It occurred to Hal suddenly that, if only there were the materials up on the ledge to fashion a quick-acting tranquilizer of the kind used to immobilize wild game, he could easily have delivered it at the point of a dart or arrow, into the little girl, from his present position or one like it. With the proper sort of tranquilizer, Cee would never know what had hit her until she woke up in the women's section of one of the dormitory buildings, with Onete still with her.

She might react strongly to finding herself enclosed; but Onete's presence would be reassuring@ and if the worst came to the worst, it might be better than leaving her here for the soldiers to discover and catch.

Of course, in argument against doing such a thing there was the fact that even a large contingent of soldiers might not be able to catch her-which they would probably try to do before they tried shooting her. If she could get away from Hal and Amanda, these Occupation troops were not going to find her easy to deal with. Then, once they had shown any sign of doing such things, she would make it a point to keep out of their sight.

Hal faded back from the clearing where Onete and Cee still confronted each other. When he was a safe distance away, he put on his sandals and made his last sweep of the ground at the bottom of the cliffs. Then he returned through the entrance under the boulder, up to the ledge. Amid was at work in his office, with a tray holding some crumbs of bread and the remnants of some sort of vegetable stew in a bowl perched precariously on the corner of a table otherwise piled with papers. I'll take that back to the kitchen when I go, shall P asked Hai, nodding at the tray after knocking on the office door and accepting Amid's invitation to come in. What'? Oh, that. Yes, thank you. Sit down, said Amid, looking up from the plans for an additional log building-one which would be in between the dormitories and his reception building in size. What did you see'? And what did you think? You're back earlier than I expected. ,,It didn't take as long as I'd have thought, either, said Hal, sitting down.

He told Amid about the hanged madman and about his idea for possibly tranquilizing Cee and bringing her up to the ledge that way.

Amid looked uncomfortable. I'm sure Artur and Onete won't like the idea, he said. Even if we could do it. Oh, I don't doubt you could creep up close enough on her to get a dart or something into her; but even I don't like to imagine how Cee'd feel, waking up locked in one of our small bedrooms, even if Onete was with her. It's just a suggestion, said Hal. Then there's the problem of the tranquilizer itself. We've got a number of drugs in the clinic here, of course, but . . . -

I know, said Hal. As I say, it was just a suggestion. Well, well, I'll talk to our pharmacist and if anything like that's possible, maybe you'd be willing to make the suggestion yourself to Artur and Onete. They and we could sit down and discuss the chances of it working. I'd be glad to, said Hal. All right, then, said Amid, as soon as we all have some free time at the same moment. I can call in Artur at any time, but Onete's still down below, isn't she? Yes, said Hal. And you're about to take your turn at the circle? I could put that off. No need to, particularly since we have to wait for Onete to get back up here.

Amid sighed, a sigh that was more than a bit weary, pushed away from him the plans he had just been examining, and sat back in his chair. Well, he said, now, about the matter I wanted you to look into down there. When do you think the soldiers might come out here? And what might they do when they actually come9

I can't begin to give you even guesses by way of answers, said Hal, until I get some information. How many soldiers arc there in the garrison'? Have you any idea how many of those would be free enough from other duties to make up a search party large enough to comb the district out here'? Do they have a tracker among them? Tracker? Amid frowned. Someone who can tell whether people have been moving through wild country like that below us by reading sign -recognizing part of a footprint, or what a broken branch means, and so forth. Ah! I see, said Amid. I don't know if they have or not.- There must have been other searches, in this district and others. Did they ever use anyone like that to try to locate the people they were hunting? Not to my knowledge, said Amid. No, I'm sure they didn't. In fact I doubt they've got someone like that. It would be common knowledge if they did. If it isn't, it only means they've got no one outstanding in that sort of ability, said Hal. it doesn't necessarily rule out the fact that some of them may be a little more knowledgeable about the woods and quicker to notice a footprint or other sign. that's open and obvious. For example, there'll be no hiding the fact that Onete's been sitting in that little clearing for some weeks now, and meeting Cee there. No. I've been worrying about that; but I don't know anything that could be done to erase the marks of their being there. Do you? I haven't been able to think of anything so far, said Hal. I'm particularly concerned-not merely for Cee, but for the Guild as a whole, said Amid. We've been safe until now up here; but there's no getting around the fact that if they find the entrance under the boulder and follow it up, they'd have us all in a trap. No weapons up here, I suppose? Hal asked. Here? Amid looked at him sternly, Certainly not. We're Exotics! I suppose you could count Old Man's sword as a weapon, if he'd let someone else use it that way. He won't hurt anything or anyone, himself. Too bad, said Hal. The soldiers would be very vulnerable, climbing up here after they got past the boulder. For all practical purposes they'd have to come single file. With even a few weapons, you might be able to ambush the whole party on the way up and take them prisoner. Of course you'd have the problern of what to do with them, once you'd captured them. I take it for granted you wouldn't be able to bring yourselves to murder them in cold blood, even if some of them have done just that, effectively, to people I i ke that insane man down the road. No, we wouldn't hurt them, of course,- said Amid. And as I say, we've no weapons, anyway. Is there any way we could take them prisoner, if we had to, without weapons? I'd strongly advise against trying it, said Hal. The Guild members probably outnumber any search party that'd be sent by at least two to one. But barehanded against soldiers like that-

He grinned. Now, if you were all Dorsai, he said. Or even true, faith-holding Friendlies . . . Please, said Amid, let's be serious. Serious is that you simply can't afford the search party's discovering the entrance under the boulder. Yes. Amid frowned down at the drawing on his desk for a Moment, then raised his eyes again to meet Hal's. Only about five of all the Guild members even know it, he said, but besides the boulder that's there beside the opening now, we long ago cut a second piece of rock of the right kind into the necessary rectangular shape and buried it just beside the boulder. The spot where it's buried has been grown over, since, just like the other spot near it that holds a block and tackle and levers for moving the block. We can fit it into the opening and it'll took, and feel, like part of the cliff behind the boulder. In fact, the block's got weight and mass enough so that even a couple of searchers-and there isn't room under the boulder for more than two at a time-couldn't push it backward and out of their way by hand, even if they suspected it of blocking a way through. But there's no reason they should. Very good! said Hal. What it means, of course, said Amid worriedly, is that once it's in place they can't get in, but we can't get out; except for those who know enough about mountain climbing to go down the open rock face. We've got a few who could do it. Not that we'd want to get out while there're soldiers down there. You're vulnerable to being seen from above, said Hal. I know the brush you've got growing on the roofs of the buildings and the rest of the camouflage hides the fixed elements of what you've brought to this ledge. But a satellite in orbit looking directly at this area on its scope, or even a ship in orbit, could see people moving about if they made the effort-the circle, for example, always has people in it; and even if it was empty you'd have to cover the worn area of ground with something. And with all that, even if you knew they might look, and hid everything and kept everybody inside, a close study by an expert of a picture taken of the ledge in daytime would find evidence of human occupation here. You're telling me we're going to be found, eventually, said Amid unhappily. Only if they look. As long as none of them ever think of the possibility of your being up here, you can last forever. That's why making sure they don't find anything below to make them think of it is crucial. Yes, said Amid. The deep wrinkles of his forehead were even deeper than usual. I know. We'll talk some more with Onete about what that Elian from Porphyry told her. He may have said something that would give us more information about the character of the search party, how large it might be, when it might come-and information about the garrison troops generaly, their number and so on. Meanwhile I'll also try to locate anyone e se among t e mem ers w o s ta e to someone rom Porphyry lately; and if they've got anything of value to tell you, I can bring them in to talk to you. Meanwhile, you were going to walk in the circle today, weren't you? You might as well go ahead and do that. You won't mind if I interrupt your walking if I feel I need to talk to you before you stop of your own accord? Of course not, said Hal. Anything I get mentally occupied with there, I can always get back into at a later time. Good.

Hal went out, picking up the utensils of Amid's lunch as he went. These reminded him that he, himself, had not yet eaten today. When he got to the nearest of the dormitory kitchens, he found it, now in the early afternoon, almost empty. He ate a quick lunch and went on, out to the circle. There were only two people waiting there, a thin, tall, elderly man named Dans, with dark brown eyes that always seemed to give him a stare, and a small, athletic young woman with blond hair, known as Trekka. I think duty took you out of your normal turn, Friend, said Dans. Trekka's first, but would you care to go before me? Before me, as well, Friend, said Trekka.

Hal grinned at them. No, you don't, said Hal. I can get put in your debt like that once, but I'm too clever to be caught twice. I'll follow Dans.

As it turned out, however, several of those currently walking were very close to the point where they wanted to stop. Hal and the other two were all walking the circle within five minutes of his arrival.

As always, when he began this, Hal shed his concern with daily matters as he would drop a winter cloak after stepping into a building's warmth. There was nothing special about the circle to facilitate this, or even anything metaphysical about it, since he had been able to do it since childhood. It was no more than the extent to which anyone lets go of their pattern of directed thoughts, when he or she slips off into daydreams.

But on this occasion, the urgency of the possible coming search by the troops and its attendant problems may have lingered a little in his consciousness and directed the otherwise free flight of his mind; for he found it once more occupied with the passage from Cletus Grahame's work on tactics and strategy that he had called up from memory in his reconnaissance below. Once more he felt tugging at him the feeling that there was more to the passage than he had read off the printed page in his memory.

Now, freed by the movement and voices of the circle to go seeking, he traced down the source of that feeling. He was a boy again, the boy Donal, back on Dorsai. There, in the big, shelf-walled library of Graemehouse, filled with old-fashioned books of printed and bound paper, there had been a number of large boxes on one shelf which had held the original manuscript of Cletus's writings. As the boy Donal, once he had mastered reading, which he had done so early that he could not remember when he had first started to read, anything written was to be gobbled wholesale.

Those had been the days when he could so lose himself in reading that he could be called to dinner by someone literally standing at his side, and not hear the voice of whoever it was.

During that period of his life he had ended up reading, along with everything else that was there to be read in Graemehouse, the manuscript version of Cletus's work. It had been handwritten on the grayish-white. locally made Dorsai paper; and here and there, there had been corrections and additions made in the lines. In particular, in certain spots whole passages had been crossed out. Notes had not been made by Cletus on the manuscript, usually, when such a passage was deleted; and Hal had often played with trying to figure out why his great great-grandfather had decided not to include it. In the case of the neatly exed out section of the remarks on terrain, the note in the margin had said--of utility only for a minority of readers.

Of utility only to a minority? Why? Hal had puzzled over that reason, set down in the time-faded, pale blue ink of Cletus's round handwriting. He remembered going into the office which had been Cletus's to begin with, and that of the head of the family ever since, and sitting down in the hard, adult-sized, wooden swivel chair at the desk there, to try if by imitating Cletus as Cletus had worked, he could divine the meaning of the note.

Why only a minority of readers? As a boy, the phrase had seemed to threaten to shut Hal out. What if he would be among the majority who would not understand it'? He had read the deleted passage carefully and found nothing in it that could conceivably be useful; but there was, unfortunately, no way for him to test himself with its information in practice until he was grown up and an officer, himself, facing a specific terrain to be dealt with.

He had not even asked any of his elders about the passage, afraid that their answer would confirm his fear that he might be among those who could not use what Cletus had originally planned to include in his work.

Later on, when as Donal he had been grown up and an officer in fact, the deleted passage had become so deeply buried in his memory that he had almost forgotten it, and, in any case, by that time he had evolved intuitional logic, which in every way that he could see did all and more that Cletus's passage had promised.

The deleted passage itself was short and simple enough. Now, walking the circle, Hal had left awareness of the ledge and the Chantry Guild far behind; and he found himself, as in the earlier case with Sir John Hawkwood, being both Cletus, seated at his desk and writing that passage, and someone watching the slim, unremarkable man with his sleeves rolled up, writing away.

If, having fully surveyed and understood the terrain, the deleted passage had read, the officer will concentrate on it, resurveying it in memor 'v, and imagining enemy troops or his own moving across it, eventually he will find the image in his mind changing from a concept to a vision. For the purposes Of which I write, there is a great difference between the two-as any great painter can attest. A concept is the object or scene imagined in three dimensions and asfully as is humanly possible. But it remains a creature of the mind of the one imagining it. It is, in a sense, connected with the mind that created it. But a completed mental picture, once brought into existence, has an existence entirely separatefirom the one who conceived it. A painter-and I speak as a failed painter, myself-can point anything he has conceptualized, adapting or improving it as he wishes. But with a completed mental picture it will have acquired a life of its own. To make it otherwise, even in the smallest degree, would be to destroy the truth of it. He has no choice but to point it as it exists, which may be greater than, or different from, his original concept. I would guess that the same phenomenon occurs in the case of the writers offiction, when they speak of the story as taking control of itself, taking itself away from the author. Such situations in which a character, for example, in effect refuses to be, say, or do what the author originallY intended, and insists that he or she will be, say or do something else instead. As painters and authors come to have such completed mental pi .ctures and learn to trust them, instead of holding to their oh .gi.nal conceptualizations, so a fid/.v effective field officer must learn to trust his own tactical or strategic visions, when the 'N, developfrom his best conceptualization of a military situation. In some way, more of the mind, spirit and capability of the human having the vision seems to be involved with the problem; and the vision is always therefore greater than the mere conceptualization. For example: in the case of the management of available terrain, the officer may find the ground he has surve 'ved apparently hanging in midair, in miniature, like a solid thing before him; and he will be able to watch as the enemyforces, and his own, move across it. Further, as he watches it, these envisioned characters may create before him just the tactical movements that he needs to bring about the result he desires. This is an ability of almost invaluable use, but it requires concentration, practice and belief, to develop it. The crossed-out section ended.

Now, suddenly, nearly a hundred years after he had read the handwritten manuscript, as he still watched and was Cletus under the influence of walking the circle, Hal understood what he had not, before.

In his own time, Cletus had needed to achieve some actual successes in the field to prove to the experienced military that his theories were something more than wild dreams. Those tactical successes were a series of bloodless victories achieved where his superiors would have considered them impossible. Hal had studied these, years ago, to see if Cletus had been using an earlier form of intuitional logic, and had concluded that Cletus had not. He had seen his way to the unexpected tactical solutions he achieved by some other method.

Just what method, Hal had never been able to determine until now. Hal himself knew that his intuitional logic was not unique to him. Chess grandmasters had undoubtedly used versions of it to foresee sequences of moves that would achieve victory on the playing board for them. What he called intuitional logic was only a somewhat refined and extended activity of that same pattern of mind use.

Cletus had clearly made a similar extension of the artistic function he used in painting. His description of the miniature battlefield hanging in midair and the tiny soldiers acting out a solution to a tactical problem, apparently on their own, could be nothing else than a direct application of the unconscious mind to the problem. In short, Cletus, as well as Walter Blunt of the original Chantry Guild-and Jathed, and who knew how many others whose names were lost in history-had been making deliberate use of the Creative Universe to achieve desired ends. Like Blunt. and possibly Jathed, Cletus had used the Creative Universe without realizing its universality, but only the small application of it to what at the moment he wanted to do. But it was startling and rewarding to find further proof of what Hal, himself, sought-and on his own doorstep, so to speak.

At the same time, he realized he still lacked a sure answer to the question of why Cletus had deleted that passage. Hal was suddenly thoughtful. Since Cletus himself had set down the way, why couldn't he, Hal, use his own creative unconscious to try and ask him'?

He looked hard at his own vision of the man who was seated at the desk, writing. Cletus was lost to time. There was no way of actually reaching the living man, himself. But if the transient and the eternal were indeed the same-even though he, Hal, had yet to feel that fact as an absolute, inward truth-then it ought to be possible to talk to the spirit of his great greatgrandfather by the same creative mechanism Cletus himself had described.

Hal concentrated . . . and although the solid-looking, threedimensional figure he watched continued to sit and write, a ghostlike and transparent version of it turned its head out of the solid head to glance at Hal standing by the desk. Then the whole ghostlike body rose up out of the solid form of Cletus at the desk and walked around the corner of it to face Hal. It was Cletus, as much or more than the solid figure was; and, as Cletus, it sat down on the edge of the desk, folded its arms on its chest and looked at Hal. So you're my great great-grandson, the spirit of Cletus said. The family's put on some size since my time. In my original body as Donal Graeme, said Hal, I was only a little larger than you. This was the size of my twin uncles, who were unusually large even for my time. But you're right. As Donal Graeme, I was the small one among the men in my family. It's flattering to hear I'll have descendants like that, said Cletus. Though of course I'll never really know of it, since you and I are at this moment just a pair of minds outside both my time and yours. You understand, I'm not just a projection of your own self-hypnosis, as your dead tutors were when you evoked them to advise you as a boy in the Final Encyclopedia, when you first started to run from this man called Bleys Ahrens.

11 the Cletus you're looking at now, am actually more alive than the one seated at that desk, writing. He's a product of your imagination. 1, since you brought me to life in what you call the Creative Universe, have a life of my own. I'm Cletus Grahame. not Hal Mayne's concept of Cletus. I wonder, said Hal soberly. Maybe I've done you a disservice. What happens to you when I go back to awareness of my own world and time? I don't know, said Cletus, any more than you do. Perhaps I go out like a blown-out candle. Perhaps I wait for you in the Creative Universe until you find your own way there, as you should, eventually. I'm not worried about it. You wanted to know why I deleted those few paragraphs of my writing on the use of terrain? Yes, said Hal. I deleted it because I wanted as many people as possible to read and benefit from my writing, said Cletus. No one's completely without unconscious prejudices. If, in reading. someone runs across mention ofsomething that offends one of these unconscious prejudices, they tend to find faults to justify a rejection of the writing, whether the faults are actually there or not. I didn't want my work rejected in that way if it could be helped. -

Why should they find fault with your idea of a vision being something more than a concept? Because I was speaking about something that's supposed to be a sort of magic that takes place only in great artists-writers, sculptors, painters, and so forth. The majority of the race, unfortunately, tends far too often to have given up on the possibility of creativity in themselves; either without even having tried to make use of it, or after an early failure. Once something like that's been rejected by an individual, he or she tends to resent anyone who tries to tell them they still have it. Because of that resentment, they n or make some ground to reject any suggestion it still exists in them; and that rejection, being emotional, would probably force them to reject my writing as a whole; in order to get rid of the unwanted part. So, I took out the passage. What about those who could have benefited from it? said Hal. Those who wouldn't be looking for an excuse to reject the idea') They'll find it eventually on their own, I'm sure, said Cletus. But if a man puts a patch over one eye and goes around trying to convince not only everybody else but himself that he was born with only one peephole on the universe, I've not only got no duty, but no moral right, to pull the patch off and force him to face the fact he's wrong. History could force you to do it, said Hal. History hasn't required that of me, in my time, said Cletus. if it has of you in your time, I sympathize with you. Brace yourself, my great great-grandson. You'll be hated by many of those you give a greater vision to.

Hal smiled a little sadly, remembering what Amid had told him about children on the Younger Worlds being taught to spit after saying his name. I already am,- he said-

A hand had caught Hal by the arm; and at the touch his attention returned suddenly to the circle, the ledge and the outside situation. It was Amid.

CHAPTER

23

I'm sorry to interrupt you, as I told you I might have to- Amid was beginning, with relentless Exotic courtesy, when Hal cut him off. It's quite all right, as I said it would be. Don't be concerned, said Hal.

The sun was just disappearing behind their own cliffs; and the mountains he watched at sunrise were now lost in night's shadow. Below them, the jungle was losing itself in twilight; and the ledge itself, to its outer edge, was in the last rosy light of the sunset. What is it? asked Hal. A search party from the garrison will start combing through the jungle below, tomorrow, said Amid. Elian visited Onete again this afternoon to tell her, while she was visiting with Cee. Cee, naturally, disappeared just before Elian showed up; and since Onete knew the news was important, she didn't wait around to see if Cee would be back, but came directly up to the ledge and me. I've had them dig up the barrier stone to block the way in under the boulder, and it's set ready to be put into position at a moment's notice. Onete, Artur and Calas-you know Calas, of course? Of course, said Hal. Calas was a wiry little man who had been one of the original Guild Members with Artur, back when Jathed was still alive.

We're gathered in my reception building, making plans. I'm afraid we need your advice. Anything I can do . . . said Hal. Amid was already leading him at what, for the small and aged man, was almost a trot toward the reception building; which now, like the two dormitories, had blackout curtains over its windows.

Within the building, an evening fire had just been lit in the fireplace and the people Amid had mentioned were seated in three chairs on one side of it. Overhead, the ordinary artificial lighting that was powered by stored sunlight from collectors on the mountainside above them in the day, was on a setting so low that its radiants, shaped like upside-down cones, glowed no brighter than candles. There was an empty chair between that of Onete and the chair Amid always occupied. Amid led Hal to it and all but pushed him into it before the Guildmaster seated himself.

Whatever the other three had been discussing, they had broken off. They sat silent as Hal and Amid came in and found their chairs. Here's Hal, said Amid to Onete, unnecessarily. Tell him what Elian told you. He said . . . began Onete. A product of Exotic schools, she had naturally been taught what the people of Mara and Kultis called Perfect Memory. In effect, this was a ninemonic system that, when learned, gave virtually total recall of information gained through any of the senses-the equivalent in ear, nose and sense of touch of an eidetic memory for anything visual. 'I just found out at lunchtime that the garrison's definitely sending out a search party for the Guild, tomorrow. My cousin heard Sanderson, the corporal who's quartered on her and her husband, talking to the private he uses as an orderly. They were outside the house, but just outside the front door. She heard them through the doora little muffled. but clear enough.' That's the first thing Elian said when he reached me. He was out of breath. He'd barely made it outside the town before the guards would have looked suspiciously on anyone that late in the afternoon; and he'd come as fast as he could once he got out of sight of the walls.

She paused and looked at Hal. Did he say how many soldiers were corning? Hal asked.

No. He probably didn't know. Did he say at what time they were leaving town in the morning, so we can make an estimate of when they'll get into this area? Well, no, said Onete. Actually we talked about how terrible it was they'd search for us after all this time; and I thanked him for coming to tell us, and then I came right back up ere to tell Amid. Did he say anything, asked Hal, this time or at any time earlier, about how the soldiers might be armed, what rank of officer would be leading them, whether they knew their way around in the jungle up here or had maps of any kind? Did he mention that any of the soldiers would be ones who'd searched this area before? No. As I said, said Onete, we just talked

She looked unhappy.

11 1 made a mess of it, didn't IT' she said. I should have asked him useful questions like that, or at least anything I could think of that would let us know what we were up against. I'm sorry. My first thought was to thank him for taking the risk to come and warn us. That's us Exotics, polite and considerate before anything else! I might just as well have chatted with hill) about the weather!

Her voice ended on a bitter, self-accusatory note. Don't let it bother you, said Hal. Exotics aren't the only ones who wouldn't know what to ask in such a situation. Just about anyone without the proper experience or training wouldn't, I'll bet Cee would have asked him some of the right questions, if she'd talk; and if she'd trusted him enough to stick around! said Onete, still bitterly. Never mind, said Amid, we'll all make mistakes like that before this thing is over, probably. Our Exotic training is exactly the wrong sort of training for handling situations like this Occupation. Don't devalue yourselves, said Hal. Remember, that same Exotic training of yours centers around making life more comfortable for those who have to deal with you. Just having to live with you has brought these same soldiers more peace of' mind and comfort than most of them have ever had in their lives before. Whether they admit it to themselves or not, it's hard for them to deprive themselves of that comfort by killing you all off; in spite of the fact they're aware that's essentially what they've been sent here to do. Almost unconsciously, you've been countering the directives under which they operate. Sodon't blame yourself for not asking questions only a professional soldier might think to ask. To each his own way of fighting. Well, in any case, said Amid to Hal, as far as the number and equipment and so forth of the soldiers in Porphyry is concerned, Caeas here can answer some of the questions for you. That's why I have him here-

The door to the reception building suddenly banged open and there strode in-there was no other proper word for the way she moved-a Guild member whose name, Hal remembered, was

R'shan. She was no taller than Onete and slim enough to look as if she was barely more than a girl. But as Hal had seen, she was incredibly strong for her size. He had seen her tossing fifty-kilo sacks of variform sweet potatoes around in the Guild storehouse, apparently without effort. At the moment she was in

work trousers and a somewhat ragged shirt. Her short-cropped blond hair had dust and woodshavings clinging to it. Underneath the hair two bright blue eyes sparkled out of an attractive, sharp-featured face. Sorry to be late, she said, coming on in and throwing herself into the empty chair just beyond Calas. I was up in the crawl space just beneath the roof of Dormitory Two and over the third floor ceiling. Amid, I found that leak up there. All that repairing they did around the kitchen chimney didn't do a bit of good. The crack in the roof's a good half-meter off from the chimney's flashing. I could see sunlight coming through- Forgive me, R'shan, said Amid, but we can talk about the leak in the Dormitory Two roof later. We've just gotten word the soldiers from Porphyry are sending out a search party to try and find us in the jungle below here. We've got to make plans. Oh? Of course! R'shan sat up in her chair. You'll want to know how we're supplied-- Yes, said Amid, but in a moment. Hal's the only one here who knows anything about the military and how they might go about searching. He's asking the questions.

Ah. Friend, here, you mean? Of course. Friend. Forgive me, said Amid, looking apologetically at Hal under R'shan's correction. My name doesn't matter either, said Hal. Let's stick to the situation under discussion. You, first, Calas. How do you happen to know more about the Occupation Troops than these others? I was one of them, said Calas. His voice was slightly hoarse, and it struck Hal suddenly that he had never heard the man speak before. I was caught in a rock slide one day when half a dozen of us were out chasing an escaped prisoner. The slide buried me and those other bastards just pawed around a little and then went off and left me. Wrote me off. Some Guild members were out foraging and saw what happened. After my so-called mates were gone, the Guild people came, dug me out and carried me back here to get well, I had a broken arm and leg, as well as other things wrong with me. The Guild saved my life. So I stayed here. I'll help you fight those sons of bitches any day- Fighting them's the last thing we want to do, said Hal. Whether the Guild lives or dies depends on the soldiers never finding out it still exists. You say the soldiers with you gave up digging for you after just a little effort to find you? Yes. It was a hot day, but that's no excuse. Excuse enough for them, though. You're a Cetan, aren't you? Yes. Calas stared at him. How did you know? It's too cornplicated to explain at the moment, said Hal. Basically, the way you talk rules out your having grown up on any of the other worlds. Tell me about the garrison. How many are there in it? When I was there, counting officers, a little over two hundred. Only about thirty of them women and most of those worked at inside jobs like administration. How large a search party do you guess'll be sent out tomorrow?

Calas shrugged. Who knows? There's live Action Groups of twenty bodies each. The rest of the garrison people are officers or have regular iobs. The five Grouns rotate on dutv so that there's alwavs one on active duty-it's like guard duty, except you don't do anything but sit there and wait for something to come up, like chasing an escaped prisoner from the Interrogation Section cells. Then there's another Group on backup, which means you have to be able to report for duty within five minutes-and they come on duty if the duty Group goes out on some job. The rest are off duty, until their own duty turn comes up. Duty's twenty-six hours. A day and a night. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, said Hal. Effectively they've got a hundred active-duty soldiers, and the rest are support only? That's about it, said Calas. All right, give me your best estimate of how many bodies might be in the search party we'll see tomorrow, how the party'd be officered, whether they'll have maps and how they'll be armed and equipped.

Calas frowned. No telling how many there'll be. If they're really serious, they'd use two full Groups; but that's only if they weren't searching anyplace else at the time or had anything else going on. More likely one Group. What would two Groups add up to in numbers, rank and so forth? asked Hal. Two Groups, answered Calas. That'd mean forty privates, four team-leaders, two groupmen and maybe two forceleaders-but probably just one of those, in command. They'd be Groups that were off duty to begin with, and they'd have the usual needle guns-just a few power rifles-and field equipment-helmets instead of caps and so on. The non-coms and officers carry power-pistols instead of long guns. And that's about it. No power slings for casting explosives? How about portable explosives? No power cannon that might be able to blast holes in the ledge here, if they found it?

Calas shook his head. Hell, I don't know anyone in that whole outfit who'd know how to load, direct, or fire a power sling or power cannon, he said. As for portable explosives, I don't think they've got anything like that, except for grenades and fixed charges that they can slap on the wall of a house to blow it down-and there's only one groupman I know of who'd know how to use that without blowing himself up. Besides, they wouldn't bring explosives up this way. There's nothing they know of here to blow up, but jungle; and no profit in blowing up that. Good, said Hal. Anyone in the outfit know how to track? Track, Friend? Read sign. Follow people through the jungle by seeing where they'd stepped or the undergrowth they'd broken through.

Calas shook his head. Not that I ever knew of, he said. Even better, said Hal. Any technological equipment -sniffers, for example? I don't know what sniffers are, said Calas. Neither do any of the rest of us, said Amid. What's a sniffer, Ha-Friend? Equipment that can be set to sense particular odors at a distance. Body odors, cooking odors. Not that I ever heard of; and I'd have heard about anything like that, said Calas. They'd have scopes? Scopes? Viewing scopes-for getting a close-up picture of what's distant. You might have called them telescopic viewers, on Ceta. Oh, those, said Calas. Every non-coin and officer'll have one, and there might be some issued to a party of the bodies it' they're going off someplace to look at things by themselves. Good. That ties right into what I was going to ask you next. Any searching that's done is likely to be either with individuals strung out in a skirmish line, or with small units of somethinlo like two to a dozen individuals, setting up a center point and working out from there, until the specific area assigned that unit for search has been gone over. In light forest like that below us. where ferns and scrub brush fill the spaces between trees at times, two men could lose track of each other easily within a short distance; they'll probably figure to use a group working out of a center point. If so, what's Your guess as to the size of the units the search party'll be broken up into?

Six to ten bodies, said Calas. Giving us two or three units from each group? That's right. Good . . . and bad, said Hal. Now- Why do you say both 'good' and 'bad,' Friend? asked Amid. Good, because it adds to the evidence that they're not expert trackers or searchers. It also means they're either lazy, or don't expect to find anyone; so for their own greater comfort and pleasure, they'll stick together in large units to have company and make easier work of the searching. It's bad, because they'll be taking longer to search over the same amount of ground; and that means they'll be around here longer. I covered most of the area that concerns us in about six hours, earlier today. They could take almost as many days to do it if they stay in large groups and loaf on the job. That's exactly what they'll do, too, said Calas. Right, said Hal, glancing out the window at the deepening gloom of the night. He turned to Amid. Do you have someone who could climb high enough on the mountain behind us to see the road past the madman's place, using a scope? Whoever it is would have to be in a position where they could not only see the road, but also where they could be seen from down here. I want someone ready to signal us below here when the troops come in sight. That way we can leave the block out of place at the entrance under the boulder until the last minute. Of course, said Amid. There's a number of us who could do that. If I were twenty years younger- They'll have to climb in the dark. I want whoever goes up to be in place by dawn. Hmm, said Amid. Yes, I think we can even do that. There are some fairly easy routes up, ways some of us already know about. Even in the dark they should be safe to climb. Fine. Hal looked at R'shan. How about supplies? We've got water from the stream. How long can we live up here on stored food alone? Six months, said R'shan, staring levelly at him. You see, said Amid, we've always considered the possibility ofbeing kept from leaving the ledge for an extended time.

Six months! Hal smiled and shook his head. You've done well in that department. Now-- He looked at Amid steadily. Did you talk to your pharmacist; and to Artur and Onete here, about bringing Cee in the way I suggested? We can't do it, said Artur. Really, we can't, said Onete. She'd go wild once she woke up here and found herself locked in, even if I was with her. From what little I can gather from her, my guess is that the soldiers that destroyed her family home must have caught her parents outside and deliberately put them inside before blowing the house apart; and Cee saw that. She trusts me a lot now, I think, but anything that held or enclosed her . . . she'd go wild and hurt herself trying to get out! You see, said Amid to Hal, otherwise, the pharmacist says it'd be perfectly possible to make such a tranquilizer dart. That's good, said Hal, because they may turn out to be useful in other ways. Would you have him make up about a dozen of them and find me people who can shoot a bow or use a sling with enough accuracy to deliver them? I can do that, yes, said Amid. How were you planning on using them? Because that may make a difference in how he makes them. I don't know, yet. It's just that such darts would give us a silent, nonlethal weapon. Maybe, on second thought, you and I had better go over and talk with him or her, now- You stay here! R'shan was already on her feet. I'll go get him. People are supposed to come to the Guildmaster, not he to them-remember, Guildmaster?

She looked sternly at Amid, who in turn looked slightly embarrassed. Sometimes it's quicker-but you're right, you're right, said Amid. I think he's still in the pharmacy, R'shan. Since you're going to get him, then, said Hal hastily, would you get whoever's going to climb the mountain with the viewscope and watch for the soldiers on the road? Missy and Hadnah, said Amid. Bring them both, R'shan. Right. The door slammed behind her, giving a brief glimpse of the new darkness outside. We'll also want to cover or camouflage the circle and anything else that's evidence of people here on the ledge from an overhead view; just in case they do take a look from above at this area, said Hal. I really don't think they can, said Amid, smiling a little. I'd forgotten when you first mentioned it; but of course, when all the wealth of our two worlds went at your request to Old Earth, we couldn't afford to keep on the payroll all the technicians and experts from other worlds we'd been used to employing. Most of the staff on the satellite system, which was primarily a weather-control system for whatever world the satellite was orbiting, were other-world meteorologists. When they left, the few Exotics who were there in the station left too; but before leaving they made a point of effectively sabotaging the equipment aboard. Good! muttered Calas. Those the Occupation Forces sent in, continued Amid evenly, were soldiers only. They might have had a few people among them who could use the equipment on the satellites, but they hadn't any who could repair it. The satellite system's gone unrepaired ever since, as the weather patterns show. I really don't think anyone can get an overhead view of us without actually flying a space-and-atmosphere ship over; and it'd be prohibitive in cost to do that for every little group like us they're trying to search out on both Kultis, here, and Mara. There's still the possibility of the searchers sending up a

float-kite, or balloon with a scope aboard, to relay images back to the ground, said Hal. We should cover up, anyway, and keep everyone out of sight from above, particularly in the daytime. Oh, we'll do that, of course. I didn't mean to say we wouldn't, said Amid. It's just that it's amusing that they can't use the satellites because of a situation they helped bring about, themselves.

There was a moment's pause in the conversation, broken by Artur. I don't know what to do about Cee, he said.

Onete put a hand on his thick forearm. She'll stay out of sight, I'm sure, she said. It's true she's always curious; but that many people together, and particularly if she remembers the uniforms of the soldiers who killed her parents-and I'm sure she does, even if she won't talk much about it-she'll be frightened and hide from them. If she really wants them not to see her or know she's there, they're about as likely to get a glimpse of her as they are to catch a sunbeam in a box and carry it away.

Artur turned his head to smile at her, but his face was still troubled in the shadows cast by the firelight. He got to his feet. I'll get busy right now organizing the camouflaging of the ledge, he said. He went out, walking heavily.

Since they had a few moments on their hands in which to do so, Hal had Onete repeat her full conversation with Elian, word for word; but what she had said earlier was correct. There was nothing more Hal could learn from it.

Amid began an explanation to Hal of how at least some weeks' supply of food for those in the Guild was always stored ready in precooked form, or was of such a nature that it could be eaten without cooking. These ready-prepared foods were used up in rotation as part of their regular daily diet, and regularly replaced. Other foods, such as root vegetables, were also used up in rotation, being replaced by more recently acquired supplies of the same food.

The door opened to let in a tall, thin man with white hair and an unusual erectness, considering his obvious age. Hal, you've met our pharmacist, Tannaheh? said Amid. Tanna, this is Friend, an honored visitor among us for a while. I think I'm probably the only Guild member you haven't met, Friend, said Tannaheh. I'm honored, of course. I've heard all about you from the others. And I've heard about you, said Hal. Honored, in turn. Tannaheh is really a research chemist- began Amid. Was a research chemist, said the thin old man. At any rate, he's our pharmacist now. Tanna, we just got word through Onete that a search party from the Porphyry Garrison is on its way here tomorrow. I've been told, said Tannaheh. In fact, everyone on the ledge knows it. I suppose, said Amid, with a faint sigh. Well, the point is, Friend's original need for a tranquilizing drug to be delivered in the form of a dart isn't going to be used for Cee, as we originally thought we might use it. But he thinks he might have other uses for such drugged darts. Do you want to explain, Friend?

It might be possible to use something like that against the soldiers if some of us have to go down to deal with them, said Hal. What I've got in mind for that purpose, though, isn't just something to put a person to sleep, but something that would leave them physically helpless, but awake and-in particular -susceptible to hypnosis. Do you have the materials to give me something like that?

Tannaheh put the tips of his long, thin fingers together and pursed his lips, frowning slightly, above them. You want them more or less incapable physically, he said, but awake enough to be put into a hypnotic state? I assume you're able to put someone in such a state yourself; and that's what you plan to do after the medication's taken effect? That's right, said Hal. Hmm, said Tannaheh. It's a bit of a problem. You're really asking for two things, A muscle relaxant that would simply leave them too limp to stand up would give you the physical state you want them in. But you also want something that would leave them receptive to hypnosis but-I assume-

not in a condition to be alarmed by you or give the alarm. I suppose the idea is that if you have to knock one of them down with a dart, you want to use hypnosis to make that person forget what happened to them? That's it, said Hal. Forgive me for interfering in the tactical area, where I'm not experienced, said Tannaheh, but if you're able to hypnotize, you ought to be aware that a post-hypnotic command to forget something isn't likely to be effective for very long after the subject comes out of the state you've put him in. I know it, said Hal, that's why there's one more requirement. The drugs used have to be compatible with alcohol. I take it for granted you've got alcohol among your supplies? Yes. Actually, I pick up the local homemade rotgut the soldiers themselves drink, and redistill it for my own purposes. I've got a connection with one of the Porphyry people. I meet her down in the jungle on certain days and trade mineral supplement pills for the drink. Mineral supplement pills? echoed Hal. Why, yes. I make a powder that can be mixed right into the food for us up here; but the people down below find it easier to distribute and take their mineral supplements in pill form. Also, they seem to feel there's something special about such pills made by a professional chemist. It's needed in their diet, as it is in ours. You do know that these worlds of Mara and Kultis are naturaliv deficient in the heavier metals, being progeny, so to speak, of an F5 star like Procyon? I'm sorry, said Hal. I did know. I'd forgotten. We used to make our supplements in central manufactories, using metal imported from worlds like Coby, said Tannaheh. But naturally there's no importation now and the Occupation trashed the factories. Of course, there's still plenty of the metals scattered around these worlds. It wouldn't be hard for anyone to find a piece of iron, say, and reduce it by practical methods to a form that could be ingested, although they'd need to know the proper amount to take . . . anyway, I do have alcohol. Have you got some of the original rotgut, as you call it, still in its original containers? Hal asked. Certainly. That may be particularly handy, said Hal. My idea was to dart them; then, under hypnosis, get them to drink a certain amount of alcohol, and leave them unconscious with another drug and the post-hypnotic idea, that they'd drunk themselves insensible. Very good. I can handle the drug and syringe part of it for you-a syringe that drives the needle in and makes its injection with the force of impact, I suppose? That'd be fine. Very good indeed. I'll take care of that as soon as I close up the pharmacy, which I was about to do for the night, anyway. I'll take some of the bottles of local drink up to your room.

You're in Dormitory Two, aren't you? How much rotgut? Do you have as much as a dozen half-liters? If I haven't, I can make some up. You see, as I say, I normally distill the stuff to get something I can use in the pharmacy. I can dilute some of the high-proof alcohol I've already distilled out and mix it back in with the original to get the amount you need.

Tannaheh got to his feet. So, if either of you want me, I'll be either at the pharmacy or in my room. If I'm asleep, don't worry about waking me. I wake easily, but I can go right back to sleep again without trouble.

He went out. Forgive me if there's some reason it's not a good idea, Amid said, but shouldn't your Dorsai with the spaceship be signaled so that he can take you off in case we do get found and taken, up here? Old Earth and all good people can't afford to lose you. The signal to Simon is the laying out of a cloth, Hal answered. We don't want to do that now, just when we're trying to make this ledge look uninhabited from the air. There's no need to worry. He was to shift in for a quick look once every twenty-four hours, in daytime. He's got sense enough to know something's up if he sees the ledge suddenly looking as if there's no one here and never has been. I'd guess he'll land in the mountains tomorrow night like he did once before, and climb down to us the morning after to see if he's needed. You can be sure of that? Reasonably sure, said Hal with a grin. Just as I'm reasonably sure that word is bound to leak to Amanda, wherever she is, and she'll know whether and when to come back here, herself. I'm pleased, said Amid. I feel a responsibility, having you here. You shouldn't, said Hal. I came of my own free will, on my own decision. It's a great advantage to us, having you with us when something like this happens, said Amid. We'll be deeply indebted to you. Nonsense! said Hal. I'm indebted to you; and I'll be more so when I've got what I want out of Jathed's Law. Jathed's Law is available to anyone who can use it. In no way could you be considered to be indebted to us for that . . . however, said Amid, clearing his throat, as far as Amanda Morgan's concerned, you're quite right that she'll hear about the search very shortly. There aren't enough soldiers to keep our people from going to and fro with word of anything interesting, between our small towns.

He looked at Hal and blinked. They never were really towns, you know, in the ordinary sense, he said. Most of us preferred to live out in the countryside with space around each of our homes. But there were some who liked to be close to their neighbors, so we had

Hal woke at his usual time, something less than an hour before dawn. He had only had some five hours of sleep, but that would be sufficient for the day to come. He rose, showered and dressed, out of the habit ingrained in his boyhood as Donal, in completely clean clothes. Any morning with the chance of battle meant a clean body and clean clothes if that were possible. Many other things besides needle guns could make wounds; and soiled clothing pushed into a wound could carry infection deep into the body. There was little to no chance of his being hurt this day, but old habits had been triggered.

They made him sad and the sadness wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak as he began the day. There was no respite.

m the time word of his uncle James's death had come to im in Donal's boyhood, until the present moment, the birth of each day had brought a dragon to fight. Long since, now, he had thought he would have found the nest in the human soul from which such dragons came and have destroyed it, ending them all. But still they came. Once again he was at a morning on which he dressed with the possibility in mind of having to fight for the lives of himself and others. It was as if nothing had been accomplished from his youngest years until now.

Perhaps there was no such thing as ending it. Perhaps the best he could settle for was to meet each new dragon each day, do the best he could with it, and count that as victory. At least he would have fought the breed while he could. He would have done his duty. But what was duty, if that was all that was done?

Back into his mind came a book he had read when he was young. He remembered a verbal exchange in Conan Doyle's novel Sir Nigel, written at the beginning of the twentieth century and laid in the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century had been a time when duty was a common word among the upper classes, in its French form of devoir. The words he had just remembered were part of a passage in which there had been an angry exchange involving Sir Robert Knolles, the leader of the group of English men-at-arms and archers to which Nigel Loring, then still only a squire, belonged. It was a dispute between the experienced Knolles and a hot-headed but inexperienced young knight, Sir James Astley, concerning a skirmish into which Astley had gotten himself and those with him.

'. . . I have done my devoir as best I might,' said Astle.y. 'Alone, I had ten of them at my sword point. I know not how have lived to tell it.' ' What is your devoir to me? Where are my thirty bowmen cried Knolles in bitter wrath. 'Ten lie dead upon the ground, and twenty are worse than dead in yonder castle . . . '

No, to fight another dragon every day might make a good show, but it made no difference. Because as long as the nest remained, the number of dragons would be endless. To fight anew each day showed responsibility, but nothing else; and yet, responsibility was part of the whole answer he sought. Just as the Law of Jathed was also part of it, if only he could grasp the full depth of its meaning. The Law rang again in his mind now, as it had rung when he had first come to the ledge here and heard it; but still it rang far off and muffled, not with the close, clear message that would signal an understanding of it, within him. Not yet-for that.

Dressed, he left his room and headed on his customary route toward the lip of the ledge and the sunrise to come. Not yet-the understanding. Only a dragon.

It was still full, moonless dark outside and the air was not merely chill, but icy, with that greatest coldness that comes just before dawn. The soldiers would not be leaving Porphyry until after the sun was well up. They would not even be coming into view of the lookouts above them on the mountain for several hours yet and there was nothing more in the way of preparations that could be made. Meanwhile, it would be reassuring for the Guildmembers to see him following his normal pattern of activity, as if the danger now threatening was not all-important. The ledge had originally had its trees cut so as to provide corridors for people to move about, shielded from overhead observation. But there was no need to follow those corridors yet with the sun not yet risen.

Like all the other Guild members, now, Hal had come to know the layout of the ledge in darkness the way he knew his own room with the lighting off. He went toward his usual position near the front edge of the ledge but chose a spot a little way from it, under a tree that would hide him when the sun had risen. He sat down in lotus position.

In a little while the sky began to lighten; and shortly after, like a carven figure emerging out of darkness, he saw Old Man, already there and similarly seated, under a tree a few meters away. They bowed to each other and then directed their attention toward the sunrise that was coming.

The day lightened the landscape around and below them; and Hal's mind once more slipped off into the scene of himself, seated like this in the Guildhouse of the far future, completed of polished stone. He sat beside a pool now rimmed with polished granite, in which fish swam and waterplants floated their white flowers.

Once more he searched out a plant close to him, with its white blossom, on one petal of which was a drop of dew, that might catch the light as the sun rose.

He found a dewdrop; and again this morning, it did. Once more, as the light was suddenly reflected from the speck of water, for a fraction of a second he felt the closeness of the understanding he sought here, but had not yet grasped. It was all but within his reach. . . .

But he could not close upon it. As the sun pushed more of itself into visibility above the far mountains, and regretfully, he returned to the needs of the moment. He exchanged bows again with Old Man and, like the other, rose. They went their separate Ways under the shelters of the corridors of trees.

Hal's way led him by force of habit toward the kitchen of his dormitory-building number two. He was a good third of the way toward it, his mind full of how close he had come to some sort of understanding, back during the sunrise, when older habit caught up with him again and he turned away.

It was old Dorsai training. Clean body and clean clothes the morning of a battle-and no breakfast. To miss one meal was unimportant. But to have the stomach empty might be helpful, in case of body wounds. Also there was the feel ing-possi bly an illusion, but he like others had felt it nonetheless -that the mind was keener and more awake on an empty stomach; just as he would not have thought of eating just before watching a sunrise or walking in the circle.

He went instead to Amid's reception building, sure that in spite of the early hour, he would find the older man there. There, Amid was indeed, sitting at a table surface between the fireplace and the front door, set up in the space vacated by a number of the chairs that had been pushed back against the wall. Spread out on the table surface was a map of the immediate jungle area, from directly below the cliffs holding the ledge to where the road past the former madman's place turned into a trail.

The map had evidently been printed up from data records in sections, and fused together into one large sheet, overnight. On it, at Amid's right elbow, sat a table-model scope with a

permanently exposed, 30-millimeter-square screen. The sight of it made Hal automatically reach to his waist to check that he had his own, 10-millimeter-square field scope folded up and hooked on there. It was. Hal! said Amid, looking up as Hal came toward the table. I'm glad you caee directly here from xatching the sun conic up-but, wait, you haven't had breakfast yet? I'll have something later, said Hal. Don't forget to eat-that's what they're always telling mc@ and at your age you need the fuel for your energies more than I do, said Amid. Hal, look at this map. Will you show me the way you think the soldiers will do their searching?

Hal came up to the table surface beside him. As I told you yesterday, said Hal, they'll come up the road, here, to the end of the trail. There, they'll drop off a couple of soldiers to set up a post; unless the officer in charge of the search is lazy or for other reasons decides to set up his own headquarters there. Either way, there'll be some of them there, in direct phone contact with their headquarters back in Porphyry. The rest . His right index finger traced routes on the map. . . . will probably continue on as two separate, equal units, to the two center points of equal halves of the area to be searched. Once at those center points each unit will set up secondary headquarters, under the command of sub-officers, keeping at least a couple each of the soldiers with them. My guess is that one alternative then is that the soldiers of each unit will be sent out to form a skirmish line at the farthest extent of their part of the territory; and make a sweep through it until they meet the skirmish line of the other unit coming from the farthest extent of their territory. If by the time they meet they've found nothing, they'll travel back together to the head of the trail and withdraw to Porphyry. That's unless their plan is to break up into smaller units. Yes. I see, said Amid, nodding. Now what about them breaking up into even smaller units? It's equally possible, said Hal. An alternative, once the secondary posts have been set up, is that they'll divide the soldiers not kept at the secondary headquarters into, say, five-person units. These units will then be sent out to search a specific piece of the territory that's to be examined by that particular sub-group. In short, the original search party will still divide into two equal units, but then the two units will each divide again into a number of smaller units, each with the responsibility of examining a small part of the total territory to be searched. Those small parts will probably be defined for them by specific coordinates on their maps, which we can learn by watching how they move. And which way do you think they'll do it? I've no way of knowing, Hal said. The choice'll be made on the basis of what kind of soldiers they are and what kind of officers they've got over them. For example, if the officer in command is afraid his sub-officers are going to lie down on the job once they're out from under his eye, he or she may prefer the skirmish line. On the other hand, if the commander's in good control and/or the sub-officers are responsible and have good control of the soldiers under them, the commander may prefer the individual group method as being more likely to make a close and careful examination of the area they're assigned to search. How long should it take them to get into position to search? Amid asked. Probably, judging from what I've seen and what I've heard about them, they'll take al I of today just to set themselves up, said Hal. Yes . . . Amid rubbed his hands together worriedly. I suppose we've nothing to fear, really, until tomorrow. I was wondering whether to send word to block the entrance yet. Any time. I'm a little surprised you haven't done it before now, Hal said. There's none of the Guild people off the ledge, are there? No, no Guild people, said Amid. He looked up at Hal. But Artur hates to see that block go into place. You understand.

Hal shook his head. Cee's not going to come through that entrance of her own accord, said Hal. Even if she knows-and I'd bet she does-that it's where all the Guild members vanish to. She's undoubtedly followed Artur, Onete, or some foragers back to the boulder and seen them go under it and not come back out, before this. I'll even bet she's actually come in through the entrance when no one was around, and possibly explored the way beyond, even as far as the ledge. Well, there you are, said Amid. Artur feels the way you do. That she knows. And he hates to give up on the thought that if she's really frightened by the soldiers she might prefer us to them and come in. But once that block's in place no single adult, let alone a child, is going to be able to budge itparticularly from the outside. It weighs as much as three men your size. I'd close the entrance now, if I were you, said Hal. Your first responsibility's to all the people up here; and Artur's feelings are only Artur's feelings. Yes.

Amid was clearly unhappy. He pointed to the desk scope. Did they tell you-Missy and Hadnah-they were going to try to set up a tight-beam link between their observation post and a repeater down here on the ledge?

Hal nodded. He had a great deal of confidence in Missy and Hadnah, although he had not known that they made a hobby of rock climbing until the present problem had come up. They looked enough alike to be brother and sister, although evidently they were not related. Both were short, well-muscled, blondhaired and young; and they even acted alike-being, as far as their Guild duties and the circle-walking allowed, always in each other's company. Well, they did it. Amid touched a stud on the desk repeater and it chimed as its screen lit up to show a bulging mass of cliff-face. A second later Missy's face blocked out most of the view of the rock. Yes, Amid? her voice said. There's no sign of soldiers yet. I I

Amid moved aside to let Hal look into the screen and be seen above. I just wanted Friend to see you'd made the connection. Right. Good morning, Friend. I hope you slept well. Very well, answered Hal. There was nothing to be done with Exotic manners but live with them. A polite inquiry about his last night's sleep was as out of place in her situation and his in the present moment as a tea party in the midst of an earthquake. I had five hours. How much did you two have? Hadnah's taking a small nap now, said Missy. After that he can keep watch for a while and I'll take one. Thank you for asking. We're not tired at all, really. I'm glad to hear that, said Hal. They two must have climbed the better part of a kilometer, vertically, during the night. Focus your scope on the end of the road for me, now, will you? Right. Missy vanished from the screen, and the view of the overswelling rock face above her was replaced by a view from what appeared to be only a dozen meters above the point where the road gave way to a trail. Pull back your focus, Hal said. I want to see that spot in relation to the ground around it. Right. Say when, replied the voice of the now invisible Missy. The scene on the screen seemed to move away from Hal and Amid, taking in more and more ground area as it went, until it showed not only the connection of road-end and trailbeginning but an area of a size that could have been occupied by four city blocks on a side. Stop, said Hal.

The withdrawal of focus halted. Let it sit with that view, said Hal. I'm going out to the edge of the ledge now and I'll be keying my belt scope into the circuit from your repeater down here. You've got up to half a day before any soldiers show up. Take another nap, yourself. If we really need you, we can call you with the chime on your scope. I'm really quite all right, said Missy, still invisible. You may not be five days from now, up there, said Hal. Rest while you can. We'll call you if we need you. All right, Friend. Thank you. Don't thank me, said Hal. I'm just protecting myself against having two overtired observers sometime later on. Right.

The last word was followed by silence from the scope on the table surface. Hal looked at Amid. Where's Calas? he asked. I can have him found, said Amid. Do that. Have him come and join me out at the edge of the ledge, said Hal. Send out Old Man, too. But Old Man never was a soldier, said Amid, frowning. I didn't suppose so, said Hal. But he's a very insightful sort. Tell him I'd like him to join me, if he would.

11011, he'll be glad to, I'm sure, said Amid. I will. And you're right. He's a very insightful individual. And get some rest yourself, when you can, said Hal. Remember what I just told Missy. This could last five days or more; and we may need to be in the best possible shape at the very end of it.

He went out, and followed the closest corridor of trees to as close to the lip of the ledge as he could get and still be hidden by tree branches overhead. There, he seated himself in the tree's shade, unfolded his scope and keyed it into the view he had asked Missy to set up from above. The end of the road-and as

far down as he could see it before it vanished under the foliage of the treetops that intervened because of the angle of the view -lay alien, intrusive and empty in the jungle, beneath the rapidly warming rays of the brilliant, white pinpoint of sun rising ever higher in the sky overhead.

He looked away from the scope and at the scene as his unaided vision saw it. It would be some time yet, as he had reminded Missy and Amid. He decided to follow Cletus's advice and let his conscious mind run freely over the terrain while waiting for his unconscious mind to produce some process for using it to the advantage of the people of the Guild.

In this case, that meant his remembering the ground as he had covered it during the first part of the previous day. He stared at the greenery below and the ground, together with the growth he had passed on it, began to unreel in the eye of his memory, stride by stride. He was on his third survey of the pattern he had covered when someone dropped down beside him, breathing a little heavily from the hurry in which he had come.

It was Calas. You wanted me? said the small, wiry ex-soldier. His black hair was disordered on his head. How much sleep did you have? Hal asked. I didn't fold up until about an hour after you did. But I've slept until now, said Calas. That's where they found me with the word you wanted me.

Hal considered him. You're from Ceta, he said. Where, on Ceta? Monroe-I don't guess you ever heard of it, Calas said. Hal shook his head. It's a tiny state, out in Czardisland Territory. Were you in any kind of military outfit there? Local militia, said Calas. Hell, all we did was shoot at targets, parade and get drunk together. We had uniforms, though.

I IAnd you got picked up for military under the Others and sent here, because of that experience? Yes, said Calas. I should have said I was a rancher -variform sheep. I was that more than I was a soldier. Born and raised on a sheep farm. Have you any idea which officers and sub-officers might be sent out? No, said Calas. it could be any one of the five force-leaders, any of the groupmen and team-leaders of the active forces. Well now, wait, if the Commandant really wants results, he's most likely to send Force-leader Liu Hu Shen. Liu's the one Force there who really gets a job done. That means at least one of the forces would be his, and two of the groupmen and four team- leaders -al I of them pretty strong on getting things done right, simply because Liu won't have anyone who won't do what he tells them. But the other force-leader and his sub-officers could be anyone-if there is another forceleader. Commandant Essley might just add someone else's force to Liu's. Not that it matters. Any other force-leader sent out is going to be second- i n-command to Liu.

- Is Liu just a better soldier than the others, Hal asked, or does he happen to like hunting down and killing Exotics? Likes it, I think, said Calas. But he's a good officer, too. Probably the best in the garrison-though nobody likes him. With him, it's always done by the numbers. Everything in line of duty, that's Liu.

A faint sound on Hal's other side made them both look and see Old Man now sitting there. He smiled at them, and Hal smiled back. It was a contrast, he thought with approval. Here was Calas, wound up to the tightness of a piano string; while Old Man was his usual self. In fact, a sort of relaxed, almost grandfatherly, warmth seemed to radiate from him as he sat there; and Calas was already perceptibly less tense. Thank you for joining us, said Hal, and suddenly realized he was talking like an Exotic.

Old Man smiled and bowed slightly from his sitting position. I didn't ask you to join us, said Hal, for any specific reason. I'd just like the benefit of your opinion on anything about the situation that you think might help. If you don't mind staying here with us, we'll watch the soldiers as they move in and perhaps you'll have some suggestions to make after you've seen them and the way they act. -

Old Man nodded and smiled, He looked out over the jungle below in the direction from which the soldiers would come. Hal turned back to Calas. You don't have to stay with us now, if you'd like to get breakfast, or some such thing, he said. In fact, if you canic directly here after they woke you and haven't eaten, I'd suggest you get some food into you. It may be a long day's watch. I won't need you back here until after the soldiers are in view on the scope, close enough so that you can tell me who the important ones are and how they might act-or react.

Calas nodded. It was an abrupt, rather ungraceful movement after the nod Old Man had given. He got to his feet. I'll go eat, he said, then I'll come back. Take your time, said Hal. It'll be three hours yet, anyway, before I expect to see the soldiers-and that's even if they left their garrison at dawn. They wouldn't be I ikely to leave before that, would they?

Calas gave a grunt of laughter. No, he said. Under anyone but Liu, they wouldn't leave even then. They might not get off until noon.

He turned and went. Hal and Old Man sat together in a silence that held no need to be broken. The sun moved up into the sky. The hours passed. After a while Calas came back. It was nearly noon by the time a

line of four combat vehicles made their way up the road to the end of the trail and stopped there, letting the search party out. Liu, said Calas. Hal saw the one he meant. Porphyry itself hasn't any at mosphere-to- space ships, or any other above-surface vehicle they could use overhead? Hal asked Calas. Not Porphyry, said Calas. They could call some in from Omanton. Perhaps that's what they'll do, then, said Hal. He turned to the scope, on which the soldiers were now visible at close range, and pressed the chime stud. The voice of Hadnah spoke to him. Yes, Friencl? If Missy's not awake, wake her, said Hal. Both of you forget the scope for now and watch for the approach of any kind of atmosphere ship. Each of you take half the visible sky to watch. It ought to be coming here in no particular hurry, but as soon as you see anything in the air, even if you're not sure it's headed this way, let us know below here. Amid, are you listening? I'm I istening for Amid. He's lying down for a bit, said the voice- of Artur. Good. Make him rest as much as you can. Have everybody make sure they're undercover, starting now. We may have aerial observation at any moment from now on. Calas says they may get air assistance from Omanton. I don't know where that is, but it's got to be close as above-surface travel goes. I'll have someone check to see everyone's hidden, right away, Friend. Good, said Hal. I'll let you go now.

Artur sounded as if he was in control of himself, Cee or no Cee, Hal thought as he turned back to closely examining the soldiers shown in the scope. He touched the controls to move his own picture to a closer view of the soldiers who had just got out of their vehicles and were forming up in units. All right, he said to Calas, Liu is obvious, with that force-leader's insignia on his lapels. Tell me about the subofficers. ' 'Right. See that thin groupman in the tailored uniform, with the black, black eyebrows, right by Liu, there? said Calas. That's the Urk, Sam Durkeley. He's Liu's pet. That groupman just getting out of the cab of the second vehicle, and the one forming up the first unit of men, are new since I was there. I don't know them. The other groupman just beyond the Urk is Ali Diwan. The only team-leader I know is the one backing the first vehicle off the road to turn it around, so it's ready to head back. That's Jakob . . . can't remember his last name. He's pretty decent, compared to most of them, There's more I don't know than I thought. I forget how long it's been since I joined the Guild. It looks as if Liu is setting up a command post just off the end of the road there, said Hal. They're putting up a shelter. Do you suppose Durkeley'll stay with him? He wouldn't be wearing that tailored uniform if he'd expected to go slogging through the jungle, said Calas. No, the Urk'11 be where Liu is, you can count on it. And Liu is obviously staying at the end of the road, said Hal. That ought to mean he's got enough confidence in his sub-officers to let them make the search out of his sight; since you said he was the most capable of the garrison's force-leaders. he wouldn't be letting them do it on their own simply because he was lazy or unsure of himself. Right, said Calas. He's either got them scared, like old Jakob there, or trained like the Urk. That doesn't mean he won't come on in, himself, if they find anything, or run into any trouble. Or he might show up when they don't expect him just to keep them wound up. That's the way he is.

The search party continued to get out of their vehicles, form up and move off into the jungle. Calas, Hal said abruptly, have you any idea how many more scopes we have that aren't in use at the moment? No, said Calas, I don't.

He scrambled to his feet. I'll go find out, he said. If there's three more that can be spared, will you bring them out here to me? said Hal. From the way they're deploying I'd guess they're going to follow the plan ot'dividing up the area and putting a team in each section. We may need to keep track of several different parties simultaneously. I'll be back as quick as I can, said Calas, and went off at a run down the corridor of trees. Hal's eyes met those of Old Man and Old Man smiled gently at him. The scope before Hal chimed. Craft approaching by air at three o'clock, said the voice of Missy, off screen.

CHAPTER

25

The craft was a surface-to-orbit shuttle bus, completely unsuited to surveillance of the sort it was being put to here. The Occupation was clearly hard up for space- and-atmosphere craft. since the Exotics had given away most of these with their spaceships to Old Earth, before yielding to control by the Others.

Very probably its pilot knew that this trip was simply a waste of its time and his; for the craft made two explosive, supersonic passes over the area where the troops were, far above the speed at which any naked eye observation would have been possible. Pictures, of course, could have been taken; but even if they had been, Hal doubted that they would be subjected to the timeconsuming, careful examination that an expert would have to make to discover evidence of human occupation anywhere on them. The time-cost of such expert attention to all the small areas probably being searched at the same time would be prohibitive.

The chance was still there, of course. But it was so small that he thought they could afford not to worry about that until it proved to have some substance.

Having made its passes, the shuttle bus disappeared. Hal, with the other two, went back to watching the deployment of the soldiers below into their various assigned areas of search.

It was a slow dispersal, and the soldiers were not driving themselves to accomplish it with anything more than casual speed. As the units departing the roadhead broke up into smaller and smaller units, their pace slowed progressively, until by the time they were down to the four individuals that seemed to be the team number for an individual section of territory, they were literally loafing along; and when at last they reached the area that was to be theirs alone to search, they put themselves first to the leisurely business of setting up temporary camps.

Meanwhile, Procyon moved across the sky overhead and the day wore on. Hal and Old Man sat still, engrossed in the developing situation as shown on the screens of the four scopes that now sat in front of them since Calas had rejoined them. None of the soldiers, as yet, were close enough for naked-eye observation. But Calas became more and more restless as the day wore on. Hal could feel the tension in the wiry little man growing with the passing hours. Why don't they get it done, damn it? exploded Calas finally. Do you know about the battle of Thermopylae? asked Hal.

Calas turned to look at him. No, Calas said. It' happened on Old Earth, nearly three thousand years ago, Hal said. Persia, a huge empire of that time, set out to conquer the city-states of the Greeks on a peninsula reaching down from the southern part of Europe into the Mediterranean Sea. Xerxes, the Persian ruler, attacked the Peninsula with a vast army. His forces clashed with seven thousand Greeks on a narrow strip of coastline with the sea on one side and steep cliffs on the other. The sea was barred to the Persians by Greek ships. The seven thousand Greeks on land were mainly from Sparta, a city that produced the best hoplites in the world then-men armed with large shields and long spears, fighting in close formation.

Hal paused. Calas was, at least, listening with every sign of interest. For three days of fighting Xerxes tried to get past the Spartans. But Leonidas, King of Sparta and their commander, with his troops, who--were mostly Spartans, held them. Then a Greek traitor showed the Persians a narrow footpath up over the cliffs. They started to go up and around the Spartans to take them from behind. Leonidas, learning of this, sent most ot'his soldiers off in retreat. He, himself, and three hundred of his Spartans with some of the allies from other cities, stayed and defended. They who stayed died fighting; but what they did allowed those sent off to get away safely. He paused again, this time glancing at Calas. The place where they fought the Persians and died, he said, is called Thermopylae; and after, there was an inscription put up there. It said 'go, stranger and tell the Spartans we lie here in obedience to their command. '

Hal stopped; he reached out and enlarged the view on one of the scopes. And? said Calas. What has all this three- thousand-yearold history to do with what we've got down there?

He jerked his hand at the valley below. Just that Leonidas knew what he was deciding to do when he chose to stay and die-and those with him knew. Hal looked directly into the eyes of Calas. We only have one life@ and at its end, there's one important question only. Whether what we did praises or condemns us in our own eyes. And judgment cae rest on any moment's decision or action, from all our years.

Old Man bowed as only he could from a seated position, toward Hal. Hal looked at him. Now, why? he said to Old Man. I only put a truth into words. It was the truth I bowed to, said Old Man; and smiled. All right, all right . . . ... muttered Calas, peering into his scanner, you don't have to underline it. Maybe I know what you mean better than you think. Don't forget I figured myself for dead, under the rocks of that slide, when I heard those mates of mine taking off without digging for me.

But from then on he watched the screen before him closely, continuously and without fidgeting.

By the time the sun began to set, the soldiers below had all made their individual camps. A few of the separate teams had even made a brief search of part of their assigned area. But most had simply spent their time setting up shelters and building a fire. They sat around the fires as darkness grew, talking and drinking from their canteens, and when, at last, there was nothing to be seen from the ledge but deep shadow where forest foliage had been visible, the numerous firelights flickered and twinkled like echoes of the stars that grew into brightness overhead. Friend?

Hal had heard the footsteps coming up behind them; but, still caught in his long day's observation of what was below, on identifying them as the footsteps of Artur he had merely noted them, and returned to his concentration on what was lit on the screen before him by the light of one of the fires below. Now he roused and answered. Yes? he said.

He got to his feet, cramped by the long watch. Beside him, Calas and Old Man were also rising. I thought I could take over for you here, said Artur. At night, there's not much need for a skilled watcher; and you'll need rest. True, said Hal.

The darkness was deep enough so that the two men were standing close together. Hal caught the faint sour odor of nervous perspiration from the other. Fresh sweat raised by the body in response to physical effort did not have that smell. I'll head back in, then, he added. Calas, Old Man, come along. Amid's probably going to want to talk to us about what we've seen.

He stepped around Artur, making it a point to pass so closely his elbow brushed lightly for a second against the shirt of the Assistant Guildmaster. Sure enough, Artur's shirt was soaked through with sweat. Make sure you get enough sleep yourself, Hal said to Artur as he passed, Don't worry about me, Artur's voice came, controlled and level behind him. I'm wide awake. Good,,, said Hal.

He led the two with him to Amid's reception building. Within, Amid was talking, also by firelight, but artificial illumination as well, to Onete. . - . All right, said Onete, breaking off whatever she had been saying as he came in the door. I'll be going.

She smiled at Hal and the others as she passed them on her way out. The door shut behind her.

Come and sit down, said Amid. They did so. There was a rough circle of chairs to one side of the table where the map was laid out, in one of which Amid sat. They took others facing him. You put in an extended watch, Amid said. How are you all? Myself, said Hal, I'm still a little stiff from sitting that long. But it's something that'll work itself out. I'm fine, said Calas-but there was tiredness to be heard in his voice. Old Man smiled and nodded. What were you able to figure out about them, and their plans for searching? Amid asked Hal. Most of what I saw just confirmed what I told you earlier, said Hal. They've clearly divided the area into small sections they're going to search in no great hurry, with units of four searchers to the section. Thanks to Calas, I understand more about some of their officers than I did. But before we get into that, you know that Artur's taken over as night guard, replacing us? Yes, said Amid. His wrinkled old face squeezed up in a frown that would have been almost comical if it had not been so concerned. He knows it doesn't do any good, but he feels better out there, where he can watch where Cee must be, even if he doesn't know exactly where she is and couldn't see her down there, even if he knew. There's no great need for him to be doing anything else. I thought he might as well be busy at what he wanted, so I agreed to let him take the night watch. There's no problem with that, is there? Not from the standpoint of safety, Hal said. How much sleep has he had? He told me he'd had over six hours last night, said Amid I'll ve only got his word for it. What is it? Are you afraid he might fall asleep out there on watch? No, said Hal. But you can be wide awake on very little sleep and still not thinking straight-even though you think you are. I I

I'm not sure I believed that about the six hours, but I believe him when he says he couldn't sleep now if he tried, said Amid -

Why's it important? The soldiers certainly won't do anything during the night?

No, said Hal. They can't search in the dark; and they're not the type for night exercises, even if they were trained to it, which I doubt. I never got any training in night exercises, when I was with them, said Calas. Garrison people, that's all they are. But what did you learn, then? asked Amid. Anything that can help? That surveillance craft possibly took pictures of the whole area, Hal said, but as we agreed last night, it's doubtful they'll be studied by anyone able to pick up the small signs that'd show we're here, under the cover and camouflage you've set up. Chances are more likely some officer'll just run an eye quickly over them to see if there're any obvious signs of people-and that, they won't find. Yes, but the soldiers, said Amid. How likely are they to notice some sign of our presence, down there in the flatland? After all, we do have foragers down there often; and there's the spot where Onete's been meeting Cee. I'd hate to promise anything, Hal said, but even if they do recognize some signs of people, from what I saw today I think we'll be fairly safe if we just sit tight up here. That ought to include, by the way, not making any noises that could be reflected down into the valley. As we sat on the edge of the ledge, I could hear the sounds of the Guild people moving about here, reflected off that cliff-face above us. Sound rises rather than falls; but we should still keep things quiet until the soldiers are gone, We can do that, said Amid. He made a note. I'll see to it. 1,

As far as the soldiers themselves go, Hal said, they all moved clumsily through the forest, making harder work than they needed to of getting places in it. They've got the city-bred tendency to try to push their way through undergrowth with main strength, rather than slip through at the best place for it. Also, very few of them set up camp in the best places available. The few who did, I think, did it by accident. They're certainly not Woods-wise; and they're probably not too happy to be here. That attitude'll help make them careless when they start searching.

He paused.

Those are the most certain points about them I picked up today; that and the information Calas was able to give me about certain officers. Basically, from what Calas says, we've got to deal with a commander who's something of a martinet, leading poorly trained and motivated troops. What that adds up to is that he'll probably be used to clubbing them-metaphorically speaking-to get results. Which in turn means they'll slack off the minute he's out of sight, no matter how much they might be afraid of him finding out about their doing that, later. I'd guess that unless something favors them, we're pretty secure up here. Cee, even, should be fairly safe down there, unless she literally walks into their hands.

He stopped and looked questioningly at Old Man. Anything to add? he asked. They'll sleep poorly tonight, said Old Man with one of his gentle smiles. They're people of bad conscience trying to rest under unfamiliar conditions. Their sleep and their dreams will be bad; and tomorrow they'll be more tired than usual, and so more likely to miss seeing things they might notice otherwise.

He fell silent and, with Hal, looked at Calas. Calas cleared his throat. Me? he said. You want a report from me on thern? Certainly, said Hal. Well, I wasn't really watching them the way I should have, earlier in the day. I didn't really look at them-then. Friend, I have you to thank for making me try to actually see them; rather than just sit up there and swear at their being here. What did you see when you did look closely? Hal said. A lot of thern're new since I was there. Not that there's any really knew well; but the faces of the ones who were there when I was there, I'd recognize. You know? So, most of them are faces I never saw before, which means they're new; but they're going to be just like we all were. Most of therri'll have come out with something to drink-liquor, I mean-in their canteens or hidden in the equipment they're carrying; and so most of therri'll be drinking tonight. I'd have been drinking, even though I wasn't that much of a drinker when I was with them; just to help me sleep out here and make it more comfortable. More'n a few'll have hangovers, tomorrow.

He paused a moment.

Some won't drink at all, of course, he said. We've got some Friendlies and others who've got individual reasons for never drinking. Anyway, that's one thing.

Hal, Amid and Old Man waited. Something else, though, said Calas. I didn't think of it until you told me about decisions; but friends tend to stick together, and the groupmen and team-leaders usually let them. Because that makes it easier for the sub-officers. That means in most of those units of four, there's almost sure to be at least two who're side-by-siders. That means those two'll stick together and the other two'll have to tag along with them. Also it means that one of the two is the leader of the two. So you've got one man in each four-man unit who'll probably end up making up the minds of the other three, whenever there's something to make up minds about. I don't know just how knowing that'll help; but maybe you, Friend, can see some use in it.

Hal nodded slowly. It may apply, he said. Apply to what? Amid asked sharply, then immediately softened his voice to its usual gentle tone. I'm sorry. Do I sound bad-tempered? I don't mean to. It's just that it's been a long night and a long day-- You don't sound bad-tempered, said Hal, and to answer

your question, there's something about what I saw of their dispersal down there today that bothers me. There're patterns to everything that humans do, and there's something about the pattern of the way they've set up for their search that bothers me, only I can't put my finger on just what it is. I've got my own system for figuring out cause and effect, which generally helps with problems like this; but right now it doesn't seem to have enough information to work with. I'll be able to tell you more tomorrow, when they begin actively searching.

The door to the building banged open and Onete entered, followed by two men wearing the large white kitchen duty aprons everyone used on that job. All three were carrying trays heavy with cloth-covered dishes. Amid popped to his feet and whisked the map off the table as Onete led her companions to it.

They set the trays down on the table and began unloading the dishes. You haven't eaten, any of you, all day, said Amid. I asked Onete to go for food as soon as you got here. I may not be able to get Artur to eat, but I can make sure the rest of you are fed.

At the sight and smell of the food in the dishes, Hal became aware of how hungry he was. Thank you, he said, pul I ing his chair up to the table as Old Man and Calas joined him.

After they had eaten and the others had gone, Hal stayed behind at Amid's request. I'm worried about Artur, said Amid. As I said, he's not eating. I don't really believe he's sleeping, either. He acts just the way he does usually; but I know him well enough to know he's tearing himself to pieces over this business of Cee being down there with those soldiers. You see, he feels responsible. Yes, said Hal, that would fit his pattern. He shares your belief, as we were saying, Amid went on, that Cee's probably followed one of us back under the boulder and right up to the ledge. That she knows where we live. He's afraid that if the soldiers catch her, they may assume she's one of us and try to get her to tell them where we are. Yes, said Hal, that would fit their pattern, too. So, if they threaten to hurt her to make her talk, she'll have no,choice but to tell them. Then, when they find the stone in place, they may think she's lying and doesn't really know@ and then they'll kill her. On the other hand we can't leave the way open; so in a way we-and he-will be responsible for her death; and she's just a little girl. Never try to predict what an individual will do under torture, Hal said. It's not a matter of will power. The individual doesn't even know himself until the time comes. The bravest can crack and people you wouldn't expect it from will die without saying a word. She might simply refuse to talk at all. But then they might torture her to death, to try to make her talk! Amid seemed to shrink. We can't let that happen! You can. You must-if there's no way to avoid it, said Hal. It won't save her to throw away the lives of everyone else in the Guild-and what the Guild might mean for the rest of your Exotics, someday. But keep your mind filled about how horrible Cee's situation could be, and sooner or later you, or Artur, or somebody else'll try some scheme that doesn't have a chance of succeeding, one that'll dump all of you into the soldiers' hands. Even if we could-, said Amid. Even if we could accept sacrificing her, Artur never could. Never! Then lock him up, said Hal, until the soldiers aregone. We can't do that! He'd hate you for it, said Hal. But it may be the kindest way of dealing with him. I'll speak to him, said Amid. He did not wring his hands. They lay still in his lap, but he might as well have been wringing them. If he can convince the rest he believes Cee will be safe- You know yourself that's not good enough, even if he could do it, said Hal. Your fellow Guild members are almost all Exotics. They're too empathic to be fooled just by his pretending not to be concerned. He's actually got to face the chance that Cee may die; and, by his example in facing that fact, lead the rest of the community into facing it, too. Anything less than that won't work. More than that, it'd be wrong. Wrong? Amid sounded shocked. Yes, said Hal, because you'd be letting a situation that's out of your control upset your people at the very time when this community needs to keep its morale as high as possible, and its thoughts as clear as possible. I promise you, if I see any hope of doing anything at all for Cee, I'll let you all know and I'll do it myself, if that's what's best. But until a real chance to help her appears, two things need to be done; and they're very hard things, especially for you Exotic-born Guild members. One, the members have to accept the fact that whatever is going to happen to Cee will happen, and they can't do anything about it, as things stand now. Second, Artur has got to face that fact himself, and show the rest of the community that he's done so.

There was a long moment before Amid answered. , ,It'll be hard enough for us, he said. For Arturimpossible. Then lock him up, as I say.

Amid did not answer. Hal got to his feet. I'm sorry, he said gently, looking down on the old man who seemed to have shrunk within the confines of his chair until he was no bigger than child-sized himself. Sooner or later everyone reaches a day on which he or she has to face things like this. It does no good to pretend such a day won't ever come.

He waited, a moment longer. It's your decision, he said. If you think of some way I can help, call me. I'm going to get some rest now, while I can.

He went out. The following morning he watched the sunrise as usual with Old Man and then took his position on the ledge's lip with the scopes. Calas joined them shortly thereafter. But it was a good three hours after that before the first of the searching groups down below began to go to work; and at that time some of them had just wakened.

Hal leaned forward suddenly and turned up the magnification on one of the scopes. Calas, he said. What's that they're putting on the ends of their needle guns? Something like an explosives thrower.

Calas looked. Oh, that, he said. They're catch-nets. They use them a lot when chasing escaped prisoners-or taking any prisoners they'll want to question before they shoot them. You know how a needle gun works?

Hal smiled. Yes, he said. As he had learned, growing up on Dorsai, the riflelike needle gun was a universal favorite as a weapon for field troops mainly because its magazine could hold up to four thousand of the needles that the weapon fired.

Each of the needles could be lethal if it hit a vital spot; but a spray of them was almost certain to bring down a human target. one way or another. The needles were slirn little things, hardly bigger than their average namesakes that were used for ordinary sewing. A kick from a machine-wound spring unit or from a cylinder of highly compressed air flicked the needles clear of the muzzle of the gun and started them toward their target. But each needle was like a miniature rocket. A solid propellant, ignited by the needle's escape from the muzzle of the rifle, drove it up to three hundred meters in a straight line toward whatever it had been aimed at. All needles fired on the same trigger pull formed a spiral pattern that spread as it approached its target, like shot from the muzzle of an ancient shotgun.

The advantages lay, therefore, in the amount of firepower from a relatively light weapon; plus the fact that the needle gun was almost invulnerable to disablement through misuse. You could drag it through the mud, or recover it from being under half a mile of water for six months, and it would still work. Moreover, the fact that it could be used in poorly trained hands to spray the general area of an enemy like a hose, made it extremely popular.

It also could deliver a number of auxiliary devices, kicking them clear with spring or compressed gas, to be self-propelled toward a particular target. But this catch-net device was one Hal had never encountered before; probably because, as Calas had said, its design fitted it rather for police than military use. I They've got seeker circuits in the noses, said Calas. Once fired, the catch-net capsule homes in on the first human body it comes close to-combination of body heat, bodily electrical circuitry and so forth, I understand-and when it gets right close to them, it blows apart and spreads a net that drops over the body. As I say, they use them for recapturing prisoners and things like that. In fact, I think the catch-net was designed in the first place for prison guards and police crowd control. That sort of thing.

Hal checked the other scopes. All the soldiers who were ready to begin searching had the catch-net capsules perched like blunt-nosed rockets on the barrel-ends of their needle guns.

He sat back to see how the search would develop. As the sun mounted in the sky, this second morning, all the individual search units were finally at work. Hal checked the command post at the roadhead and saw that Liu was still there, with the sergeant Calas had called the Urk in attendance. Outside Liu's shelter an operations table with map screen in its surface and permanently mounted scopes stood in the daylight. One of the vehicles in which the searching party had come out was still there and parked by the table, undoubtedly generating power for the table, as well as the comforts of the command shelter, on tight-beam circuit.

Old Man reached over suddenly, just before noon, and tapped with his finger on the screen of the scope before Hal. Hal looked, but saw nothing to explain the other man's drawing his attention to it. Still, the slim, yellow fingertip rested on the screen, which was now showing a mass of forest undergrowth just beyond the two soldiers they had in focus there at the moment. Hal kept his eyes on that area of the screen, waiting; and, after a moment, he too saw what had caught Old Man's eye-a flicker of movement.

He watched. A small, slim, brown body was moving parallel to the searching soldiers, at a distance from them of perhaps ten meters. Hal continued to watch and for a moment she was fully in view, before the greenery hid her again. It was Cee, with, as before, nothing but the length of vine with its split-open pod shape a few inches to one side of her navel. 'I don't think they've seen her, said Hal. No, answered Old Man. Seen who? demanded Calas. Once more Old Man's finger tapped and held on the screen. Calas stared at it. After a long moment he whistled softly and sat back.

He looked at Hal. What should we do? he asked. What would you suggest we do? Hal said, meeting his eyes. Calas stared at him for a long moment and then looked away. Hal softened his voice. For now, he said, you concentrate on that screen. Try to keep Cee in sight, but watch particularly for any sign either of those soldiers've spotted her. Yes. Yes, I will, said Calas, fixing his gaze tightly on the screen.

Hal flicked the controls on another scope so that he had a v ew of the whole area. A few more finger-taps overlaid the picture of the land below with a ghostly map of that same area, but divided into sections, with small bright lights in each section, each representing one of the searching soldiers.

The pattern in the process of search which he had not been able to find but which he had sensed was in the making there still bothered him. The troops below were equipped not only with their weapons but with all other ordinary field equipment. including helmets that would have built-in communications equipment, putting them in verbal contact with their fellov searchers, their immediate sub-officer, and even the command base. He wished for a moment he could tune in on what was being said over that communications network. That reminded him of another, earlier, wish, which was that the Guild, in addition to what other equipment they had possessed, had seen fit to equip themselves with a long range ear-gun-a listening device that allowed the one using it to pick up even a faint noise from a specific spot no larger than an adult human hand and a kilometer or more distant.

As it was, he had a view of the searchers, but no idea of what they were saying. With the ear-gun he could have overheard conversations even back at the command post where Liu waited. But to want what was not available was a waste of time. He put both desires from him and considered the pattern of ghost map and lights once more.

With intuitional logic he should have been able to track down what he felt immediately. The fact he could not meant that to intuitional logic the pattern he sensed was not there. Either there actually was no such thing, or a necessary link in the logic chain that would relate it to what he saw at the moment was missing. A word overheard from one of the searchers might have filled that gap. Particularly since he had known Amanda, he trusted his instincts more than ever before; and now his instincts were positive that there was a pattern to the development of the situation below him that he could not yet see.

He leaned forward sharply to peer at the screen he had been watching. What is it? asked Calas. He glanced up to see both Calas and Old Man watching him. Is Cee still following those two soldiers? Hal asked. Yes. Calas nodded emphatically. Has either one of them seen her, as far as you can tell? Not as far as I could tell. Or I,- said Old Man unexpectedly.

Hal looked back at the screen before him. What is it? said Calas again. They may not be as inept as I was thinking they were, said Hal. Perhaps some of them've had some field training after all. Some'll have had training rounding up prisoners before, said Calas. That's all. That may be enough, said Hal. He pointed at the screen before him with the ghost map and the lights. Or they may be wearing some special equipment-heat sensors or such that would warn them Cee was following. Those two soldiers just began searching outside their own area. Outside . . . ? said Calas. They're still moving in a straight line, and it's taken them over into the territory of another search unit-as best I can judge where the boundaries of the territories are-

He broke off. There it is, he said. I see what they're doing now. What are they doing? asked Calas. Those soldiers Cee's following have spotted her after all. They're leading her on. Take a look at the screen. The other search teams are changing their pattern. The team leading her is keeping on going forward, to lead her into position, and gain time for a good number of the others who're close to move into a circle around her. Then, as they move in, using their helmet communication, they'll draw the circle tighter around her. When she finally begins to suspect and makes a break for it, it'll not only be these two, but a lot of the others, who ought to have a good shot at her with those catch-nets of theirs. Unless sh,@ stops following these two now, I think she's virtually certain to be captured.

There was the sound of feet on the gravel-like soil behind them. They all turned. Onete came up and stopped before them all. But it was to Hal she spoke. Artur's gone, she said breathlessly. Evidently, he left last night. Rolled the boulder aside and rolled it back in place after him. He left a note by the boulder.

She paused to catch her breath. He said he was sorry, but he had to go down to do what he could to protect Cee. He asked them to leave the boulder in place as long as they could before they felt they had to replace it with the rock plug. Just in case he was able to bring her back up to safety after all.

CHAPTER

26

And it's been left? asked Hal. It's been left, answered Onete. Everyone wants it that way.

There was nothing they could do from the ledge but watch. Onete left them again. In the next three-quarters of an hour as Procyon climbed brilliantly into a clear sky, Cee shadowed the two soldiers and was drawn into a semi-open area with short but vertical, near-unclimbable cliffs on two sides of it; and with now more than two dozen of the following members of the Occupational Troops closing in behind her to shut off escape back the way she had come.

She clearly heard them moving in on her, as they drew close; but the sounds must have come from all directions, so that she turned, ready to flee one way, then hesitated, turned to run in another, and hesitated again.

The hesitations were what doomed her. If she had raced full tilt for their line at the first noise, she would have had some chance, at least, of dodging between two of them, twisting, ducking, evading their grasps and so getting away. But at her first betrayal of the fact she had heard them, they all burst into a run toward her, so that when she began to run, herself, they were already closing in on her.

She checked and stood, legs spread apart, one in advance of the other. She had evidently been carrying something cupped in each hand all this time; and she now threw these two things, whatever they were, at the men most directly before her.

The throws were delivered with the kind of power and accuracy that could only come from long practice. With a sidearm motion her whole body sent the missiles on their way, and to the surprise of those on the ledge as well as that of the soldiers, the two men she had thrown at went over backwards and down, while she dashed forward again at the gap in their line she had now created.

Almost, she made it. But the others were too close. Nets exploded into existence in the air above and around her, dropped and enveloped her; and a moment later her net-swathed body disappeared under the swarm of adult figures.

From the ledge it was still plain, however, that she was not easy to subdue. The huddle of soldiers' backs, which was all those on the ledge could see, heaved and moved for some tiime@ and it was only the sudden appearance of Liu Hu Shen and the Urk that stopped one of the soldiers who had finally reversed his needle gun, raised it, and seemed about to use it as a club.

The huddle struggled a bit more and then went still. Hu Shen clearly was issuing orders right and left. There were now between twenty and thirty of the uniformed men in the clearing, and at last the group holding her stopped its struggle, indicating she had finally been held and immobilized.

In remarkably short time the power pistol which the Urk had been carrying had been used to cut down a number of trees, large and small, to enlarge the clearing; the cut-down upper parts being hauled off to one side by teams of the men. Left standing were two trees about ten meters apart. By this tinic three dome-shaped battle tents had also been erected. The moment the first of these were up, the huddle of men carrying Cee, invisible in their midst, moved into it, to come out its entrance a little later by twos and threes with every sign of relief'. Clearly Cee had been left, tied down or otherwise secured. somewhere within. Bastards! said Calas.

Liu, who had been generally overseeing the work being done, now for the first time went into the building where Cee had been taken. He was inside for only a few minutes, however, before he came out again, crossed the clearing and entered one of the other structures, into which his men had been bringing various furniture, such as chairs, a desk and a cot. They had brought the furniture folded up in carrying cases; and once the furniture was inside, they reclosed the cases and carried them into the third dome.

Calas's gaze, however, was all on the structure into which they had taken Cee. They could be working on her in there right now! he growled. I don't think so, said Hal. My guess is Liu just stepped inside with her long enough to see if she'd answer him, but not really expecting her to. When she didn't, he left her tied up; or however she's restrained, in there, for now. That's your guess, said Calas mutinously. I know the kind of shithouse sweepings they've got in that outfit! I believe you do, said Hal, but I also believe they won't dare do anything they aren't ordered to do by that commanding officer, from the way you've described him. And he won't want any of them touching Cee-just yet, anyway. Another guess? Calas said. No. Look down there for yourself, said Hal. If he'd wanted to question Cee physically, the obvious place for it would have been back at his base, in Porphyry. They've undoubtedly got the equipment for it back there- That's true enough, said Calas, under his breath. But back there, he'd have superiors who might take not only control away from him, said Hal, but whatever glory there might be in catching the famous little wild girl. It just might be, too, that Liu has a pretty low opinion of the officers over him.

Calas nodded. You mean, he's right in feeling that way?- asked Hal. Unless they've got some brighter ones in since I was around, said Calas. Right up to the Commander, the rest are all the sort that want to get to their desk at eleven in the morning, sign half a dozen papers, then go to lunch and take the rest of the day off. You're right, as long as he stays out here, he's the one in charge. Yes, said Hal, and he stands to gain more credit; which none of his superiors can take away from him, if he comes in, not orily with the girl, but with as many more strays and outlaws as he can pick up and bring back. As I say, take a look down there. Don't those two tents and the cut-down trees make it look like he's planning to stay a day or two, at least? Yes, said Calas, somewhat grudgingly, looking at them. It's a good guess, then, said Hal, he's been lookin@_, beyond Cee's capture all along. He'll be pretty sure she knows who else lives around here, and he'll want her help in finding them.

His eyes met Calas's brown ones. You mean he knows about the Chantry Guild? Guesses, at least, said Hal. He may have picked up bits of information from townspeople he's questioned, and gotten enough out of them to at least suspect there's some kind of' community of free Exotics up here. That's why he'll be in no hurry to get his men back to barracks; and that's why he won't hurt Cee, to begin with at least. He may even try to make friends with her. , ,Lots of luck! Calas cleared his throat, and spat, deliberately, over the edge of the cliff before them. If she wouldn't answer when Artur tried to talk to her and she'd barely answer Onete, Liu's chances of making friends with her .

Calas ran out of figures of speech, into silence. But it's still all just your guesses, all the same, he said, at last, to Hal. Old Man, said Hal, turning to the silent figure beside them, what do you think? I think you're probably right, said Old Man softly. Calas turned to stare at the white-bearded, thin face. He'll need the child in good physical shape to lead them to whoever else is hem and if he's got any experience at all with managing prisoners, he'll know she'll be more willing to help him if she believes he doesn't plan to hurt them when he gets them. So I'd think he'll begin, at least, by making ier as comfortable as possible; while at the same time makinf, sure she doesn't run away. Also, he'll try to give the impression that it's just a matter of time before he finds the other people, whether she helps or not, and a leisurely attitude to the situation is going to help along that illusion.

As usual, when Old Man talked at any length at all, the Guild members had a tendency to listen attentively. Calas listened. When Old Man fell silent again, he nodded, slowly.

Right, he said. it makes sense. But what happens if she still doesn't answer him? He's going to run out of patience sooner or later. We'll have to watch, wait, and hope some kind of opportunity comes up for us to do something about the situation, without risking discovery of the Guild, said Hal. I don't know what other option we've got. Do you?

After a long moment, Calas slowly shook his head again, and turned back to watching the screens showing where Cee was being held. Missy and Hadnah had followed the action of the chase closely and now held the area of the three buildings and the clearing in a good-sized picture. Calas sat unmoving and watching, but now he watched the way a wolf might, at a rabbit hole.

It was midafternoon when he suddenly exploded into speech. By God, they've got him! It was unnecessary to ask who had been meant by him. Artur was the only one down there likely to be brought in as a captive. By rights it should have been Missy or Hadnah who first caught sight of the large man and his two captors, benefiting from the higher angle of their post of observation. But evidently the approach had been under the cover of treetops, which were more an obstacle to those viewing high on the mountainside, than Hal and the other two with him. He doesn't look very mussed up, Calas went on. You'd have thought someone like him who could move that boulder at the foot of the path out of his way and then roll it back could have put up more of a fight before they took him. He's unarmed, said Hal. What would you do if you were faced with a needle gun-and both those soldiers bringing him in have them?

There was a pause. You're right, said Calas; but he said it grudgingly. Artur had plainly given his clothing some thought before he dressed to leave the ledge. He was wearing green shorts and shirt, and boots made of rough leather tanned a light brown. He would not have been easy to spot among the growth below unless he moved. On the other hand, Hal guessed that Artur knew less than nothing about moving inconspicuously through the high-altitude forest below.

Cee, on the other hand, could have given any one of them lessons. If it had not been for the heat sensors, or whatever other technological aids the soldiers had been carrying, Hal would have been willing to bet she could have moved around and between them all day long without being spotted.

As the two guarding Artur brought him into the camp, one of' the dozen who had stayed around after the three shelters had been set up ducked into the other tent, the one holding Liu. A moment later the commanding officer came out and stood while Artur was brought face to face with him.

They stood looking at each other. The screen showed their lips moving. Hal's ability to read lips had become rusty over the last few years and the angle at which the screen showed the two had Artur's back to him and Liu's face averted to the point where he could see only the left corner of his lips. He could not make out what either man was saying. However, they talked for no more than a few minutes.

The conversation ended with Liu abruptly turning around and re-entering his shelter. The two escorting soldiers, apparently having been given their orders by their disappearing commander, took Artur to one of the two trees that had not been cut down. They tied him to it, in standing position with his back to the tree trunk, enclosing him with what seemed an excessive number of turns of rope around his body and the tree. He stood with his back to the tree, unable to move even in small ways. Now what? asked Calas. I believe, said Old Man in his soft voice, that the officer has decided to leave him there to think his situation over. Does Artur know they've got Cee, do you think? asked Calas, looking from Old Man to Hal and back again.

Old Man said nothing. I don't think so, answered Hal, any more than I think they've let Cee know they've got him. Liu's probably planning to spring the news on both of them when the time's right to goet the most shock value from doing it.

That may have been the commander's plan, but in any case he seemed in no hurry to carry it out. Procyon descended in tile west and the stars came out. The forest below became one dark. mysterious mass, with the exception of two small spots. One was where a blaze of artificial light lit up the clearing in tile distance where the trucks were still parked. The other, closer. was more directly below the watchers, where Artur stood, still

tied to the tree, and with Liu still out of sight in his shelter. From one of the other domes trays with covered dishes were carried into the tent that was Liu's, and it was perhaps three-quarters of an hour afterward that he finally made an appearance.

The Urk hurried up to him and was told something. The tall, thin underofficer in the tailored uniform went off to the shelter that held Cee, and re-emerged a few minutes later, followed by two soldiers with the little girl held between them, her hands tied behind her.

She was making no effort to walk under her own power. Her knees were bent and the two soldiers were forced to carry her to the other tree that had been left uncut, where she was roped into the same upright position Artur had been tied into. After a few moments, she unbent her knees and took the weight of her body on her feet.

Her face had that blank look of a child's which could indicate anything from an extreme of terror to complete incomprehension. Her eyes followed the Urk as he went to speak to Liu.

Liu and the Urk came toward her. Behind the two men, in the center of the clearing, a large open fire was being built. It was not an unreasonable thing to do. At night, because of the altitude, even here at the base of the mountains proper, the nights were cool, for all that they were almost on the equator of the planet. But it did not get so cold that a fire so large had any real utility. Cee, herself, was obviously used to the nighttime temperatures, which she faced unclothed.

She was still unclothed now; more so, in fact, because her vine-pod girdle had been taken from her. But, as Hal had noticed on first seeing her when he had been with Amanda, her nakedness was such a natural and unconscious state that, if anything, she made those around her in clothes look unnatural. Her expression remained blank as the two men came up to her, and Liu spoke to her. It was intensely frustrating to Hal not to be able to catch enough of the officer's lip movements to guess at least a word or so from him, or from one of the soldiers.

In any case, she did not answer. Only, now, she stared directly at Liu, instead of the Urk, with that completely unfathomable, completely observant, open-eyed stare of which only the young are capable.

Liu's lips moved again. The expression of his face grew stern.

There was no movement of lips or change of appearance in the girl before him. He glanced at the Urk, beside him, and the Urk said something. I think, said Old Man unexpectedly, he asked for confirmation of the fact that she actually knows how to speak, and understands Basic.

Hal looked suddenly at the brown eyes in the ageless face behind the white beard. You read lips? he asked, almost sharply.

Old Man shook his head. No, he answered, I only guess. But I think it's a good guess. And I think this Urk is reminding him she was six years or older when her parents died.

Liu turned away and went back past the fire to Artur. His face was now so averted in the picture shown on the screen before Hal that it was obviously useless even to try to read lips. I'd say your guess may have been pretty close to the mark, he told Old Man. What do you think he's saying to Artur right now' , '

Old Man shook his head a little slowly. It's guessing, only, he said. I could be very wrong, but obviously this officer's deliberately waited until dark to let the two see each other. Plainly, the fire is to make the scene look

even more threatening. He gives the impression of a man who hopes to make use of psychological as well as physical pressures. Watching someone else tortured to produce answers is one of the favorite ways of getting information since mankind started to use such methods. The idea, of course, is to weaken the will of someone who doesn't want to talk. Here he's got two prisoners. He can question either one with all kinds of painful means, with a double chance of getting answers-either from the one he questions or from the one watching and expecting the sarne thing. Either might break. Obviously, though, he expects to be able to judge the effect of his questioning better on a grown man, than on someone like Cee. He'll be threatening Artur with torture now, if Artur doesn't tell him how to find the other people who're around here? That's what you're saying, isn't it? demanded Hal. I would guess, said Old Man simply.

Liu continued to talk to Artur several minutes longer; but Artur's face, unlike Cee's, showed anger and defiance. Liu pointed at Cee several times and Artur shook his head. Most possibly, Hal thought, the big man would be denying any knowledge of the little girl; although it remained impossible for Hal to read the movements of his lips. Eventually, Liu turned away from him and went back across the lighted clearing into his i1helter; while the Urk, with two of the soldiers, got busy with the physical questioning of Artur.

Calas began to swear in a low, monotonous tone; and his voice went on and on, as if he were talking to himself.

Mercifully, the angle of vision both from the ledge and from higher up on the mountain with Missy and Hadnah was such that the bodies of the three men were in the way of any camera view of exactly what they were doing to Artur. However, the soldiers and their noncommissioned officer were careful not to block the view Cee could have had of what was going on.

But their efforts were wasted. After watching them for a moment until Artur's mouth opened in what was obviously an involuntary scream of pain, she took her attention off them. Her eyes, in that expressionless face of hers, turned instead to focus on the round, white shape of the tent into which Liu had vanished. They kept their gaze immovable upon the tent.

Old Man drew in an audible breath. He's made a mistake, Old Man said. He? You mean Liu? asked Hal. Yes, said Old Man. Artur denied knowing her and Cee told him nothing. The officer has no way of knowing she loves him, or he, her. She loves Artur? Hal asked. Amid told me she wouldn't let him get close to her, after that one time he tried to reach out and touch her! True enough, said Old Man, but all the time she must have remembered who he was and either loved him from befoi-e or come to love him when he tried to make contact again with her. She was just too frightened to come close to him. Look at her face now.

Hal reached forward to turn the screen's controls up to give a close-up picture of Cee's face. They saw it only slightly averted, staring at Liu's shelter off screen; but Calas's swearing broke off abruptly. Holy Mother! said Calas.

Hal also was absorbing the shock of what he was seeing. It was strange, since in no easily visible way had Cee's blank expression changed. Only, the steadiness of her gaze seemed to have acquired a power of its own. God help that Liu if she ever gets her hands on him-, and him tied up, or helpless! breathed Calas.

Old Man nodded. But why do you say Liu made a mistake? Hal asked. If she had not already, she has now identified him with whatever she saw done to her parents when they died. Liu Hu Shen thought to provoke fear in the child by forcing her to watch Artur being tortured. Instead he's unleashed hatred. A terrible hatred in her, against him.

After a long moment of silence, Old Man added: Who would have thought one so young could hate so much'? But then life has made her more than half wild animal; and the actions of that man have now made her wholly so. . . .

CHAPTER

27

I can't take any more of this! said Calas in a thick voice. He got up abruptly and blundered off into the darkness. They heard the sounds of him being sick farther back froni the lip of the ledge.

Hal and Old Man sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Old Man spoke, raising his voice, but not looking back over his shoulder as he spoke. It's over for now, he said.

There was a pause, then the sound of footsteps coming back to them. Caeas reappeared, a shadow in the darkness, and stepped around in front of Hal. We've got to do something about this, he said. We will. Hal looked into the screen. Artur sagged in his ropes, apparently unconscious. The Urk and the two soldiers had abandoned him when Liu had stepped out of his shelter and spoken to them, a few minutes earlier. As the three men on the ledge watched, they came back now, untied Artur from the tree, eased his unconscious body to the ground and re-tied it with the same ropes that had held it upright.

Cee, supple as a cat, had managed to slide downward not only herself but the ropes binding around her and the tree, until now she sat cross-legged on the ground at the foot of' the tree. She looked almost comfortable. But nothing else about her expression or the target of her eyes, which was still either Liu or his shelter when he was inside it, had changed. We'll do something, said Hal. I just had to know whether Liu was going to try to force the answers he wants tonight, or stretch the process out a day or two. Clearly, he's going to drag it out. Time doesn't seem to be a factm or perhaps he has at least several days to find out what he wants to know. I was afraid he'd need to find out tonight whatever Artur or Cee could tell him, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Look, they're even covering Artur against the night cold.

It was true. On the screen they could see one of the soldiers throwing a blanket over the motionless form of Artur. Another soldier took a blanket over to Cee and tucked it around her shoulders so that it made a sort of small tent covering her body. Like the others, he ignored the fact she was now seated on the ground.

She paid no attention to the blanket being put around her, but when next they looked, it had left her shoulders and was a pool of darkness around her lower legs and on the ground. A soldier got up from among a group of them who were seated around the fire and passing a bottle around. He tucked the blanket into place again about her shoulders; but a few minutes later it was once more on the ground.

He started to get up once more, but the soldier next to him pulled him back into a sitting position. After that they ignored Cee. Missy? Hadnah? Hal said to the screen. We're watching, the voice of Missy came back to him. Good, said Hal. We're going to leave our screens down here for a council of war at Amid's. If you want me, that's where I'll be. You two can keep the watch going? Count on us, chimed in the voice of Hadnah.

Hal got to his feet a little stiffly. His legs had adjusted to the morning sittings to watch the sunrise; but whole days seated on the ground were something else again. Old Man got to his feet lightly and easily, as if he had been seated there for minutes rather than hours. With Calas, they went to Amid's office.

He was busy dealing with a short, thick-set, and-for an Exotic-a remarkably pugnacious- I ook i ng man with bristly gray hair, cut short; about some matter having to do with the building on of extra dormitory space to provide larger units for couples, particularly couples with young children. The grayhaired man was named Abke-Smythe, but that was all Hal knew about him except that he had some sort of responsibility for the group's housing. Amid started to interrupt this, to talk with Hal and the others as they came in; but Hal shook his head at the older man. We can sit and wait a few minutes, he said. In fact one of your chairs would feel good.

He dropped into one of the larger overstuffed chairs, and both Calas and Old Man followed his example, except that Old Man, with a momentary, mischievous smile at Hal, took his position in cross-legged fashion upon the seat cushion of his chair.

Hal grinned back, momentarily, then let his mind go elsewhere. The fact was, as much as his body needed a rest from the position it had held all day, his mind now needed to switch gears from analyzing everything he had seen in the jungle below him since early morning and planning what was to be done with the night before him.

Without intending to, he fell asleep. He blinked and woke, startled to find that time had gone by and things in the office had changed. A table had been set up with three straight chairs, and in two of them Calas and Old Man were already seated, eating. At another empty chair a place had been set which was obviously waiting for him. Take your time, said the voice of Amid. Hal looked over to see the head of the Chantry Guild still behind his desk, fingers busily tapping on some keys inset in his desktop. We can keep the food hot, It's all right, said Hal. I guess I just needed a moment to sort my mind out. I'll be right there.

He got up, went over and took the empty chair at the table. Calas passed him covered dishes, from which Hal began transferring large amounts of food to his plate. The fact was, he thought as he did this, that what he had just said was exactly the truth. The night before he had had a good night's sleep, and had not needed more now, but from long experience he recognized that his unconscious mind had wanted his consciousness out of the way while it addressed the problem he was facing now. It had worked. He had awakened with a solution clear to him.

He opened his mouth to start talking to Amid and the others, then closed it again. There was eating to be done and it would be some time into tomorrow's daylight before he would have a chance to eat again, probably. Best to finish his meal now, and have his discussion later. He went to work on the food, accordingly; in spite of his late start, ending up at almost the same second as Calas, who had continued to eat for some minutes after Old Man had finished. Thank you, Hal said, looking over at Amid. Now, said Amid, what have you got to thank me for? Simply a share of our food, which we'd give to anyone who was here, let alone someone like yourself, who we count on to help us solve a situation like this. Don't count too much on me, said Hal. In the first place, -something might happen to me; and, in the second place, there are a number of people, including you and Old Man, who could do a creditable job of solving it alone. And in fact, if Amanda was here, you'd be idiots not to use her for dealing with this, rather than me. She's had experience with this world, the soldiers, and a complete Dorsai upbringing. No doubt, said Amid. But I think that if she, or anyone else, was here, she'd join the rest of us in choosing you to suggest what we need to do. There's something about you that carries a banner everyone rallies to. Including Bleys? Hal smiled. I'm being serious, said Amid. You know what I mean. All right, if you've finished eating, what have you got to tell us?

-Not a lot that I haven't told you already, answered Hal soberly. The trick's going to be to send these soldiers home thinking they've found nothing worth worrying about; and also to get Cee and Artur back alive, if we can. That's where those darts come in. By the way- ''if you'll look on the table over in the corner there, under that white cloth, I think you'll find what you're asking about,'' interrupted Amid. Tannaheh ought to have been here fiftecfl minutes ago-ah, here he is, finally!

It was a little difficult to see why Amid should sound so sure. since he completed his sentence before the door to his office'' had swung wide enough to reveal who was coming in. But he was not wrong. Tannaheh was the one who entered, carrying a good-sized box which seemed to have been filled with long strands of-rass, now dried to a golden brown color. Behind hini

was another man, a short man in his fifties or older with a long, straight nose and hands that were large for the rest of his body, as if spread and thickened by years of hard work. Under the thin, straight, gray hair the man's face was solemn almost to the point of sourness. He wore a jacket made of some material that looked like leather, over heavy, dark brown trousers and a checked shirt-a contrast to Tannaheh, whose slim body was dressed, as it had been earlier, in the gray wool sweater, white shirt, blue trousers and boots. Sorry to hold everybody up, said Tannaheh cheerfully. He carried the box over and set it down gently on the table covered with the white cloth. I thought Luke was going to wait for me at his workshop with the belts and bows, and when I got there and didn't find him, I thought he'd just stepped out for a minute; and so I spent some time waiting there for him, until his son dropped in for some tool or other. He told me Luke'd already brought the things over here earlier and then gone on to the dispensary to wait for me. Anyway, we got together finally at the dispensary and here we are. You know Luke, don't you? Amid asked Hal. Indeed, I do, said Hal, nodding at Luke, who was the Guild's chief craftsman. Sorry about the mix-up, said Luke, in a surprisingly deep bass voice. Well, well, it doesn't matter now you're here; and Hal and everyone's here, said Amid, getting up to come around his desk, rubbing his hands and holding them out to the central fireplace of the office, to warm them. --Poor circulation in the extremities, Age. Well, show them what you've got. You go ahead, Luke, said Tannaheh. The darts and the drugs in thern'll need a little explaining. All right.

Luke twitched the white cover to the back of the table, revealing a number of items on the polished surface, including several bandoleer-like belts, with loops for ammunition. But what took Hal's eye particularly were five short recurved bows, no more than four feet in length, made of a milky-colored, smoothly glasslike material. Luke noted the direction of his gaze. Had the boys up all night, making these, he said. The belts took hardly any time at all.

He picked up one of the bows and handed it to Hal, meanwhile reaching with his other hand for a rather stubbylooking arrow, apparently made of' the same material as bows.

The bow was already equipped with a string, tied tightly at one end and ending in a loop at the other. Hal had already placed the tied end on the floor and was putting his weight on the bow to bend it, as he slid the looped end up the shaft and into the notch prepared to hold it at the bow's far end. The bow. he saw, seemed to be made of a form of glass. Once strung, he held the bow up in one hand and ticked the string with the thumb of his other. It hummed musically.

The string was a little strange. It appeared to be made ofthe same milky material as the arrow shafts. Also there was a feel to it that was different from that of any bow string Hal had handled before. He plucked the string, listened to the musical note ofit, hefted the bow and turned to pass it to Old Man. You know swords, he said, smiling. Am I correct in thinking you know something about these, too? Something, said Old Man, nodding as he took the weapon. We used to shoot at a prayer target, blindfolded.- Oh? said Amid, interested. Some form of divination'! Or should we ask? Of course you may ask, said Old Man. But it wasn't divination. Hitting the target correctly was a test of control over the body and mind.

He was going through the same motions with the bow as Hal a before, first unstringing, then restringing it-except that where Hal had placed an end of the bow on the floor and leaned

s weight on it in order to bend it enough to slide the looped end up into its notch, Old Man merely tucked the bow under one arm and bent it against his body to string it. I don't think I'd be able to do that, said Hal, watching. Indeed you could, said Old Man earnestly. It's only a matter of practice-and habit. Forgive me. I didn't mean to seem to be showing off. We all know you don't show off, said Amid. What was that about shooting at a mark, blindfolded, though? Could you show us that? If you'll forgive me Old Man looked around the room, then turned his back on it, so that he was facing the wall behind Amid's desk. If one of you would fix a piece of paper against the far wall, then blindfold me and hand me an arrow-one with a sharp point, if you have one? I'm afraid, said Tannaheh, all the points are on the darts which fasten to the ends of the arrows- That's all right, said Luke, give me an arrow.

He took the blunt-ended, feathered shaft Tannaheh gave him, reached to Amid's desk for a pin from a tray which held such things, along with page fasteners and other small clips and devices. Hitching around from the back of his belt a case that held a number of small instruments, he clipped off the blunt head of the pin with what looked like a needle-nosed set of pliers, then held the chopped-off point for a moment in the jaws of the pliers. Hal saw the blunt end of the pin glow red for a second before Luke used the pliers to sink it into the blunt end of the arrow shaft, which melted before it. That ought to give you point enough for wooden walls like these, Luke said. I'll go put up a target.

He handed the arrow to Old Man, who received it without turning back to look at him. Luke tore off a sheet from the memo pad on Amid's desk, walked with it to the far wall and placed it against the wall at a point about level with his own eyes. By some means Hal could not see, he made it cling to the wall, then stood aside.

Meanwhile, Amid had been busy blindfolding Old Man with one of the napkins that had come with the food. When he was done, he stood back. All ready, he said to Old Man. The target's up. Go ahead.

Old Man turned almost casually, with the arrow already notched to the bow string. He gave the string the merest tweak, for the other wall was at most ten meters away. The arrow arced into the air and almost fell against the target, the pin in its end sticking in the very center of the paper, and plainly through it to the wood, for the arrow drooped, but did not fall to the floor. Now, said Old Man, if you'll bring the arrow back to me and take down the paper.

Luke did both things, stopping halfway back to use one of his tools to straighten out the pin, which apparently had become bent. Once more Old Man fitted the arrow to his bow and sent it on its way. It stuck again, this time in the bare wall.

Luke walked over to retrieve it, reached for the shaft, then hesitated, staring at the place where it was stuck in the wall. He whistled. Just a few millimeters off from the first hole, he said.

He pulled the arrow loose and brought it back, as Amid took off the blindfold and Old Man laid down the still strung bow on Amid's desk. How could you do it? Hal asked him.

I 'I listened to the rustle of the paper as it was carried across the room, said Old Man, and aimed at where the noise stopped. But you hit the center of the paper! Amid said.

Old Man smiled. There were only two sources of paper on your desk, he answered. Notepaper, and the memo pad. They would rustle differently. Besides the memo sheets are glued together at the top. I heard Luke tear one loose; and when he pressed it against the wall to make it stick, the board made a small creak. I aimed at w ere t at sound had been, with the memo sheet, and the wall, pictured in my mind. And then you did it again, with the paper gone, said Amid admiringly. Even more simply, I'm afraid, said Old Man. The second time I simply used the bow exactly the way I'd done the first-, and the arrow went to the same place.

He turned to Hal. These things are unimportant in themselves, he said. I just wanted you to be sure I could be useful to you with the bow. You've made your point, said Hal. He turned to Amid. Amid, we've got a record of all the scopes saw today, haven't we

Why, yes, said Amid. They're the usual sort of scope. They store images unless you set them not to; and we assumed you might want to check something or other. I do, said Hal. Would you have someone check the records for everything seen in them today, to see if we've got any views of even parts of the interiors of the three structures Liu put up down there. Particularly, I'd like any views we might have of the building he's in, himself.

THE CHANTRY GUILD

285

I can do that right from here, said Amid. He sat back down at his desk, punched a few keys, and looked expectantly at the screen of the scope on the desk that was now showing the brightly lit scene of the soldiers' camp below. The uniformed men around the table had dwindled to two and the bottle had disappeared. The extra men were spread around on the ground in sleeping sacks, unmoving. They were drinking when I last looked, said Hal. That underofficer, whatever his name is- The Urk, supplied Calas. Urk. Odd name, said Amid, -looked out just before you came in here and they put the bottle away. He was in the center one of-what do you call those buildings? Hutments is the military name, said Calas. They're a kind of tent.

--The middle one of those hutments, went on Amid. The officer's in the one on the right of the screen as we look at it now. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a cooker and various kitchen furniture in that same one the Urk's in. Strange, but he and the officer are the only ones under shelter. Of course, at this time of year night showers are unlikely- That's one of Liu's little military points, said Calas. He never misses a chance to point up the fact that rank has its privileges. Making the ranks sleep on the open ground just drives home the difference between them and him and the Urk. A strange personality, said Amid. Not so strange, after all, said Old Man softly. Here we go! interrupted Amid, as the scene on the screen changed to a still picture which showed Liu's hutment, with one of the two flaps that closed its front entrance folded back. A camp chair, an unfolded and set up desk and the corner of a cot could be seen, the cot already with bedding on it. Seventeen more views, the screen says. Shall we look at all of them? If you don't mind-, said Hal. Of course not . . . Amid tapped his desk controls and they went, one by one, through the various views the scopes had been able to make of the inner area of Liu's hutment. It was furnished with what they had already seen, plus a sort oftall box that could be it filing cabinet or a food and liquor cabinet. All right, said Hal, when they had examined the last view.

11 iu should be in that cot now and asleep. So should the Urk, in the center hutment. The two guards will probably be changed at intervals. Now--

He turned his attention back to Amid. I'm going to go down there tonight, he said, to try to get Cee and Artur back and leave those soldiers with the impression that they found nothing worthwhile. If I can manage the hypnosis properly, after disabling them with the darts, I'll hope to leave them believing neither Artur nor Cee had anything to tell them-that they both died under torture, and were buried up here-so that they'll go back thinking the whole thing was a wild goose chase. The question is going to be who I take with me.

Me, for one, said Calas. Perhaps, said Hal. We'll see. Now, Amid, who in the Guild knows the forest down there at night, and can move around in it in the dark, quietly? Onete, of course, said Amid. And there are four or five other foragers who like to do night foraging. There're sonic p ants-some tubers part icu larly -that betray their presence at night more than in the day, by actions like opening blossoms or leaves, or-there's even a tuber that causes the ground above it to glow slightly, at night. But I'm wandering.

He pressed a key and leaned over a speaker grille in his desk. All those whore particularly adept at night foraging, he said into the grille, -come to my office right away, please. Good, said Hal. How many of them, do you know, can use a bow and arrow effectively?

Amid looked blank. I haven't the slightest idea. He appealed to Old Man. Do you know

Old Man shook his head. Calas? I haven't any idea, said Calas. By the way, Hal said to him, you wanted to come. Call you move quietly through the jungle at night? I've been out night foraging, too, if that's what you mean, said Calas. Then, on a more subdued note, he added, I may not be the quietest, but I know enough to look where I'm putting my feet. No one down there'll hear me. And you can use a bow?

No! said Calas explosively. But we've got to have an hour or two before we go down. I'll learn in that time.

He looked at Old Man. He can teach me. Hal turned his gaze on the quiet, bearded face. What do you think? he asked Old Man. Could you teach him to use one to any good purpose, in just a few hours? At short range, perhaps, said Old Man softly. At any rate I could try. Perhaps you'll have to let me try teaching others along with Calas. Perhaps several people. I can use a bow, said Luke. Shot one for years. Made my own first real bow when I was thirteen. I may not be as good as this magician, here- He nodded at Old Man. --but I'm good by any ordinary standards. I'll say that and stand on it! Then perhaps the two of you can do some teaching, said Hal. When we finally go down, the six best shots will carry bows and darts. Old Man and I are two, that leaves four to be picked.

He turned to Amid. You might put out a call for anyone in the Guild who does know how to use one, night forager or not. And Tannaheh, while we're waiting, you might start showing me how the darts work and telling me about them. Of course! said Tannahch, on an explosive outrush of breath that betrayed his chafing at the delay in getting to discussion of this particular subject.

He led Hal to the box and reached down among the dried grass he had used as packing. What he came up with looked like an old-fashioned hypodermic of the kind used back before the human race had first settled the Younger Worlds, three hundred years before. There was a round, tubelike cylinder with a collar at one end that was threaded on the inside. At the other end was a slim needle of a rod, perhaps twelve millimeters in length, ending in a point that was so sharp Hal could not see it, except as a twinkle in the overhead light from the ceiling of the office. All of it was made of the same milky-appearing material as the arrow shaft. You're lucky I have a library, said Tannaheh, holding up the dart. You're from Earth, Friend, as I understand it; and there they've still got zoos and refuges with wild animals in them. Consequently, they've got wild animals that need to be tranquilized so they can care for them when they're sick, or whatever. But Kultis hasn't any large fauna, native or introduced. The largest wild variform creatures we've brought in as tIrozen embryos from Earth have been some rabbits, and bi,-, birds, like hawks and vultures. The result was we haven't lia@ any need for tranquilizer darts, or means to propel them into the animal. I had to go back into medical history, to the time of Earth's first ventures into space, to find the information I needed.

Hal nodded. Tannaheh gave every evidence of wanting to deliver a lecture, but it was too early to put the brakes on him, yet. He let the Guild pharmacist go on. I managed to dig up illustrations and information on what they were using then, and build on that; making do with substitutes, where necessary-which was in almost every phase of making the dart.

He reached into the box and came up with a machine copy of what was obviously a page from some old book. It showed a drawing of something very much like the dart he had in his other hand. You see, he said, I've recreated an artifact from the past.

ut I had to use my imagination to duplicate almost everything about it. To begin with, our ancestors used metal projectiles. The body of the dart and even the needle itself was metal. We have some metal, but no way to machine it into this sort of shape. I understand, said Hai. But clearly you found an answer to that. Quite right. I didn't have metal I could work with; but I did have glass that was as strong as metal and as flexible as I wanted to make it, something our ancestors of that time didn't have: and ! could work with it more easily than they could work with their earlier version of glass. So this dart you see is made entirely of glass. Well done, said Hal. I'm glad you think so, Tannaheh went on. But actually the problem of what to make the dart out of was small compared to finding the drugs needed to produce the effect you told me you wanted. Now, when the dart hits . . .

He laid the drawing back in the box, fumbled around anion.p the packing and came up with a small square of wood about three times as thick as his hand. The needle is pushed back into the body of the dart, this cylinder here- He pushed on the dart and the needle shortened to perhaps four millimeters. --as you see, injecting the drug. I'll be giving you a chart showing what parts of the body you should try to shoot the needle into for best results. Then, once the drug has been injected, the cylinder falls off, again as you see-

He let go of the body of the dart and it fell to the floor, leaving the needle still sticking in the wood with only a length of what looked like string trailing from it. The needle, he went on, is coated with a sterilizing agent, which means you can pull it out without worrying about having started an infection. Not only that, but it's thin enough and sharp enough so that the person hit by the dart isn't going to feel much; and the only evidence that'll be left is going to be a small red mark on the skin surface. No blood, probably. Afterwards, the site of the needle entry is going to itch, rather than hurt, once the tranquilizing agent wears off; and this, together with the red dot, will make it seem like the person was bitten by some insect. No one should suspect . Good, said Hal. Old Man, you and Luke had better try out the arrows with the weight of the dart on their ends. I assume, he turned to Tannaheh, you've got some practice darts there without the drug in them; which can be used without our worrying about blunting the needles on something we're going to have to use later? Of course, said Tannaheh. I'll give them to you in just a second. But first let me tell you how I came up with substitutes for the drugs used in the old Earth darts. Go ahead, said Hal patiently. The hours of night were short, but he could give this man, who had after all done something absolutely necessary for them, the courtesy of listening to him for a little while longer. The original darts described in my books, said Tannahch,

used several drugs which weren't difficult to obtain back on Earth, even in those days, but impossible for me to get here. There were several mixtures. One of the very good ones was ketainine hydrochloride combined with xylazine hydrochloride and atropine. The atropine was there essentially to keep the subjects under, but breathing, after they'd been knocked down by the other two-which were very quick acting.

He paused, obviously waiting. I can see where you'd have a problem, Hal said. A large problem, said Tannaheh. I had native substances that could duplicate the knock-down effects of the two hydrochlorides, but they wouldn't mix with the closest native equivalent to atropine derived from one of our night-blooming plants. Mixed, they started interacting chemically, immediately.

He paused again. So what did you do? Hal asked. Obviously the only solution was to have you inject the atropinelike drug after the earlier ones were already in the blood streams of your targets! said Tannaheh. And so you made two kinds of darts? That was the first thing I thought of, Tannaheh said. Then I had a better idea.

He picked up the shaft which had fallen from the end of the dart head driven into the piece of wood. You'll notice, he said, passing the detached shaft back to Hal, how the shaft is marked with a circle some twelve millimeters back from the end where the needle comes out? Break that end off.

Hal broke it off. It came free very easily, revealing another. somewhat shorter, needle projecting from what was now the new, effective end of the shaft. You see? said Tannaheh. You can shoot it from the bow again, or use it by hand to inject the atropinelike drug directly. Be careful of giving anyone a double dose, though. It's in very dilute form, here, but still dangerous. In its natural state, as part of the sap of the plant you get it from, it's a very effective poison. You've made whatever we can do down there possible, said Hal. I think you know how grateful everyone is to you- Nothing! said Tannaheh. He waved his hand lightly. I'd like to tell you, though, what you've actually got by way of chemicals there in these darts- is this something we need to know to use them? interrupted Hal.

Well, no. But-- Then, if you don't mind, you can tell us all about it later, said Hal. We've only got so many hours of darkness to work in and a lot to do. I'm sure you understand.

-I-well, of course, said Tannaheh. Believe me, Hal said to him, more softly, later, when there's time, we'll want to know. But right now there's a lot to be done. Of course. Of course, said Tannaheh, taking a step back from the desk with its open box of darts. Forgive me. There's nothing to forgive. Hal turned to the rest of the room.

While they had been speaking, the door had been opening to let people in; and now there was a small crowd of them in Amid's office. They had lined up against the front wall of the office on either side of the door. Now, said Hal, which of you are night foragers who can move quietly down there among the vegetation and rocks? Put your hands up so I can identify you.

Eight men and women to the right of the door as Hal faced it responded. And who's the best? Onete, said several voices at once, with several more

following-all, in fact, but Onete herself, who had been one of those standing there and holding up her arm.

Good, said Hal. Which of you can use a bow and arrow?

There was some hesitation. Those who had their hands up lowered them and looked at each other, Finally, two of them raised their hands hesitantly again.

Hal smiled at them, to relax them. I take it, he said, this means you two can shoot an arrow from a bow, but you haven't much faith in yourselves as far as being able to hit the mark?

The two arms went down and the heads above them nodded. Old Man, said Hal, turning to him, and you, Luke, do you suppose you could take these two and any other two who want to volunteer- Me, said Calas, quickly and stubbornly. 'Ikll right, said Hal, and one other volunteer, then. Take them to some inside space where there's light to see a target at about six to ten meters, and see if you can teach them something about hitting what they aim at. The corridors in the dormitories'd give us the distance, said Luke to Old Man.

Old Man nodded. And there are ways of hitting the point desired, that call for belief in self more than practice, he said. Both men began to move toward the door. Just a minute, said Hal. In addition to the six who feel most sure about their ability to move in the dark quietly, we're going to need about six more who'll be needed to help carry. For the benefit of those of you who've just come in, what we're going to do is go down to that caep where Artur and Cee are, try to put the soldiers out of action, and bring Cee and her uncle back up here to the ledge. We'll need a stretcher for Artur; and that stretcher will need at least four people to carry it at any given time.

He paused to let that sink in. Bringing him up the steep slope is going to be the real probi m. He'll have to be roped to the stretcher, so he doesn't slide off, and his bearers are going to have to be changed frequently. For those of you whove never done this-and I think that's most, if not all, of you-I can tell you that carrying even an ordinary-sized man on a stretcher up a steep slope is a very rough task, indeed. So we'll need at least three teams, so that the stretcher bearers can change off frequently. That's where you other eight come in. You can wait for the rest of us back out of earshot of the camp and help carry once we reach you with Artur and Cee. _Will the girl come? asked one of the men to the left of the door. I think she'll come if you bring Artur, said Old Man. You should be careful how you handle him, though. If he cries out or any reason, she may assume you're just more people like the soldiers, as far as your reason for carrying him off goes.

I 'By the way, put in Tannaheh, I've made up a medical kit with pain-killers and other first aid supplies for use on Artur, as soon as you reach him. Good, said Hal, and thank you. I should have thought to ask You for that myself.

He turned to look at Onete. I think you better take care of the first aid, he said to Onete. You may be the one person who can do things to Artur without Cee thinking we're simply harming him more. I can try, said Onete. She just might trust me. Old Man's right, too, I think, said Hal, in saying she'll follow if we take Artur-even all the way up here, where she's never come before. She won't trust him out of her sight in anyone else's hands.

He turned back to the people who had just come into the office. We've got until midnight to get ready, he said. If for any reason some of you don't want to go, speak up now. The rest of us'll start getting ready to go down. I want to move into that camp there as soon as both moons are down; and be back behind the boulder on our way up to the ledge before it starts to get light.

No one moved or spoke up. Good, said Hal. Then, you four bow-people go with Old Man and Luke. Onete, you and the other night foragers gather around me, here. I'll explain how your part of it'll work.

CHAPTER

28

Making the nighttime descent of the mountain from the ledge to the boulder beneath which they would exit had been almost like descending in daytime, from Hal's point of view. He had spent most of his life as Hal with Earth's single moon. Here, however, both of Kultis's moons could be in the sky at once-as they were at the moment-and both near the full. The combination of the two made not only for adequate light, but a nearelimination of shadows.

The indescribable spicy odor of the alien semi-tropical forest had risen to meet them as they descended, and the clean mountain breezes were left behind, above them. At the boulder barring the entrance to the up trail, they had left the backup team of eight men and women, seven of whom stayed behind the boulder, which had been rolled back in place, and AnnaMist -the eighth-followed them through, but only as far as the other side of the boulder. It was to be her job to keep watch and, if necessary, pass the alarm back to those on the other side not to open up, if she got warning of anything gone wrong with the expedition.

Down in the forest, the moonlight was dimmer but still good, by the standards of Hal's Earth-accustomed eyes. However, the small and bright moons were fast-moving, and the smaller soon set. So the light dimmed, as they made their way toward Liu's camp. Eventually, it shut off completely, leaving them with only the starlight to help them see where to put their feet.

There had been some stumbles, and some who held to the person in front of them to make sure of the way. But Hal had sent Onete and the experienced night foragers ahead to lead. With these up front they made steady progress, until the line halted-so suddenly that Hal almost ran into the last member of the foragers, just before him.

A whisper came back down the line, passed from person to person for him, and he made his way to the head of the line. There he identified Onete by her general outline and body odor, as he had become acquainted with the body odors of most of the Guild members in the last few months. We've found some new-dug soil that looks like two graves, she said in a whisper so low that no one else could hear it. You don't suppose . . . No, he whispered back. It'd make no sense for Liu to get up a couple of hours before dawn to kill the two of them and bury them without the answers he was after-even if he'd had time to do all that since we left the ledge. Wasn't someone carrying one of the scopes? Let's take a look at the camp. The light from the screen began Onete doubtfully. How close to the camp are we? A hundred and fifty meters. But you warned us against any light or sound once we left the boulder- I think with a hundred and fifty meters of forest in between we can risk it, in this instance, said Hal. Can you get it for me? The rest of you make a wall with your bodies between us and the camp.

There were a few minutes delay and then the closed scope was placed in his hands. He opened it and touched the controls. A tiny view of the camp they were headed for appeared in the center of the screen. The figures on it were almost too small to be recognizable, but one was clearly still Cee, seated on the ground, and one was clearly Artur, still wrapped with rope and unmoving.

Hal turned the scope off, closed it and handed it back. Someone take this, he said. It was removed from his grasp. To Onete he added, It'll be messy, since we've only got our hands to dig with, but we're going to have to see what's buried here, if anything is. Use the scope light, if you need to.

That camp's got two men on watch, but they're only watching as far as the nearest darkness; and with those bright lights it must be like looking into an endless cave all around them.

Onete stopped him as he bent down to start digging, himself. Not you, she said, you may need clean hands later on for some reason. Also, most of us know how to use the plants we pass to find materials to clean ourselves up with.

It was a realistic argument. Even his effectiveness in shooting the bow he carried might be hampered by badly grimed fingers. All right, he said and stood aside. He watched as shadowy figures labored in the soft earth of both dug-over areas. After some minutes, Onete's outline detached itself from the working group and came back to him. We've found a body, she said. We're just finding out if the other grave holds a body, too.

There was a subdued murmur from the working party, a few more motions, and then work ceased. I'll come take a look, said Hal. Have you got that scope handy? I'll get it. Onete moved away from him. He went to the group, which made way for him, and bent over the two half-excavated openings in the reworked earth. A hand pushed the scope into his grasp. He opened it, turned it on to show a minimum-sized picture, and directed the reflected light of the screen down into the opened holes.

A boot toe, the upper part of a body and the head of a soldier had been roughly cleaned of covering soil in one of them, the upper body and head of a second in the hole alongside.

The white, pale light of the scope, washing over the halfexposed bodies and their still dirt-streaked faces-eyes closed but features staring up at the star-filled sky-was unpleasant enough so that a murmur arose from the group around the two graves. Quiet! snapped Onete, with a tone of command Hal had not expected from her. But look at their faces-, said one protesting voice.

Hal reached down and brushed a little more of the loose dirt off the face and throat of the nearest body. They strangled to death, he said. His fingers moved down to clear a little more dirt from the throat of the body before him: then pressed lightly on where the man's Adam's apple had been.

The dead flesh yielded before the pressure like a loose sack of small fragments and there was the faint crackling of trapped air forced into the surrounding tissues. His larynx's been crushed.

There was silence from those around him. Does anyone here know, he asked, was Artur acquainted with any of the martial arts? I'm talking about those for bare-handed fighting.

The silence continued another moment. No, said Onete, I don't believe he did. No blow from the edge of a hand did that, said Old Man's voice behind Hal. It could have been done by a kick, a very skillful kick; but it's unlikely. The blow of a fist, perhaps; though even Artur would have to be lucky as well as powerful to strike that spot with enough force.

Hal squatted back on his heels, staring down at the nearest body. There's no good reason they'd kill two of their own that way, he said, half to himself. He raised his voice slightly. We'll need to cover them up again so that the graves look undisturbed.

He got to his feet and watched as the shadowy figures around him became busy, pushing the loose dirt back into its original place. When it was done, they started out once more through the forest with its root-cluttered, rock-strewn ground all but invisible under their feet.

It was not long, though, before those in the lead halted, and the line of people bumped each into the person ahead of him or her, and stopped. Onete came back to Hal. This is about a hundred meters from the soldiers' camp, she said. Thank you, he answered. All right, here's the place where we'll leave all of you except the six of us who are bow-and-dart people and the other six night foragers Onete picked out as being able to move most quietly. I want one forager attached to each of us who've got bows, to get us to the edge of the illuminated area of the camp as quietly as possible. According to Missy and Hadnah's count, there're sixteen of the soldiers, counting Liu and the Urk. Calas, I'm sorry you've got to be one of those to stay behind, but you can't shoot and you can't move as well as the people we're taking.

It's all right, said Calas, his voice low and hoarse from the black wall of bodies that now stood clumped around him. More than anything I want to see Cee and Artur free. Just one thing-if we hear noises from the camp that sound like they've woken up and may be taking you, can the rest of us rush the camp, and try to help?

Hal hesitated. You'd be smarter, all of you, to head back for the boulder and the ledge. he said. If they get their hands on six of you, anyway, they're going to be able to make at least one show them the way up to the ledge, said Calas. Yes, said Hal. All right, if you're sure they're all awake and trying to take us prisoner or whatever, come along. You can rush the camp. But you'll probably just be giving them that many more prisoners, or dead bodies. That's all I want to hear, said Calas.

The small forward group moved off. They were close enough to see some glimmers of light through the trees ahead when Onete stopped them for the second time. About another twenty-five meters,- she told Hal, and you'll be just outside the clearing. They were foolish to put their lights up high that way. It means that direct illumination stops, for all practical purposes, at the edge of the area cleared. Reflection off ground and tree trunks will throw light farther back, but the eyes of those on guard aren't likely to pick up what it illuminates. Their sight is going to be adjusted to the brightness of the area under the camp lights. It's so stupid to do things that way! Maybe there's a trap to it, somewhere? I doubt it, said Hal. I don't think they're really expecting us, or anything on the order of a try to rescue the prisoners. Those two men awake there, from what Calas tells me about the officers, are probably just part of Liu's spit-and-polish attitude. The rule book says post guards in situations like this, so he posts guards. Do you want your bow-people spread around the camp now? Onete asked. I can have the foragers position them. Not spread around, said Hal. Old Man stays with me and I'd like you yourself to take the two of us down close to the hutments. Luke and the three other bow-people, take them over to where the soldiers are sleeping on the ground. Old Man and I will take out the two men on watch duty; and-Luke? Right here, said Luke's voice from the darkness. The minute, Hal said, you and the other bow-armed people see the two on guard drop, start shooting into the soldiers in the sleeping, sacks. Old Man and I will be going after Liu and the Urk. Meanwhile, Onete, I want you to do what I asked you to do up on the ledge. Use that knife you're carrying to cut loose Cee and Artur. Then whistle in the other toragers with the stretcher to put Artur on it and start carrying him out of here.

He paused and looked around at them, so that his voice would carry to each. Remember, he said, what I told you when I briefed you before we left the ledge. Once things start happening, eac o you ignore everything going on around you and just do what you came here to do. This is to free Cee and Artur, get Artur on the stretcher and carried out. Onete, it'll be up to you to try to get Cee to understand we're not going to hurt him the way the soldiers did. She probably won't trust us at first sight, any more than she trusted them.

Onete nodded. I'l I do exactly that, she said. Don't worry about my part of it, just concentrate on your own.

Hal smiled at her, though he knew the smile would be hidden in the darkness; but perhaps it would color the tone of his voice enough for her to pick it up. I know you will. And we will. he said. Let's go now.

Onete, go around to everyone, pass the word to anyone who didn't hear or understand me completely, just now. Then come back and guide Old Man and me to our proper positions.

She did, and a few moments later saw the three of them ghosting like morning fog around the outskirts of the camp to the far end where the hutments stood and the table at which all the enlisted men had eaten. It was now occupied only by the two on duty. These two, deprived of their bottle, were seated at one end of the table and had found themselves entertainment in the form of some kind of gambling that involved dice. All their attention was on the movement of the small, dotted cubes.

Beyond them and close by, Artur lay silent and motionless under the blanket they had thrown over him. Farther off, Cee still sat cross-legged at the foot of her tree. She was wide awake, but her gaze was finally off the hutment that held Liu. Instead it was focused as plainly on Onete, Hal and Old Man, as if it was broad daylight and she could see them clearly, in their movement around the camp. Can she see us, do you think? Hal whispered as softly as he could and still be heard by Onete. Hears us, more likely, whispered Onete in answer. It's all right as long as one of those two soldiers doesn't take a look at her and get interested in what there could be out in the dark here to make her watch it, said Hal.

They stopped. Onete faced Cee squarely and shook her head deliberately, waving one hand past her face and deliberately turning her own gaze away from the little girl.

Whether Cee could not actually see them, or chose to ignore Onete's signal to stop watching them, was impossible to tell; but in any case, her gaze remained brightly following the three of them. Hal shrugged. They moved on. This will do, he whispered, finally, when they reached a point which put them at about the same distance from hutments and the two soldiers on watch. Old Man?

Hal had already taken his bow from his back and was stringing it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Old Man doing the same. They each took a shaft from the quivers at their belts and a dart from a loop of one of the bandoleer-belts that Luke and his helpers had made for them.

In silence, together, they screwed the darts on to the ends of the arrow shafts. Old Man smiled, and-holding bow and arrow with one hand-held up the fingers of his other with the thumb and middle finger only a couple of inches apart to indicate the very short distance they had to shoot.

Hal smiled back and nodded. It was true. They were less than six meters from the soldiers. Even Calas, probably, could not have missed, at this close distance. Hal pointed at the farther soldier, the one across the table from them and whose face was toward them.

Old Man smiled and nodded, aiming at the other man. They shot almost together. The soft twang of the bowstrings was loud enough to be heard by the two targets. Both men looked up from their gambling, startled, as the dart points went home, Hal's in the shoulder muscle of the man he had aimed at, Old Man's in the back of the neck of the soldier on his side.

Both the uniformed men reached with puzzled looks toward the points of irritation where the dart needles had entered; but the shafts had already dropped off the darts, clattering down and through the slats that made up the seats of the benches with which the tables were equipped. Old Man's target actually managed to close a couple of fingers weakly on the end of the dart which protruded from his neck; but Hal's never managed to touch his, before both men were failing backwards off the bench on to the ground.

Both Hal and Old Man broke off the ends of two more arrow shafts and shot another dart into each slumped body, a dart that would inject the atropinelike substance Tannaheh had equipped them with.

Now, for the first time, Hal took a second to look around the clearing. The soldiers in the sleeping sacks were still receiving dart-loaded arrows fired from the darkness beyond them. In the dazzling light from the overhead illumination, he saw Onete, knife in hand, on her way to cut Cee loose from the tree to which she had been tied.

The twang of a bowstring close to his right ear brought his attention abruptly back to Old Man. He was in time to see a dart-laden arrow penetrate the wall of the hutment in which the sleeping Liu was housed. I believe that lodged in a safe body area, Old Man said, lowering the bow and looking mildly at Hal. I thought you were going to wait until I could go and open one of the door flaps, so you could see what you were shooting at, said Hal. I know you made that offer, back up on the ledge, said Old Man, still softly, but as it turned out it wasn't necessary. The still pictures on the scope were good enough to show us where his cot stood and how he lay on it-you remember there was one that showed him taking a nap with one of the flaps open, so that we could see him there in the shadow on the cot? You're right, said Hal. He looked at the middle hutment. We saw the inside of the Urk's hutment too, but without him on the cot. That's why you didn't put a dart through the wall of it into him?

According to my memory, his cot was almost completely surrounded by equipment of one kind or another. I'll take care of it, then. Hal kicked off his boots. I'll open a flap to let you see what you're shooting at; and if there's still no way you can get a clean shot at him, wave me on. I'll go in and place a dart in him by hand.

He glanced about, saw Onete busy now with the medical kit and Artur, stepped to the door of the middle hutment and pulled back the right-hand one of the two flaps that closed its entrance. Within, by the outside light of the clearing that was reflected inside through the open flap, it was possible to see a body in a sleeping sack on a cot between what looked like a temperaturecontrolled food storage box and a cooker. Hal was turning to check with Old Man when the soft twang of a bowstring was accompanied almost simultaneously by the passage of an arrow by him. It lodged its needle in what looked like the upper body of the form in the sack.

The body lifted its head and shoulders as if to begin to get up; then fell back and was still. Here, said Old Man.

Hal turned to see the other beside him, the bow in one hand and the other holding Hal's boots, the top rims clutched together. Hal took the boots and put them on, as Old Man went forward, picked up the fallen shaft of the arrow, broke off its end and made the second injection into the drugged sleeper on the cot. Indeed, it's the one Calas called the Urk, he said. The hand that was not carrying his bow now held the power pistol the Urk had worn earlier. This was in its holster; on a belt with the rest of his clothes, on a chair beside the cot. , ,Thanks, said Hal, you don't want to keep it yourseIP It's a machine for killing-nothing more, said Old Man. I've never killed, human or animal, and never will. These drugged darts are permissible.

Hal nodded and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers.

He led the way back outside to the clearing. There, the other bow-people were injecting the follow-up, atropinelike drug, mostly by hand, as they bent over the still forms in the sleeping sacks. Hal shook his head and smiled a little. For once, to confound practice as opposed to theory, a tactical plan had worked out as it had been planned.

Hal turned to the darkness of the forest and whistled. The sound went out into obscurity, and another whistle distantly responded.

A few moments later, Calas and the other Guild members they had left a hundred meters back ran into the clearing, carrying the various parts of the stretcher that had been part of their responsibility. As Hal watched they began to fit it together and prepare Artur, now unconscious from a drug in the medical kit but otherwise still alive, to be lifted on to it and secured there for carrying.

The sight reminded Hal of Cee. He looked back toward the tree to which she had been tied and did not see her, only Onete, hastening toward him. He went to meet her. Where's Cee? he asked. I don't know. I don't have any idea, answered Onete. She sounded distressed. She can move so fast . . . I cut her loose and had her with me, coming to join all the rest of us, here; and something must have made me look away for a moment, because all at once she was gone. Maybe she ran off into the forest. Is that likely') Hal said. With Artur still with us'? But I don't know where else she would go--

Hal did not hear the rest of what Onete said, because his ear was suddenly caught by a faint, but undeniable noise, a wheep., wheep! sound. He started at a dead run in the direction from which the sound had come, which was either right beside or in Liu's hutment. The image of the two dead soldiers they had unearthed was starkly in his mind, @uddenly connecting itself With a memory of the two he had seen fall on the screen as the Soldiers rushed Cee to capture her. He reached the hut and burst through the flaps; but he was too late.

Cee, holding one of Liu's socks in either hand, each sock with a heavy-looking lump in its toe, ducked under his arm and was out the flaps before he could turn around.

He did not wait to examine what he knew would be the corpse of Liu Hu Shen, but ran after Cee, almost catching her as she went in between the open flaps of the Urk's tent and actually catching her, a moment later, as she stood just inside the entrance swinging in her right hand a weighted sock that gave forth the same sort of noise that had attracted his attention a moment before.

He grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around both of her arms, pinning them to her body and lifting her clear of the ground.

She fought back fiercely, in utter silence and with incredible strength for one so young. She kicked back and up with her heels; but he had anticipated this, spreading his legs and holding her closely against him, so that those same heels, rock-hard after years of running unshod on all kinds of surfaces, could not reach his rom.

She tried to swing the weighted end of the sock up to smash his face or hit his head; but his grip was around her elbows and she did not have the freedom of movement and strength to rotate the heavy end through the air and upward to its point of aim. Meanwhile, continuously, she struggled to twist and turn in his arms, to win enough freedom from his grasp so that she could twist loose and escape.

But, fighting as best she could, she was a youngster pitting the strength of her small body against the large and powerful adult one. Hal held her fast and backed with her out of the hutment. Onete! Old Man! he shouted.

He heard the sound of two pairs of running feet, but it was Old Man who first stepped around from behind him to face them. He twitched the weighted sock so suddenly from Cee's grasp that her fingers failed to hold their grip on it, and tossed it aside. Her gaze noted where it fell and returned instantly to glarc at him. Child, child, he said sorrowfully to her, don't you kno that nothing is ever settled, nothing is ever gained, by killing?

She stared back at him with savage, unrepentant eyes. Take her, Hal told him. Hold her. Onete had now joined them and was talking rapidly and soothingly to Cee, who ignored the woman completely. Old Man can hold her, Hal said to Onete. You try and make her understand that we're here to rescue her uncle and take him to someplace where he'll be safe; but her killing Liu just now- She killed the officer! Onete said. I'm afraid so. I should have realized she might.

Onete stooped and picked up the officer's sock Cee had dropped, held it upside down and shook it. A short, heavy energy pack for a power pistol dropped out of the end of it. She must have got them from Liu's uniform belt, Hal said, -and thrown sock and pack together, the way she'd send a rock from her sling. Those two dead in the forest will have been her doing. The two we saw on the screen, who fell when they rushed in to catch her. But never mind that now. What are we to do with her? Onete said, distressed. As I say, Old Man can hold her. It'll be up to you to make her understand that we're here to rescue her uncle; but she's already made a problem for us by killing Liu. If she kills anyone else, we may not be able to cover it up and send the soldiers away believing things that'll keep them from coming back. If they don't believe and do come back, they'll find and kill us all, including her uncle, after all.

Onete nodded. I'll try, she said. Don't just try. She's got to understand and go along with us. You've got to get through to her, somehow. She's got to understand that we have to take Artur back up to the Chantry Guild to fix what the soldiers did to him; and she's got to help us do that, not hinder! All right, said Onete. Take her, Old Man, said Hal, but be careful. Loosen up for a second and she'l I get away; and we'l I never catch her.

With her weapon taken from her, Cee had stopped struggling in Hal's arrns; but he was very sure she would explode into action the moment she felt any loosening of the grip upon her. He waited for Old Man to take the child into his own arms; but instead the other merely reached up and began to stroke the back of Cee's neck, meanwhile crooning to her, a wordless melody that consisted of the same series of musical phrases repeated over and over again. Artur told me about that, Onete murmured to Hal. It was one of the things Cee's mother used to hum when Cee was a baby and even after, to put her to sleep. Artur thought he could use it to make Cee trust him; but maybe he just didn't hum it right. Old Man must have learned it from him.

Hal nodded. The neck-stroking, he knew, was one of the Physical aids to hypnosis.

In any case, he felt the tension gradually going from the small, tight body he held, growing less and less until eventually Cee hung almost limply in his arms.

Old Man stopped his crooning. I think you can let her go now, he said to Hal. He took one of Cee's small, hard and dirty hands in his own. Come with me, he said to the girl.

He led her off. Onete followed. Hal turned back with a feeling of relief, mixed with urgency, to the matter of taking care of the soldiers, on whom the drug would act for only a limited amount of time.

The first thing to be done was to get the Urk up, and bring him out under hypnosis to ostensibly explain things to equally drugged and to-be-hypnotized soldiers. Hal's original story that he had planned they would carry back to their headquarters was to have been given them by Liu; and would have simply told them that both Artur and Cee had died under torture-the last stage of which would have been supposed to have taken place privately at the hands of Liu himself in one of the hutments; that the two had thereafter been buried and, since Liu had learned enough from them before they died to be certain there were no other people around in this area of the forest, they would all be returning to headquarters.

Now, his story must not only be given by the Urk, which weakened it, the Urk being no more than a noncommissioned officer; also it must explain Liu's death, which would raise a great many more questions than if Liu, himself, had returned with only two soldiers lost. Particularly when the loss could be blamed on the great strength of the adult they had captured. And it would be Liu's word that there was nothing more to be found up here.

In time, of course, that hypnotic memory would wear thin; and some memory of what had actually happened to each of them here tonight would have surfaced @n the minds of all of' them, officers and men. But by that time, the subject would have been closed and filed away some time since, and none of them. even Liu, would have any good reason to make extra work and trouble for himself by digging back into the records and looking for the truth of what had actually happened.

Hal stepped into the Urk's hut, still wrapped in thought. It was not until he actually opened the top flap of the Urk's sleeping sack and put his hand on the man's throat to both rouse him and begin the process of hypnosis, that the coolness of the flesh he was touching brought his attention back to what was before him.

The coolness was very slight, because of the shortness of time that had passed since they had reached the camp. But it was noticeable enough now to alert Hal; and now that he looked closely at the man under his hand, he saw that the Urk was also dead. Almost as immediately as he registered the fact of death and his eyes found what had killed the man, his memory clicked back with something he should have remembered, but had not until this moment.

When Cee had dodged under his arm and out of Liu's hutment before he could catch her, she had been swinging two of the officer's weighted socks. There had been one in each hand. This, in spite of the fact that Liu had died of a crushed throat like the two dead soldiers they had disinterred on the way here. Since Liu presumably had been wearing only one sock on each foot, and had taken those off for the night, she had been able to turn them into weapons after she had stolen silently into his hutment. She would have loaded them with energy packs from the carrying loops in the man's belt. Then she must have thrown, and picked up again, the one she had used to kill the force-leader.

But when Hal had burst into the Urk's hut and wrapped his arms around her as she was just about to throw, she had been carrying only one of the socks with which she had left Liu's sleeping place. Somehow she must have gotten off one throw before Hal had caught her; and since it had been a hurried shot at the target, she must have been about to follow it up with a second cast when Hal had seized her.

There was an ordinary battlelamp on the chair holding the Urk's clothes. Hal turned it up and in the wash of reddish light that spread over the form on the cot the face stood out clearly. The right temple was plainly indented. The Urk must have died instantly from the first energy-pack loaded sock; but Cee, who had most probably been aiming at his throat as she had in all the previous cases, must in the dimness of light reflected from the outside of the hutment, have realized only that she had missed her target. So she had tried, but failed, to get her second weighted sock thrown before Hal had stopped her.

He stood, head slightly bent under the low roof of the hut ent, which had been tall enough for people like the Urk and Liu but was not for him. Now, the situation was even more co@plicated.

Briefly, what he would now need to hypnotize the soldiers into believing, must be an ever greater distortion of what had actually taken place here in the forest.

He turned, went out of the hutment, and across to the group that was now strapping Artur securely onto his stretcher. A little off to one side, the drugged soldiers sat or lay still, watched by the other four bowmen; and a little beyond these were Cee, Onete and Old Man. Old Man's hand still rested on the back of Cee's neck. But it lay there with an appearance more like that of a comforting gesture, than a calming one. Onete's lips were moving steadily as she spoke to Cee; who in her turn was utterly unmoving and unanswering, but listened to the grown woman as if fascinated.

Hal reached the group by the stretcher. I'm sorry, he said, but I'm going to have to make use of Artur before you carry him away. If he's ready to be moved, follow me. I want to bring him into the hutment on the far right where the officer in command was sleeping. Calas? Right here, answered Calas, emerging from the crowd. Come along, said Hal. I want to talk to you as we go. After Liu and the Urk, who'd be in charge of these soldiers? Who? Probably him, said Calas as they walked toward the hutment. He pointed to a square-bodied, middle-aged man with thin, tousled hair on a round head, sitting beside his sleeping sack and staring at nothing. He's a supply corporal; and theoretically he wouldn't command force-soldiery. But he's the senior in rank; and besides, he's one of the headquarters clique, one of the bunch that runs things and you keep in good with, if you know what's good for you. His name's Harvey. He'd take command here if Liu or the Urk couldn't. He'd like doing that-but it's not likely-

He stared at Hal abruptly. Or is it? Yes, said Hal bluntly. They're both dead. Dead? Calas stopped in his tracks, then had to run to catch up with Hal, who had not paused. Cee got to them, Hal said.

She did? Calas broke into a smile. How? The stretcher bearers, also close enough to hear this, turned their heads at Hal's blunt statement. But he did not answer. They continued to stare, to the point where they almost missed the entrance to the hutment at which they were aiming, before finally carrying the stretcher through it. So, as a result, we've got a problem on our hands, Hal went on. They were now inside the hutment that had been Liu's. Hal stood aside to let the bearers set down on the floor the still unconscious Artur. Take him off the stretcher, Hal directed them. I want him laid, face down, sprawled out on the floor as if he'd fallen trying to reach Liu on his cot. When you're done with that, go to the hutment next door, dress the body of the Urk in his uniform, sidearm and all-find the power pistol-and carry him in here on the stretcher. Calas, said Hal, as soon as they had gone out, how well could you imitate Liu's voice? I don't mean you'd have to be good enough to foot anyone under ordinary conditions, close up; but I need a shout or two, supposedly from him, to back up what I'm going to hypnotize the rest of the soldiers into believing. Did Liu have some particular way of speaking that was his alone? Everyone does; and most soldiers can imitate their officers' mannerisms. He had a high voice and a snappy, snotty way of talking, said Calas. I think I could come up with something like it, if I'm to be yelling from inside the hutment here, where they can't see me and the hutment'll probably mess up the way his voice'd sound, some. Good, said Hal, '. what I want you to yel I is an order from Liu to the Urk to shoot. The idea will be that Artur's somehow gotten loose in here. Good, said Calas. I can do that standing on my head. Anyway, I like the idea of Artur getting loose in here with the two of them. Or, I would if Artur would have actually done anything to them, even if he did get free.

CHAPTER

29

Good, said Hal, in his turn. He moved to the cot and began propping Liu's head up on the pillow beneath it, so that his throat was visible. The body was beginning to cool further, but still had not stiffened. He took the officer's pistol belt from its perch over the back of the bedside chair that held the rest of the man's clothes, and laid it on the seat of the chair, so that the power pistol in its holster was lyin.@, flat, with the pistol butt next to the bed.

He stretched out the man's arm and curled the dead fingers around the butt of the weapon, half drawing it from its holster. He chuckled, with a rueful edge to the chuckle. What's the joke, Friend? Calas's voice asked behind him Only, said Hal-turning to face the former soldier--the fact I'd just been thinking earlier that our plans for all this had gone off perfectly this time, exactly as we made them, up on the ledge. That was before I found Liu and the Urk had been killed-and everything had to be changed. You've got a different idea now? asked Calas.

There was no doubt in the smaller man's voice. Clearly, he had complete confidence that whatever might have come up, Hal could adjust their plans to take care of it. I had it in mind to arrange things so that the two of them would take their troops home. Their report would be that both Artur and Cee had died under questioning. But that it was pretty clear from what they said that there was no one else living up here. They would have reported that they'd buried the bodies, the way they buried the soldiers that Artur'd have been blamed for killing earlier, then simply gave up and went back to the ga7ison.

And now? prompted Calas. The stretcher bearers came in with the dressed and armed body of the Urk. Put him down just inside the entrance flap to the left, Hal told them. As I was just telling Calas, we've had to change plans. Now when I hypnotize those soldiers out there I'm going to have to convince them that everybody killed everybody else. A taller story by quite a bit. Two dead soldiers, even a dead underofficer's one thing. A dead commissioned officer's something else-at least as far as paperwork is concerned. Their headquarters is going to be grilling these soldiers for details -that's right; take the Urk off the stretcher and pull him up so he's not quite alongside Artur. Now turn him nearly all the way over on his face, so that you can't see the front part of his body.

They did as he said. All right, said Hal, when they were finished. Now, roll the stretcher up around its poles and lay it along the wall of the hutment, behind the cot, so it can't be seen. In a moment I want the rest of you to go out and join the others guarding the soldiers. Send someone to me at once if any of them show signs Of coming out of their drugged state.

He knelt beside the unconscious form of Artur. Oh. Also-,- he said, raising his head to look back over his shoulder at the stretcher bearers, one of you go out and get me a length of the rope they had him tied up with. About a meter's length'I I do.

The bearers looked at each other, and the one nearest the door went out. When he came back with the rope, Hal took it, tied Artur's hands gently together behind his back with one end of the rope. Anyone got a knife? he asked, still kneeling beside Artur.

Calas and one of the stretcher bearers were the only ones with such items, Hal opened each of them in turn and tried the edge of the blade on his thumb. He chose Calas's. With it, he made various cuts all around the rope in an irregular circle, severing only the top strands. He pulled these cuts apart and cut deeper, pulling on the rope as he did so, so that when at last it parted, it showed a ragged end. There, he said, winding the rest of the rope around the central pole that upheld the hutment and had been mechanically driven deep into the packed earth under it. He left protruding about as much rope as would make one turn around the pole, with the ragged-looking end projecting into the air. There, he said. That should look more like someone broke the rope with sheer strength, rather than its being cut. I think, under hypnosis, I can make them believe someone as big as Artur could do that. He probably could have, said Calas, accepting his knife back.

Hal shook his head. Have someone tie you with your hands behind you using ordinary string, sometime; and see if you can break it to get loose, he said. if you've a length of it between you and what you Ire tied to, so you can snap the cord with a sudden jerk, you might be able to break it. If there's no play in it, I think you'll probably find you can't break even that. But it doesn't matter. I think under hypnotic suggestion we can make the soldiers believe Artur did it with this rope.

He stood up. Now, he said, everybody out, except for Calas and one of you. Calas can use whoever stays with him as a messenger, if he needs to send me word of something. Come on.

He led them back out into the night and the bright overhead lights of the camp. A slow, damp breeze-a herald of dawn -had begun to blow. They had probably less than an hour before they would be able to see each other's faces without the artificial lights.

The prisoners were still either sitting or lying motionless, still under the effect of the drugged arrows. Set them up, Hal told the Guild members. Including the two who were on watch and sitting at the table. Add those two to the back line of the others. I want them all sitting up with their backs to the hutments.

The Chantry Guild people went about setting up the resistless soldiers. Most of those they handled stayed put in an upright position, once placed in it, with their legs crossed. A few were overweight enough or tight-jointed enough that they needed support to hold that position. In such cases, a Guild member sat down with his or her back against the soldier who could not balance himself.

Meanwhile, Hal had been going down the line of men. There were two lines, since that was the way the sleeping sacks had been laid out on the ground. He squatted in front of each one in turn and spoke to the relaxed, apparently unhearing, man before him for a few minutes until he evoked an answer to the question Do you hear me?

At a yes, he moved on to the next one in line. It took him nearly half an hour to get all of them to answer him. When, however, he had gotten a response from the last one in the front line, he turned to the closest Chantry Guild member; a slim, almost fragile-looking girl of eighteen, with a sudden dazzling smile that came without warning and invariably seemed to change her completely. Her name was Kady and she was one of Onete's picked group of expert night foragers. I'd like you to go to Calas now, in the hutment over there, Hal said to her. Her smile flashed in agreement. Tell him that when you pass the signal to him, he's to call out in his best imitation of Liu's voice. What he's supposed to shout is Shoot, Urk! Now! Shoot him!

Hal repeated the words to be shouted, slowly. Now, he said to Kady, you repeat them back to me. Shoot, Urk! said Kady, in a thin, clear voice. Now! Shoot him!' Good,': said Hal. You make Calas repeat it back to you, that same way, to make sure he's got it correctly. Then step outside and keep your eyes on me. When I wave, you stick your head back inside and tell him to shout. You've got all that? When I see you wave at me I make Calas repeat 'Shoot, Urk! Now! Shoot him! ' said Kady. Then, what do we do? I'll take care of the rest of it, said Hal. You two leave the hutment and back off. Repeat that for me. Calas and I leave the hutment after he shouts and we leave the rest to you, she said. Right, Hal replied, you're perfect.

She smiled again, and went toward the hutment. Hal himself turned back and walked around to face the two lines of seated soldiers, who now all sat facing the still dark jungle beyond the clearing lights.

His eyes picked out the man named Harvey, who was one of those able to sit upright, cross-legged, without any support at his back. He had a strong-boned face, softened by fat, and the bulge of his stomach was enough to reach between his crooked legs almost to the ground in front of him, leaning forward as he was; and probably helped counterbalance any tendency he had to fall backward. He would have looked pleasant and ineffective if it had not been for the hardness of feature under his facial fat.

On Hal's first pass along the seated lines, asking the individual soldiers if they could hear him, Harvey had been the single individual to whom Hal had said anything more. He had suggested then that Harvey might have to take on a position of decision for all the rest. With the others, he had merely made sure that he had fixed their attention hypnotically upon him and upon what he was going to tell them. Listen to me, all of you, now, he said, raising his voice. You've all been asleep until just now,

He paused to remember something. He had asked the two men who had been on watch duty what their names were, and for a moment he had misplaced those names among the thousands of others tucked into his memory. All of you have been asleep, he went on, almost immediately, even Bill Jarvis and Stocky Weems, who were on watch. That drink they had earlier tonight must have gotten to them. In any case, you were all asleep until just now. Isn't that right? Answer-yes! Yes, muttered the two lines of men. You knew when you went to sleep that your force-leader, Liu, and the Urk were still at work in Liu's hutment questioning both the little girl and the big man you all took prisoncr, Hal went on. But you paid no attention to that until just now, when something woke you all. What woke you?

He waited for a long moment of silence. I'll tell you what woke you, he said. You heard a yell from the Urk, as if he was hurt or frightened. You don't remember what he said, but you do remember what you heard after that yell had woken you. You all remember that, don't you? Say 'yes' if you remember.

Yes, said the seated men, again. That's right, said Hal. From that moment on, you all remember everything, just as it happened, or as it was told to you. That's so, isn't it? Say 'yes,' if you remember. Yes. You won't remember me or any of these other unfamiliar men and women you've seen here tonight. You'll forget that anyone was here but your own fellow soldiers and officers. Say 'yes.' Yes, intoned the soldiers like a ragged, impromptu choir.

Hal walked forward among them until he stood before Harvey, in the second rank. He turned to the man on Harvey's right. You can't see me, or hear what I say to Harvey. You won't remember me at all, either from earlier or now. Say 'yes., Yes, said the soldier.

Hal turned to the man on Harvey's left, repeated his words and got another yes for answer. Hal turned his attention back to Harvey, squatting down so that he was almost face to face with the fat man wearing the corporal's tabs on the gray collar of his uniform. He spoke to Harvey, using a voice pitched so low that the two soldiers on either side would have had trouble hearing him even if they had been listening. Harvey, Hal said, you hear me, don't you? Yes, answered Harvey. You won't remember about this conversation, any more than you'll remember seeing me or anyone but your own people and the two prisoners, said Hal. You'll do this because I tell you to, but also because it'll be in your own best interests to forget. If you forget you'll get all the credit for getting these soldiers back to headquarters, yourself.

Harvey smiled, but the expression of the rest of his face did not change. In just a minute or two, Hal said quietly, something is going to happen. None of the rest of the soldiers out here know it's going to happen; but you've been expecting some trouble of this kind to crop up from the moment you saw Liu and the Urk planned to question that very large, strong man, all by themselves, in one of the hutments, without a couple of the armed soldiers standing guard. You knew he was dangerous because he killed two men with his bare hands while he was being captured.

But of course, it wasn't your place to say anything to the Urk or the force-leader, so you didn't. But that's why you've been ready to take charge of things if some kind of trouble does crop up. Isn't that right?

1, Yes. I I

Hal paused. That's why, not like the rest, you've been sleeping lightly; and so you woke up the first moment you heard anything out of the ordinary. Now, you're just about to hear it. I'll leave you for a moment, and then I'll be back beside you when you hear it, to tell you what to do; and I'll stay beside you until everything's under control. Understood? Understood, said Harvey.

Hal got to his feet and moved swiftly and silently to Liu's hutment. He stepped inside to meet the inquiring gazes of Calas, Kady and the one Guild member who had stayed with Calas as a messenger. All set, he said to Calas. Now, when Kady passes you the signal you've got two things to do. One is shout what Kady told you to shout. The other is to take the power pistol from the Urk's holster, and use it to blow the throat out of Liu. Can you do that, or have you got some hesitations about shooting a corpse? I wouldn't shoot I ive people today-I hope, said Calas. I felt like killing Liu after what he'd ordered them to do to Artur. But I don't think maybe I'd kill, anymore, except someone like him, now I'm a Chantry member. It's not going to bother me, though, to blow the dead bastard's throat out. I suppose you want to hide the fact of how he was killed? That's right, said Hal. If you hadn't wanted to be the one who used the power pistol, I'd have to, and I'd do the shout and the shot from here, before I go back to the soldiers. After you're done put the pistol into the Urk's hand.

-@ight,- said Calas. Good, said Hal. He turned to Kady. Come with me and stand just outside the door, so you can see me. I'll be waving soon after I get back to one particular soldier. When I do, you tell Calas, and run away from the hutments-fast. Orban, you come away now and get out of sight with the rest of the Guild members.

. Orban was a slight man in his forties with very light-colored blond hair flat on his skull. He nodded.

Hal left the hutment, went back to the soldiers, and squatted down once more in front of Harvey. He looked about. All Guild members, as instructed earlier, were out of the line of sight of the hypnotized soldiers. Whatever happens, he said, looking back at Harvey, it'll be up to you to lead all the rest of the men out of here and back to headquarters. You've got rank on everybody else; and the others'll follow you. All you have to do is take charge. I'll be right beside you all the time until you leave here, even though you won't remember that afterward, and the rest won't see or hear me when I talk to you.

He paused. Harvey watched him, listening with an attention that was so profound it was almost innocent. Now, in a moment, what woke you all up is going to go on with more noise and trouble, Hal said. You'll need to take charge of things at once, Order all the rest of them to stay put here while you go and investigate. Remind them you're the one in command, Corporal.

He watched Harvey's eyes closely on the last word, but they did not change. The ranks of groupman, force-leader, and team-leader, which Cletus Grahame had proposed in his massive work on tactics and strategy, had come into being as the jealously guarded property of the actual fighting troops. The older ranks of corporal, sergeant, warrant officer and lieutenant had been kept only for those in support positions. Some who bore the older ranks were ashamed of them; some secretly pleased by the special access to privileges that went along with them. Harvey, it seemed, was one of the latter.

Nonetheless, most noncommissioned officers in his position secretly yearned for the authority to directly order and command combat troops. What Hal was suggesting hypnotically to Harvey now would give him not only that, but the approval of his superiors back at headquarters, when he took control of a situation in which his officers were dead.

Some men in his position might have found the prospect either forbidding or unpleasant. Harvey, however, gave no sign that this was the case with him.

Hal stood up.

Now, he said to all the soldiers, lie down. Sleep. They all, including Harvey, obeyed. Hal turned to face the hutment that had been Liu's and the slim figure of Kady standing just outside the entrance flaps. He lifted his arm over his head and waved it back and forth, slowly, twice. He saw her arm go up to wave back and she turned to speak in through the flaps.

Turning back, she went off at a run toward one side of the hutments, where at the edge of the darkness, Onete stood with Cee. The girl had wrapped around herself another vine having a split-open pod, and the pod sagged down, heavy once more with what were probably more rocks of a size to fit the girl's closed fist. Her eyes were steady on the hutment in which were not only the dead Liu and Urk, but the still living Artur.

A shout, almost high-pitched enough to be called a scream, came from the structure, with the words Hal had directed Kady to pass on to Calas. They were followed almost immediately by the coughing roar of the power pistol, and almost as quickly after that, the figure of Calas slipped out through the flaps and headed off in the direction Kady and Orban had taken.

Hal clapped his hands together loudly. Sit up! he shouted. All of You men! Listen! What's happening? What's going on in there?

They were sitting up, most of them looking around, bewildered.

Hal leaned down swiftly and spoke in the ear of Harvey, who was also now sitting up, but looking toward Liu's hutment. Now! Hal said softly. Now, you take control of them, or it'll he too late. Tell them to stay where they are. You'll look into it! Hold it! Stay put! shouted Harvey, scrambling to his feet. That's an order-from me! I'll find out what's happening.

A few of the soldiers who had already fumblingly started to rise, sat back down. Still groggy from the remainder of the drugs still in their bloodstream, but released from the deeper stages of hypnosis by the clapping of Hal's hands, they swore and muttered to each other, staring at the hutment-but they stayed put.

Harvey stumbled toward the hutment. His cross-legged position had evidently cut off the circulation of blood to his legs; and they were just now reawakening to normal flow. He was walking more normally by the time he reached the flaps of the hutment. Corporal Magson, sir. May I come in? he called, and waited. When after a moment, there was no answer, he pushed his way inside, closely followed by Hal.

Under the silent interior lights of the hutment, the bodies of the obviously dead Urk and Liu Hu Shen and the unconscious figure of Artur lay still. .-They're all dead, said Hal quickly, standing behind the corporal. He spoke in a low voice, directly into Harvey's ear, as the fat man stopped, checked by the sight before him. You can see what's happened. The prisoner must have been strong enough to break loose and start for the force-leader. Liu must have reached for his pistol, but since he'd been watching from his bed and the sidearm was in its holster on the chair beside the bed, he must have seen he couldn't get to it in time. So he shouted-we all heard him, just now-for the Urk to shoot. And the Urk must have-but not fast enough to save his own life. Look at that, his head's all crushed in. That big man must have been as strong as a giant! But the Urk did manage to kill him with that one shot. Yes . . . said Harvey, still staring, still under the influence of the hypnosis to the point where he heard Hal's words as if they were his own thoughts. And when the Urk shot the big man, Hal went on in a soft, persuasive voice, the charge went right through him and killed the force-leader, too. They're all dead. Yes, that's it, said Harvey. You'll really have to take charge now, said Hal. They'll think a lot of you at headquarters for handling this properly. You'll want to bring the officers' bodies back for burial, of course; but you can have some of the men scrape a hole and rol I the body of the big man in it, next to where they buried the child, after she died from the questioning. As Liu himself said just an hour ago-remember? Liu said that there was pretty surely no one else up here to find; or either the child or the man would have talked by this time. But he said, remember, they might as well make sure by working on the man until he died? Yes, said Harvey, yes, I remember just how it was.

Hal paused. Actually, you know, he said in a lower, more confidential tone in Harvey's ear, those two just wanted an excuse to have their fun with what they had left. Right. They would, muttered Harvey. ,'Now, the first thing, Hal went on, is to get a couple of the soldiers you can trust to remember what you say and do what you want. Get them in here with you to see what's happened, and then they can take the big man out and bury him. Also, you better record some pictures of how things were, here, while you're at it, to show back at headquarters. Now! he said, clapping his hands softly together behind Harvey's right ear. Remember. None of you've seen anyone but the big man and the girl. Now, get things moving!

Harvey started, turned, and went out of the hutment. Hal followed. The fat man walked slowly back to the seated soldiers, an went around to stand in front of them. All right, listen to me now . . . he began . . . and paused. Hal whispered in his ear and he spoke up again. We've had a blowup. Both the Force and the Group are dead. That leaves me in command; so all of you snap to and do what I tell you! We've got to bury that prisoner, strike camp, and get the officers' bodies back to headquarters, right away. Ranj, Wilson and Morui, you three come with me. Bring a recorder. I want you for witnesses and to make some recordings of what's happened inside the Force's hutment. The rest of you get busy striking camp and making ready to move out. Come on, come on now! Move!

Time was also moving, Hal noted. Dawn was very close. Both moons were long down; and the utter blackness just before day, at the ground level, denied the lightening of the sky beyond the lamps of the camp, when he looked straight up.

Back on the ledge, Hal had warned the Guild people to start getting back out of sight the moment he first clapped his hands, to begin the process of bringing the soldiers partially out of their hypnosis. They had faithfully faded back beyond the lights into the jungle dark; and, as the morning lightened further, they would move farther and farther off, until even under daylight, the forest itself would hide them from the view of anyone in the camp.

In the meantime Hal, continuing to remind the three soldiers Harvey had chosen and any others he dealt with, that he was not there as far as their perceptions were concerned, had supervised the picture-taking of the interior of Liu,s hutment. Then, at his prompting, Harvey had picked up entrenching tools and taken the same men out into the darkness with a single handlight, to dig a grave for the supposedly dead Artur. While they were involved in this task, he had the Guild bearers carry Artur, once more on the stretcher, with the straps securing him in place, to the edge of the excavation. The soldiers, digging and swearing at the hand labor, paid no attention to the bringers of the body they were to dispose of, and, having set Artur down, the Guild people melted back out of sight into the darkness.

Harvey had been supervising the grave-digging under Hal's instructions. When the diggers had gone deep enough into the soft forest floor, half mold, half earth, Hal had Harvey call them out for a break in their labors and take them aside. There, by the limited light of the single source of illumination they had brought with them, he brought them momentarily back into a more profound state of hypnosis, and gave them a false memory of having tumbled Artur themselves from the graveside into the grave; then begun to cover him up, before Harvey had called them out for a rest. Then he signaled the stretcher bearers to start back to the ledge with Artur.

As soon as they had faded into the darkness with their load, at Hal's prompting, Harvey sent the grave-diggers back to finish shoveling into the open excavation all that they had taken out. They did so; and Harvey took them back to camp. By now, all of the hutments and erected lights were down and packed, ready to move; and most of the soldiers themselves were in full kit, with their weapons, and ready to move out as well -

At the edge of the camp, Hal left the soldiery to complete the job of returning to their headquarters under Harvey's command -

He had little doubt that from this point on, military habit would take them back there without further prompting. The hypnotic command he had given them would eventually wear off; but their memories of what had actually happened would remain confused, and there would be nothing for any of them to gain later by changing their version of what had happened, as they would have originally given it to their superiors.

He dropped into a lope over the now clearly visible ground, to catch up with the party from the Guild, who by this time would be halfway back to the entrance of the trail up the mountainside.

The day was rapidly brightening around him and his steady jog felt good. The ledge was small enough, and he had been deeply enough immersed in his other concerns, so that he had not deliberately walked, let alone covered ground at a run except for that one day, since he had left his exercise room at the Final Encyclopedia.

He was reminded again of what he had thought during that last run, a few days ago-even his running treadmill at the Final Encyclopedia, surrounded with the images and scents of an imaginary outdoors, had not been like this. This was real; and it brought back old memories of his runs through the forest near the estate in the Rocky Mountains where he had spent his second childhood; before the coming of the Others had sent him scuttling for a hiding place on the Younger Worlds.

For a moment, the image of the young gunmen with their long, slim-barreled void pistols, and Bleys Ahrens, as they had suddenly appeared at the estate, came back to him. Particularly Bleys, slimmer then than he was now-wherever on the Younger Worlds he might be at this moment, eleven years later. Slimmer, and seeming much taller; both because then, in that first sight, Hal had not himself reached his full adult height, which was to be the equal of Bleys'; and because of the last ten years of slight but noticeable aging and thickening of the other man's body.

A cold feeling like a breath of some stray breeze seemed to pass through him. He had let Amanda bring him here to Kultis and the Chantry Guild with no real faith that here he might be helped to find the Creative Universe. The impasse keeping him from that goal these last two years had been like some great, impossibly wide, impossibly thick wall of glass, holding him out. But now, over the past few weeks, he had come out of the despondency that his failure had built in him. Hope had stirred in him once again-but with hope, now, also came fear.

Time was passing. Tam's days were numbered. Even if they had not been, the force that Bleys was building to overwhelm even the phase-shielded Earth was moving to its inevitable completion. Time was on the march; and while he had refound hope-great hope, somehow, with this successful rescue of Artur-he had still not found a way past that impassable, glasslike barrier to his lifetime goal-

He glimpsed the figures of some of the Guild members through the farther trees before him and realized he had finally caught up with them. He checked his jog to a walk. It might worry them to see him running, might make them think that there was more urgency than there actually was now, to getting Artur up the mountainside to the ledge and proper care. Actually, it was only Artur's physical condition that still urged that time not be wasted. The soldiers of the Occupation Forces should not bother them for some little time to come.

He walked, but stretched his stride to cover ground swiftly without appearing to race. In a moment or two he was up with them. Artur, on the stretcher, was at the head of the traveling group, with a man on each of the four handles of the stretcher. As Hal had foreseen, Artur was proving a heavy load for his carriers, even across this level, if somewhat cluttered, forest floor. The extra people beyond the rock would be very much needed to get him safety up the steep trail of the mountainside to the ledge. How is he? Hal asked Onete, who was walking beside the head of the stretcher, keeping an eye on Artur's face. He came to, answered Onete, without taking her eyes off Artur's face. Tannaheh gave me several loaded syringes to use if he did that. I used one; and he went back to sleep. I wish Tannaheh had told me what I was supposed to be giving him. I don't like doing things like that without knowing. It probably didn't occur to Tannaheh, said Hal. It occurred to me, Onete said, but he shoved them into my hand just as we left the ledge, after running after us to give them to me. I didn't have a chance to ask him, in the dark and all. Anyway, Artur's back unconscious or sleeping again, one of the two; and that's a blessing-

She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, speaking out of the corner of her mouth, still without taking her gaze off Artur's face. Check to my right, about four meters off, she said, barely using her lips, but don't turn your head to look.

He leaned over the stretcher as if to gaze more closely into the face of Artur, using the movement to disguise a tilt of his head to the right, so that out of the corner of his eyes, he could see into the forest on that side of them. His view picked up Cee, prowling along level with the stretcher and himself.

The vine with its pod no longer was around her waist. It hung by its vine-ends from one fist, with the weight of what was probably a single rock only pulling it down. Cee's other fist held a second rock ready. Her eyes were on him with the same steadiness they had held back at the camp when she had looked both at him and at Liu. She still doesn't trust us completely, Onete said, still in a barely audible voice, still with her lips hardly moving. But particularly, she doesn't trust you. Liu gave orders to the soldiers and they did what they did to Artur. You give orders to us, as far as she can see; so you must be another like him. If she starts to rotate or to raise either arm, hit the ground, or get something between you and her. Thanks, said Hal, I will. But don't worry about me. I know about slings-I can even use one myself. I'll be able to tell if she starts to use that.

What he said was true enough. His knowledge of slings as well as a number of other primitive weapons dated back to the early training of his first childhood on Dorsai. What he did not tell her was that it was going to be impossible for him to keep an eye on Cee at all times and meanwhile do whatever he might do to make sure they all got up to the ledge safely.

It was full daylight now; and they came at last to the large outcropping of rock under which it was possible for them to make their way to the boulder that had been set up to block the path beyond it on to the trail leading up the side of the mountain to the ledge.

CHAPTER

30

Shawnee, a slightly stout, middle-aged woman, with her gray hair puLled back above her ankle-length blue robe and sandals, had the round, calm face of a typical Exotic and was on sentry duty just outside the entrance under the rock that led to the mountain trail. We heard you coming, she said, as the group reached her, and got you on the scopes by relay from the ledge. The blocking boulder's moved back and the way's clear. You can take Artur through, and we'll block the way again behind you.

There was a short period of difficulty, for the bearers had to bend double to pass through the entrance and this made Artur an impossible load for the four of them. It ended up with seven people, including Hal, crawling through with the stretcher essentially carried on their backs, until they reached the other side of the rock face and the opening beyond where the path up the mountainside began. The large granite boulder, as Shawnee had promised, was off to one side.

They stopped to rest while the boulder was rolled back. Once in place, it cut off not only entrance, but any light from above. Now anyone crawling under the rock face would have no alternative but to believe they had come up against the solid mountainside and that nothing but stone was beyond. Amid said we shouldn't need to bother digging up the plug rock, if the soldiers were leaving, said Shawnee, unless, you've got some reason to. No. No reason to now, answered Hal. He felt weariness, but with the warm hearth-glow of success at its heart.

But then began the labor of getting Artur up the steep slope of the mountainside track to the ledge. In spite of the Guild members' own experience with the way in, and the fact Hal had warned them, the carriers found they could only work in five-minute stretches before needing to be relieved. Hal stayed beside them all the way, on one side of the stretcher, ready to help catch it if one of the bearers should slip and fall. On the other side climbed Onete, her syringes ready, and beyond her, scrambling sometimes on all fours like a mountain goat, but with the sling loaded and its vine-ends caught up short, ready in one grimy fist, was Cee-her eyes continually on Hal.

There was one uncomfortable moment when Artur began to come to, and moaned. Cee was instantly upright, the vine-ends of her sling sliding down through her fists to their full length; and in the same moment Onete stepped up to the side of the stretcher, her body directly blocking Hal from any throw by Cee. He's all right! Hal's done nothing! she snapped at Cee. I'm going to make your uncle comfortable and put him back to sleep, right now.

The stretcher bearers had stopped. Any excuse for a moment in which to catch their breath. Onete turned about, still blocking any throw at Hal with her own body, and gave Artur another injection. He relaxed on the stretcher.

11 et's get on, said Hal, taking his own grip on the side of the stretcher again; and they resumed their painful way upward.

When they finally stepped out onto the level surface of the ledge itself, everybody was at the end of their strength. We'll take him to a room in the clinic, Onete told Hal. You can find him there later, if you want him. Tannahch has some people trained as nurses and assistants. There'll be somebody with him all the time. Tell Tannaheh someone who's been through what Artur's been through is going to have to be brought out of it gradually, Hal said. For a while at first after he comes to, he's going to think he's still in the hands of his torturers-but Tannaheh probably already knows that.

I'll tell him anyway, said Onete. You better get some rest yourself. You've been up more than twenty-four hours, haven't you? Perhaps, said Hal. Anyway, I've got a few words I want w-have with Amid before I call it done. I'll see you later. @ He turned away from her and the stretcher bearers, who were now brand new at their job, being from among those who had stayed up on the ledge. Some of those who had helped the stretcher up the last few meters of slope had simply sat down, or lain down, where they had stopped, although to Hal's eyes none .of them looked in need of more than an ordinary night's rest to put them back on their feet. He turned away and went toward Amid's office.

The heat of the rising sun of midmorning struck at his face and chest through his sweat-soaked shirt, and the level ground felt strange under his feet. He slanted across the open ground, approaching Amid's office from the front and side. He reached it at its right corner and walked along its front toward its entrance. As he passed, he glanced in one of the windows that were the best compromise these forest-built structures could make with the former Exotic homes, where it had been hard to tell from one room to the next whether you were outdoors or indoors. It had suddenly occurred to him that the small, old head of the Chantry Guild might be somewhere else about the establishment, and the thought of a prolonged search for him on legs wobbly with weariness was not attractive.

But Amid was there. Hal saw him through the window, seated in one of the chairs around the now fireless central fireplace. In a chair facing him was Amanda.

Hal stopped for a second. Down below, he had forgotten Amanda might show up. He went on; but at the door, set open to the warming morning air, he paused and looked through its aperture at those inside.

He was not quite sure why he had stopped. It was as if an instinct had put out its hand to stop him for a second, to make him stop and think, first.

Perhaps, he thought, with sudden unnatural clarity, he did need to think before entering. A number of times in his life before it had been when he was most tired, after great and prolonged effort of mind and body, that his mind had taken on a strange, almost feverish clarity. The most important of those had been a moment there in which he had - her with the telephoned picture of her

then that he had thought to himself that I@ beautiful, but lacked something which rt-,MF!RP_v1 MM,fi wbich in that moment he had not been and was not intensity. It was something Amanda went beyond. Part of her extended another dimension, lived in another dimension. struck him now, had the potential to extend into dimension, but only particular individuals chose to only in some of these could it be seen in them by he saw it now, where he had never been it before. Now, remembering Rukh, he realized he seen it in her; and perhaps a little even in Ajela and t7mmmi faith-holders on Harmony, like James Child-of- %M been, now he thought of it, very clearly visible in it was in Tam Olyn; and it had been there in his three that he now realized he had learned, partly at least, it from what he saw in them, without identifying was, but imitating it in his own life as he imitated the men in other ways. was in other, more unlikely people, too. It was in Cee, enough. And it must have been in Jathed. In fact, had co me here to ask Amid, tired as he was, without why he needed the answer, but knowing he could not ntil he had it-was whether Jathed had, in those early in the forest, had some sort of contact with Cee. he had visited her parents? Then the sudden discovery MP- here had all but driven the questions from his mind, he realized, suddenly, that Amanda was connected to herself a part of them, in fact. tie Went in; and the other two turned at the sound of his boots .,;Vnthe Wooden floor. Amid, he was now able to see, had his own IMended element; and it came to Hal that both Amanda and 'W , low 'd as well as others like them, were not only part of what he chosen to spend his life finding but part of what he had for when he had let Amanda bring him to Kultis. She @'@@-VlOuld not have identified this specific element as one of the things he needed to discover; but, that strange, almost mystic of her that had always set her family apart from other Dorsai times had been some years back now, in the militia cell on Harmony, where he had been left burning up with fever, to die; and instead, in that moment, his mind had seen and worked clearly as never before.

Something like that was on him now, although he did not seem to be able to put it all together. But, out of the dull hopelessness from which Amanda had brought him, when she had led him here, he had finally climbed-to this.

But what was this? One thing was certain, it was not anything resembling his former despondency. He was alive again, and the feeling that the cause to which he had dedicated himself could not be lost was with him again. Also, there were some new bits and pieces of understanding. But they did not fit together. More than ever in his existence before, he felt he stood on the brink of the answer he searched for, but could not quite see the final step that would take him to it.

Part of it was Jathed, that wild Exotic philosopher, who had preached a separate universe for each living individual. Part of it was Cee. Part of it was the fact that he had gone with the others and succeeded in rescuing both Cee and Artur, while sending the soldiers away harmlessly. And done it without harming anyone. True, Cee had killed. But Cee was no more to be held accountable as a murderer than a wolf who had killed in defense of itself and one of its cubs.