnishings at all, but in the very center sank a well of darkness. A smooth pillar, glowingfaintly, rose from its core. Travis' adjusting eyes noted how the lightcame in small ripples--green and purple, over a foundation shade of darkblue. 

The pillar seemed rooted below and it extended up through a similaropening in the ceiling, providing the only possible exit up or down, save for climbing from window to window outside. Travis moved slowly tothe well. Underfoot was a smooth surface overlaid with a velvet carpetof dust which arose in languid puffs as he walked. Here and there hesighted prints in the dust, strange triangular wedges which he thoughtmight possibly have been made by the claws of birds. But there were noother footprints. This tower had been undisturbed for a long, long time. 

He came to the well and looked down. There was dark there, dark in whichthe pulsations of light from the pillar shown the stronger. But thatglow did not extend beyond the edge of the well through which the thickrod threaded. Even by close examination he could detect no break in thesmooth surface of the pillar, nothing remotely resembling hand- orfootholds. If it did serve the purpose of a staircase, there were notreads. 

At last Travis put out his hand to touch the surface of the pillar. Andthen he jerked back--to no effect. There was no breaking contact betweenhis fingers and an unknown material which had the sleekness of polishedmetal but--and the thought made him slightly queasy--the warmth and veryslight give of flesh!

He summoned all his strength to pull free and could not. Not only didthat hold grip him, but his other hand and arm were being drawn to jointhe first! Inside Travis primitive fears awoke full force, and he threwback his head, voicing a cry of panic as wild as that of a huntingbeast. 

An instant later, his left palm was as tight a prisoner as his right. And with both hands so held, his whole body was suddenly snappedforward, off the safe foundation of the floor, tight to the pillar. 

In this position he was sucked down into the well. And while unable tofree himself from the pillar, he did slip along its length easilyenough. Travis shut his eyes in an involuntary protest against thisweird form of capture, and a shiver ran through his body as he continuedto descend. 

After the first shock had subsided the Apache realized that he was nottruly falling at all. Had the pillar been horizontal instead ofvertical, he would have gauged its speed that of a walk. He passedthrough two more room enclosures; he must already be below the level ofthe valley floor outside. And he was still a prisoner of the pillar, nowin total darkness. 

His feet came down against a level surface, and he guessed he must havereached the end. Again he pulled back, arching his shoulders in a finaldesperate attempt at escape, and stumbled away as he was released. 

He came up sideways against a wall and stood there panting. The light, which might have come from the pillar but which seemed more a part ofthe very air, was bright enough to reveal that he was in a corridorrunning into greater dark both right and left. 

Travis took two strides back to the pillar, fitted his palms once againto its surface, with no result. This time his flesh did not adhere andthere was no possible way for him to climb that slick pole. He couldonly hope that at some point the corridor would give him access to thesurface. But which way to go--?

At last he chose the right-hand path and started along it, pausing everyfew steps to listen. But there was no sound except the soft pad of hisown feet. The air was fresh enough, and he thought he could detect afaint current coming toward him from some point ahead--perhaps an exit. 

Instead, he came into a room and a small gasp of astonishment was wrungout of him. The walls were blank, covered with the same ripples ofblue-purple-green light which colored the pillar. Just before him was atable and behind it a bench, both carved from the native yellow-redmountain rock. And there was no exit except the doorway in which he nowstood. 

Travis walked to the bench. Immovable, it was placed so that whoever satthere must face the opposite wall of the chamber with the table beforehim. And on the table was an object Travis recognized immediately fromhis voyage in the alien star ship, one of the reader-viewers throughwhich the involuntary explorers had learned what little they knew of theolder galactic civilization. 

A reader--and beside it a box of tapes. Travis touched the edge of thatbox gingerly, half expecting it to crumble into nothingness. This was aplace long deserted. Stone table, bench, the towers could survivethrough centuries of abandonment, but these other objects. .. . 

The substance of the reader was firm under the film of dust; there wasless dust here than had been in the upper tower chamber. Hardly knowingwhy, Travis threw one leg over the bench and sat down behind the table, the reader before him, the box of tapes just beyond his hand. 

He surveyed the walls and then looked away hurriedly. The ripplingcolors caught at his eyes. He had a feeling that if he watched that ebband flow too long, he would be captured in some subtle web ofenchantment just as the Reds' machine had caught and held the Tatars. Heturned his attention to the reader. It was, he believed, much like theone they had used on the ship. 

This room, table, bench, had all been designed with a set purpose. Andthat purpose--Travis' fingers rested on the box of tapes he could notyet bring himself to open--that purpose was to use the reader, he wouldswear to that. Tapes so left must have had a great importance for thosewho left them. It was as if the whole valley was a trap to channel astranger into this underground chamber. 

Travis snapped open the box, fed the first disk into the reader, andapplied his eyes to the vision tube at its apex. 

The rippling walls looked just the same when he looked up once more, butthe cramp in his muscles told Travis that time had passed--perhaps hoursinstead of minutes--since he had taken out the first disk. He cupped hishands over his eyes and tried to think clearly. There had been sheets ofmeaningless symbol writing, but also there had been many clear, three-dimensional pictures, accompanied by a singsong commentary in analien tongue, seemingly voiced out of thin air. He had been stuffed withragged bits and patches of information, to be connected only by guesses, and some wild guesses, too. But this much he did know--these towers hadbeen built by the bald spacemen, and they were highly important to thatvanished stellar civilization. The information in this room, asdisjointed as it had been for him, led to a treasure trove on Topazgreater than he had dreamed. 

Travis swayed on the bench. To know so much and yet so little! If Ashewere only here, or some other of the project technicians! A treasuresuch as Pandora's box had been, peril for one who opened it and did notunderstand. The Apache studied the three walls of blue-purple-green inturn and with new attention. There were ways through those walls; he wasfairly sure he could unlock at least one of them. But not now--certainlynot now!

And there was another thing he knew: The Reds must _not_ find this. Sucha discovery on their part would not only mean the end of his own peopleon Topaz, but the end of Terra as well. This could be a new and alienBlack Death spread to destroy whole nations at a time!

If he could--much as his archaeologist's training would argue againstit--he would blot out this whole valley above and below ground. Butwhile the Reds might possess a means of such destruction, the Apachesdid not. No, he and his people must prevent its discovery by the enemyby doing what he had seen as necessary from the first--wiping out theRed leaders! And that must be done before they chanced upon the towers!

Travis arose stiffly. His eyes ached, his head felt stuffed withpictures, hints, speculations. He wanted to get out, back into the openair where perhaps the clean winds of the heights would blow some ofthis frightening half knowledge from his benumbed mind. He lurched downthe corridor, puzzled now by the problem of getting back to the windowlevel. 

Here, before him, was the pillar. Without hope, but still obeying someburied instinct, Travis again set his hands to its surface. There was atug at his cramped arms; once more his body was sucked to the pillar. This time he was rising!

He held his breath past the first level and then relaxed. The principleof this weird form of transportation was entirely beyond hisunderstanding, but as long as it worked in reverse he didn't care tofind out. He reached the windowed chamber, but the sunlight had left it;instead, the clean cut of moon sweep lay on the dusty floor. He musthave been hours in that underground place. 

Travis pulled away from the embrace of the pillar. The bar of his woodenlance was still across the window and he ran for it. To catch thescouting party at the pass he must hurry. The report they would make tothe clan now had to be changed radically in the face of his newdiscoveries. The Apaches dared not retreat southward and withdraw fromthe fight, leaving the Reds to use what treasure lay here. 

As he hit the pavement below he looked about for the coyotes. Then hetried the mind call. But as mysteriously as they had met him in thevalley, so now were they gone again. And Travis had no time to hunt forthem. With a sigh, he began his race to the pass. 

In the old days, Travis remembered, Apache warriors had been able tocover forty-five or fifty miles a day on foot and over rough territory. But perhaps his modern breeding had slowed him. He had been so sure hecould catch up before the others were through the pass. But he stood nowin the hollow where they had camped, read the sign of overturned stoneand bent twig left for him, and knew they would reach the rancheria andreport the decision Deklay and the others wanted before he could headthem off. 

Travis slogged on. He was so tired now that only the drug from thesustenance tablets he mouthed at intervals kept him going at a doggedpace, hardly more than a swift walk. And always his mind was haunted byfragments of pictures, pictures he had seen in the reader. The big bombhad been the nightmare of his own world for so long, and what was thatagainst the forces the bald star rovers had been able to command?

He fell beside a stream and slept. There was sunshine about him as hearose to stagger on. What day was this? How long had he sat in the towerchamber? He was not sure of time any more. He only knew that he mustreach the rancheria, tell his story, somehow win over Deklay and theother reactionaries to prove the necessity for invading the north inforce. 

A rocky point which was a familiar landmark came into focus. He paddedon, his chest heaving, his breath whistling through parched, sun-crackedlips. He did not know that his face was now a mask of driven resolution. 

"Hahhhhhh--"

The cry reached his dulled ears. Travis lifted his head, saw the menbefore him and tried to think what that show of weapons turned towardhim could mean. 

A stone thudded to earth only inches before his feet, to be followed byanother. He wavered to a stop. 

"_Ni'ilgac_--!"

Witch? Where was a witch? Travis shook his head. There was no witch. 

"_Do ne'ilka da_'!"

The old death threat, but why--for whom?

Another stone, this one hitting him in the ribs with force enough tosend him reeling back and down. He tried to get up again, saw Deklaygrin widely and take aim--and at last Travis realized what washappening. 

Then there was a bursting pain in his head and he was falling--fallinginto a well of black, this time with no pillar of blue to guide him. 

13

The rasp of something wet and rough, persistent against his cheek;Travis tried to turn his head to avoid the contact and was answered by aburst of pain which trailed off into a giddiness, making him fearanother move, no matter how minor. He opened his eyes and saw thepointed ears, the outline of a coyote head between him and a dull graysky, was able to recognize Nalik'ideyu. 

A wetness other than that from the coyote's tongue slid down hisforehead now. The dull clouds overhead had released the first heavy rainTravis had experienced since their landing on Topaz. He shivered as thechill damp of his clothes made him aware that he must have been lyingout in the full force of the downpour for some time. 

It was a struggle to get to his knees, but Nalik'ideyu mouthed a hold onhis shirt, tugging and pulling so that somehow he crept into a hollowbeneath the branches of a tree where the spouting water was lessened toa few pattering drops. 

There the Apache's strength deserted him again and he could only hunchover, his bent knees against his chest, trying to endure the throbbingmisery in his head, the awful floating sensation which followed anymovement. Fighting against that, he tried to remember just what hadhappened. 

The meeting with Deklay and at least four or five others . .. Then theApache accusation of witchcraft, a serious thing in the old days. Olddays! To Deklay and his fellows, these _were_ the old days! And thethreat that Deklay or some other had shouted at him--"_Do ne'ilkada'_"--meant literally: "It won't dawn for you--death!"

Stones, the last thing Travis remembered were the stones. Slowly hishands went out to explore his body. There was more than one bruised areaon his shoulders and ribs, even on his thighs. He must still have been atarget after he had fallen under the stone which had knocked himunconscious. Stoned . .. Outlawed! But why? Surely Deklay's hostilitycould not have swept Buck, Jil-Lee, Tsoay, even Nolan, into agreeing tothat? Now he could not think straight. 

Travis became aware of warmth, not only of warmth and the soft touch ofa furred body by his side, but a comforting communication of mind, afeeling he had no words to describe adequately. Nalik'ideyu was sittingcrowded against him, her nose thrust up to rest on his shoulder. Shebreathed in soft puffs which stirred the loose locks of his rain-damphair. And now he flung one arm about her, a gesture which brought awhisper of answering whine. 

He was past wondering about the actions of the coyotes, only supremelythankful for Nalik'ideyu's present companionship. And a moment laterwhen her mate squeezed under the low loop of a branch and joined themin this natural wickiup, Travis held out his other hand, drew itlovingly across Naginlta's wet hide. 

"Now what?" he asked aloud. Deklay could only have taken such a drasticaction with the majority of the clan solidly behind him. It could wellbe that this reactionary was the new chief, this act of Travis'expulsion merely adding to Deklay's growing prestige. 

The shivering which had begun when Travis recovered consciousness, stillshook him at intervals. Back on Terra, like all the others in the team, he had had every inoculation known to the space physicians, includingseveral experimental ones. But the cold virus could still practicallyimmobilize a man, and this was no time to give body room to chills andfever. 

Catching his breath as his movements touched to life the pain in onebruise after another, Travis peeled off his soaked clothing, rubbed hisbody dry with handfuls of last year's leaves culled from the thickcarpet under him, knowing there was nothing he could do until thewhirling in his head disappeared. So he burrowed into the leaves untilonly his head was uncovered, and tried to sleep, the coyotes curling upone on either side of his nest. 

He dreamed but later could not remember any incident from those dreams, save a certain frustration and fear. When he awoke, again to the soundof steady rain, it was dark. He reached out--both coyotes were gone. Hishead was clearer and suddenly he knew what must be done. As soon as hisbody was strong enough, he, too, would return to instincts and customsof the past. This situation was desperate enough for him to challengeDeklay. 

In the dark Travis frowned. He was slightly taller, and three or fouryears younger than his enemy. But Deklay had the advantage in a stouterbuild and longer reach. However, Travis was sure that in his presentlife Deklay had never fought a duel--Apache fashion. And an Apache duelwas not a meeting anyone entered into lightly. Travis had the right toenter the rancheria and deliver such a challenge. Then Deklay must meethim or admit himself in the wrong. That part of it was simple. 

But in the past such duels had just one end, a fatal one for at leastone of the fighters. If Travis took this trail, he must be prepared togo the limit. And he didn't want to kill Deklay! There were too few ofthem here on Topaz to make any loss less than a real catastrophe. Whilehe had no liking for Deklay, neither did he nurse any hatred. However, he must challenge the other or remain a tribal outcast; and Travis hadno right to gamble with time and the future, not after what he hadlearned in the tower. It might be his life and skill, or Deklay's, against the blotting out of them all--and their home world into thebargain. 

First, he must locate the present camp of the clan. If Nolan's argumentshad counted, they would be heading south away from the pass. And tofollow would draw him farther from the tower valley. Travis' batteredface ached as he grinned bitterly. This was another time when a mancould wish he were two people, a scout on sentry duty at the valley, thefighter heading in the opposite direction to have it out with Deklay. But since he was merely one man he would have to gamble on time, one ofthe trickiest risks of all. 

Before dawn Nalik'ideyu returned, carrying with her a bird--or at leastbirds must have been somewhere in the creature's ancestry, but thepresent representative of its kind had only vestigial remnants of wings, its trailing feet and legs well developed and far more powerful. 

Travis skinned the corpse, automatically putting aside some spine quillsto feather future arrows. Then he ate slivers of dusky meat raw, throwing the bones to Nalik'ideyu. 

Though he was still stiff and sore, Travis was determined to be on hisway. He tried mind contact with the coyote, picturing the Apaches, notably Deklay, as sharply as he could by mental image. And her assentwas clear in return. She and her mate were willing to lead him to thetribe. He gave a light sigh of relief. 

As he slogged on through the depressing drizzle, the Apache wonderedagain why the coyotes had left him before and waited in the towervalley. What link was there between the animals of Terra and the remainsof the long-ago empire of the stars? For he was certain it was not bychance that Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta had lingered in that misty place. He longed to communicate with them directly, to ask questions and beanswered. 

Without their aid, Travis would never have been able to track the clan. The drizzle alternated with slashing bursts of rain, torrential enoughto drive the trackers to the nearest cover. Overhead the sky was eitherdull bronze or night black. Even the coyotes paced nose to ground, oftenmaking wide casts for the trail while Travis waited. 

The rain lasted for three days and nights, filling watercourses withrapidly rising streams. Travis could only hope that the others werehaving the same difficulty traveling that he was, perhaps the more sosince they were burdened with packs. The fact that they kept on meantthat they were determined to get as far from the northern mountains asthey could. 

On the fourth morning the bronze of the clouds slowly thinned into theusual gold, and the sun struck across hills where mist curled like steamfrom a hundred bubbling pots. Travis relaxed in the welcome warmth, feeling his shirt dry on his shoulders. It was still a waterloggedterrain ahead which should continue to slow the clan. He had highexpectations of catching up with them soon, and now the worst of hisbruises had faded. His muscles were limber, and he had worked out hisplan as best he could. 

Two hours later he sat in ambush, waiting for the scout who was walkinginto his hands. Under the direction of the coyotes, Travis had circledthe line of march, come in ahead of the clan. Now he needed an emissaryto state his challenge, and the fact that the scout he was about to jumpwas Manulito, one of Deklay's supporters, suited Travis' purposeperfectly. He gathered his feet under him as the other came opposite, and sprang. 

The rush carried Manulito off his feet and face down on the sod whileTravis made the best of his advantage and pinned the wildly fighting manunder him. Had it been one of the older braves he might not have been sosuccessful, but Manulito was still a boy by Apache standards. 

"Lie still!" Travis ordered. "Listen well--so you can say to Deklay thewords of the Fox!"

The frenzied struggles ceased. Manulito managed to wrench his head tothe left so he could see his captor. Travis loosened his grip, got tohis feet. Manulito sat up, his face darkly sullen, but he did not reachfor his knife. 

"You will say this to Deklay: The Fox says he is a man of little senseand less courage, preferring to throw stones rather than meet knife toknife as does a warrior. If he thinks as a warrior, let him proveit--his strength against my strength--after the ways of the People!"

Some of the sullenness left Manulito's expression. He was eager, excited. 

"You would duel with Deklay after the old custom?"

"I would. Say this to Deklay, openly so that all men may hear. ThenDeklay must also give answer openly. "

Manulito flushed at that implication concerning his leader's courage, and Travis knew that he would deliver the challenge openly. To keep hishold on the clan the latter must accept it, and there would be anaudience of his people to witness the success or defeat of their newchief and his policies. 

As Manulito disappeared Travis summoned the coyotes, putting full effortinto getting across one message. Any tribe led by Deklay would behostile to the mutant animals. They must go into hiding, run free in thewilderness if the gamble failed Travis. Now they withdrew into thebushes but not out of reach of his mind. 

He did not have too long to wait. First came Jil-Lee, Buck, Nolan, Tsoay, Lupe--those who had been with him on the northern scout. Then theothers, the warriors first, the women making a half circle behind, leaving a free space in which Deklay walked. 

"I am the Fox, " Travis stated. "And this one has named me witch and_natdahe_, outlaw of the mountains. Therefore do I come to name names inmy turn. Hear me, People: This Deklay--he would walk among you as_'izesnantan_, a great chief--but he does not have the _go'ndi_, theholy power of a chief. For this Deklay is a fool, with a head filled bynothing but his own wishes, not caring for his clan brothers. He says heleads you into safety; I say he leads you into the worst danger anyliving man can imagine--even in peyote dreams! He is one twisted in histhoughts, and he would make you twisted also----"

Buck cut in sharply, hushing the murmur of the massed clan. 

"These are bold words, Fox. Will you back them?"

Travis' hands were already peeling off his shirt. "I will back them, " hestated between set teeth. He had known since his awakening after thestoning that this next move was the only one left for him to make. Butnow that the testing of his action came, he could not be certain of theoutcome, of anything save that the final decision of this battle mightaffect more than the fate of two men. He stripped, noting that Deklaywas doing the same. 

Having stepped into the center of the glade, Nolan was using the pointof his knife to score a deep-ridged circle there. Naked except for hismoccasins, with only his knife in his hand, Travis took the two strideswhich put him in the circle facing Deklay. He surveyed his opponent'sfinely muscled body, realizing that his earlier estimate of Deklay'sprobable advantages were close to the mark. In sheer strength the otheroutmatched him. Whether Deklay was skillful with his knife was anotherquestion, one which Travis would soon be able to answer. 

They circled, eyes intent upon each move, striving to weigh and measureeach other's strengths and weaknesses. Knife dueling among thePinda-lick-o-yi, Travis remembered, had once been an art close tofinished swordplay, with two evenly matched fighters able to engage fora long time without seriously marking each other. But this was a farrougher and more deadly game, with none of the niceties of such ameeting. 

He evaded a vicious thrust from Deklay. 

"The bull charges, " he laughed. "And the Fox snaps!" By some incrediblestroke of good fortune, the point of his weapon actually grazed Deklay'sarm, drawing a thin, red inch-long line across the skin. 

"Charge again, bull. Feel once more the Fox's teeth!"

He strove to goad Deklay into a crippling loss of temper, knowing howthe other could explode into violent rage. It was dangerous, that rage, but it could also make a man blindly careless. 

There was an inarticulate sound from Deklay, a dusky swelling in theman's face. He spat, as might an enraged puma, and rushed at Travis whodid not quite manage to avoid the lunge, falling back with a smartingslash across the ribs. 

"The bull gores!" Deklay bellowed. "Horns toss the Fox!"

He rushed again, elated by the sight of the trickling wound on Travis'side. But the slighter man slipped away. 

Travis knew he must be careful in such evasions. One foot across theridged circle and he was finished as much as if Deklay's blade had foundits mark. Travis tried a thrust of his own, and his foot came down hardon a sharp pebble. Through the sole of his moccasin pain shot upward, caused him to stumble. Again the scarlet flame of a wound, down hisshoulder and forearm this time. 

Well, there was one trick, he knew. Travis tossed the knife into theair, caught it with his left hand. Deklay was now facing a left-handedfighter and must adjust to that. 

"Paw, bull, rattle your horns!" Travis cried. "The Fox still shows histeeth!"

Deklay recovered from his instant of surprise. With a cry which wasindeed like the bellow of an old range bull, he rushed into grapple, sure of his superior strength against a younger and already wounded man. 

Travis ducked, one knee thumping the ground. He groped out with hisright hand, caught up a handful of earth, and flung it into the duskybrown face. Again it seemed that luck was on his side. That handfulcould not be as blinding as sand, but some bit of the shower landed inDeklay's eye. 

For a space of seconds Deklay was wide open--open for a blow which wouldrip him up the middle, the blow Travis could not and would not deliver. 

Instead, he took the offensive recklessly, springing straight for hisopponent. As the earth-grimed fingers of one hand clawed into Deklay'sface, he struck with the other, not with the point of the knife but withits shaft. But Deklay, already only half conscious from the blow, hadhis own chance. He fell to the ground, leaving his knife behind, twoinches of steel between Travis' ribs. 

Somehow--he didn't know from where he drew that strength--Travis kepthis feet and took one step and then another, out of the circle until thecomforting brace of a tree trunk was against his bare back. Was hefinished--?

He fought to nurse his rags of consciousness. Had he summoned Buck withhis eyes? Or had the urgency of what he had to say reached somehow frommind to mind? The other was at his side, but Travis put out a hand toward him off. 

"Towers--" He struggled to keep his wits through the pain and billowingweakness beginning to creep through him. "Reds mustn't get to thetowers! Worse than the bomb . .. End us all!"

He had a hazy glimpse of Nolan and Jil-Lee closing in about him. Thedesire to cough tore at him, but they had to know, to believe. .. . 

"Reds get to the towers--everything finished. Not only here . .. Maybeback home too. .. . "

Did he read comprehension on Buck's face? Would Nolan and Jil-Lee andthe rest believe him? Travis could not suppress the cough any longer, and the ripping pain which followed was the worst he had everexperienced. But still he kept his feet, tried to make them understand. 

"Don't let them get to the towers. Find that storehouse!"

Travis stood away from the tree, reached out to Buck his earth andbloodstained hand. "I swear . .. Truth . .. This must be done!"

He was going down, and he had a queer thought that once he reached theground everything would end, not only for him but also for his mission. Trying to see the faces of the men about him was like attempting toidentify the people in a dream. 

"Towers!" He had meant to shout it, but he could not even hear forhimself that last word as he fell. 

14

Travis' back was braced against blanketed packs as he steadied a pieceof light-yellow bark against one bent knee scowling at the lines drawnon it in faint green. 

"We are here then . .. And the ship there--" His thumb was set on onepoint of the crude map, forefinger on the other. Buck nodded. 

"That is so. Tsoay, Eskelta, Kawaykle, they watch the trails. There isthe pass, two other ways men can come on foot. But who can watch theair?"

"The Tatars say the Reds dare not bring the 'copter into the mountains. After they first landed they lost a flyer in a tricky air-current flowup there. They have only one left and won't risk it. If only they aren'treinforced before we can move!" There it was again, that constantgnawing fear of time, time shortening into a rope to strangle them all. 

"You think that the knowledge of our ship will bring them into theopen?"

"That--or information about the towers would be the only thingsimportant enough to pull out their experts. They could send a controlledTatar party to explore the ship, sure. But that wouldn't give them thetechnical reports they need. No, I think if they knew a wrecked WesternConfederation ship was here, it would bring them--or enough of them tolessen the odds. We have to catch them in the open. Otherwise, they canhole up forever in that ship-fort of theirs. "

"And just how do we let them know our ship is here? Send out anotherscouting party and let them be trailed back?"

"That's our last resource. " Travis continued to frown at the map. Yes, it would be possible to let the Reds sight and trail an Apache party. But there was none in the clan who were expendable. Surely there wassome other way of laying the trap with the wrecked ship for bait. Capture one of the Reds, let him escape again, having seen what theywanted him to see? Again a time-wasting business. And how long wouldthey have to wait and what risks would they take to pick up a Redprisoner?

"If the Tatars were dependable. .. . " Buck was thinking aloud. 

But that "if" was far too big. They could not trust the Tatars. Nomatter how much the Mongols wanted to aid in pulling down the Reds, aslong as they could be controlled by the caller they were useless. Orwere they?

"Thought of something?" Buck must have caught Travis' change ofexpression. 

"Suppose a Tatar saw our ship and then was picked up by a Red huntingpatrol and they got the information out of him?"

"Do you think any outlaw would volunteer to let himself be picked upagain? And if he did, wouldn't the Reds also be able to learn that hehad been set up for the trap?"

"An escaped prisoner?" Travis suggested. 

Now Buck was plainly considering the possibilities of such a scheme. AndTravis' own spirits rose a little. The idea was full of holes, but itcould be worked out. Suppose they capture, say, Menlik, bring him hereas a prisoner, let him think they were about to kill him because of thatattack back in the foothills. Then let him escape, pursue him northwardto a point where he could be driven into the hands of the Reds? Verychancy, but it just might work. Travis was favoring a gamble now, sincehis desperate one with the duel had paid off. 

The risk he had accepted then had cost him two deep wounds, one of whichmight have been serious if Jil-Lee's project-sponsored medical traininghad not been to hand. But it had also made Travis one of the clan again, with his people willing to listen to his warning concerning the towertreasury. 

"The girl--the Tatar girl!"

At first Travis did not understand Buck's ejaculation. 

"We get the girl, " the other elaborated, "let her escape, then hunt herto where they'll pick her up. Might even imprison her in the ship tobegin with. "

Kaydessa? Though something within him rebelled at that selection for theleading role in their drama, Travis could see the advantage of Buck'schoice. Woman-stealing was an ancient pastime among primitive cultures. The Tatars themselves had found wives that way in the past, just as theApache raiders of old had taken captive women into their wickiups. Yes, for raiders to steal a woman would be a natural act, accepted as suchby the Reds. For the same woman to endeavor to escape and be hunted byher captors also was reasonable. And for such a woman, cut off from heroutlaw kin, to eventually head back toward the Red settlement as theonly hope of evading her enemies--logical all the way!

"She would have to be well frightened, " Travis observed with reluctance. 

"That can be done for us--"

Travis glanced at Buck with sharp annoyance. He would not allow certaingames out of their common past to be played with Kaydessa. But Buck hadsomething very different from old-time brutality in mind. 

"Three days ago, while you were still flat on your back, Deklay and Iwent back to the ship--"

"Deklay?"

"You beat him openly, so he must restore his honor in his own sight. Andthe council has forbidden another duel or challenge, " Buck replied. "Therefore he will continue to push for recognition in another way. Andnow that he has heard your story and knows we must face the Reds, notrun from them, he is eager to take the war trail--too eager. So wereturned to the ship to make another search for weapons----"

"There were none there before except those we had. .. . "

"Nor now either. But we discovered something else. " Buck paused andTravis was shaken out of his absorption with the problem at hand by anote in the other's voice. It was as if Buck had come upon something hecould not summon the right words to describe. 

"First, " Buck continued, "there was this dead thing there, near wherewe found Dr. Ruthven. It was something like a man . .. But all silveryhair----"

"The ape-things! The ape-things from the other worlds! What else did yousee?" Travis had dropped the map. His side gave him a painful twinge ashe caught at Buck's sleeve. The bald space rovers--did they still existhere somewhere? Had they come to explore the ship built on the patternof their own but manned by Terrans?

"Nothing except tracks, a lot of them, in every open cabin and hole. Ithink there must have been a sizable pack of the things. "

"What killed the dead one?"

Buck wet his lips. "I think--fear. .. . " His voice dropped a little, almost apologetically, and Travis stared. 

"The ship is changed. Inside, there is something wrong. When you walkthe corridors your skin crawls, you think there is something behind you. You hear things, see things from the corners of your eyes. .. . When youturn, there's nothing, nothing at all! And the higher you climb into theship, the worse it is. I tell you, Travis, never have I felt anythinglike it before!"

"It was a ship of many dead, " Travis reminded him. Had the age-oldApache fear of the dead been activated by the Redax into an acutephobia--to strike down such a level-headed man as Buck?

"No, at first that, too, was my thought. Then I discovered that it wasworst not near that chamber where we lay our dead, but higher, in theRedax cabin. I think perhaps the machine is still running, but runningin a wrong way--so that it does not awaken old memories of ourancestors now, but brings into being all the fears which have everhaunted us through the dark of the ages. I tell you, Travis, when I cameout of that place Deklay was leading me by the hand as if I were achild. And he was shivering as a man who will never be warm again. Thereis an evil there beyond our understanding. I think that this Tatar girl, were she only to stay there a very short time, would be wellfrightened--so frightened that any trained scientist examining her laterwould know there was a mystery to be explored. "

"The ape-things--could they have tried to run the Redax?" Traviswondered. To associate machines with the creatures was outwardly purefolly. But they had been discovered on two of the planets of the oldcivilization, and Ashe had thought that they might represent thedegenerate remnants of a once intelligent species. 

"That is possible. If so, they raised a storm which drove them out andkilled one of them. The ship is a haunted place now. "

"But for us to use the girl. .. . " Travis had seen the logic in Buck'sfirst suggestion, but now he differed. If the atmosphere of the ship wasas terrifying as Buck said, to imprison Kaydessa there, eventemporarily, was still wrong. 

"She need not remain long. Suppose we should do this: We shall enterwith her and then allow the disturbance we would feel to overcome us. Wecould run, leave her alone. When she left the ship, we could then takeup the chase, shepherding her back to the country she knows. Within theship we would be with her and could see she did not remain too long. "

Travis could see a good prospect in that plan. There was one thing hewould insist on--if Kaydessa was to be in that ship, he himself would beone of the "captors. " He said as much, and Buck accepted hisdetermination as final. 

They dispatched a scouting party to infiltrate the territory to thenorth, to watch and wait their chance of capture. Travis strove toregain his feet, to be ready to move when the moment came. 

Five days later he was able to reach the ridge beyond which lay thewrecked ship. With him were Jil-Lee, Lupe, and Manulito. They satisfiedthemselves that the globe had had no visitors since Buck and Deklay;there was no sign that the ape-things had returned. 

"From here, " Travis said, "the ship doesn't look too bad, almost as ifit might be able to take off again. "

"It might lift, " Jil-Lee gestured to the mountaintop behind the curve ofthe globe--"about that far. The tubes on this side are intact. "

"What would happen were the Reds to get inside and try to fly again?"Manulito wondered aloud. 

Travis was struck by a sudden idea, one perhaps just as wild as theother inspirations he had had since landing on Topaz, but one to bestudied and explored--not dismissed without consideration. Supposeenough power remained to lift the ship partially and then blow it up?With the Red technicians on board at the time. .. . But he was noengineer, he had no idea whether any part of the globe might or mightnot work again. 

"They are not fools; a close look would tell them it is a wreck, "Jil-Lee countered. 

Travis walked on. Not too far ahead a yellow-brown shape moved out ofthe brush, stood stiff-legged in his path, facing the ship and growlingin a harsh rumble of sound. Whatever moved or operated in that wreck waspicked up by the acute sense of the coyote, even at this distance. 

"On!" Travis edged around the snarling animal. With one halting step andthen another, it followed him. There was a sharp warning yelp from thebrush, and a second coyote head appeared. Naginlta followed Travis, butNalik'ideyu refused to approach the grounded globe. 

Travis surveyed the ship closely, trying to remember the layout of itsinterior. To turn the whole sphere into a trap--was it possible? How hadAshe said the Redax worked? Something about high-frequency wavesstimulating certain brain and nerve centers. 

What if one were shielded from those rays? That tear in the side--hehimself must have climbed through that the night they crashed. And thebreak was not too far from the space lock. Near the lock was a storagecompartment. And if it had not been jammed, or its contents crushed, they might have something. He beckoned to Jil-Lee. 

"Give me a hand--up there. "

"Why?"

"I want to see if the space suits are intact. "

Jil-Lee regarded Travis with open bewilderment, but Manulito pushedforward. "We do not need those suits to walk here, Travis. This air wecan breathe--"

"Not for the air, and not in the open. " Travis advanced at a deliberatepace. "Those suits may be insulated in more ways than one----"

"Against a mixed-up Redax broadcast, you mean!" Jil-Lee exclaimed. "Yes, but you stay here, younger brother. This is a risky climb, and youare not yet strong. "

Travis was forced to accede to that, waiting as Manulito and Lupeclimbed up to the tear and entered. At least Buck and Deklay'sexperience had forewarned them and they would be prepared for the weirdghosts haunting the interior. 

But when they returned, pulling between them the limp space suit, bothmen were pale, the shiny sheen of sweat on their foreheads, their handsshaking. Lupe sat down on the ground before Travis. 

"Evil spirits, " he said, giving to this modern phenomenon the old name. "Truly ghosts and witches walk in there. "

Manulito had spread the suit on the ground and was examining it with acare which spoke of familiarity. 

"This is unharmed, " he reported. "Ready to wear. "

The suits were all tailored for size, Travis knew. And this fitted aslender, medium-sized man. It would fit him, Travis Fox. But Manulitowas already unbuckling the fastenings with practiced ease. 

"I shall try it out, " he announced. And Travis, seeing the awkward climbto the entrance of the ship, had to agree that the first test should becarried out by someone more agile at the moment. 

Sealed into the suit, with the bubble helmet locked in place, the Apacheclimbed back into the globe. The only form of communication with him wasthe rope he had tied about him, and if he went above the first level, hewould have to leave that behind. 

In the first few moments they saw no twitch of alarm running along therope. After counting fifty slowly, Travis gave it a tentative jerk, tofind it firmly fastened within. So Manulito had tied it there and wasclimbing to the control cabin. 

They continued to wait with what patience they could muster. Naginlta, pacing up and down a good distance from the ship, whined at intervals, the warning echoed each time by his mate upslope. 

"I don't like it--" Travis broke off when the helmeted figure appearedagain at the break. Moving slowly in his cumbersome clothing, Manulitoreached the ground, fumbled with the catch of his head covering and thenstood, taking deep, lung-filling gulps of air. 

"Well?" Travis demanded. 

"I see no ghosts, " Manulito said, grinning. "This is ghost-proof!" Heslapped his gloved hand against the covering over his chest. "There isalso this--from what I know of these ships--some of the relays stillwork. I think this could be made into a trap. We could entice the Redsin and then. .. . " His hand moved in a quick upward flip. 

"But we don't know anything about the engines, " Travis replied. 

"No? Listen--you, Fox, are not the only one to remember usefulknowledge. " Manulito had lost his cheerful grin. "Do you think we arejust the savages those big brains back at the project wished us to be?They have played a trick on us with their Redax. So, we can play a fewtricks, too. Me--? I went to M. I. T. , or is that one of the things you nolonger remember, Fox?"

Travis swallowed hastily. He really had forgotten that fact until thisvery minute. From the beginning, the Apache team had been carefullyselected and screened, not only for survival potential, which was theirbasic value to the project, but also for certain individual skills. Justas Travis' grounding in archaeology had been one advantage, so hadManulito's technical training made a valuable, though different, contribution. If at first the Redax, used without warning, had smotheredthat training, perhaps the effects were now fading. 

"You can do something, then?" he asked eagerly. 

"I can try. There is a chance to booby trap the control cabin at least. And that is where they would poke and pry. Working in this suit will betough. How about my trying to smash up the Redax first?"

"Not until after we use it on our captive, " Jil-Lee decided. "Then therewould be some time before the Reds come----"

"You talk as if they _will_ come, " cut in Lupe. "How can you be sure?"

"We can't, " Travis agreed. "But we can count on this much, judging fromthe past. Once they know that there is a wrecked ship here, they will beforced to explore it. They cannot afford an enemy settlement on thisside of the mountains. That would be, according to their way ofthinking, an eternal threat. "

Jil-Lee nodded. "That is true. This is a complicated plan, yes, and onein which many things may go wrong. But it is also one which covers allthe loopholes we know of. "

With Lupe's aid Manulito crawled out of the suit. As he leaned itcarefully against a supporting rock he said:

"I have been thinking of this treasure house in the towers. Suppose wecould find new weapons there. .. . "

Travis hesitated. He still shrank from the thought of opening the secretplaces behind those glowing walls, to loose a new peril. 

"If we took weapons from there and lost the fight. .. . " He advanced hisfirst objection and was glad to see the expression of comprehension onJil-Lee's face. 

"It would be putting the weapons straight into Red hands, " the otheragreed. 

"We may have to chance it before we're through, " Manulito warned. "Suppose we do get some of their technicians into this trap. That isn'tgoing to open up their main defense for us. We may need a biggernutcracker than we've ever seen. "

With a return of that queasy feeling he had known in the tower, Travisknew Manulito was speaking sense. They might have to open Pandora's boxbefore the end of this campaign. 

15

They camped another two days near the wrecked ship while Manulitoprowled the haunted corridors and cabins in his space suit, planning hisbooby trap. At night he drew diagrams on pieces of bark and discussedthe possibility of this or that device, sometimes lapsing intotechnicalities his companions could not follow. But Travis was wellsatisfied that Manulito knew what he was doing. 

On the morning of the third day Nolan slipped into their midst. He wasdust-grimed, his face gaunt, the signs of hard travel plain to read. Travis handed him the nearest canteen, and they watched him drinksparingly in small sips before he spoke. 

"They come . .. With the girl--"

"You had trouble?" asked Jil-Lee. 

"The Tatars had moved their camp, which was only wise, since the Redsmust have had a line on the other one. And they are now farther to thewest. But--" he wiped his lips with the back of his hand--"also we sawyour towers, Fox. And that is a place of power!"

"No sign that the Reds are prowling there?"

Nolan shook his head. "To my mind the mists there conceal the towersfrom aerial view. Only one coming on foot could tell them from thenatural crags of the hills. "

Travis relaxed. Time still granted them a margin of grace. He glanced upto see Nolan smiling faintly. 

"This maiden, she is a kin to the puma of the mountains, " he announced. "She has marked Tsoay with her claws until he looks like the ear-clippedyearling fresh from the branding chute----"

"She is not hurt?" Travis demanded. 

This time Nolan chuckled openly. "Hurt? No, we had much to do to keepher from hurting us, younger brother. That one is truly as she claims, adaughter of wolves. And she is also keen-witted, marking a return trailall the way, though she does not know that is as we wish. Did we notpick the easiest way back for just that reason? Yes, she plans toescape. "

Travis stood up. "Let us finish this quickly!" His voice came out on arough note. This plan had never had his full approval. Now he found itless and less easy to think about taking Kaydessa into the ship, allowing the emotional torment lurking there to work upon her. Yet heknew that the girl would not be hurt, and he had made sure he would bebeside her within the globe, sharing with her the horror of the unseen. 

A rattling of gravel down the narrow valley opening gave warning tothose by the campfire. Manulito had already stowed the space suit inhiding. To Kaydessa they must have seemed reverted entirely to savagery. 

Tsoay came first, an angry raking of four parallel scratches down hisleft cheek. And behind him Buck and Eskelta shoved the prisoner, urgingher on with a show of roughness which did not descend to actualbrutality. Her long braids had shaken loose, and a sleeve was torn, leaving one slender arm bare. But none of the fighting spirit had lefther. 

They thrust her out into the circle of waiting men and she planted herfeet firmly apart, glaring at them all indiscriminately until shesighted Travis. Then her anger became hotter and more deadly. 

"Pig! Rooter in the dirt! Diseased camel--" she shouted at him inEnglish and then reverted to her own tongue, her voice riding up anddown the scale. Her hands were tied behind her back, but there were nobonds on her tongue. 

"This is one who can speak thunders, and shoot lightnings from hermouth, " Buck commented in Apache. "Put her well away from the wood, lestshe set it aflame. "

Tsoay held his hands over his ears. "She can deafen a man when shecannot set her mark on him otherwise. Let us speedily get rid of her. "

Yet for all their jeering comments, their eyes held respect. Often inthe past a defiant captive who stood up boldly to his captors hadreceived more consideration than usual from Apache warriors; courage wasa quality they prized. A Pinda-lick-o-yi such as Tom Jeffords, who rodeinto Cochise's camp and sat in the midst of his sworn enemies for aparley, won the friendship of the very chief he had been fighting. Kaydessa had more influence with her captors than she could dream ofholding. 

Now it was time for Travis to play his part. He caught the girl'sshoulder and pushed her before him toward the wreck. 

Some of the spirit seemed to have left her thin, tense body, and shewent without any more fight. Only when they came into full view of theship did she falter. Travis heard her breathe a gasp of surprise. 

As they had planned, four of the Apaches--Jil-Lee, Tsoay, Nolan, andBuck--fanned out toward the heights about the ship. Manulito had alreadygone to cover, to don the space suit and prepare for any accident. 

Resolutely Travis continued to propel Kaydessa ahead. At the moment hedid not know which was worse, to enter the ship expecting the fear tostrike, or to meet it unprepared. He was ready to refuse to enter, notto allow the girl, sullenly plodding on under his compulsion, to facethat unseen but potent danger. 

Only the memory of the towers and the threat of the Reds finding andexploiting the treasure there kept him going. Eskelta went first, climbing to the tear. Travis cut the ropes binding Kaydessa's wrists andgave her a slight slap between the shoulders. 

"Climb, woman!" His anxiety made that a harsh order and she climbed. 

Eskelta was inside now, heading for the cabin which might reasonably beselected as a prison. They planned to get the girl as far as that pointand then stage their act of being overcome by fear, allowing her toescape. 

Stage an act? Travis was not two feet along that corridor before he knewthat there would be little acting needed on his part. The thing whichpervaded the ship did not attack sharply, rather it seeped into his mindand body as if he drew in poison with every breath, sent it racingalong his veins with every beat of a laboring heart. Yet he could notput any name to his feelings, except an awful, weakening fear whichweighted him heavier with every step he took. 

Kaydessa screamed. Not this time in rage, but with such fervor thatTravis lost his hold, staggered back to the wall. She whirled about, herface contorted, and sprang at him. 

It was indeed like trying to fight a wildcat and after the first secondor two he was hard put to protect his eyes, his face, his side, withoutinjuring her in return. She scrambled over him, running for the break inthe wall, and disappeared. Travis gasped, and started to crawl for thebreak. Eskelta loomed over him, pulled him up in haste. 

They reached the opening but did not climb through. Travis was uncertainas to whether he could make that descent yet, and Eskelta was obeyingorders in not venturing out too soon. 

Below, the ground was bare. There was no sign of the Apaches, thoughthey were in hiding there--and none of Kaydessa. Travis was amazed thatshe had vanished so quickly. 

Still uneasy from the emanation within, they perched within the shadowof the break until Travis thought that the fugitive had a goodfive-minute start. Then he nodded a signal to Eskelta. 

By the time they reached ground level Travis felt a warm wetnessspreading under his shielding palm and he knew the wound had opened. Hespoke a word or two in hot protest against that mishap, knowing it wouldkeep him from the trail. Kaydessa must be covered all the way backacross the pass, not only to be shepherded away from her people andtoward the plains where she could be picked up by a Red patrol, but alsoto keep her from danger. And he had planned from the first to be one ofthose shepherds. 

Now he was about as much use as a trail-lame pony. However, he couldsend deputies. He thought out his call, and Nalik'ideyu's head appearedin a frame of bush. 

"Go, both of you and run with her! Guard--!" He said the words in awhisper, thought them with a fierce intensity as he centered his gaze onthe yellow eyes in the pointed coyote face. There was a feeling ofassent, and then the animal was gone. Travis sighed. 

The Apache scouts were subtle and alert, but the coyotes could far outdoany man. With Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta flanking her flight, Kaydessawould be well guarded. She would probably never see her guards or knowthat they were running protection for her. 

"That was a good move, " Jil-Lee said, coming out of concealment. "Butwhat have you done to yourself?" He stepped closer, pulling Travis' handaway from his side. By the time Lupe came to report, Travis was againwound in a strapping bandage pulled tightly about his lower ribs, andreconciled to the fact that any trailing he would do must be well to therear of the first party. 

"The towers, " he said to Jil-Lee. "If our plan works, we can catch partof the Reds here. But we still have their ship to take, and for that weneed help which we may find at the towers. Or at least we can be onguard there if they return with Kaydessa on that path. "

Lupe dropped down lightly from an upper ledge. He was grinning. 

"That woman is one who thinks. She runs from the ship first as a rabbitwith a wolf at her heels. Then she begins to think. She climbs--" Helifted one finger to the slope behind them. "She goes behind a rock towatch under cover. When Fox comes from the ship with Eskelta, again sheclimbs. Buck lets himself be seen, so she moves east, as we wish--"

"And now?" questioned Travis. 

"She is keeping to the high ways; almost she thinks like one of thePeople on the war trail. Nolan believes she will hole up for the nightsomewhere above. He will make sure. "

Travis licked his lips. "She has no food or water. "

Jil-Lee's lips shaped a smile. "They will see that she comes upon bothas if by chance. We have planned all of this, as you know, youngerbrother. "

That was true. Travis knew that Kaydessa would be guided without herknowledge by the "accidental" appearance now and then of somepursuer--just enough to push her along. 

"Then, too, she is now armed, " Jil-Lee added. 

"How?" demanded Travis. 

"Look to your own belt, younger brother. Where is your knife?"

Startled, Travis glanced down. His sheath was empty, and he had notneeded that blade since he had drawn it to cut meat at the morning meal. Lupe laughed. 

"She had steel in her hand when she came out of that ghost ship. "

"Took it from me while we struggled!" Travis was openly surprised. Hehad considered the frenzy displayed by the Tatar girl as an outburst ofalmost mindless terror. Yet Kaydessa had had wit enough to take hisknife! Could this be another case where one race was less affected by amind machine than the other? Just as the Apaches had not been governedby the Red caller, so the Tatars might not be as sensitive to the Redax. 

"She is a strong one, that woman--one worth many ponies. " Eskeltareverted to the old measure of a wife's value. 

"That is true!" Travis agreed emphatically and then was annoyed at thebroadening of Jil-Lee's smile. Abruptly he changed the subject. 

"Manulito is setting the booby trap in the ship. "

"That is well. He and Eskelta will remain here, and you with them. "

"Not so! We must go to the towers----" Travis protested. 

"I thought, " Jil-Lee cut in, "that you believed the weapons of the oldones too dangerous for us to use. "

"Maybe they will be forced into our hands. But we must be sure thetowers are not entered by the Reds on their way here. "

"That is reasonable. But for you, younger brother, no trailing today, perhaps not tomorrow. If that wound opens again, you might have much badtrouble. "

Travis was forced to accept that, in spite of his worry and impatience. And the next day when he did move on he had only the report thatKaydessa had sheltered beside a pool for the night and was doggedlymoving back across the mountains. 

Three days later Travis, Jil-Lee, and Buck came into the tower valley. Kaydessa was in the northern foothills, twice turned back from the westand the freedom of the outlaws by the Apache scouts. And only half anhour before, Tsoay had reported by mirror what should have been welcomenews: the Red helicopter was cruising as it had on the day they watchedthe hunters enter the uplands. There was an excellent chance of thefugitive's being sighted and picked up soon. 

Tsoay had also spotted a party of three Tatars watching the helicopter. But after one wide sweep of the flyer they had taken to their ponies andridden away at the fastest pace their mounts could manage in this roughterritory. 

On a stretch of smooth earth Buck scratched a trail, and they studiedit. The Reds would have to follow this route to seek the wrecked ship--aroute covered by Apache sentinels. And following the chain ofcommunication the result of the trap would be reported to the party atthe towers. 

The waiting was the most difficult; too many imponderables did not allowfor unemotional thinking. Travis was down to the last shred of patiencewhen word came on the second morning at the hidden valley that Kaydessahad been picked up by a Red patrol--drawn out to meet them by thecaller. 

"Now--the tower weapons!" Buck answered the report with an imperativeorder to Travis. And the other knew he could no longer postpone theinevitable. And only by action could he blot out the haunting mentalpicture of Kaydessa once more drawn into the bondage she so hated. 

Flanked by Jil-Lee and Buck, he climbed back through the tower windowand faced the glowing pillar. 

He crossed the room, put out both hands to the sleek pole, uncertain ifthe weird transport would work again. He heard the sharp gasp from theothers as his body was sucked against the pillar and carried downwardthrough the well. Buck followed him, and Jil-Lee came last. Then Travisled the way along the underground corridor to the room with the tableand the reader. 

He sat down on the bench, fumbled with the pile of tape disks, knowingthat the other two were watching him with almost hostile intentness. Hesnapped a disk into the reader, hoping he could correctly interpret thedirections it gave. 

He looked up at the wall before him. Three . .. Four steps, the correctmove--and then an unlocking. .. . 

"You know?" Buck demanded. 

"I can guess----"

"Well?" Jil-Lee moved to the table. "What do we do?"

"This--" Travis came from behind the table, walked to the wall. He putout both hands, flattened his palms against the green-blue-purplesurface and slid them slowly along. Under his touch, the material of thewall was cool and hard, unlike the live feel the pillar had. Cooluntil--

One palm, held at arm's length had found the right spot. He slid theother hand along in the opposite direction until his arms were levelwith his shoulders. His fingers were able now to press on those pointsof warmth. Travis tensed and pushed hard with all ten fingers. 

16

At first, as one second and then two passed and there was no response tothe pressure, Travis thought he had mistaken the reading of the tape. Then, directly before his eyes, a dark line cut vertically down thewall. He applied more pressure until his fingers were half numb witheffort. The line widened slowly. Finally he faced a slit some eight feetin height, a little more than two in width, and there the openingremained. 

Light beyond, a cold, gray gleam--like that of a cloudy winter day onTerra--and with it the chill of air out of some arctic wasteland. Favoring his still bandaged side, Travis scraped through the door aheadof the others, and came into the place of gray cold. 

"Wauggh!" Travis heard that exclamation from Jil-Lee, could have echoedit himself except that he was too astounded by what he had seen to sayanything at all. 

The light came from a grid of bars set far above their heads into thenative rock which roofed this storehouse, for storehouse it was. Therewere orderly lines of boxes, some large enough to contain a tank, othersno bigger than a man's fist. Symbols in the same blue-green-purplelights of the outer wall shone from their sides. 

"What--?" Buck began one question and then changed it to another: "Wheredo we begin to look?"

"Toward the far end. " Travis started down the center aisle between rowsof the massed spoils of another time and world--or worlds. The same tapewhich had given him the clue to the unlocking of the door, emphasizedthe importance of something stored at the far end, an object or objectswhich must be used first. He had wondered about that tape. A sensationof urgency, almost of despair, had come through the gabble of alienwords, the quick sequence of diagrams and pictures. The message mighthave been taped under a threat of some great peril. 

There was no dust on the rows of boxes or on the floor underfoot. Acurrent of cold, fresh air blew at intervals down the length of the hugechamber. They could not see the next aisle across the barriers of storedgoods, but the only noise was a whisper and the faint sounds of theirown feet. They came out into an open space backed by the wall, andTravis saw what had been so important. 

"No!" His protest was involuntary, but his denial loud enough to echo. 

Six--six of them--tall, narrow cases set upright against the wall; andfrom their depths, five pairs of dark eyes staring back at him in coldmeasurement. These were the men of the ships--the men Menlik had dreamedof--their bald white heads, their thin bodies with the skintightcovering of the familiar blue-green-purple. Five of them were here, alive--watching . .. Waiting. .. . 

Five men--and six boxes. That small fact broke the spell in which thoseeyes held Travis. He looked again at the sixth box to his right. Expecting to meet another pair of eyes this time, he was disconcerted toface only emptiness. Then, as his gaze traveled downward, he saw whatlay on the floor there--a skull, a tangle of bones, tattered materialcobwebbed into dusty rags by time. Whatever had preserved five of thestar men intact, had failed the sixth of their company. 

"They are alive!" Jil-Lee whispered. 

"I do not think so, " Buck answered. Travis took another step, reachedout to touch the transparent front of the nearest coffin case. There wasno change in the eyes of the alien who stood within, no indication thatif the Apaches could see him, he would be able to return their interest. The five stares which had bemused the visitors at first, did not breakto follow their movements. 

But Travis knew! Whether it was some message on the tape which the sightof the sleepers made clear, or whether some residue of the drivingpurpose which had set them there now reached his mind, was immaterial. He knew the purpose of this room and its contents, why it had been madeand the reason its six guardians had been left as prisoners--and whatthey wanted from anyone coming after them. 

"They sleep, " he said softly. 

"Sleep?" Buck caught him up. 

"They sleep in something like deep freeze. "

"Do you mean they can be brought to life again!" Jil-Lee cried. 

"Maybe not now--it must be too long--but they were meant to wait out aperiod and be restored. "

"How do you know that?" Buck asked. 

"I don't know for certain, but I think I understand a little. Somethinghappened a long time ago. Maybe it was a war, a war between whole starsystems, bigger and worse than anything we can imagine. I think thisplanet was an outpost, and when the supply ships didn't come any more, when they knew they might be cut off for some length of time, theyclosed down. Stacked their supplies and machines here and then went tosleep to wait for their rescuers. .. . "

"For rescuers who never came, " Jil-Lee said softly. "And there is achance they could be revived even now?"

Travis shivered. "Not one I would want to take. "

"No, " Buck's tone was somber, "that I agree to, younger brother. Theseare not men as we know them, and I do not think they would be good_dalaanbiyat'i_--allies. They had _go'ndi_ in plenty, these star men, but it is not the power of the People. No one but a madman or a foolwould try to disturb this sleep of theirs. "

"The truth you speak, " Jil-Lee agreed. "But where in this, " he turnedhis shoulder to the sleeping star men and looked back at the filledchamber--"do we find anything which will serve us here and now?"

Again Travis had only the scrappiest information to draw upon. "Spreadout, " he told them. "Look for the marking of a circle surrounding fourdots set in a diamond pattern. "

They went, but Travis lingered for a moment to look once more into thebleak and bitter eyes of the star men. How many planet years ago hadthey sealed themselves into those boxes? A thousand, ten thousand? Theirempire was long gone, yet here was an outpost still waiting to berevived to carry on its mysterious duties. It was as if in Saxon-invadedBritain long ago a Roman garrison had been frozen to await the return ofthe legions. Buck was right; there was no common ground today betweenTerran man and these unknowns. They must continue to sleep undisturbed. 

Yet when Travis also turned away and went back down the aisle, he wasstill aware of a persistent pull on him to return. It was as thoughthose eyes had set locking cords to will him back to release thesleepers. He was glad to turn a corner, to know that they could nolonger watch him plunder their treasury. 

"Here!" That was Buck's voice, but it echoed so oddly across the bigchamber that Travis had difficulty in deciding what part of thewarehouse it was coming from. And Buck had to call several times beforeTravis and Jil-Lee joined him. 

There was the circle-dot-diamond symbol shining on the side of a case. They worked it out of the pile, setting it in the open. Travis knelt torun his hands along the top. The container was an unknown alloy, tough, unmarked by the years--perhaps indestructible. 

Again his fingers located what his eyes could not detect--theimpressions on the edge, oddly shaped impressions into which his fingertips did not fit too comfortably. He pressed, bearing down with the fullstrength of his arms and shoulders, and then lifted up the lid. 

The Apaches looked into a set of compartments, each holding an objectwith a barrel, a hand grip, a general resemblance to the sidearms oftheir own world and time, but sufficiently different to point up theessential strangeness. With infinite care Travis worked one out of thevise-support which held it. The weapon was light in weight, lighter thanany automatic he had ever held. Its barrel was long, a good eighteeninches--the grip alien in shape so that it didn't fit comfortably intohis hand, the trigger nonexistent, but in its place a button on thelower part of the barrel which could be covered by an outstretchedfinger. 

"What does it do?" asked Buck practically. 

"I'm not sure. But it is important enough to have a special mention onthe tape. " Travis passed the weapon along to Buck and worked anotherloose from its holder. 

"No way of loading I can see, " Buck said, examining the weapon with careand caution. 

"I don't think it fires a solid projectile, " Travis replied. "We'll haveto test them outside to find out just what we do have. "

The Apaches took only three of the weapons, closing the box before theyleft. And as they wriggled back through the crack door, Travis wasvisited again by that odd flash of compelling, almost possessive powerhe had experienced when they had lain in ambush for the Red huntingparty. He took a step or two forward until he was able to catch the edgeof the reading table and steady himself against it. 

"What is the matter?" Both Buck and Jil-Lee were watching him;apparently neither had felt that sensation. Travis did not reply for asecond. He was free of it now. But he was sure of its source; it had notbeen any backlash of the Red caller! It was rooted here--a compulsiontriggered to make the original intentions of the outpost obeyed, a lastdrag from the sleepers. This place had been set up with a singlepurpose: to protect and preserve the ancient rulers of Topaz. Andperhaps the very presence here of the intruding Terrans had released aforce, started an unseen installation. 

Now Travis answered simply: "They want out. .. . "

Jil-Lee glanced back at the slit door, but Buck still watched Travis. 

"They call?" he asked. 

"In a way, " Travis admitted. But the compulsion had already ebbed; hewas free. "It is gone now. "

"This is not a good place, " Buck observed somberly. "We touch that whichshould not be held by men of our earth. " He held out the weapon. 

"Did not the People take up the rifles of the Pinda-lick-o-yi for theirdefense when it was necessary?" Jil-Lee demanded. "We do what we must. After seeing that, " his chin indicated the slit and what lay behindit--"do you wish the Reds to forage here?"

"Still, " Buck's words came slowly, "this is a choice between two evils, rather than between an evil and a good--"

"Then let us see how powerful this evil is!" Jil-Lee headed for thecorridor leading to the pillar. 

 * * * * *

It was late afternoon when they made their way through the swirlingmists of the valley under the archway giving on the former site of theoutlaw Tatar camp. Travis sighted the long barrel of the weapon at asmall bush backed by a boulder, and he pressed the firing button. Therewas no way of knowing whether the weapon was loaded except to try it. 

The result of his action was quick--quick and terrifying. There was nosound, no sign of any projectile . .. Ray-gas . .. Or whatever might haveissued in answer to his finger movement. But the bush--the bush was nomore!

A black smear made a ragged outline of the extinguished branches andleaves on the rock which had stood behind. The earth might still encloseroots under a thin coating of ash, but the bush was gone!

"The breath of Naye'nezyani--powerful beyond belief!" Buck broke theirhorrified silence first. "In truth evil is here!"

Jil-Lee raised his gun--if gun it could be called--aimed at the rockwith the bush silhouette plain to see and fired. 

This time they were able to witness disintegration in progress, thecrumble of the stone as if its substance was no more than sand lapped byriver water. A pile of blackened rubble remained--nothing more. 

"To use this on a living thing?" Buck protested, horror basing the doubtin his voice. 

"We do not use it against living things, " Travis promised, "but againstthe ship of the Reds--to cut that to pieces. This will open the shell ofthe turtle and let us at its meat. "

Jil-Lee nodded. "Those are true words. But now I agree with your fearsof this place, Travis. This is a devil thing and must not be allowed tofall into the hands of those who--"

"Will use it more freely than we plan to?" Buck wanted to know. "Wereserve to ourselves that right because we hold our motives higher? Tothink that way is also a crooked trail. We will use this means becausewe must, but afterward. .. . "

Afterward that warehouse must be closed, the tapes giving the entranceclue destroyed. One part of Travis fought that decision, right though heknew it to be. The towers were the menace he had believed. And what wasmore discouraging than the risk they now ran, was the belief that thetreasure was a poison which could not be destroyed but which mightspread from Topaz to Terra. 

Suppose the Western Conference had discovered that storehouse andexplored its riches, would they have been any less eager to exploitthem? As Buck had pointed out, one's own ideals could well supplyreasons for violence. In the past Terra had been racked by wars ofreligion, one fanatically held opinion opposed to another. There was norighteousness in such struggles, only fatal ends. The Reds had no rightto this new knowledge--but neither did they. It must be locked againstthe meddling of fools and zealots. 

"Taboo--" Buck spoke that word with an emphasis they could appreciate. Knowledge must be set behind the invisible barriers of taboo, and thatcould work. 

"These three--no more--we found no other weapons!" Jil-Lee added awarning suggestion. 

"No others, " Buck agreed and Travis echoed, adding:

"We found tombs of the space people, and these were left with them. Because of our great need we borrowed them, but they must be returned tothe dead or trouble will follow. And they may only be used against thefortress of the Reds by us, who first found them and have taken untoourselves the wrath of disturbed spirits. "

"Well thought! That is an answer to give the People. The towers are thetombs of dead ones. When we return these they shall be taboo. We areagreed?" Buck asked. 

"We are agreed!"

Buck tried his weapon on a sapling, saw it vanish into nothingness. Noneof the Apaches wanted to carry the strange guns against their bodies;the power made them objects of fear, rather than arms to delight awarrior. And when they returned to their temporary camp, they laid allthree on a blanket and covered them up. But they could not cover up thememories of what had happened to bush, rock, and tree. 

"If such are their small weapons, " Buck observed that evening, "thenwhat kind of things did they have to balance our heavy armament? Perhapsthey were able to burn up worlds!"

"That may be what happened elsewhere, " Travis replied. "We do not knowwhat put an end to their empire. The capital-planet we found on thefirst voyage had not been destroyed, but it had been evacuated in haste. One building had not even been stripped of its furnishings. " Heremembered the battle he had fought there, he and Ross Murdock and thewinged native, standing up to an attack of the ape-things while thewinged warrior had used his physical advantage to fly above and bomb theenemies with boxes snatched from the piles. .. . 

"And here they went to sleep in order to wait out some danger--time ordisaster--they did not believe would be permanent, " Buck mused. 

Travis thought he would flee from the eyes of the sleepers throughouthis dreams that night, but on the contrary he slept heavily, finding ithard to rouse when Jil-Lee awakened him for his watch. But he was alertwhen he saw a four-footed shape flit out of the shadows, drink waterfrom the stream, and shake itself vigorously in a spray of drops. 

"Naginlta!" he greeted the coyote. Trouble? He could have shouted thatquestion, but he put a tight rein on his impatience and strove tocommunicate in the only method possible. 

No, what the coyote had come to report was not trouble but the fact thatthe one he had been set to guard was headed back into the mountains, though others came with her--four others. Nalik'ideyu still watchedtheir camp. Her mate had come for further orders. 

Travis squatted before the animal, cupped the coyote's jowls between hispalms. Naginlta suffered his touch with only a small whine ofuneasiness. With all his power of mental suggestion, Travis strove toreach the keen brain he knew was served by the yellow eyes looking intohis. 

The others with Kaydessa were to be led on, taken to the ship. ButKaydessa must not suffer harm. When they reached a spot near-by--Travisthought of a certain rock beyond the pass--then one of the coyotes wasto go ahead to the ship. Let the Apaches there know. .. . 

Manulito and Eskelta should also be warned by the sentry along thepeaks, but additional alerting would not go amiss. Those four withKaydessa--they must reach the trap!

"What was that?" Buck rolled out of his blanket. 

"Naginlta--" The coyote sped back into the dark again. "The Reds havetaken the bait, a party of at least four with Kaydessa are moving intothe foothills, heading south. "

But the enemy party was not the only one on the move. In the light ofday a sentry's mirror from a point in the peaks sent another warningdown to their camp. 

Out in their mountain meadows the Tatar outlaws were on horseback, moving toward the entrance of the tower valley. Buck knelt by theblanket covering the alien weapons. 

"Now what?"

"We'll have to stop them, " Travis replied, but he had no idea of justhow they would halt those determined Mongol horsemen. 

17

There were ten of them riding on small, wiry steppe ponies--men andwomen both, and well armed. Travis recalled it was the custom of theHorde that the women fought as warriors when necessary. Menlik--therewas no mistaking the flapping robe of their leader. And they weresinging! The rider behind the shaman thumped with violent energy a drumfastened beside his saddle horn, its heavy boom, boom the same call theApache had heard before. The Mongols were working themselves into themood for some desperate effort, Travis deduced. And if they were toodeeply under the Red spell, there would be no arguing with them. Hecould wait no longer. 

The Apache swung down from a ledge near the valley gate, moved into theopen and stood waiting, the alien weapon resting across his forearm. Ifnecessary, he intended to give a demonstration with it for an objectlesson. 

"_Dar-u-gar_!" The war cry which had once awakened fear across a quarterof Terra. Thin here, and from only a few throats, but just as menacing. 

Two of the horsemen aimed lances, preparing to ride him down. Travissighted a tree midway between them and pressed the firing button. Thistime there was a flash, a flicker of light, to mark the disappearance ofa living thing. 

One of the lancers' ponies reared, squealed in fear. The other kept onhis course. 

"Menlik!" Travis shouted. "Hold up your man! I do not want to kill!"

The shaman called out, but the lancer was already level with thevanished tree, his head half turned on his shoulders to witness theblackened earth where it had stood. Then he dropped his lance, sawed onthe reins. A rifle bullet might not have halted his charge, unless itkilled or wounded, but what he had just seen was a thing beyond hisunderstanding. 

The tribesmen sat their horses, facing Travis, watching him with theferal eyes of the wolves they claimed as forefathers, wolves thatpossessed the cunning of the wild, cunning enough not to rush breakneckinto unknown danger. 

Travis walked forward. "Menlik, I would talk--"

There was an outburst from the horsemen, protests from Hulagur and oneor two of the others. But the shaman urged his mount into a walking pacetoward the Apache until they stood only a few feet from each other--thewarrior of the steppes and the Horde facing the warrior of the desertand the People. 

"You have taken a woman from our yurts, " Menlik said, but his eyes weremore on the alien gun than on the man who held it. "Brave are you tocome again into our land. He who sets foot in the stirrup must mountinto the saddle; he who draws blade free of the scabbard must beprepared to use it. "

"The Horde is not here--I see only a handful of people, " Travis replied. "Does Menlik propose to go up against the Apaches so? Yet there arethose who are his greater enemies. "

"A stealer of women is not such a one as needs a regiment under ageneral to face him. "

Suddenly Travis was impatient of the ceremonious talking; there was solittle time. 

"Listen, and listen well, Shaman!" He spoke curtly now. "I have not yourwoman. She is already crossing the mountains southward, " he pointed withhis chin--"leading the Reds into a trap. "

Would Menlik believe him? There was no need, Travis decided, to tell himnow that Kaydessa's part in this affair was involuntary. 

"And you?" The shaman asked the question the Apache had hoped to hear. 

"_We_, " Travis emphasized that, "march now against those hiding behindin their ship out there. " He indicated the northern plains. 

Menlik raised his head, surveying the land about them with disbelieving, contemptuous appraisal. 

"You are chief then of an army, an army equipped with magic to overcomemachines?"

"One needs no army when he carries this. " For the second time Travisdisplayed the power of the weapon he carried, this time cutting intoshifting rubble an outcrop of cliff wall. Menlik's expression did notchange, though his eyes narrowed. 

The shaman signaled his small company, and they dismounted. Travis washeartened by this sign that Menlik was willing to talk. The Apache madea similar gesture, and Jil-Lee and Buck, their own weapons well insight, came out to back him. Travis knew that the Tatar had no way ofknowing that the three were alone; he well might have believed an unseentroop of Apaches were near-by and so armed. 

"You would talk--then talk!" Menlik ordered. 

This time Travis outlined events with an absence of word embroidery. "Kaydessa leads the Reds into a trap we have set beyond the peaks--fourof them ride with her. How many now remain in the ship near thesettlement?"

"There are at least two in the flyer, perhaps eight more in the ship. But there is no getting at them in there. "

"No?" Travis laughed softly, shifted the weapon on his arm. "Do you notthink that this will crack the shell of that nut so that we can get atthe meat?"

Menlik's eyes flickered to the left, to the tree which was no longer atree but a thin deposit of ash on seared ground. 

"They can control us with the caller as they did before. If we go upagainst them, then we are once more gathered into their net--before wereach their ship. "

"That is true for you of the Horde; it does not affect the People, "Travis returned. "And suppose we burn out their machines? Then will younot be free?"

"To burn up a tree? Lightning from the skies can do that. "

"Can lightning, " Buck asked softly, "also make rock as sand of theriver?"

Menlik's eyes turned to the second example of the alien weapon's power. 

"Give us proof that this will act against their machines!"

"What proof, Shaman?" asked Jil-Lee. "Shall we burn down a mountain thatyou may believe? This is now a matter of time. "

Travis had a sudden inspiration. "You say that the 'copter is out. Suppose we use that as a target?"

"That--that can sweep the flyer from the sky?" Menlik's disbelief wasopen. 

Travis wondered if he had gone too far. But they needed to ridthemselves of that spying flyer before they dared to move out into theplain. And to use the destruction of the helicopter as an example, wouldbe the best proof he could give of the invincibility of the new Apachearms. 

"Under the right conditions, " he replied stoutly, "yes. "

"And those conditions?" Menlik demanded. 

"That it must be brought within range. Say, below the level of aneighboring peak where a man may lie in wait to fire. "

Silent Apaches faced silent Mongols, and Travis had a chance to tastewhat might be defeat. But the helicopter must be taken before theyadvanced toward the ship and the settlement. 

"And, maker of traps, how do you intend to bait this one?" Menlik'squestion was an open challenge. 

"You know these Reds better than we, " Travis counterattacked. "How wouldyou bait it, Son of the Blue Wolf?"

"You say Kaydessa is leading the Reds south; we have but your word forthat, " Menlik replied. "Though how it would profit you to lie on such amatter--" He shrugged. "If you do speak the truth, then the 'copter willcircle about the foothills where they entered. "

"And what would bring the pilot nosing farther in?" the Apache asked. 

Menlik shrugged again. "Any manner of things. The Reds have neverventured too far south; they are suspicious of the heights--with goodcause. " His fingers, near the hilt of his tulwar, twitched. "Anythingwhich might suggest that their party is in difficulty would bring themin for a closer look--"

"Say a fire, with much smoke?" Jil-Lee suggested. 

Menlik spoke over his shoulder to his own party. There was a babble ofanswer, two or three of the men raising their voices above those oftheir companions. 

"If set in the right direction, yes, " the shaman conceded. "When do youplan to move, Apaches?"

"At once!"

But they did not have wings, and the cross-country march they had tomake was a rough journey on foot. Travis' "at once" stretched into nighthours filled with scrambling over rocks, and an early morning ofpreparations, with always the threat that the helicopter might notreturn to fly its circling mission over the scene of operations. Allthey had was Menlik's assurance that while any party of the Redoverlords was away from their well-defended base, the flyer did justthat. 

"Might be relaying messages on from a walkie-talkie or something likethat, " Buck commented. 

"They should reach our ship in two days . .. Three at the most . .. Ifthey are pushing, " Travis said thoughtfully. "It would be a help--ifthat flyer is a link in any com unit--to destroy it before its crewpicks up and relays any report of what happens back there. "

Jil-Lee grunted. He was surveying the heights above the pocket in whichMenlik and two of the Mongols were piling brush. "There . .. There . .. And there. .. . " The Apache's chin made three juts. "If the pilot swoopsfor a quick look, our cross fire will take out his blades. "

They held a last conference with Menlik and then climbed to the perchesJil-Lee had selected. Sentries on lookout reported by mirror flash thatTsoay, Deklay, Lupe, and Nolan were now on the move to join the otherthree Apaches. If and when Manulito's trap closed its jaws on the Redsat the western ship, the news would pass and the Apaches would move outto storm the enemy fort on the prairie. And should they blast any callerthe helicopter might carry, Menlik and his riders would accompany them. 

There it was, just as Menlik had foretold: The wasp from the opencountry was flying into the hills. Menlik, on his knees, struck flint tosteel, sparking the fire they hoped would draw the pilot to a closerinvestigation. 

The brush caught, and smoke, thick and white, came first in separatepuffs and then gathered into a murky pillar to form a signal no onecould overlook. In Travis' hands the grip of the gun was slippery. Herested the end of the barrel on the rock, curbing his rising tension asbest he could. 

To escape any caller on the flyer, the Tatars had remained in the valleybelow the Apaches' lookout. And as the helicopter circled in, Travissighted two men in its cockpit, one wearing a helmet identical to theone they had seen on the Red hunter days ago. The Reds' long undisputedsway over the Mongol forces would make them overconfident. Travisthought that even if they sighted one of the waiting Apaches, they wouldnot take warning until too late. 

Menlik's bush fire was performing well and the flyer was headingstraight for it. The machine buzzed the smoke once, too high for theApaches to trust raying its blades. Then the pilot came back in a lowersweep which carried him only yards above the smoldering brush, on alevel with the snipers. 

Travis pressed the button on the barrel, his target the fast-whirlingblades. Momentum carried the helicopter on, but at least one of themarksmen, if not all three, had scored. The machine plowed through thesmoke to crack up beyond. 

Was their caller working, bringing in the Mongols to aid the Redstrapped in the wreck?

Travis watched Menlik make his way toward the machine, reach the crackedcover of the cockpit. But in the shaman's hand was a bare blade on whichthe sun glinted. The Mongol wrenched open the sprung door, thrust inwardwith the tulwar, and the howl of triumph he voiced was as worldless andwild as a wolf's. 

More Mongols flooding down . .. Hulagur . .. A woman . .. Centering on thehelicopter. This time a spear plunged into the interior of the brokenflyer. Payment was being extracted for long slavery. 

The Apaches dropped from the heights, waiting for Menlik to leave thewild scene. Hulagur had dragged out the body of the helmeted man andthe Mongols were stripping off his equipment, smashing it with rocks, still howling their war cry. But the shaman came to the dying smudgefire to meet the Apaches. 

He was smiling, his upper lip raised in a curve suggesting the victorypurr of a snow tiger. And he saluted with one hand. 

"There are two who will not trap men again! We believe you now, _andas_, comrades of battle, when you say you can go up against their fort andmake it as nothing!"

Hulagur came up behind the shaman, a modern automatic in his hand. Hetossed the weapon into the air, caught it again, laughing--disclaimingsomething in his own language. 

"From the serpents we take two fangs, " Menlik translated. "These weaponsmay not be as dangerous as yours, but they can bite deeper, quicker, andwith more force than our arrows. "

It did not take the Mongols long to strip the helicopter and the Reds ofwhat they could use, deliberately smashing all the other equipment whichhad survived the wreck. They had accomplished one important move: Thelink between the southbound exploring party and the Red headquarters--ifthat was the role the helicopter had played--was now gone. And the"eyes" operating over the open territory of the plains had ceased toexist. The attacking war party could move against the ship near the Redsettlement, knowing they had only controlled Mongol scouts to watch for. And to penetrate enemy territory under those conditions was an old, oldgame the Apaches had played for centuries. 

While they waited for the signals from the peaks, a camp was establishedand a Mongol dispatched to bring up the rest of the outlaws and allextra mounts. Menlik carried to the Apaches a portion of the dried meatwhich had been transported Horde fashion--under the saddle to soften itfor eating. 

"We do not skulk any longer like rats or city men in dark holes, " hetold them. "This time we ride, and we shall take an accounting fromthose out there--a fine accounting!"

"They still have other controllers, " Travis pointed out. 

"And you have that which is an answer to all their machines, " blazedMenlik in return. 

"They will send against us your own people if they can, " Buck warned. 

Menlik pulled at his upper lip. "That is also truth. But now they haveno eyes in the sky, and with so many of their men away, they will notpatrol too far from camp. I tell you, _andas_, with these weapons ofyours a man could rule a world!"

Travis looked at him bleakly. "Which is why they are taboo!"

"Taboo?" Menlik repeated. "In what manner are these forbidden? Do younot carry them openly, use them as you wish? Are they not weapons ofyour own people?"

Travis shook his head. "These are the weapons of dead men--if we canname them men at all. These we took from a tomb of the star race whoheld Topaz when our world was only a hunting ground of wild men wearingthe skins of beasts and slaying mammoths with stone spears. They arefrom a tomb and are cursed, a curse we took upon ourselves with theiruse. "

There was a strange light deep in the shaman's eyes. Travis did not knowwho or what Menlik had been before the Red conditioner had returned himto the role of Horde shaman. He might have been a technician orscientist--and deep within him some remnants of that training could nowbe dismissing everything Travis said as fantastic superstition. 

Yet in another way the Apache spoke the exact truth. There was a curseon these weapons, on every bit of knowledge gathered in that warehouseof the towers. As Menlik had already noted, that curse was power, thepower to control Topaz, and then perhaps to reach back across the starsto Terra. 

When the shaman spoke again his words were a half whisper. "It will takea powerful curse to keep these out of the hands of men. "

"With the Reds gone or powerless, " Buck asked, "what need will anyonehave for them?"

"And if another ship comes from the skies--to begin all over again?"

"To that we shall have an answer, also, if and when we must find it, "Travis replied. That could well be true . .. Other weapons in thewarehouse powerful enough to pluck a spaceship out of the sky, but theydid not have to worry about that now. 

"Arms from a tomb. Yes, this is truly dead men's magic. I shall say soto my people. When do we move out?"

"When we know whether or not the trap to the south is sprung, " Buckanswered. 

The report came an hour after sunrise the next morning when Tsoay, Nolan, and Deklay padded into camp. The war chief made a slight gesturewith one hand. 

"It is done?" Travis wanted confirmation in words. 

"It is done. The Pinda-lick-o-yi entered the ship eagerly. Then theyblew it and themselves up. Manulito did his work well. "

"And Kaydessa?"

"The woman is safe. When the Reds saw the ship, they left their machineoutside to hold her captive. That mechanical caller was easilydestroyed. She is now free and with the _mba'a_ she comes across themountains, Manulito and Eskelta with her also. Now--" he looked from hisown people to the Mongols, "why are you here with these?"

"We wait, but the waiting is over, " Jil-Lee said. "Now we go north!"

18

They lay along the rim of a vast basin, a scooping out of earth so widethey could not sight its other side. The bed of an ancient lake, Travisspeculated, or perhaps even the arm of a long-dried sea. But now thehollow was filled with rolling waves of golden grass, tossing heavyheads under the flowing touch of a breeze with the exception of a spaceabout a mile ahead where round domes--black, gray, brown--broke theyellow in an irregular oval around the globular silver bead of a spacer:a larger ship than that which had brought the Apaches, but of the sameshape. 

"The horse herd . .. To the west. " Nolan evaluated the scene with theeyes of an experienced raider. "Tsoay, Deklay, you take the horses!"

They nodded, and began the long crawl which would take them two miles ormore from the party to stampede the horses. 

To the Mongols in those domelike yurts horses were wealth, life itself. They would come running to investigate any disturbance among the grazingponies, thus clearing the path to the ship and the Reds there. Travis, Jil-Lee, and Buck, armed with the star guns, would spearhead thatattack--cutting into the substance of the ship itself until it was asieve through which they could shake out the enemy. Only when theinstallations it contained were destroyed, might the Apaches hope forany assistance from the Mongols, either the outlaw pack waiting wellback on the prairie or the people in the yurts. 

The grass rippled and Naginlta poked out a nose, parting stems beforeTravis. The Apache beamed an order, sending the coyotes with thehorse-raiding party. He had seen how the animals could drive huntedsplit-horns; they would do as well with the ponies. 

Kaydessa was safe, the coyotes had made that clear by the fact that theyhad joined the attacking party an hour earlier. With Eskelta andManulito she was on her way back to the north. 

Travis supposed he should be well pleased that their reckless plan hadsucceeded as well as it had. But when he thought of the Tatar girl, allhe could see was her convulsed face close to his in the ship corridor, her raking nails raised to tear his cheek. She had an excellent reasonto hate him, yet he hoped. .. . 

They continued to watch both horse herd and domes. There were peoplemoving about the yurts, but no signs of life at the ship. Had the Redsshut themselves in there, warned in some way of the two disasters whichhad whittled down their forces?

"Ah--!" Nolan breathed. 

One of the ponies had raised its head and was facing the direction ofthe camp, suspicion plain to read in its stance. The Apaches must havereached the point between the herd and the domes which had been theirgoal. And the Mongol guard, who had been sitting cross-legged, thereins of his mount dangling close to his hand, got to his feet. 

"Ahhhuuuuu!" The ancient Apache war cry that had sounded across deserts, canyons, and southwestern Terran plains to ice the blood, ripped just asfreezingly through the honey-hued air of Topaz. 

The horses wheeled, racing upslope away from the settlement. A figurebroke from the grass, flapped his arms at one of the mounts, grabbed atflying mane, and pulled himself up on the bare back. Only a masterhorseman would have done that, but the whooping rider now drove the herdon, assisted by the snapping and snarling coyotes. 

"Deklay--" Jil-Lee identified the reckless rider, "that was one of hisrodeo tricks. "

Among the yurts it was as if someone had ripped up a rotten log toreveal an ants' nest and sent the alarmed insects into a frenzy. Menboiled out of the domes, the majority of them running for the horsepasture. One or two were mounted on ponies that must have been stakedout in the settlement. The main war party of Apaches skimmed silentlythrough the grass on their way to the ship. 

The three who were armed with the alien weapons had already tested theirrange by experimentation back in the hills, but the fear of exhaustingwhatever powered those barrels had curtailed their target practice. Nowthey snaked to the edge of the bare ground between them and the ladderhatch of the spacer. To cross that open space was to provide targets forlances and arrows--or the superior armament of the Reds. 

"A chance we can hit from here. " Buck laid his weapon across his bentknee, steadied the long barrel of the burner, and pressed the firingbutton. 

The closed hatch of the ship shimmered, dissolved into a black hole. Behind Travis someone let out the yammer of a war whoop. 

"Fire--cut the walls to pieces!"

Travis did not need that order from Jil-Lee. He was already beamingunseen destruction at the best target he could ask for--the side of thesphere. If the globe was armed, there was no weapon which could bedepressed far enough to reach the marksmen at ground level. 

Holes appeared, irregular gaps and tears in the fabric of the ship. TheApaches were turning the side of the globe into lacework. How far thoserays penetrated into the interior they could not guess. 

Movement at one of the holes, the chattering burst of machine-gun fire, spatters of soil and gravel into their faces; they could be cut topieces by that! The hole enlarged, a scream . .. Cut off. .. . 

"They will not be too quick to try that again, " Nolan observed with coldcalm from behind Travis' post. 

Methodically they continued to beam the ship. It would never bespace-borne again; there were neither the skills nor materials here torepair such damage. 

"It is like laying a knife to fat, " Lupe said as he crawled up besideTravis. "Slice, slice--!"

"Move!" Travis reached to the left, pulled at Jil-Lee's shoulder. 

Travis did not know whether it was possible or not, but he had a headyvision of their combined fire power cutting the globe in half, slicingit crosswise with the ease Lupe admired. 

They scurried through cover just as someone behind yelled a warning. Travis threw himself down, rolled into a new firing position. An arrowsang over his head; the Reds were doing what the Apaches had known theywould--calling in the controlled Mongols to fight. The attack on theship must be stepped up, or the Amerindians would be forced to retreat. 

Already a new lacing of holes appeared under their concentrated efforts. With the gun held tight to his middle, Travis found his feet, zigzaggedacross the bare ground for the nearest of those openings. Another arrowclanged harmlessly against the fabric of the ship a foot from his goal. 

He made it in, over jagged metal shards which glowed faintly and reekedof ozone. The weapons' beams had penetrated well past both the outershell and the wall of insulation webbing. He climbed a second andsmaller break into a corridor enough like those of the western ship tobe familiar. The Red spacer, based on the general plan of the alienderelict ship as his own had been, could not be very different. 

Travis tried to subdue his heavy breathing and listen. He heard aconfused shouting and the burr of what might be an alarm system. Theship's brain was the control cabin. Even if the Reds dared not try tolift now, that was the core of their communication lines. He startedalong the corridor, trying to figure out its orientation in relation tothat all-important nerve center. 

The Apache shoved open each door he passed with one shoulder, and twicehe played a light beam on installations within cabins. He had no idea oftheir use, but the wholesale destruction of each and every machine waswhat good sense and logic dictated. 

There was a sound behind. Travis whirled, saw Jil-Lee and beyond himBuck. 

"Up?" Jil-Lee asked. 

"And down, " Buck added. "The Tatars say they have hollowed a bunkerbeneath. "

"Separate and do as much damage as you can, " Travis suggested. 

"Agreed!"

Travis sped on. He passed another door and then backtracked hurriedly ashe realized it had given on to an engine room. With the gun he blastedtwo long lines cutting the fittings into ragged lumps. Abruptly thelights went out; the burr of the alarms was silenced. Part of the ship, if not all, was dead. And now it might come to hunter and hunted in thedark. But that was an advantage as far as the Apaches were concerned. 

Back in the corridor again, Travis crept through a curiously lifelessatmosphere. The shouting was stilled as if the sudden failure of themachines had stunned the Reds. 

A tiny sound--perhaps the scrape of a boot on a ladder. Travis edgedback into a compartment. A flash of light momentarily lighted thecorridor; the approaching figure was using a torch. Travis drew hisknife with one hand, reversed it so he could use the heavy hilt as asilencer. The other was hurrying now, on his way to investigate theburned-out engine cabin. Travis could hear the rasp of his fastbreathing. Now!

The Apache had put down the gun, his left arm closed about a shoulder, and the Red gasped as Travis struck with the knife hilt. Not clean--hehad to hit a second time before the struggles of the man were over. Then, using his hands for eyes, he stripped the limp body on the floorof automatic and torch. 

With the Red's weapon in the front of his sash, the burner in one handand the torch in the other, Travis prowled on. There was a good chancethat those above might believe him to be their comrade returning. Hefound the ladder leading to the next level, began to climb, pausing nowand then to listen. 

Shock preceded sound. Under him the ladder swayed and the globe itselfrocked a little. A blast of some kind must have been set off at or underthe level of the ground. The bunker Buck had mentioned?

Travis clung to the ladder, waited for the vibrations to subside. Therewas a shouting above, a questioning. .. . Hurriedly he ascended to thenext level, scrambled out and away from the ladder just in time to avoidthe light from another torch flashed down the well. Again that call ofinquiry, then a shot--the boom of the explosion loud in the confinedspace. 

To climb into the face of that light with a waiting marksman above wassheer folly. Could there be another way up? Travis retreated down one ofthe corridors raying out from the ladder well. A quick inspection of thecabins along that route told him he had reached a section of livingquarters. The pattern was familiar; the control cabin would be on thenext level. 

Suddenly the Apache remembered something: On each level there should bean emergency opening giving access to the insulation space between theinner and outer skins of the ship through which repairs could be made. If he could find that and climb up to the next level. .. . 

The light shining down the well remained steady, and there was theechoing crack of another shot. But Travis was far enough away from theladder now to dare use his own torch, seeking the door he needed on thewall surface. With a leap of heart he sighted the outline--his luck wasin! The Russian and western ships were alike. 

Once the panel was open he flashed his torch up, finding the climbingrungs and, above, the shadow outline of the next level opening. Securingthe alien gun in his sash beside the automatic and holding the torch inhis mouth, Travis climbed, not daring to think of the deep drop below. Four . .. Five . .. Ten rungs, and he could reach the other door. 

His fingers slid over it, searching for the release catch. But there wasno answering give. Balling his fist, he struck down at an awkward angleand almost lost his balance as the panel fell away beneath his blow. Thedoor swung and he pulled through. 

Darkness! Travis snapped on the torch for an instant, saw about him therelays of a com system, and gave it a full spraying as he pivoted, destroying the eyes and ears of the ship--unless the burnout he hadeffected below had already done that. A flash of automatic fire from hisleft, a searing burn along his arm an inch or so below the shoulder--

Travis' action was purely reflex. He swung the burner around, even ashis mind gave a frantic No! To defend himself with automatic, knife, arrow--yes; but not this way. He huddled against the wall. 

An instant earlier there had been a man there, a living, breathingman--one of his own species, if not of his own beliefs. Then because hisown muscles had unconsciously obeyed warrior training, there was this. So easy--to deal death without really meaning to. The weapon in hishands was truly the devil gift they were right to fear. Such weaponswere not to be put into the hands of men--any men--no matter how wellintentioned. 

Travis gulped in great mouthfuls of air. He wanted to throw the burneraway, hurl it from him. But the task he could rightfully use it for wasnot yet done. 

Somehow he reeled on into the control cabin to render the ship truly adead thing and free himself of the heavy burden of guilt and terrorbetween his hands. That weight could be laid aside; memory could not. And no one of his kind must ever have to carry such memories again. 

 * * * * *

The booming of the drums was like a pulse quickening the blood to arhythm which bit at the brain, made a man's eyes shine, his musclestense as if he held an arrow to bow cord or arched his fingers about aknife hilt. A fire blazed high and in its light men leaped and whirledin a mad dance with tulwar blades catching and reflecting the red gleamof flames. Mad, wild, the Mongols were drunk with victory and freedom. Beyond them, the silver globe of the ship showed the black holes of itsdeath, which was also the death of the past--for all of them. 

"What now?" Menlik, the dangling of amulets and charms tinkling as hemoved, came up to Travis. There was none of the wild fervor in theshaman's face; instead, it was as if he had taken several strides out ofthe life of the Horde, was emerging into another person, and thequestion he asked was one they all shared. 

Travis felt drained, flattened. They had achieved their purpose. Thehandful of Red overlords were dead, their machines burned out. Therewere no controls here any more; men were free in mind and body. Whatwere they to do with that freedom?

"First, " the Apache spoke his own thoughts--"we must return these. "

The three alien weapons were lashed into a square of Mongol fabric, hidden from sight, although they could not be so easily shut out ofmind. Only a few of the others, Apache or Mongol, had seen them; andthey must be returned before their power was generally known. 

"I wonder if in days to come, " Buck mused, "they will not say that wepulled lightning out of the sky, as did the Thunder Slayer, to aid us. But this is right. We must return them and make that valley and what itholds taboo. "

"And what if another ship comes--one of _yours_?" Menlik asked shrewdly. 

Travis stared beyond the Tatar shaman to the men about the fire. Hisnightmare dragged into the open. .. . What if a ship did come in, one withAshe, Murdock, men he knew and liked, friends on board? What then of hisguardianship of the towers and their knowledge? Could he be as sure ofwhat to do then? He rubbed his hand across his forehead and said slowly:

"We shall take steps when--or if--that happens--"

But could they, would they? He began to hope fiercely that it would nothappen, at least in his lifetime, and then felt the cold bleakness ofthe exile they must will themselves into. 

"Whether we like it or not, " (was he talking to the others or trying toargue down his own rebellion?) "we cannot let what lies under the towersbe known . .. Found . .. Used . .. Unless by men who are wiser and morecontrolled than we are in our time. "

Menlik drew his shaman's wand, twiddled it between his fingers, andbeneath his drooping lids watched the three Apaches with a new kind ofmeasurement. 

"Then I say to you this: Such a guardianship must be a double charge, shared by my people as well. For if they suspect that you alone controlthese powers and their secret, there will be envy, hatred, fear, adivision between us from the first--war . .. Raids. .. . This is a largeland and neither of our groups numbers many. Shall we split apartfatally from this day when there is room for all? If these ancientthings are evil, then let us both guard them with a common taboo. "

He was right, of course. And they would have to face the truth squarely. To both Apache and Mongol any off-world ship, no matter from which side, would be a menace. Here was where they would remain and set roots. Thesooner they began thinking of themselves as people with a common bond, the better it would be. And Menlik's suggestion provided a tie. 

"You speak well, " Buck was saying. "This shall be a thing we share. Weare three who know. Do you be three also, but choose well, Menlik!"

"Be assured that I will!" the Tatar returned. "We start a new life here;there is no going back. But as I have said: The land is wide. We have noquarrel with one another, and perhaps our two peoples shall become one;after all, we do not differ too greatly. .. . " He smiled and gestured tothe fire and the dancers. 

Among the Mongols another man had gone into action, his head thrown backas he leaped and twirled, voicing a deep war cry. Travis recognizedDeklay. Apache, Mongol--both raiders, horsemen, hunters, fighters whenthe need arose. No, there was no great difference. Both had been trickedinto coming here, and they had no allegiance now for those who had sentthem. 

Perhaps clan and Horde would combine or perhaps they would driftapart--time would tell. But there would be the bond of the guardianship, the determination that what slept in the towers would not be roused--intheir lifetime or many lifetimes!

Travis smiled a bit crookedly. A new religion of sorts, a priesthoodwith sacred and forbidden knowledge . .. In time a whole new life andcivilization stemming from this night. The bleak cold of his earlythought cut less deep. There was a different kind of adventure here. 

He reached out and gathered up the bundle of the burners, glancing fromBuck to Jil-Lee to Menlik. Then he stood up, the weight of the burden inhis arms, the feeling of a greater weight inside him. 

"Shall we go?"

To get the weapons back--that was of first importance. Maybe then hecould sleep soundly, to dream of riding across the Arizona range at dawnunder a blue sky with a wind in his face, a wind carrying the scent ofpiñon pine and sage, a wind which would never caress or hearten himagain, a wind his sons and sons' sons would never know. To dreamtroubled dreams, and hope in time those dreams would fade and thin--thata new world would blanket out the old. Better so, Travis told himselfwith defiance and determination--better so!