The Defiant Agents quotes

But Ashe was reluctant. He had a feeling that matters were slipping out of his control, that he was about to face a crisis which was somehow worse than just a major security leak.

Was the enemy always on the other side of the world? Or could he wear the same uniform, even share the same goals?

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

Fire, mankind’s oldest ally, weapon, tool, leaped high before the naked stone of the mountain side.

Men sat cross-legged about it, fifteen of them. And behind, guarded by the flames and that somber circle, were the women. There was a uniformity in this gathering.

He did not want the chieftainship here. No, but neither did he want growing whispers working about him to cut him off from his people.

To every Apache severance from the clan was a little death.

He must have those who would back him if Deklay, or those who thought like Deklay, turned grumbling into open hostility.

His hand made a swift sweep and plucked a knife as long and keen as his from 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 her knife, which he then fastened to his own belt. Alerting the coyotes, he dispatched them ahead; and the three started on, the Mongol girl between the two Apaches.

“The machines, always the machines!” he cried hoarsely. “A thing which can 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 blow before he chokes on the blood in his throat,” Menlik retorted. “We cannot use bow or tulwar against weapons which flame and kill quicker than any storm lightning!

“Perhaps in them is some conditioned control making it so that they cannot attack their rulers—”

“I do not like this matter of machines which can play this way and that with 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 and the death of Ruthven, escaped just such an existence as these Tatars now endured? If so, why?

“

Charge again, bull. Feel once more the Fox’s teeth!

”

“

The ship is changed. Inside, there is something wrong. When you walk the corridors your skin crawls, you think there is something behind you.

You hear things, see things from the corners of your eyes … When you turn, there’s nothing, nothing at all! And the higher you climb into the ship, the worse it is. I tell you, Travis, never have I felt anything like it before!”

“

Pig! Rooter in the dirt! Diseased camel⁠—

” she shouted at him in English and then reverted to her own tongue, her voice riding up and down the scale. Her hands were tied behind her back, but there were no bonds on her tongue.

“Pig! Rooter in the dirt! Diseased camel—” she shouted at him in English and then reverted to her own tongue, her voice riding up and down the scale.

Her hands were tied behind her back, but there were no bonds on her tongue.

“This is one who can speak thunders, and shoot lightnings from her mouth,” Buck commented in Apache. “Put her well away from the wood, lest she set it aflame.”

Expecting to meet another pair of eyes this time, he was disconcerted to face only emptiness. Then, as his gaze traveled downward, he saw what lay on the floor there—a skull, a tangle of bones, tattered material cobwebbed into dusty rags by time.

Whatever had preserved five of the star men intact, had failed the sixth of their company.

“They are alive!” Jil-Lee whispered.

How many planet years ago had they sealed themselves into those boxes? A thousand, ten thousand? Their empire was long gone, yet here was an outpost still waiting to be revived to carry on its mysterious duties.

It was as if in Saxon-invaded Britain long ago a Roman garrison had been frozen to await the return of the legions.

Buck was right; there was no common ground today between Terran man and these unknowns. They must continue to sleep undisturbed.

“

Then let us see how powerful this evil is!

” Jil-Lee headed for the corridor leading to the pillar.

The result of his action was quick—quick and terrifying. There was no sound, no sign of any projectile … ray-gas … or whatever might have issued in answer to his finger movement.

But the bush⁠—the bush was no more!

A black smear made a ragged outline of the extinguished branches and leaves on the rock which had stood behind. The earth might still enclose roots under a thin coating of ash, but the bush was gone!

“Will use it more freely than we plan to?” Buck wanted to know. “We reserve to ourselves that right because we hold our motives higher?

To think that way is also a crooked trail.

We will use this means because we must, but afterward …”

“You have taken a woman from our yurts,” Menlik said, but his eyes were more on the alien gun than on the man who held it. “Brave are you to come again into our land.

He who sets foot in the stirrup must mount into the saddle; he who draws blade free of the scabbard must be prepared to use it.

”

Menlik pulled at his upper lip. “That is also truth. But now they have no eyes in the sky, and with so many of their men away, they will not patrol too far from camp.

I tell you, andas, with these weapons of yours a man could rule a world!

”

“

Arms from a tomb. Yes, this is truly dead men’s magic.

I shall say so to my people. When do we move out?”

“Deklay—” Jil-Lee identified the reckless rider, “that was one of his rodeo tricks.”

Among the yurts it was as if someone had ripped up a rotten log to reveal an ants’ nest and sent the alarmed insects into a frenzy.

Men boiled out of the domes, the majority of them running for the horse pasture. One or two were mounted on ponies that must have been staked out in the settlement.