Time Traders II: The Defiant Agents Key Out of Time by Andre Norton Read Free Book Online Page A

spring of water cut round by well-marked game trails. A series of ledges brought him up to a small plateau where scrub wood could be used to build the wickiups. Water and food lay within reach, and the ledge approach was easy to defend. Even Deklay and his fellow 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 the vanished star empire. Therefore, the planet was important, but why? As yet he had found no indication that anything above the intelligence level of the split horns was native to this world. But he was gnawed by the certainty that there was something here, waiting. . . . And the desire to learn what it was became an ever-burning ache.
    Perhaps he was what Deklay had accused him of being, one who had come to follow the road of the Pinda-lick-o-yi too closely. For Travis was content to scout with only the coyotes for company, and he did not find the loneliness of the unknown planet as intimidating as most of the others.
    He was checking his small trail pack on the fourth day after they had settled on the plateau when Buck and Jil-Lee hunkered down beside him.
    "You got to hunt—?" Buck broke the silence first.
    "Not for meat."
    "What do you fear? That ndendai —enemy people—have marked this as their 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. "Will it 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 is fitted 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 for the service of those they like, but it is not good that man walks alone from his kind."
    There it was again, the feeling of clan solidarity which Travis did not always share. On the other hand, Tsoay would not be a hindrance. On other scouts the boy had proved to have a keen eye for the country and a liking for experimentation which was not a universal attribute even among those of his own age.
    "I would go to find a path through the mountains; it may be a long trail," 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 way of seeking."
    "Tsoay shall go. He keeps silent before older warriors as is proper for the untried, but his thoughts fly free as do yours," Buck replied. "It is 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, and within it we are but a handful of men alone—"
    "That, too, I know." Travis thought he could read more than one kind of warning in Jil-Lee's words.
    * * *
    They were the second day away from the plateau camp, and climbing, when they chanced upon the pass Travis had hoped might exist. Before them lay an abrupt descent to what appeared to be open plains country cloaked in a dusky amber Travis now knew was the thick grass found in the southern valleys. Tsoay pointed with his chin.
    "Wide land—good for horses, cattle, ranches . . ."
    But all those lay far beyond the black space surrounding them. Travis wondered if there was any native animal which could serve man in place of 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. Yet it drew him. "We go," he decided.
    Close as it had looked from the pass, the plain was yet a day and a