In The Defiant Agents, prolific science fiction writer Andre Norton offers up the best of both worlds: an action-packed read that is truly thought-provoking, as well. Subjected to an experimental procedure against their will, members of several ethnic groups have reverted back to the ways of their distant ancestors and are forced to try to survive on a primitive planet. Will they comply with the aims of this ethically dubious experiment, or will the test have unforeseen consequences?
The space race has gone interstellar! Western and Soviet agents vie for control of the strategic alien world of Topaz and the lost technology it conceals. Agent Travis Fox awakens on Topaz after a crash landing, his memories a confusing mix of his own and those of a 19th-century Apache ancestor. His fellow agents have all been subject to the same experiment, some more thoroughly entangled in the past than others. Driven by his present-day memories and aided by a pair of mutant coyotes, he sets out to explore the landscape and finds Mongols of the Golden Horde who have escaped from the Russians’ colony. Despite suspicion and scrambled memories on both sides—and a Russian mind-control device—Fox is determined to unite the Apache and Mongol tribes against their common enemy and keep Topaz’ secrets from falling into Russian hands. The third novel in Andre Norton’s Time Traders series continues her tale of the Cold War expanded across time and space through the relics of a lost alien empire. It was originally published in 1962 by The World Publishing Company. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
LOST IN TIME Exploring space and time is a dangerous business, and no one knows this better than Time Agents Travis Fox and Ross Murdock. So when both men are stranded on far-off planets with no hope of rescue from Earth, they must rely on their wits and their training to survive. But survival is only the beginning. To better handle the rigors of the alien world of Topaz, Fox and his crewmates have been implanted with the memories of their Apache ancestors¾but the Opposition has sent its own team with the reawakened memories of their Mongol ancestors! Meanwhile, Murdock is trapped in the ancient past of the water world of Hawaika, facing terrifying wizards in a kingdom he knows will soon be utterly annihilated by an alien empire that is bent on the conquest of the entire galaxy. The fates of two worlds, and possibly the galaxy itself, will be determined by the actions of these castaways in time¾and whatever happens, the lives of Time Agents everywhere will be changed forever. . . . At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
A battle for survival begins and ends in the human mind in the thrilling novel from the Time Traders series. The latest gambit by the Western powers to outmaneuver the Russians was Operation Cochise—which launched Travis Fox and his crew on a ship bound for the planet Topaz. At least that’s what Fox thinks . . . All he knows for sure is that something went wrong and they crash landed. Everything else is a fog of warped memories. When they come across a band of Russians who have also had their memories obliterated, Fox begins to suspect they are all pawns in a much larger game. And his speculations are right. Someone is manipulating them. Observing them. And if Fox and his newfound allies cannot find a way to break free from their mental bonds, their captors may never be stopped. The Defiant Agents is the third book in the Time Traders Series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Operation Cochise: a carefully planned Western move to colonize a planet ahead of the Russians. Travis Fox had been an eager volunteer, but the morning he dragged himself half-conscious from the wrecked spaceship on the planet Topaz, he sensed the terror which would threaten the project. Travis never learned why the ship had crashed, nor why he and the other Apache agents had been shot into space without warning. But he quickly finds that the Russians already had a horde of barbaric Mongols on the planet. Now if Travis can't unravel the secret of the eerie underground chamber in the towers hidden in a valley of mist, both Topaz and Terra could be destroyed.
When a group of archeologists uncover the remains of an interstellar spaceship, they plan a trip to the past for additional information on their find. But their starship goes haywire and the explorers are trapped in a void between the past and present. Not even guide Travis Fox can predict if they'll make it home--or wander through space and time forever.
If it is possible to conquer space, then perhaps it is also possible to conquer time. At least that was the theory American scientists were exploring in an effort to explain the new sources of knowledge the Russians possessed. Perhaps Russian scientists had discovered how to transport themselves back in time in order to learn long-forgotten secrets of the past. That was why young Ross Murdock, above average in intelligence but a belligerently independent nonconformist, found himself on a "hush-hush" government project at a secret base in the Arctic. The very qualities that made him a menace in civilized society were valuable traits in a man who must successfully act the part of a merchant trader of the Beaker people during the Bronze Age.
1 No windows broke any of the four plain walls of the office; there was no focus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks set out on its surface appeared to glow—perhaps the heat of the mischief they could cause ... had caused ... blazed in them. But fanciful imaginings did not cushion or veil cold, hard fact. Dr. Gordon Ashe, one of the four men peering unhappily at the display, shook his head slightly as if to free his mind of such cobwebs. His neighbor to the right, Colonel Kelgarries, leaned forward to ask harshly:"No chance of a mistake?" "You saw the detector." The thin gray string of a man behind the desk answered with chill precision. "No, no possible mistake. These five have definitely been snooped." "And two choices among them," Ashe murmured. That was the important point now. "I thought these were under maximum security," Kelgarries challenged the gray man.
Two American astronauts, a man and a woman, sail into space to search for a missing team of Russian scientists. The search takes them to a planet which is populated by aliens who have devolved into animals.
