Read Time Traders II: The Defiant Agents Key Out of Time for Free Online Page A

called Redax, I think," Travis replied. "I heard Dr. Ashe speak of this. 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 have been under its influence, so we lived as our people lived a hundred years 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 they told us at the project. To venture into these new worlds requires a different type of man than lives on Earth today. Traits we have forgotten are needed to face the dangers of wild places."
    "You, Fox, have been beyond the stars before, and you found there were such dangers to face?"
    "It is true. You have heard of the three worlds I saw when the ship from the old days took us off, unwilling, to the stars. Did you not all volunteer to pioneer in this manner so you could also see strange and new things?"
    "But we did not agree to be returned to the past in medicine dreams and be sent unknowingly into space!"
    Travis nodded. "Deklay is right. But I know no more than you why we were so sent, or why the ship crashed. We have found Dr. Ruthven's body in the cabin, only we have discovered nothing else which tells us why we were brought here. With the ship broken, we must stay."
    They were silent now, men and women alike. Behind them lay several days of activity, nights of exhausted slumber. Against the cliff wall lay the packs of supplies they have salvaged from the wreck. By mutual consent they had left the vicinity of the broken globe, following their old custom 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 animals signs, and the ga-n have not warned us of anything else—"
    "Those devil ones!" Again Deklay spat into the fire. "I say we should have 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 double reaction—two different feelings which almost sickened him when they struck simultaneously. And he was beginning to suspect that with some of the 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 Deklay had reverted to an ancestor who had ridden with Victorio or Mangas Coloradas! Travis had a flash of premonition, a chill which made him half foresee a time when the past and the present might well split them apart—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, so let us not do anything in haste. Back in the desert world of the People I have seen the mba'a , and he was very clever. With the badger he went hunting, 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 who would 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 seem friendly 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 be defended. For perhaps there are men here whose hunting territory we have invaded, though we have not yet seen them. We are a people small in number and alone. Let us walk softly on trails which are strange to our feet."
    Inwardly Travis sighed in relief. Buck, Jil-Lee . . . for the moment their sensible words appeared to swing the opinions of the party. If either of them could be established as haldzil , or clan leader, they would all be safer. He himself had no aspirations in that direction and dared not push too hard. It had been his initial urging which had