The Defiant Agents - Andre Norton

The Defiant Agents (novella) by Andre Norton Third book in Norton's Time Trader series Cosmic secrets brought back by time travellers have been unravelled. The alien technology scavenged by U.S. and Russian scientists has started a race to colonise planets outside our solar system -- but the U.S. scientists are losing! In a desperate move the U.S. decides to use a group of Apache volunteers in an experimental attempt to colonize a primitive planet, but before they can even begin their spaceship crashes on the planet Topaz. Published 1962