The Defiant Agents

by Norton, Andre

  Again the dolphin dived in attack on the reptile, this time seizing in its mouth the floating cord of the harpoon and giving it a jerk which jolted the dragon even more off balance, pulling it away from Ross’s niche and out into the center of the saucer.

  There were two dolphins in action now, Ross saw, playing the dragon as matadors might play a bull, keeping the creature disturbed by their agile maneuvers. Whatever prey came naturally to the Hawaikan monster was not of this type, and the creature was not prepared to deal effectively with their teasing, dodging tactics. Neither had touched the beast, but they kept it constantly striving to get at them.

  Though it swam in circles attempting to face its teasers, the dragon did not abandon the level before Ross’s refuge, and now and then it darted its head at him, unwilling to give up its prey. Only one of the dolphins frisked and dodged above now as the sonic on Ross’s belt vibrated against his lower ribs with its message warning to be prepared for further action. Somewhere above, his own kind gathered. Hurriedly he tapped out in code his warning in return.

  Two dolphins busy again, their last dive over the dragon pushing the monster down past Ross’s niche toward the saucer’s depths. Then they flashed up and away. The dragon was rising in turn, but coming to meet the Hawaikan creature was a ball giving off light, bringing sharp vision and color with it.

  Ross’s arm swung up to shield his eyes. There was a flash; such answering vibration carried through the waves that even his nerves, far less sensitive than those of the life about him, reacted. He blinked behind his mask. A fish floated by, spiraling up, its belly exposed. And about him growths drooped, trailed lifelessly through the water; while there was a now motionless bulk sinking to the obscurity of the depression floor. A weapon perfected on Terra to use against sharks and barracuda had worked here to kill what could have been more formidable prey.

  The Terran wriggled out of the niche, rose to meet another swimmer. As Ashe descended, Ross relayed his news via the sonic. The dolphins were already nosing into the depths in pursuit of their late enemy.

  “Look here—” Ross guided Ashe to the crevice which had saved him, aimed the torch beam into it. He had been right! There was a long groove in the covering built up by the growths; a vertical strip some six feet long, of a uniform gray, showed. Ashe touched the find and then gave the alert via the sonic code.

  “Metal or an alloy, we’ve found it!”

  But what did they have? Even after an hour’s exploration by the full company, Ashe’s expert search with his knowledge of artifacts and ancient remains, they were still baffled. It would require labor and tools they did not have, to clear the whole of the saucer. They could be sure only of its size and shape, and the fact that its walls were of an unknown substance which the sea could cloak but not erode. For the length of gray surface showed not the slightest pitting or time wear.

  Down at its centermost point they found the dragon’s den, an arch coated with growth, before which sprawled the body of the creature. That was dragged aloft with the dolphins’ aid, to be taken ashore for study. But the arch itself…was that part of some old installation?

  Torches to the fore, they entered its shadow, only to remain baffled. Here and there were patches of the same gray showing in its interior. Ashe dug the butt of his spear-gun into the sand on the flooring to uncover another oval depression. But what it all signified or what had been its purpose, they could not guess.

  “Set up the peep-probe here?” Ross asked.

  Ashe’s head moved in a slow negative. “Look farther…spread out,” the sonic clicked.

  Within a matter of minutes the dolphins reported new remains—two more saucers, each larger than the first, set in a line on the ocean floor, pointing directly to Karara’s Finger Island. Cautiously explored, these were discovered to be free of any but harmless life; they stirred up no more dragons.

  When the Terrans came ashore on Finger Island to rest and eat their midday meal one of the men paced along the beached dragon. Ashore it lost none of its frightening aspect. And seeing it, even beached and dead, Ross wondered at his luck in surviving the encounter without a scratch.

  “I think that this one would be alone,” PaKeeKee commented. “Where there is an eater of this size, there is usually only one.”

  “Mano-Nui!” The girl Taema shivered as she gave to this monster the name of the shark demon of her people. “Such a one is truly king shark in these waters! But why have we not sighted its like before? Tino-rau, Taua…they have not reported such—”

  “Probably because, as PaKeeKee says, these things are rare,” Ashe returned. “A carnivore of size would have to have a fairly wide hunting range, yet there’s evidence that this thing has laired in that den for some time. Which means that it must have a defined hunting territory allowing no trespassing from others of its species.”

  Karara nodded. “Also it may hunt only at intervals, eat heavily, and lie quiet until that meal is digested. There are large snakes on Terra that follow that pattern. Ross was in its front yard when it came after him—”

  “From now on”—Ashe swallowed a quarter of fruit—“we know what to watch for, and the weapon which will finish it off. Don’t forget that!”

  The delicate mechanisms of their sonics had already registered the vibrations which would warn of a dragon’s presence, and the depth globes would then do the rest.

  “Big skull, oversize for the body.” PaKeeKee squatted on his heels by the head lying on the sand at the end of the now fully extended neck.

  Ross had heretofore been more aware of the armament of that head, the fangs set in the powerful jaws, the horn on the snout. But PaKeeKee’s comment drew his attention to the fact that the scale-covered skull did dome up above the eye pits in a way to suggest ample brain room. Had the thing been intelligent? Karara put that into words:

  “Rule One?” She went over to survey the carcass.

  Ross resented her half question, whether it was addressed to him or mere thinking aloud on her part.

  Rule One: Conserve native life to the fullest extent. Humanoid form may not be the only evidence of intelligence.

  There were the dolphins to prove that point right on Terra. But did Rule One mean that you had to let a monster nibble at you because it might just be a high type of alien intelligence? Let Karara spout Rule One while backed into a crevice under water with that horn stabbing at her mid-section!

  “Rule One does not mean to forego self-defense,” Ashe commented mildly. “This thing is a hunter, and you can’t stop to apply recognition techniques when you are being regarded as legitimate prey. If you are the stronger, or an equal, yes—stop and think before becoming aggressive. But in a situation like this—take no chances.”

  “Anyway, from now on,” Karara pointed out, “it could be possible to shock instead of kill.”

  “Gordon”—PaKeeKee swung around—“what have we found here—besides this thing?”

  “I can’t even guess. Except that those depressions were made for a purpose and have been there for a long time. Whether they were originally in the water, or the land sank, that we don’t know either. But now we have a site to set up the peep-probe.”

  “We do that right away?” Ross wanted to know. Impatience bit at him. But Ashe still had a trace of frown. He shook his head.

  “Have to make sure of our site, very sure. I don’t want to start any chain reaction on the other side of the time wall.”

  And he was right, Ross was forced to admit, remembering what had happened when the galactics had discovered the Red time gates and traced them forward to their twentieth-century source, ruthlessly destroying each station. The original colonists of Hawaika had been as giants to Terran pygmies when it came to technical knowledge. To use even a peep-probe indiscreetly near one of their outposts might bring swift and terrible retribution.

  3

  The Ancient Marinersr />
  Another map spread out and this time pinned down with small stones on beach gravel.

  “Here, here, and here—” Ashe’s finger indicated the points marked in a pattern which flared out from three sides of Finger Island. Each marked a set of three undersea depressions in perfect alliance with the land which, according to the galactic map, had once been a cape on a much larger land mass. Though the Terrans had found the ruins, if those saucers in the sea could be so termed, the remains had no meaning for the explorers.

  “Do we set up here?” Ross asked. “If we could just get a report to send back….” That might mean the difference between awakening the co-operation of the Project policy makers so that a flood of supplies and personnel would begin to head their way.

  “We set up here,” Ashe decided.

  He had selected a point between two of the lines where a reef would provide them with a secure base. And once that decision was made, the Terrans went into action.

  Two days to go, to install the peep-probe and take some shots before the ship had to clear with or without their evidence. Together Ross and Ashe floated the installation out to the reef, Ui and Karara helping to tow the equipment and parts, the dolphins lending pushing noses on occasion. The aquatic mammals were as interested as the human beings they aided. And in water their help was invaluable. Had dolphins developed hands, Ross wondered fleetingly, would they have long ago wrested control of their native world—or at least of its seas—from the human kind?

  All the human beings worked with practiced ease, even while masked and submerged, to set the probe in place, aiming it landward at the check point of the Finger’s protruding nail of rock. After Ashe made the final adjustments, tested each and every part of the assembly, he gestured them in.

  Karara’s swift hand movement asked a question, and Ashe’s sonic code-clicked in reply: “At twilight.”

  Yes, dusk was the proper time for using a peep-probe. To see without risk of being sighted in return was their safeguard. Here Ashe had no historical data to guide him. Their search for the former inhabitants might be a long drawn-out process skipping across centuries as the machine was adjusted to Terran time eras.

  “When were they here?” Back on shore Karara shook out her hair, spread it over her shoulders to dry. “How many hundred years back will the probe return?”

  “More likely thousands,” Ross commented. “Where will you start, Gordon?”

  Ashe brushed sand from the page of the notebook he had steadied against one bent knee and gazed out at the reef where they had set the probe.

  “Ten thousand years—”

  “Why?” Karara wanted to know. “Why that exact figure?”

  “We know that galactic ships crashed on Terra then. So their commerce and empire—if it was an empire—was far-flung at that time. Perhaps they were at the zenith of their civilization; perhaps they were already on the down slope. I do not think they were near the beginning. So that date is as good a starting place as any. If we don’t hit what we’re after, then we can move forward until we do.”

  “Do you think that there ever was a native population here?”

  “Might have been.”

  “But without any large land animals, no modern traces of any,” she protested.

  “Of people?” Ashe shrugged. “Good answers for both. Suppose there was a world-wide epidemic of proportions to wipe out a species. Or a war in which they used forces beyond our comprehension to alter the whole face of this planet, which did happen—the alteration, I mean. Several things could have removed intelligent life. Then such species as the burrowers could have developed or evolved from smaller, more primitive types.”

  “Those ape-things we found on the desert planet.” Ross thought back to their first voyage on the homing derelict. “Maybe they had once been men and were degenerating. And the winged people, they could have been less than men on their way up——”

  “Ape-things…winged people?” Karara interrupted. “Tell me!”

  There was something imperious in her demand, but Ross found himself describing in detail their past adventures, first on the world of sand and sealed structures where the derelict had rested for a purpose its involuntary passengers had never understood, and then of the Terrans’ limited exploration of that other planet which might have been the capital world of a far-flung stellar empire. There they had made a pact with a winged people living in the huge buildings of a jungle-choked city.

  “But you see”—the Polynesian girl turned to Ashe when Ross had finished—“you did find them—these ape-things and the winged people. But here there are only the dragons and the burrowers. Are they the start or the finish? I want to know—”

  “Why?” Ashe asked.

  “Not just because I am curious, though I am that also, but because we, too, must have a beginning and an end. Did we come up from the seas, rise to know and feel and think, just to return to such beginning at our end? If your winged people were climbing and your ape-things descending”—she shook her head—“it would be frightening to hold a cord of life, both ends in your hands. Is it good for us to see such things, Gordon?”

  “Men have asked that question all their thinking lives, Karara. There have been those who have said no, who have turned aside and tried to halt the growth of knowledge here or there, attempted to make men stand still on one tread of a stairway. Only there is that in us which will not stop, ill-fitted as we may be for the climbing. Perhaps we shall be safe and untroubled here on Hawaika if I do not go out to that reef tonight. By that action I may bring real danger down on all of us. Yet I can not hold back for that. Could you?”

  “No, I do not believe that I could,” she agreed.

  “We are here because we are of those who must know—volunteers. And being of that temperament, it is in us always to take the next step.”

  “Even if it leads to a fall,” she added in a low tone.

  Ashe gazed at her, though her own eyes were on the sea where a lace of waves marked the reef. Her words were ordinary enough, but Ross straightened to match Ashe’s stare. Why had he felt that odd instant of uneasiness as if his heart had fluttered instead of beating true?

  “I know of you Time Agents,” Karara continued. “There were plenty of stories about you told while we were in training.”

  “Tall tales, I can imagine, most of them.” Ashe laughed, but his amusement sounded forced to Ross.

  “Perhaps. Though I do not believe that many could be any taller than the truth. And so also I have heard of that strict rule you follow, that you must do nothing which might alter the course of history. But suppose, suppose here that the course of history could be altered, that whatever catastrophe occurred might be averted? If that was done, what would happen to our settlement in the here and now?”

  “I don’t know. That is an experiment which we have never dared to try, which we won’t try—”

  “Not even if it would mean a chance of life for a whole native race?” she persisted.

  “Alternate worlds then, maybe.” Ross’s imagination caught up that idea. “Two worlds from a change point in history,” he elaborated, noting her look of puzzlement. “One stemming from one decision, another from the alternate.”

  “I’ve heard of that! But, Gordon, if you could return to the time of decision here and you had it in your power to say, ‘Yes—live!’ or ‘No—die!’ to the alien natives, what would you do?”

  “I don’t know. But neither do I think I shall ever be placed in that position. Why do you ask?”

  She was twisting her still damp hair into a pony tail and tying it so with a cord. “Because…because I feel….No, I can not really put it into words, Gordon. It is that feeling one has on the eve of some important event—anticipation, fear, excitement. You’ll let me go with you tonight, please! I want to see it—not the Hawaika that is, but that other world with another name, the one they
saw and knew!”

  An instant protest was hot in Ross’s throat, but he had no time to voice it. For Ashe was already nodding.

  “All right. But we may have no luck at all. Fishing in time is a chancy thing, so don’t be disappointed if we don’t turn you up that other world. Now, I’m going to pamper these old bones for an hour or two. Amuse yourselves, children.” He lay back and closed his eyes.

  The past two days had wiped half the shadows from his lean, tanned face. He had dropped two years, three, Ross thought thankfully. Let them be lucky tonight, and Ashe’s cure could be nearly complete.

  “What do you think happened here?” Karara had moved so that her back was now to the wash of waves, her face more in the shadow.

  “How do I know? Could be any of ten different things.”

  “And will I please shut up and leave you alone?” she countered swiftly. “Do you wish to savor the excitement then, explore a world upon world, or am I saying it right? We have Hawaika One which is a new world for us; now there is Hawaika Two which is removed in time, not distance. And to explore that—”

  “We won’t be exploring it really,” Ross protested.

  “Why? Did your agents not spend days, weeks, even months of time in the past on Terra? What is to prevent your doing the same here?”

  “Training. We have no way of learning the drill.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it wasn’t as easy as you seem to think it was back on Terra,” he began scornfully. “We didn’t just stroll through one of those gates and set up business, say, in Nero’s Rome or Montezuma’s Mexico. An Agent was physically and psychologically fitted to the era he was to explore. Then he trained, and how he trained!” Ross remembered the weary hours spent learning how to use a bronze sword, the technique of Beaker trading, the hypnotic instruction in a language which was already dead centuries before his own country existed. “You learned the language, the customs, everything you could about your time and your cover. You were letter perfect before you took even a trial run!”