"Andre Norton - Ross Murdock 03 - The Defiant Agents" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

hour -- "
"Me? Why?" Ashe asked with a trace of suspicion.
"Because I can't leave without acting directly against orders, and that
would put us wrong immediately. You see Hough and talk to him personally --
put it to him straight. He'll have to have all the facts if he's going to
counter any move from Stanton before the council. You know every argument we
can use and all the proof on our side, and you're authority enough to make
it count."
"If I can do all that, I will." Ashe was alert and eager. The colonel,
seeing his change of expression, felt easier. But Kelgarries stood a moment
watching Ashe as he hurried down a side corridor, before he moved on slowly
to his own box of an office. Once inside he sat for a long time staring at
the wall and seeing nothing but the pictures produced by his thoughts. Then
he pressed a button and read off the symbols which flashed on a small
viewscreen set in his desk. Punching a code, he relayed an order which might
postpone trouble for a while. Ashe was far too valuable a man to lose, and
his emotions could boil him straight into disaster over this.
"Bidwell -- reschedule Team A. They are to go to the Hypno-Lab instead of
the reserve in ten minutes."
Releasing the mike, he again stared at the wall. No one dared interrupt a
hypno-training period, and this one would last three hours. Ashe could not
possibly see the trainees before he left for New York. And that would remove
one temptation from his path -- he would not talk at the wrong time.
Kelgarries' mouth twisted sourly. He took no pride in what he was doing. And
he was perfectly certain that Ruthven would win and that Ashe's fears of
Redax were well founded. It all came back to the old basic tenet of the
service: the end justified the means. They must use every method and man
under their control to make sure that Topaz would remain a Western
possession, even though that strange planet now swung far beyond the sky
which covered both Western Alliance and Greater Russia. Time had run out too
fast; they were being forced to play what cards they held, even though those
might be low ones. Ashe would be back, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this
had been decided one way or another. Not until this was finished. Finished!
Kelgarries blinked at the wall. Perhaps they were finished, too. No one
would know until the transport ship landed on that other world, that
jewellike disk of gold-brown they had named Topaz.

- Chapter 2
2
There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians. Each swung in its own
orbit just beyond the atmosphere of a bronze-gold planet in the four-world
system of a yellow star. The globes had been launched to form a protective
web around Topaz six months earlier. Just as contact mines sown in a harbor
could close that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was
this world supposedly closed to any spaceship lacking the signal to ward off
the missiles the spheres could summon. This system for protecting the new
human settlers had been tested as well as possible, but not as yet put to
the ultimate proof. Still, the small bright globes spun undisturbed across a
two-mooned sky at night and made reassuring blips on an installation screen
by day. Then a thirteenth object winked into being and began the encircling,