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Ice Prison by Kathleen Sky

PROLOGUE

Mithras was a frozen hell of a planet; a blizzard's joy, a haven for hurricanes, and a toy for glaciers. Covered with permafrost and whipped by high speed winds, it should have been useless as a place for men to live. But there were minerals under the frozen tundra, and there were men and women the Confederation did not want on any of its other planets. The Confederation Colonial Service, or CCS, had put Mithras to use as a penal colony and had transported the riffraff of the galaxy to its frozen wastes. Most of the early convicts died in the bitter cold; those that survived bred generations of miners for the CCS. The planet was now technically only a mining colony—but those who had to live there knew better. It was still a prison.

The CCS had established a main cave in the horseshoe-shaped ridge of hills that made up the only inhabited area on the planet. The Colonial Service section was at the back of the low half circle, the mines curved away to the west, and on the east was the Homecave.

This was the closest thing to a real home the Mithrans would ever know. It was a bank of caves and grottos—man-made, cut into solid cold rock by the first prisoners. No tunnel connected the Homecave to the CCS

cave. Originally there had been such a tunnel, but after five convict uprisings it was deemed advisable to seal off any connecting area between the colonists and the people who governed them. The policy was set early and stayed locked into a chance-formed system.

Howell looked out of his bubble-sled at the sheer-walled cliffs and the swirling snow and knew he wasn't going to like Mithras. He was a cold and lonely man, well suited for a life here, but the CCS had warned him that Mithras was not very likely to make that life pleasant… or too long.

CHAPTER ONE

"Commander Gulimel, do you mean to tell me all of this was caused by a child?" Captain Burian Howell glanced up at the face of his new second-in-command. Finding nothing there but Slavic inscrutability, he hunched his neck deeper into his shoulders like a frustrated bird of prey. Howell glared with hooded eyes at a stack of infocubes littering the top of his desk, cubes bursting with data on the chaos that was Mithras. He could easily understand why the CCS had given him a shiny, overdue set of captain's stripes to go with the job. Five hours on the planet's icy surface and he was ready and willing to give the stripes back and demand a nice, safe commander's position on any planet but Mithras. After all, he had been more than a little suspicious when told of his new rank. It hadn't been earned by either good behavior or bootlicking any of the top command of the Confederation Colonial Service. He sighed and looked hopefully up at Gulimel, towering over his small desk in the incredibly cramped office he must now call his own.

"Not exactly a child, sir. Kiedron Agata is over fourteen." Lieutenant Commander Jens Gulimel stood at rigid attention in front of the desk, the effect of military precision marred by the fact that his blond hair was in dire need of cutting and his dress tunic was entirely too tight for his chunky frame. "That's old enough to breed on a colony planet—husbandhigh, they say." He surreptitiously tugged at his uniform collar. ' "I know that and I don't like it. Children make lousy parents. When you reach eighty-seven as I have, you'll see how young fourteen really is. I only hope the CCS lets you live so long. I don't think I'll see my one hundred and fifty if they keep dropping things like this on me. Of all the stinking, incompetent, muddleheaded messes." Howell looked even more a predator as he bent over the cubes, an owl picking daintily at the bones of a mouse—or in this case, a rat. His white wispy hair and long beak of a nose made him appear even older than his years. Misguided vanity kept him from using cosmetic aids, and only the pressure of his superiors forced him to use the life-lengthening techniques that kept his body still strong and almost young. His long, tapering fingers sifted through the stacks of cubes as he sniffed in disgust at the smell of the Colonial Service's latest batch of carrion.

There was one cube in the viewer at his side. The screen was lit, illuminating the face of a child-soon-to-be-woman called Kiedron Agata. Howell adjusted the focus and stared at the image of a round-faced girl with wide, childish brown eyes and dark, raggedly cut hair. Her mouth was tight, hostile. Nothing childish there.

"So this is what's brought a whole colony to its knees? One little twit of a girl—and according to CCS reports, not even very bright at that."

"I've developed a healthy cynicism about official CCS reports—there's always the possibility of down-and-out fraud," Jens said cautiously. He appeared to be sweating inside the too-tight uniform, and Howell watched the phenomenon with interest. Even with the warmth inside the cave, the office was quite a bit colder than he was used to. "Doctor Ronson, before his death, said she was the smartest child he had ever met on Mithras," the aide finished.

"Why didn't someone listen to him and get her off planet? We have schools for colonial children, jobs, positions—why wasn't she spotted by the Academy recruiters?"

Jens shifted uneasily, his ice-blue eyes betraying some inner turmoil.

"Ronson was a sandfreak, sir. Out of his mind most of the time. You know what CCS doctors are like—if he had been any good he wouldn't have been on Mithras. So none of the brass paid much attention to his ravings about the Agata kid. After all, if the Academy hadn't found anything worthwhile in her, how could a recruiter expect an addict to be more perceptive? The girl showed as a low normal—fine for breeding, but nothing to excite the Academy in the brilliance department."

"So she faked the tests out. How—who was behind her? Children don't run revolutions by themselves, commander."

"No, sir." Gulimel's voice was flat and dry. "But you see, the whole colony is behind her, all except our personnel and the nab troops; we don't get any help from the colonists. At first it was her father running the show, but it only got worse after he died. Kiedron is the mind behind this now, and the longer you're here the more you will understand that." Jens' voice betrayed some doubt as to how long Howell might last on Mithras. The captain knew there had been three commandants in the last year alone. One had been killed by Tovo Agata, Kiedron's father; Kiedron had killed the second; and the last one had been taken off planet raving mad and screaming in paranoid delirium. But he had suicided less than four hours out from Mithras, and here was his second-in-command without a scratch on him. How deeply was Gulimel involved in the deaths of my predecessors? Howell wondered. And will I be next? He looked up at the calm blond man in front of him and wanted very much to trust him. He had to trust someone in this ice prison the CCS had given him. But Gulimel was alive and three other men were dead—and Howell had a definite feeling that Gulimel was not saying even half of what he knew. Mithras was no model colony, even without the Agata brat. It was primarily a mining colony with some deep cave agriculture and food processing. The colonists were a sullen lot, fifth generation and increasingly disenchanted with the CCS.

Howell tapped the edge of one of the cubes and watched it topple off the stack to land on the floor at the lieutenant commander's feet. Jens swiftly retrieved it and returned it to the desk. "Sit down, Gulimel," Howell said, waving a hand in the direction of a small toadstool of a chair jammed between the side of the desk and the wall. "I hate having people loom over me. Being as tall as I am, I prefer to do the looming." Jens nodded and slid gratefully onto the chair.

He tried to smile, but to Howell it came out looking suspiciously like a grimace of pity.

"Tell me," he continued, "you've served under three commandants in the last year alone—all obviously unsuited for the job. Why weren't you given the position this time around? You've got more than enough seniority."

"First, I didn't want it, and second—well, it's all there in my file. The Service doesn't even want to raise me to a full commander, let alone a captain. I married a native." Jens seemed tense, and Howell wondered if this was what the man had been trying so hard to hide.

"A colonial, you mean. This cryogenicist's paradise hasn't got any natives. A colder, more nasty place would be harder to find anywhere. If I were native to Mithras I'd have died of the blue megrims before I was born."

Jens Gulimel grinned and visibly relaxed. "The colonials don't like it much either, but they have no choice. Would you like to have a look at one of the mines now, sir, or would you prefer to grill the CCS nabs about the Agata kid?"

"I suppose the mine would involve getting back into one of those walking sleeping bags I was brought here in? The idea of bundling up like that every time you go to the surface could get to be a bloody bore."

"Freezing to death would be more of a bore. I'm afraid the suits are a necessity; without them you wouldn't last five minutes out there."

"Then how does the Agata manage to be so active if she has to run around in thermals? Seems as if that would make her easier to catch."

"She's fifth generation; they don't feel the cold as badly as we do. Kiedron uses that fact to the hilt. She can move in, hit, and be away before the nabs can even suit up. We've tried acclimatizing the men, even tried cold-model androids, but no luck." Jens spread his hands in resignation.

"No one not born here ever gets used to the cold, and as for the androids—Kiedron hunted them down and had them killed, one by one." Howell swallowed noisily. "I think I would like to see the mine now. It can't be any more depressing than these cubes.

The two men moved through the cramped corridors of the CCS cave, Howell having to duck to avoid the low roof. All the corridors had been cut out of the rock by hand several generations ago by the first colonists, back when Mithras was used as a penal colony. The thermal suits were stacked in cases close to the openings of the tunnels, a situation that Howell could see would be a problem. It would be only too easy to sabotage the suits or remove them altogether, making the job of tracking down the revolutionaries that much more difficult. When questioned about it, Jens glumly admitted that this had happened more than once, and even elaborate locks had been useless.

"We even tried having nabs stay in thermals round the clock, but they couldn't take it—the suits are too cumbersome and hot," Jens explained as he helped Howell into a bright red outfit. "The Service doesn't care what kind of equipment we get here, sir. I think most of this was left over from the Vegan Wars, hundreds of years ago—you talk about war surplus! These were the best things they sent us and they're none too good. Nothing's too good on Mithras."

"By the Mother, they must weigh fifteen kilos! No wonder the nabs couldn't take it."

"You'll appreciate every gram once we hit the outside, sir, believe me." Jens was only too right. Howell hastily pulled his faceplate shut as the lieutenant commander opened the outer lock. Cold air sucked quickly into the lungs could kill; Howell took several deep breaths of the oxygen-rich mixture in his tanks and waited while Jens closed the lock behind him. The bright red suits that Howell had found ridiculous at the spaceport took on a chilling purpose as he watched the flurries of snow almost hide his aide from him, even though he was less than two meters away. The wind-driven snow caused other problems as Howell watched his face mask rapidly fog up. "Gulimel!" he called over his hood mike, "I can't see a thing. My face plate is frosted over."

"Hit the defrost button on the right, inside your hood. You should be able to reach it with your tongue." Jens's voice was tinny in his ears. Howell quickly found the button and with some clumsy maneuvers managed to turn it on. The face plate rapidly cleared and Howell could see a red blocky form to his left that should be Gulimel.

"The mine is this way, sir," the voice hummed in his hood as Howell watched the figure beckon. "If you're worried about getting lost I suggest you use the lifeline at your waist and hook onto me.

I'm used to finding my way around—but it's very easy to lose your sense of direction out here. The compass on your sleeve helps some, but not enough, unfortunately." Another flurry of snow obscured Jens, and Howell moved clumsily in the direction he thought would lead to where he had just seen the man.

"I think I had better...."

A red-clad arm reached out of the blue-white emptiness to his right and grabbed his elbow. He had walked right by Jens and had not even seen him. How a revolution could be managed by a very small group was beginning to be only too clear to him. "I do think the lifeline would be best, commander," he said as he fumbled at his waist. Jens was quicker and had the line out and snapped in place before Howell was even sure where it had been. Clearly he had a lot to learn about survival on Mithras. Saying very little, he let Jens lead him across the frozen wasteland toward the mines. He had to take Jens's word for it that that was where they were going. The lieutenant commander could just as easily be leading him into a trap with Kiedron Agata waiting to do in another commandant. Howell mentally composed a letter of resignation for the CCS as Jens pulled him over the icy tundra.

The location of the mine was marked by a dark, slab-sided tower squatting over the grav tube. Howell almost bumped headlong into the tower, and only Jens's tugging on the lifeline saved him from a nasty bruising.

"Ought to put a bleeper on the swiving thing." Howell muttered as Gulimel led him to the entrance lock. "Make a report on that, commander. I want bleepers on every stationary object in the colony. Then we may be able to find things without killing ourselves in the process."

"Lustvogel tried that, sir. Kiedron had them deactivated in a week—all except for the one she had placed in the middle of an active glacier. We had nabs chasing themselves all over the hills for ages. Lost twelve men. It's much safer to make the men understand that they must stick together and never feel too secure out in the open. Standard survival tactics."

"Yes, quite." Howell had an uneasy feeling that almost anything he might come up with would have been tried before and rejected because Kiedron had sabotaged it. He went back to composing his resignation letter and had just about completed it by the time he and Jens reached the bottom of the five-hundred-meter-deep shaft. The grav tube opened out on a maze of rock-lined tunnels, all of them marked with cryptic notations as to direction and degree of slope.

"Don't pay any attention to those, sir. Chanoch did them one night for a lark. Had us really confused for a while. The night shift thought that the day shift had done them and vice versa."

"Chanoch? You mean Kiedron didn't do this bit of mischief?"

"Yes, sir. Ezhno Chanoch is Kiedron's second-in-command. He's a couple of years older than Kiedron, but not as bright. His father's an Outcaver. Watch your head here; the ceilings are low and not very smooth."

The mine was indoors, but no attempt had been made to provide artificial heating. As a result there was ice everywhere and deep pools of slushy water. Howell slipped several times in the first few meters and it was only Jens' surefootedness that saved him. Over Howell's protests, Jens had insisted on retaining the lifeline in the mines. But now the captain was glad of the extra security, though he would not admit it aloud. The ice underfoot wasn't always water. Pockets of frozen carbon dioxide were frequent in the below-freezing temperatures and there was the danger of slipping into a pool of liquid acid or chemical slush left over from the mining machines. Jens pointed out that some of the more liquid pools were the most dangerous and must be avoided at all costs. Howell shivered inside his thermals when Jens told him how quickly the chemicals could strip a man of clothing and flesh, and dissolve his bone to a frothing nothingness.

"Can't something be done?" Howell asked, skirting a particularly deep pool. "People could be killed so easily down here. Confederation safety regs state that—"

"They don't apply here, sir. Our major function is producing more minerals for the Confederation, and if a few colonials die in the process, what of it? They breed quickly." Jens's voice was bitter.

"And I always thought of Hell as being hot," Howell mused. "This is more of a hell than could ever be imagined by mind of man. I would sell my soul for a lake of fire about now. And after I'd warmed myself at it I'd dump about half the CCS into it."

"And the other half, sir?" Jens picked up quickly on the straight line.

"Why, I'd send them to Mithras!"

Laughing, the two men moved slowly down the tunnels toward an area where Jens said a work crew would be.

They could hear the miners long before they were close enough to see them. The mining-bore machines thundered in the narrow tunnels as they ate great chunks out of the stone walls. Light from the glow panels set in the wall was dim and flickery, the panels vibrating to the snarling sound of the drills. Jens and Howell rounded a corner in the tunnel and were almost on top of the mining crew. The group of some two dozen men was packed into the narrow end of the dig. Several of the men were on top of the massive bores while others filled shuttle hoppers with the cut rock. The air vibrated with noise. The men were almost naked even though the temperature hovered at around minus fifteen celsius.

"Do you see why Kiedron and company have the drop on us, sir?" Jens asked. He was still using the hood mike; trying to talk in the deafening proximity of the bore drills would have been an impossibility. Howell noted that the miners used a series of rapid hand motions to communicate. He made a mental note to learn it quickly, as he dodged out of the path of a bore drill traveling in reverse as it built up momentum for its next attack on the end of the tunnel.

The walls were colored a rich blue-gray by veins of ducocite, a mineral vital to the production of data-processing equipment. The Confederation believed in making use of both convicts and whatever resources a planet could produce. The combination of the two had formed the problem that was Mithras. There were none of the original convicts left, but their descendants were still doing the time.

"They must be freezing to death," Howell said to Jens as they watched the miners work. "How did they learn to adjust to the cold?"

"Easy—those that couldn't, died. What you see here is planned evolution. I'm picking up a little of it myself. Living here ten years has made me able to at least tolerate cold, and my children are even better at it than I am. I guess my wife had more to do with that than I did. She has trouble with heat. Put her in a room over zero celsius and she melts."

"Then these people can never leave Mithras!"

"If that were true, we wouldn't have any trouble with recruiters. Actually it's not that bad—it's easier to adjust to heat than to cold. All you have to do is keep the electrolytes balanced and avoid dehydration or heat prostration. I figure it might take one generation to bring these people back to normal, and the kids who get taken to the Academy must be able to adjust pretty well. But the Mithrans wouldn't want it. They love the climate, oddly enough. It's the CCS they hate."

"And I'm the CCS around here." Howell shivered as though a sleam had walked on his grave. "Let's get out of here. The cold…" Howell let it trail off. Even with the thermals a chill was creeping in, and his toes and fingertips were numb.

"Right, follow me. I'll show you the reports on your predecessors and then call in some of the nabs to give you a better picture of what we're up against."

Jens led Howell back down the frosty corridors toward the grav tube, neither of them saying much. Howell was too busy trying to keep warm and Jens seemed preoccupied.

Howell was thinking longingly of a hot bath and some tea, and he devoutly hoped they were close to the tube entrance when Jens stopped in his tracks beside a dark lump along their path. With a half-smothered exclamation, the aide knelt beside the frost-covered mound. Then, getting quickly to his feet, he reached out to pull off Howell's lifeline. "Let's get out of here," he muttered. "Walk slowly but keep moving. The grav tube is just around the next turn. I'll be right behind you, but don't look back." Howell moved ahead at a brisk walk, wondering what had happened. Was this the ambush he had feared? Jens Gulimel could so easily shoot him in the back and dump his body into one of the acid pools—then report him as lost on the tundra. No one would ever know or even care. Jens's comments about Service doctors also applied to Service commandants. Rotten planets got rotten commandants—or men like Howell who would not toe the party line. Such men generally ended up dead. As he turned the corner Howell could hear the sound of a fight behind him. He sensed rather than saw the flash of a laser, then Jens was beside him sprinting for the tube. "Run for it!" he gasped, suiting his actions to his words. Howell was not far behind him. The tube was empty and both men threw themselves into the arched opening and hit the deckplate at the same time. They rode up in silence. At Howell's first attempt to question. Jens quickly shushed him and stood, head tilted, listening for another grav disk rising below them. There was no sound at all from the depths of the mine.

Once on the surface Gulimel signaled over his pocket transmitter for a squad of nabs to meet them at the tower. He motioned to Howell to pull his laser and stand just to the left of the grav tube entrance, while he took up an identical pose on the right side and stood waiting. The mine was still, no sound of anything from the tube, but Jens did not relax his vigilance until the squad of nabs joined them. He had a quick conversation with the squad leader in the hand language and the squad disappeared down the grav tube and into the mine.

"I think we should leave, sir. The nabs will take care of it, and the sooner you're back in the main cave, the better." Howell nodded, too cold to speak.

They reached the cave quickly, Jens half dragging Howell the last few meters to the sealed hatchway. Once inside, Howell stamped his feet to get the circulation back in them and removed his faceplate. The rush of warm air stung his cheeks and neck, and he raised his still-frosted glove to the smarting skin and touched it gingerly.

"I see you know a little about cold," Jens commented approvingly. "The last man in your spot about tore half his cheek off by rubbing too hard after coming indoors."

"I was a skier," Howell said briefly, tugging at his thermals to get them off.

Jens came to his aid and the two of them stripped down to their uniforms. To Howell's surprise his uniform was soaking wet, and one glance at Jens standing like a drowned rat in the ruins of his dress uniform made Howell wonder if he looked as bad.

"Sorry, sir, that's the way they work. The layer of sweat helps insulate your body from the cold. There are some dry clothes through here." Jens led him toward a locker room. "Showers are through that door, but don't get it too hot. Try lukewarm at first." Howell nodded. Stripping off his soggy uniform, he made his way to the showers, shivering with the cold in the room and his own lowered body temperature.

Once back in his office, dressed in a clean uniform and wrapping himself around a mug of tea, Howell looked up at the lieutenant commander standing again in front of his desk.

"Sit down, Gulimel," Howell said in a voice as cold as the outdoors.

"Now, do I get told what all of that was about, or do I just get to play audience around here?"

"Sorry, sir, I didn't want to risk our necks standing around jabbering out there," Jens sat down on the toadstool chair. "I could tell the cold was getting to you and I was afraid Kiedron might get you, too. That was a dead man in the tunnel, sir. A recently dead man in a CCS officer's uniform—one of yours."

"What? How did he get my uniform? Gulimel, I want an explanation!"

"Yes, sir. He was a mine foreman, not well liked. The uniform was probably stolen from your quarters. It had been pulled on over his thermals and was considerably torn in the process. I think it was meant as a warning," Jens concluded dryly.

"And Kiedron Agata?"

"The body had its throat cut—that's the trademark of Kiedron's gang. There were some of her brats hidden down one of the side tunnels, armed with knives and sticks, I managed to wing one of them, I think."

"I want to talk to that squad leader when he gets in—if he gets in."

"He will. Hesslin is well liked by the miners. That's why I called him instead of some of the others. Getting along with the natives—sorry, colonials, is of vital importance here. Captain Lustvogel never learned that, and Kiedron killed him. There are too many of them and not enough Service personnel. We have to learn to get along."

"Like you did?" Howell regretted the remark as soon as he said it. Mithras was already destroying his good sense.

"Possibly." Jens reacted to the remark by folding into himself. His flat blue eyes revealed some of his discomfort. "Hesslin drinks," he said, not looking at Howell. "Ronson snorfed sand and I… I have my wife. If you want to stay sane, Howell, you'd better find something, too." This was the first time Gulimel had used Howell's name and had not called him "sir." Howell writhed mentally at the implied insult.

"I've never been much of a drinker; alcohol and I don't agree too well. I don't care for sand, and I've never met a woman with enough magic in her to keep me interested for long—so shall I take up Kiedron hunting to keep myself amused?" Howell asked in return.

"No good. Captain Lustvogel tried that, and he found her." Jens rose to his feet. "If you will excuse me, sir, I will inform the foreman's widow of her new status. She works in the mines too— like my wife."

"Fine," Howell nodded, and then roughly cleared his throat. "Jens, I'm sorry. I've been a fool."

Jens nodded, and smiled lopsidedly. "Don't write that letter of resignation yet—give yourself some time to build up some real grievances."

"What?" Howell stood up. "How did you know? What are you, a Jug?"

"No, it doesn't take any telepathy to see what you were thinking. It's the same for all you commandants. Only difference is that the others wrote their letters—and it didn't get them off Mithras." With a slight wave of his hand, Jens left the office while Howell pondered whether he had a friend or an enemy in the man.

Making a mental note to look up the lieutenant commander's file, Howell sat down and turned on his viewscreen. The cube with Kiedron's face was still in place. Howell found it much more disturbing than before his trip to the mine. Kiedron killed him. Jens's comment about Lustvogel flashed through Howell's mind. Lustvogel's file would be something to check too. Howell flipped through the cubes on Kiedron until he found the one describing Lustvogel's death. She had ambushed him in cold blood and had cut his throat. A paragraph or two onward made it clear the blood was not so cold, after all. Heinrich Lustvogel had been the man responsible for Tovo Agata's death. The colonist had been killed by the commandant; Kiedron had avenged, and was still avenging, her father's death.

Howell caught himself thinking how big a part Kiedron must have played in Marios Rap's insanity. He had a good suspicion he would soon find out what she had in mind for him. The reign of terror had already begun with the death of the mine foreman dressed in his uniform. Sighing, he shut off the viewscreen and watched the page he had been reading fade into nothingness. He thought of looking for Gulimel or the nab squad leader, and about writing that letter of resignation. Sometimes cowardice was the best way out. But to let a fourteen-year-old girl and some cold drive him away… the fatcats of the CCS would love having him admit failure. He had managed to get as high as he had by not failing. It had been the one thing that had forced the service to do some things his way. It had been his protection against punishment for the beard pulling he so often felt compelled to do. He couldn't lose that protection now. After all, he thought grimly, if I can tame Mithras and the Agata chit, they'll have to give me those admiral's stripes— and maybe even the top spot, eventually: head of the CCS. Howell smiled his best bird of prey smile.

"Kiedron, my love," he said aloud to the empty office, "I am not going to let you get away with this. I'm not like anyone else you've been up against. I'm going to find you and tan your rotten little hide." Howell felt much better, more of a man. A fit product of his training and a potential head of the Confederation Colonial Service. The resignation letter would never be written. He was going to stick it out, stay sane, do his job—and win.

CHAPTER TWO

"Alancia, has he stopped bleeding yet?" Ezhno Chanoch glanced back over his shoulder at the huddled group of seven youngsters gathered around the barely visible shape that was Haldar, stretched out on the floor of the mine shaft. A bloody pool was forming on the rocky floor and trickling in a slushy stream toward Chanoch.

He was responsible for the encounter with the new commandant, and it had not gone well. He held in one hand, with a certain deliberate negligence, the dead mine foreman's laser. Unfortunately, Chanoch had no more idea of how to aim and fire it than would an orangutan—which he closely resembled. It was the first time he had gotten his hands on any weapon more deadly than a vibroblade, and he was reveling in the sense of power it gave him. It was also the only tangible thing to be gained from this raid. Bad luck, he told himself, was the only reason he had missed the commandant. He growled under his breath and pointed the weapon in the direction of the shaft's mouth, hoping someone would come within range so he would be able to kill him.

"Haldar is bleeding buckets. We'd better make tracks for the caves before we're caught." The small girlchild pushed her dirty blonde hair out of her eyes and looked worshipfully at Chanoch.

To Alancia, the red-haired Chanoch was a minor god—a fact he exploited shamelessly.

"Well, I guess you may be right. But I did want to wait for the nabs Papa Jens is likely to send after us. I wish I'd killed the motherjumper." He glared ferociously for Alancia's benefit and waved the laser about. "A commander's first duty is to his troops, though, so I'll put my feelings aside."

"Yeah, and Agata will skin you dead if Haldar snuffs it." A small dark-skinned boy had gotten up from beside the wounded child and moved to a position just behind Chanoch. "You'd better give that laser to Agata, or I'll whistle on you," he added as a warning Chanoch stiffened and stuck out his lower lip. "Ponce, I'll leave you for rat bait if you open your mushbox again. Sure I'm going to give this to Agata—what do you take me for, a fool?"

The expression on Ponce's face showed plainly that this was exactly what he thought of Chanoch, but he shrugged and only repeated Alancia's message. "Haldar is going to snuff it soon, so we'd better zazz back to earth quick. The nabs'll never bother to track us outside." Grumbling under his breath about cowardly brats, Chanoch hand-signalled the rest of the children to carry Haldar; then, taking his place at the front of the procession, he led the way through the maze of tunnels toward an exit. Kiedron had been prepared for any emergency and had made sure that there were more exits and entrances to the mines than were on any nab chart. Her father had started the underground on Mithras and his daughter had been his best pupil. He had also taught her to take advantage of talent wherever she found it. Chanoch had been in training as a miner—a skill that made him very valuable to Kiedron. The route to the exit involved a steady climb upward through level after level of mining tunnels. There were no grav disks here, so the trip toward the surface was slow. Ponce and Alancia were both in their early teens and strong enough to support most of Haldar's weight in an awkward two-plus carry. The younger children took turns helping with the load while Chanoch did nothing to ease the burden for anyone.

Instead, he worried about the reception he'd get from Kiedron Agata. Granted, the harassment was by her orders, and she would feel no loss over the dead mine foreman; but she rarely tolerated sloppiness. Chanoch had a nagging suspicion he had been sloppy.

The last leg of the journey involved climbing through a tunnel half-filled with mining waste—a task resulting in a more than normal share of skinned knees and bruises for everyone. Haldar had passed out soon after being shot, so he was spared the worst of the jolting. His wounds had been bound up with Alancia's shirt, leaving her bare above her ragged trimslax. Her slim adolescent body glimmered in the dim light from the wall panels as she trudged along behind Chanoch. Ponce kept up a low muttered commentary on the state of the passageway and what all of this was probably doing to Haldar's innards.

The mouth of the tunnel was partially blocked, requiring the children to leave one at a time. Chanoch ordered Ponce to put Haldar down and check that the surface was clear of nabs.

"Why don't you go see? I'm bagged from all this toting." Ponce was struggling with the limp body, helping Alancia make the wounded boy as comfortable as possible.

"Because I'm in charge of this expedition, and as commander it's important that I be able to lead us back to the caves. You couldn't carry me too; I'm too big for you to manage."

"And what if I buy it? Would you just leave me here?" Ponce's voice rose to a squeal of indignation. "I'm a load myself, so tell me, what'll you do if I run smack into a nab squad?"

"I'll use this on them," Chanoch waved the laser under Ponce's nose.

"While you guys were slumping along, I figured out how to use this here weapon and I think I could get to be real good with it."

"And I'm to be the one to find out how good?" Ponce's voice dripped sarcasm. "I'll take the look-see, but I'll also take the laser." Ponce's hand shot out and snagged the weapon. "After all, if it took you the better part of two hours to figure this out I'd probably manage it in a minute or two." Before Chanoch could do more than sputter, Ponce was gone, his snakelike body slithering its way to the mine opening.

The surface was clear—or comparatively so. The heavy fogs that were a feature of Mithras obscured everything beyond a meter or two. There could be a whole army on the tundra and Ponce might not see it. But he would hear it. His senses told him the area was safe, so after tucking the weapon into the waistband of his ragged trimslax, he made his way back to the concealed group.

"All clear. The nabs are beating the slush out by the north quad but I think we can glide them without being noticed."

"Right. I want everyone on the quiet from here on." Chanoch knelt on the dirt floor and scratched a few lines into the soil with one grubby fingernail. "See, here's the cave and here are the nabs. We got to weasel-walk, but not coming any closer than a fog to them. Alancia, do you want to lead a yahoo run up into the hills to distract them?" Alancia pushed her hair out of her face and considered Chanoch's suggestion. She was feeling very proud that he had the faith in her to lead the nabs on a chase all over the tundra. But part of her was not convinced that was what Kiedron Agata would have wanted her to do.

"Don't be a stupid," Ponce snapped. "If Alancia plays hide and creep with the nabs, who's going to help with Haldar? You?" he challenged Chanoch.

"No. I'm the one who'll lead you back to the caves. I can't be burdened down while I'm thinking. I have to be responsible since the rest of you can't manage it. Skip the yahoo run—we'll just duck them. But it would have been fun."

Ponce snorted and went to arrange the carry they would use to pass the unconscious Haldar over the rocks to the entrance. Utilizing a bucket-brigadelike motion, Haldar was transported to the open air. Alancia shivered at the first burst of wind, then seemed to steady herself for the trip.

Chanoch, with the only heavy jacket in the group, made no move to offer it to her. It had been part of the load stolen from the new commandant's luggage and he felt a certain pride in its bright color and fancy braiding. He was not about to give it up to anyone—except maybe Kiedron Agata.

The temperature on the surface was well below freezing, a fact the rag-tag band ignored. Even Alancia, her nipples turning stiff and blue with the cold, accepted it as a normal part of her life. She pressed her body closer to Haldar to conserve her own heat and to protect the child from the wind.

Plodding after Chanoch, the group made its way across a tractless tundra. Roads would have been useless on Mithras. As fast as they could be built, the snow would have covered them and obliterated every trace that they had ever existed. Chanoch used his nose and ears, plus the conditioned homing sense inherent in most natives of Mithras, to lead them back to safety.

They sensed two squads of nabs along the way and passed them without the troops ever knowing they were in the vicinity. Keeping close to the ground, they moved in a deliberately broken, shuffle-slide movement that would not carry on the wind as anything more than random noise. Kiedron had learned from the senior Agata. The cave in use at this time was hidden in a low ridge of hills. Its entrance was blocked by a curtain of ice, and almost invisible if you were not positive of its location. The ice had been formed by the children pouring water and mine waste over the hillside until the proper effect was achieved. Even if the nabs had found the cave it would have been dismissed as an abandoned mine shaft and probably given a very perfunctory search—which was what Kiedron was counting on.

The children moved around the rusting mining tools scattered at the entrance, and Chanoch signaled the young guard hidden on a lip of ice over the tunnel leading to the cave. The child, grinning like a gargoyle, watched them pass under his vantage point and then gave a half-smothered exclamation at the sight of Haldar being carried in.

"Hey, has he snuffed it? Agata isn't going to like that."

"Hush your jaw rattling," Chanoch ordered." Of course he's still good for a battle or two. Do you think we'd have taken this much trouble with a stiff?" Ghanoch turned and motioned his cavalcade forward. Ponce stayed just long enough in view of the guard child so that he could see him let go of Haldar with one hand and make an obscene gesture at Chanoch's back. The child giggled and resumed his gargoyling.

The main cave was a low-pitched room with no signs of any improvements on nature. Agata and company had neither the manpower nor the need to dome every cave they lived in. Such effete actions were for nabs, not the children of Mithras. Their home caves had been similarly cold and they had no desire to change that. Bags of food and piles of clubs and firewood littered the corners of the cave. The food was either begged or stolen, the wood patiently gathered in Mithras's snowbound forests. There were no knives in these heaps. Knives were too valuable to treat so casually. Any child possessing such a weapon cherished it by day and slept with it at night. Possession of a knife made one a warrior and, consequently, important. Chanoch wore two knives habitually, a style that Ponce scorned as being ostentatious. If Chanoch couldn't pin someone or something with the first knife he'd have very little chance to use the second. Life was a very harsh teacher in the milieu these children moved in, and they thrived on it. Those who didn't thrive were dead or deported. Alancia and Ponce went to bed Haldar down and look for the first aid kit. Kiedron had taught most of her charges all she had learned from the Colonial Service doctor and, in the process, had turned out some fairly competent healers. Necessity had made this imperative. They could not take the risk of seeking help from the colonists or any other adult. Sometimes an injured child would be returned to his or her original home, but there was too great a risk of discovery in that to do it very often. Chanoch had paid no further attention to the wounded boy. He was too busy wandering around the cave and telling the group of twenty or so youngsters present about how brave he had been on the mine raid. When he asked about Agata he was told she was out on a reconnaissance trip looking for a new cave to hide in should the new commandant get eager to start hunting them down.

"Ho," Chanoch puffed out his cheeks in an exaggerated show of bravado, "we don't have a thing to worry about that way. You shoulda seen him jump when Papa Jens found a body dressed up in the commandant's clothes. I thought I'd split a gut watching them scramble to get out of the mine. He's mouse liver like the rest of the CCS. I almost killed him today, but my aim was a little off. I was using a laser that was a bit different than the ones I'm used to."

"When you get done bragging, Jason says Agata wants the supplies checked and bagged for transporting." Ponce had slipped up behind Chanoch in time to hear him blathering about the laser and his dark face reflected exactly what he thought of Chanoch.

"You take care of it. I have more important things to do," Chanoch replied loftily. "And by the way, where is my laser?"

"I gave it to Jason to pack with the rest of the weapons—and since when did it become your laser? We had a talk about that in the mine and you said—"

"I know, I know, I'm going to show it to Agata. But she'll be so pleased with how I ran things that she should give it to me. After all, I ran that raid and I am second around here."

"I've never heard Agata say that. But she did say you were supposed to check out the supplies— something about the duties of a commander, I think."

Chanoch's ears turned red and he stamped away muttering about upstart know-it-alls.

"I guess things didn't go so good, huh?" A younger teenage girl with a slightly Oriental cast to her face looked up from where she had been sitting with her back to the cave wall. In her hands was a coil of macramelike rope.

Ponce laughed harshly. "Chieng, if you had only been there! Chanoch made a rat's ass of himself. I thought he was going to blow his own stupid head off with that laser. He managed to fire off one shot, but the way it bounced around he could have hit any of us before he'd hit a nab."

"What's Agata going to say? I'll want to be in on the firing squad."

"No such luck; she still needs that clod. But just you wait until we get a few more young miners on our side—then it's goodbye, Chanoch!"

"And hello, Ponce?" Chieng smiled up at him, fluttering her eyelashes in an exaggerated gesture of admiration.

"Could be—it just could be." Ponce swaggered away, his hands tucked into the belt covering the bulge in his clothing made by a concealed laser.

CHAPTER THREE

"One week on this cold storage of a planet, and I've seen nothing but infocubes." Howell, with Jens beside him, was trying to make some small amount of sense out of the late Marios Rap's files.

"Oh, come on, Burian. That's not fair! I've given you a complete tour of the CCS caves, let you check the supplies with me and even taught you how to put on a coldsuit without breaking it or your arms." Howell was forced to acknowledge the truth of his aide's version of the past week. "Yes, but ever since the death of that mine foreman I've had the feeling you're keeping me in cotton wool. I am supposed to be commanding something around here, aren't I?"

"Steady, fire-eater. Your time to bite something will come yet. Meanwhile, back to the files."

"I joined the Service for adventure, not to be turned into a bloody file clerk. My problem is that I believed all those recruitment posters." Howell picked up another deck of cubes, making loud meek groaning sounds at its weight and awkwardness.

"See why I didn't want the job?" Jens shifted his weight on the small stool and eyed Howell's more ample chair with interest. "Any time you want to trade seats, you can have this hemorrhoid special."

"I've requisitioned a new chair, but it wouldn't fit in here. You're just going to have to make do. I'll give you the chair if you'll take the position that goes with it."

"No way! Too much work for a block of blubber like me. It takes one of you skinny types to stand all the pressures and the running around. You work about a seventeen, eighteen hour shift in here. Me, I get to head for the Homecave after only a reasonable ten or fifteen hours. Such is the advantage of being second-in-command on a CCS post."

"My heart bleeds for you every time I go to my broom closet of a sleeping quarters. Remember that next time you bed down in your cave."

"Don't worry; if I forget, my wife reminds me." Jens finished sorting a deck of green color-coded cubes and stacked it on the desk. "I'm a real home boy. Jest settin', sleepin' and filin', that's me."

"But was it really necessary to keep every file in triplicate? I've seen at least two other copies of this report on cave fungus production in the last hour alone, and the gods know how many more times I'll come across it."

"That's Mithras for you. I thought it was kinda foolish myself when I first ran into it under Granthum. But Rap was the worst about the files—he insisted on six copies of everything."

"So that means I've got three more to go?"

"Not likely. The CCS copy and the one for the Central Council go out each month on the ore-ship. That leaves four on planet. Unless the captain of the ship didn't think getting CCS mail out was important. In that case there's six—or less, depending on when Kiedron last burglarized your office. Then you might not have a single copy of anything left. Once she even gave us some reports her father had dummied up in return for our own—that was a fun month. But don't worry if you're missing something. Most reports are nothing more urgent than a list of how many times in the previous month the commandant was almost killed. Rap was fond of those. I think he did up six copies of his suicide note out of habit."

"You're a very funny man." Howell's neck was buried in his shoulders in a gesture Jens had come to recognize as a sign that the commandant was amused—but not much.

"If I don't find what I'm looking for, one or the other of us will be out there stark naked, doing calisthenics on an iceberg. And I don't want it to be me. Now I was briefed on this mess and I've read the official reports on Mithras—and they're a crock. I was hoping to find the real stuff here in Rap's mare's nest, but no such luck. I'm depending on you to fill me in on what the hell happened to do in three commandants in little more than a year."

"Ah, I was hoping to hold off on the history lesson a bit longer, but since you asked…" Jens got to his feet and stretched. "I suppose it is part of your survival training." He settled himself on the edge of Howell's desk and propped his spine against the wall.

"Now, when I got here ten years ago, Tad Granthum had your spot, and other than being an incompetent fool he wasn't too bad as a commandant. He had a thing going with a woman in the Homecave, and for several years things bumbled along. Then his woman was killed in a mine cave-in, and Granthum went ape. He took to roaming the caves and taking any woman that caught his eye. He wasn't too careful about whose wife or daughter she might be, and so Granthum had an accident in one of the mines."

"I read the report on that one. Seems that Tovo Agata was the one blamed for the 'accident.' I'm surprised Agata was able to get away with it."

"It was only fair. One of the women Granthum raped was Agata's wife. She dived into a waste-pool when she learned she was pregnant by Granthum. She only had one child by Tovo and I guess that was all she wanted—his kids or no one's. She wasn't too stable, I'll have to admit, but she sure was a beauty! Not many of our women would have done that; but then, rape isn't too common in the Caves. A man could die for less than just touching another man's woman without her consent. They call it Caver Justice—it's harsh, but effective. Poor Gia, not very bright, but too beautiful to die that way."

"Was this before or after Granthum's death?"

"Before. The Service has a lot to answer for when it comes to the Agata family. If I'd been in Kiedron's place I'd probably be doing the same things she is. Particularly after Lustvogel got here.

"The CCS sent him to Mithras because he had a good rep about calming down unruly colonies. His calming consisted of trying to terrorize the lot of us, nabs and Cavers alike. He started the practice of outcaving people who wouldn't do things his way. That's why we have over two hundred of our best men living like animals out in the old mine shafts. We have to watch out for them and Kiedron as well. It's damned unwise to set up too many factions that all hate you. That was Lustvogel's mistake. I never saw such a man for doing so many things wrong. He did in the older Agata and then he had Kiedron to face. Standard justice on Mithras, Burian. None of us blamed her a bit—in fact, some of the Cavers claimed they had an even better right since Lustvogel had made Outcavers of their kin. None of us were about to go after her for killing a man we all hated."

"Did you have anything to do with Lustvogel's death?" Howell's voice was slow and soft, but the question hung there in the room like a grenade with its pin pulled.

"That's an interesting question, sir. Do you really think I'd be fool enough to answer it? If I said 'yes,' I could be court-martialed, and if I said

'no,' would you really believe me?" Jens shifted his position on the desk to face Howell.

"I had to ask. Since I first arrived here, one thing has been going through my head—why are you still alive when three other men are dead?

I need an answer so I'll know if I'm going to end up just as dead. Everyone has a price, Jens. I want to know what yours is." Howell knew he was pushing his aide badly, and probably doing him a great disservice; but Howell had no faith in loyalty for loyalty's sake. He knew his own breaking point and he needed to know what it was for Jens Gulimel.

"I hoped you'd get to understand Mithras better than any of the clowns before you, and I think you're making a good start." Jens looked up at the cracks in the ceiling and exhaled softly. "Yes, I have a price, My wife and children. As long as I'm alive she gets a light job and my kids aren't available for conscription. That's probably why she married me. Lots of women take up with nabs because they know it will make life easier for them and their children. But my staying alive is the key to their safety. Anything that threatens that will have to be dealt with by any means I can. But don't worry, Burian. I like you—and if I have to sell you out I'll give you fair warning."

"Good. And I'll do the same for you. If I have to throw you to the CCS

wolves, I'll warn you first. I'm not like anyone you've had here before. I'm not incompetent, I don't go in for killing anything that moves—and as for Marios Rap's manifold stupidities—I knew Rap several years back on Burson's World, and he was a frootloop then. We had bets going on how soon he'd go round the bend on us. They shouldn't have ever sent him to a powderkeg like Mithras—the poor sod.

"But as for myself, I'm a mean, sneaky mother-jumper who gets things done my way. I know where a lot of CCS skeletons are hiding. I know every dirty trick in the book and have used most of them. But I am honest, in my own way. I believe in creative honesty—not all the truth, not all the time, but always consistent and not too badly bent. You play fair with me and I do the same for you. But nothing is as important to me as I am."

"That's true of most people," Jens said. "But most of them can't or won't admit it. What's your price? You asked for mine; I think I have a right to know what yours is."

"Power. I want to be the head of the Confederation Colonial Service, but on my terms and without licking one pair of CCS boots on the way up. I'm the best man they've got for the job, if they'd only wake up and realize it; instead they sent me here. I could get the whole CCS working right by my methods, and I think I could do it without making anyone too unhappy. Mithras, for one, would be less of a hell-hole, that's for sure."

"But you wouldn't be helping Mithras for Mithras's sake, would you?"

"Altruism is a crock. Any man who says he only works for the good of his fellow beings is a fool, a liar or a crook. But a well-run Mithras is proof that I can do my job and any other job I may want. It's for the good of both Mithras and myself that we work well together." Jens nodded, relief written clearly on his face. "Good, I can buy that—now, shall we get back to the files?"

"First tell me how Kiedron manages to find out what's going on around here. She can't be getting anything from these." Howell tossed the cube on food production at Jens; he caught it easily.

"Nearly everyone you come in contact with is a source of information to her. She doesn't push people harder than they can stand, and she does hide their kids for them. So they feel ratting on you is a small price to pay in the way of loyalty. I even had to use her to find out what Lustvogel was going to do. He didn't always tell me. Real paranoid flippo, that one."

"Could he have been a little frightened over your talks with Kiedron working both ways?"

"Oh, he knew that! He'd even bargained with her over some things—she helped keep the Outcavers in line—in between the times he was trying to kill her. That's how things work on Mithras."

"Hurrah, and down the rabbit hole." Howell shook his head in disbelief.

"I've been on a lot of crazy planets in my day, but this one…" He threw up his hands and let them drop for lack of a truly meaningful gesture describing Mithras. "I've been going over the records and it seems like there should be a lot more colonists than the barely seven thousand on record. Has Kiedron managed to hide that many kids—or is someone faking the population count?"

"Yes and no. There are some Outcavers working the older mines and blackmarketing; that fouled up the ore counts, but not too much. Kiedron has at most a hundred to a hundred and fifty kids salted away. More than that would be impossible to keep supplied. She gets them back into the regular work force as soon as they look old enough. And yes, the records are inaccurate, but not always deliberately. Some Cavers have their children in private rather than using the CCS clinic, and those births go unrecorded. Death records for anyone are hard to get, too. Many of the colonists don't like the CCS recycling program—and some of the Outcavers, we hear, practise cannibalism. Our worst problem is the Academy recruiters. They're like locusts, swarming in here and picking off the best and brightest of our children. I suppose they think they're doing the best thing for the Confederation, but they're killing Mithras. The average intelligence quotient is falling...."

"But it's that way on every colony world," Howell pointed out. "None of them have complained about it nearly this much."

"Other colonies have plenty of kids and plenty of room to spread out in," Jens pointed out. "Life on Mithras is concentrated in these caves, and every child is precious. Then, too, the Mithrans are a lot tougher than most other colonials, because their life is harder. Did you know that the birth rate is falling along with the intelligence quotient? Not many women want to have children for the Confederation to steal. And speaking about that, we're due for some trouble very soon around here. An Academy recruiter is due on planet with the next oreship. I'd bet Kiedron is out in the Homecave rounding up children right now; that's the standard time for her to act up."

"Well send some nabs out there to stop her. By the Mother of All, can't we just once come out ahead of her?"

"I've already taken care of that. There's a squad checking several of the families out. But Kiedron generally rolls right over the nabs. They're afraid of her." Jens picked up a cube and toyed with it. "I am, too, when it's right on the line. I have a family out there. What if she swings a deal giving the recruiters my kids in return for the ones belonging to someone a bit more helpful to her?"

"She really knows where to bite, doesn't she? I want those nabs doubled. Try to get ones without families—some of the newer lot that arrived with me. Put them on shift and a half, if necessary. She'll get those children over my dead body."

"Your dead body would be quite easy to arrange. You and I are not the only ones with a going price around here. The game is called survival. Wait until you know more about Mithras, Burian. You might decide Kiedron is right—you said yourself you don't always play it the Confederation way."

"I've been thinking along those lines too, and the cubes prove you're right—the genetic base on Mithras is being weakened. But the idea of that little twit—hell, I don't know what I'm doing here that will help or hinder. But I am counting on you to teach me, if Kiedron lets me live so long."

"I'm glad you feel that way. For the first time since I got to this ice block I'm beginning to feel some sort of hope for it." Jens unfolded from the edge of the desk. "Want to do a supply inspection with me, or shall I give you more lessons in hand-speak?"

"Both; I can watch what the men moving the supplies are saying and learn while I inspect."

Jens looked away. "I've been teaching you the basic vocabulary—what I can of it. Most of the words are obscene, and some of the things the workers might say about you wouldn't be too flattering to your ego. Then too, it might not be wise to let people know you can read them. Some folks will say the damnedest things in front of someone if they think he can't understand what's being said."

"Right." Howell rubbed his chin thoughtfully He was growing a beard to help keep out the cold, and it itched. "Let's get started on the lesson, and this time I want the dirty parts first. No doubt they are the ones that get the most use." Howell's eyes gleamed. "I also need to be filled in about current customs involving the womenfolk. If you know those two things you can survive long enough to learn more. Insulting a woman or a being's swear-by gods are the quickest ways to an early grave on most colony worlds."

Jens nodded, his face split by a wide grin. Smiling came easy to the lieutenant commander—but then, Howell reflected bitterly, he wasn't the commandant of Mithras.

"That's not a bad idea, but let's stick to the life-and-death ones for now. Hold your right hand like so. That's the sign for 'fire in the mines.'" Jens demonstrated by raising his hand and shaking it vigorously. "With practise you'll be able to not only say 'fire,' but with the proper wrist action show exactly where it is and how bad."

"Like this?" Howell held up his own hand and waved it limply about. Jens collapsed in belly-jiggling guffaws. "You've just said that triplets were born to an eighty-year-old man in the middle of an oil fire!" he explained when he could recover his breath. "Now, slower, and watch the wrist action." Jens again made the motion for "fire in the mines," and Howell ineptly tried to copy it.

"If you go into giggling hysterics every time I open my hand, we'll never get anywhere," the commandant complained. "I've never met such a man for giggling. Look, Gulimel, how's this?" Howell held his wrist flat and wiggled his fingers like seaweed.

"Better, but that's a pretty small blaze. Let's try for something more like this." His hand moved in a clockwise motion as he shook his fingers in a shallow arc.

"Ah! I think I've got it now." But before Howell could raise his hand to demonstrate, the door dilated and Hesslin and a subsquad commander, Hiru Senjaro, walked into the room.

"Sir, Kiedron's in the west village." Hesslin leaned on the edge of the desk casually, and Howell could see he had stopped to change uniforms after coming in from outside. The subsquad leader was still in his coldsuit, but obviously uncomfortable in the warmth of the office. "We saw her with five children in tow leaving the Pleski place about half an hour ago. I think she's heading for the north end of the village. There are some more kids there."

"Hesslin," Howell asked in as reasonable a tone as he could manage,

"why didn't you call from the Caves when you spotted her?"

"Sir, the lines were cut and our hood mikes would have been static prone with the storm out there, so I decided to come here myself."

"None of the Cavers would flash a message here for us. They were too busy getting their kids tucked away. They know a recruiter is coming." The subsquad leader was new to Mithras and obviously annoyed with his superior's methods.

"Don't bug it, Senjaro," Jens said. "That's the third time this week the lines have been down. It's nothing new, so letting it get to you catches no Kiedrons. Hesslin, get the crew working on the repairs. Senjaro, you take me to where you last saw Kiedron. Put a shift at the north sector air lock while you're at it. Your men are new to this and it's time they saw some action."

"Come on, Jens! Let's not stand here jabbering. Move on out!" Howell was out from behind his desk and pushing his way through the overcrowded room toward the door.

"I'm not sure you should go on this one, Burian. Senjaro and I can handle it ourselves. I've wanted him to get a crack at Kiedron."

"And I want a crack at her, too! Do I have to make an order of it?" Howell danced with impatience in the doorway, making short, abrupt dashes from room to hall. The door's dilation effect was fluttering from his nervous pacing. "Come on! We don't have the time to argue over it." Howell was completely in the hall at last, and the door closed behind him with a sort of resigned sigh.

"He's right, Commander Gulimel." Hiru Senjaro nodded in the direction of the door. "I feel the same way; and if we don't get a move on ourselves, our hyperactive commandant will be halfway to the Caves without us."

Hesslin nodded agreement. "Let the snow-eater get his mouth full, Jens. It might teach him something."

Jens and Senjaro caught up with Howell at the coldsuit cases. The commandant was struggling to suit up by himself and making a botch of it. Senjaro grinned at Jens and went to Howell's aid.

"I'll do it myself!" Howell waved him away. "If I'm going to make it here I have to do things on my own. Coddling makes for a low survival rate on any planet."

"True." Jens had suited up with practised efficiency and was signaling Senjaro to open the door lock. "But those who foul up, die. Mithras gives no credit for just trying. And this is no time to be playing games."

"It's no game." Howell slammed his faceplate into position. "You've made it clear that this is no emergency action, and that my succeeding here is based on how well I can cope with things as they are. I intend to cope, and that way succeed."

Jens nodded sharply and did not answer. His expression, before the faceplate had hidden it, had been one of mild annoyance. The lock open, the three men stepped out into the cold of Mithras.

"There's a sled station about two meters to our left." Jens snapped the lifeline into place connecting himself and Howell. The commandant, pleased with one victory, made no complaint about the safety precaution. Senjaro had disappeared into the sleet-filled whiteness. Howell heard his voice, tinny over the earphones, announce that he had found the sled.

"This way." Jens tugged on the line. They bumped into the snow-scratched bubble protecting the sled, and Howell stood with nagging impatience while Senjaro and Jens cleared away the ice from the locks and opened the bubble.

Howell was sure he could have walked to the north end of the caves in the time it took the two men to put the sled into operation. He was forced by the overcrowding inside to ride over the jet hump, and the heat rising through his heavy suit was decidedly uncomfortable. He tried to ignore it, knowing he would soon be far more uncomfortable from the cold of the surface. He felt as though he were slowly smothering in the bulk of his own and the other men's suits. The small dome of the sled seemed walled with red puffy wads of warm fabric.

The sled skimmed over the permafrost, through the blinding whiteness. Howell had no idea how Jens was able to pilot blind with only the most sketchy of instrument panels. Senjaro, noticing Howell's bewilderment as the commandant tilted his helmet to look alternately out of the clear dome and back at the pilot's chair, decided to explain.

"No point in using much instrumentation out here, sir. The storms would make garbage of most of it and sabotage would make anything left undependable. After being on Mithras a while I'm told you learn how to fly one of these by feel alone."

"And if I can't manage that?"

"You stay in your office," Jens said abruptly, "like Rap did, and go mad. It's learn or else, out here."

Howell turned his head to try to see something of Jens's face. His cold tone and obvious disapproval were unsettling. Worry about the deaths of the last three commandants rose like a ghost in Howell's mind. He could see nothing but the vaguest outlines of the lieutenant commander's features, and he hurriedly fought down the ghost. "I'd rather take my chances out here. Going off the deep end has no enchantment for me." He knew his voice was filled with false bravado, but he could feel the kick of adrenalin rising in his body. At last, some action! Courage, real this time, was surging through his body. He felt ready to take on a regiment of Agatas. At last he was going to have a chance at Kiedron hunting, and all the disapproving aides in the universe couldn't dissuade him now. The sled dipped lower and banked toward the end of the low hills that marked the termination of the Homecave. The sled touched down, its repellor field digging shallow troughs in the ice below. Howell could see the bulk of the rock cliffs in front of them, and in between the flurries of sleet could make out the massive air lock.

He started to climb out of the sled after Senjaro, but Jens put out a hand to restrain him. "Stay here, sir. Hiru and I know these caves and you don't. We can't be hunting for you and Kiedron at the same time." Howell started to protest as Jens unsnapped the lifeline. "I could stay fastened to you…"

"He's right, sir," Senjaro said reluctantly. "You would be safer here, and much more useful, too. The caves double back on each other something crazy, and Kiedron might make it past both of us and our nabs. But this way, with you out here, we might have a chance to capture her. The air lock is the only way out and you're guarding it."

"Very pretty. I get to play sahib while you two beat the bush. Only thing is, I remember your orders, Jens, about a shift being stationed right inside the air lock. It was a good try, Senjaro, and I appreciate it. Politeness will get you almost anywhere. You win, both of you. I'll stay with the sled and try to believe I'm useful out here."

"Good." Jens got out of the sled and moved through the drifts toward the air lock. "Don't leave the sled," he called over his hood mike. "If Kiedron does get past the guards, stun her down. The kids with her aren't likely to do much without her giving the orders. If you miss, don't go after her. You'll get very lost, very quickly. If we don't get the Agata this time, I'll call out several squads to comb the hills. She can't go far with a bunch of brats. But if I do, we'll have everyone and his cousin on the mikebands. That much noise would make it impossible to track one man—so stay put!"

Senjaro and Jens disappeared into the open air lock and closed it behind them. Howell was left alone, for the first time, on the open plain of Mithras colony.

He had intentionally left the dome of the sled open to keep his view clear. The defrosting equipment in the sled would work only marginally if the sled was not moving. Howell saw this as one more CCS blunder. A sled could have been designed to maintain a comfortable environment if stalled, but such a sled would have been more expensive and complex. It didn't matter to the fatrats back at central if a stranded nab froze to death because there was no way to safely keep his sled warm until he was rescued. The way the sled was designed, any use of heating equipment would cause the sled to sink into the melting slush below it—a course of action that was plainly a form of suicide.

Howell burrowed into his suit and waited.

He felt his feet go numb first and then the tips of his fingers. The suits are as marginally designed as the sleds, he grumbled to himself. Time seemed to have stopped, and he could not get to his watch under the thick glove. Nothing in the white emptiness around him was real—only the cold. He could see the air lock only in brief flashes between the falling snow. The wind was dying and nothing moved in the vicinity of the sled. Howell yawned and felt the adrenalin leaching out of his system. He cursed himself for being an impetuous fool.

The slow falling of the snow stopped and the sky seemed to lighten. Visibility in the pale, golden light was better than Howell had ever seen in his brief time on Mithras. The hilltops were touched with mist only at the highest ridges. The low horseshoe of hills that made up the colony was clearly visible. The plain sparkled in the almost magical light. Howell was enchanted by the phenomenon and did not realize it only signaled the beginnings of a howling blizzard. He turned his head to see the full panorama of his new command and, in that magical moment, found himself facing Kiedron.

There was no mistaking her. She was so close to the sled that Howell felt he could reach out and touch her. She was shorter than he had expected, and prettier. Her hair shimmered and was touched with snowflakes like a crown of lace. She was dressed in a pair of tattered trimslax and a dark green parka he recognized as one of his own. Her rosy face was sweet and touched by the sunlight, her mouth a round "O" of surprise. They looked at each other for what seemed later like hours, then she turned and ran across the, plain toward the hills of the mines. She stopped once to wave at him, and, dreamlike, Howell waved back. He had been stunned by the sudden appearance of the girl and the fact that she was alone in this fairy-tale setting with the light reflecting off her upturned face. Pulling himself back together, he cursed himself for blatant stupidity. The elf-child he had stared at like an awestruck peasant was the most dangerous person on this planet.

Yelling, he jumped out of the sled and fell to his knees. Firing off a bolt from his stungun, he knew he was too far out of range.

Howell stumbled after the girl, firing as he ran.

She swooped smoothly over the ice like a deer while he slogged along behind. The air was filled with shining crystals of light and the snow glittered around him.

The adrenalin was back.

Ignoring his cold hands and feet, he trailed the girl. She was all that he could think of. Jens's warnings were forgotten in the thrill of the hunt. It was going to be so easy to bring down the elusive child who had destroyed three commandants before him.

Almost at once he found himself regretting the capture. He wanted to hang onto those few fragments of time when the two of them had looked at each other and there had been nothing of hunter and hunted between them. He wanted to see her face as it had been: young, childlike. The storm hit with a sudden roar of hail on his helmet. Visibility was lost in an instant. The cold, wet sleet again covered the tundra of Mithras. Howell thought he heard the echoes of a mocking, elfin laugh in the sound of the wind brushing by him. He was alone, somewhere out in the tundra, and Kiedron had led him here to die.

CHAPTER FOUR

The wind and snow lashed at him as Howell fought to keep his footing. He thought he had been running in a straight line from the sled, and his compass verified that. If he could keep from deviating from that line there was more of a chance he would be found. The winds would swiftly cover any traces of his path; his main worry was that the cold would kill him before he could be located. His only hope was in conserving his body heat and energy; for that, he had to stop walking.

The tundra was not perfectly flat. Hillocks and ravines crisscrossed the valley. Such a variation could save his life. The wind knocked him to his knees, and he decided it might be safer to stay as low to the ground as possible while searching for some shelter. Then too, he was none too sure he could manage to stand up again and had no wish to find out he was right.

His slow, creeping progress was causing a snowbank to form around him, and this, he realized, might save him. Shoving at the snow, he pushed through the top crust and found a pocket of softer snow. He dug deeper, the heat from his suit icing the edges of his pseudocave. Doglike, he shoveled the snow out behind him until he was covered by a thick white blanket. The winds screamed overhead and ruffled the snow covering him. He knew, in time, his layer of insulation would be scored away by the blizzard. But it might last long enough for his needs. He wrapped his arms and legs tightly to his body and rolled up into the fetal position. Relaxing as much as possible, he breathed shallowly and waited.

Jens, fearing Howell would have taken his orders to stay with the sled too literally, had dashed out into the storm, only to find the sled empty. He had taken the risk of going out into a blizzard for the sole purpose of rescuing Howell. Finding him gone was a shock. Jens slogged his way back to the air lock, but the guards swore that no one had come in or out while Jens was outside. He was sure then that Howell had tried to make it to the air lock when the storm broke, but had failed to reach it. Men had died before on Mithras only centimeters away from safety. It was only too easy to get lost out on the tundra. When the storm passed, Jens would send out a search party to find the commandant's body and take it to the recycling plant.

Resigning himself to the loss of what might have been a good commandant, Jens returned to his home grotto to sit out the blizzard with his family. This one might last for days, and no work would be possible in such a storm.

Howell dozed and curled himself tighter into his snow cave. Some of the top crust had thinned, but he had dug deeper and was almost warm in his shelter. At intervals he woke to check the snow covering him. He flexed his arms and legs to prevent stiffness and went back to a sleep that was filled with dreams of Kiedron—disturbing dreams of an angelic child mocking him across the cold plain.

Energy conservation was his prime concern— that and keeping warm. There was a hard wall at his back. It was either hard-packed ice or rock. It was impossible to tell which, but its only purpose was to keep out the wind. Howell was grateful for it, whatever it was.

Thirst was a problem. With all the ice and snow around him, Howell still did not dare to open his faceplate. The resulting loss of heat would do him more harm than his thirst. His toes were frostbitten and he could not move his fingers in his gloves. In between naps, he cursed the Service for not equipping their coldsuits with some form of high energy liquid supplies. Glucose, vitamins anything was possible—damn the CCS!

He heard the winds grow quiet overhead, but was not sure how much time had passed. He was too cold to move and feared he would permanently lose the use of his feet. He tried not to think of dying or of not being found. He had to believe he was being looked for. If he stopped hoping, there was no need to go on fighting. His burning thirst made him risk a small crack open in the faceplate; the resulting melted snow helped a little, but he shivered from the increased cold inside his suit. He had to be found!

At first he thought he had only dreamed the sound, as he had been dreaming the images of Kiedron over and over when she had stood looking at him across the plain. He shook his head to clear it. The cold made his mind seem as numb as his fingers. Then he realized it was a voice, the sound was real. Opening his dry mouth, he tried to make his swollen tongue form words. The only sound was a dry croak.

"Thad, Hiru. Someone's out here in the snow!" It was a voice Howell recognized as Hesslin's. They must have been out looking for Kiedron, too. Howell tried again to speak. His croaking was louder, and he moved his stiffened arms and legs to signal where he was. His head burst through the crust of ice over his hiding place, but the air around him was filled with swirls of snow. He cried out again and heard answering voices that seemed to be closer. Out of the snow three bulky red forms were moving toward him. He waved an arm and then fell back into the snow. His head swam with the effort of moving and the pain in his fingers made him sick. He could feel his body being dragged out of the snow and strong arms around him. "By the Mother! It's the commandant." Senjaro's voice seemed to come to him at a great distance as he fainted in the men's arms.

Howell came to at the CCS cave entrance as Senjaro, Hesslin and Thad were stripping off his coldsuit. "You were a lucky devil," Hesslin was saying as Howell tried to focus his eyes.

"Water!" His voice was cracked and hardly more than a whisper. Hesslin held up his head as Thad Benin slowly poured warm water down his throat.

"I'll get the showers ready. He's going to need a slow thawing out and a lot of rest." Senjaro looked down at the commandant with admiration in his dark eyes. "By the Lady, I didn't know an off-worlder could make it for two days alone on Mithras. He's a real tough one, he is." Senjaro moved out of Howell's view, and he could hear the subsquad leader's footsteps as he walked across the locker area to the showers and tubs that made up the equipment for warming up after the cold of the outside.

Howell's mind felt wrapped in cotton candy— all soft and fuzzy. He knew he was safe and that he would live. His toes were white from the cold and the cutting off of circulation, but Hesslin assured him that they would be all right in time. Howell nodded and sank deeper into his soft mental cloud.

He was jerked back to reality by the sounds of hissing steam and Senjaro's agonized screams. The screaming rose to a head-pounding wail, and Hesslin and Thad let Howell slide abruptly to the floor as they ran across the corridor to the locker room and the showers.

"Cut the main lines, Thad! I can't see for the steam! CUT THE WATER

LINES!" Hesslin's voice was the only one Howell could hear. Senjaro was silent. The screaming had ended. There was the sound of men running, water splashing and then a quiet stillness broken only by Hesslin's sobs.

"The filthy bitch, the damn filthy bitch. Kiedron's sabotaged the showers. Steam, nothing but filthy, scalding, man-killing steam…"

CHAPTER FIVE

There was a warm water bed under him and a metal framework of heated blankets draped over his mostly bandaged body. It felt so good to be really warm that Howell was reluctant to even admit he was awake. Just to lie still and relax was so comforting that he could almost block from his mind those last few minutes of Hiru Senjaro's life. If I wake up, I'll have to face all of that— explaining to Jens— going out there again— and catching Kiedron Agata … oh, to hell with it! He toyed with the idea of not waking up at all, but just staying in bed, being fed through a tube in his arm and being always warm. But that's no way to get where you want to go, Burian. The coldly sensible part of him was back in command. Get up, lout, and get up fighting! You're Captain Burian Howell of the CCS … Shove it. … He knew he was playing games with himself, that he would get up, go back outside and try to catch Kiedron… but not now.

Jens was beside him, he could hear the heavier man pacing beside his bed. Poor old Jens. If I don't crack open an eye the man will probably be giving me up for dead and writing for a replacement for me. Howell opened one eye and let it drop in a slow wink.

"So, you are playing dead-android! I thought you were holding too still to be really sleeping."

"Resting my old bones, lad. Can't an ancient crock like me get a little time to himself?"

"Sure, if you were really as half-dead as you'd like us to believe. Your stock has gone up no end around here. You've survived something that's killed younger and smarter types than you."

"Younger, maybe; smarter, never! As I said before, I know a little about cold and how to combat it." Howell opened both eyes and it seemed he could hear his eyelids creaking under the effort. "I have to admit I would have been a very cold corpse in another day or so. It was my good luck that Hesslin and…"

"Hiru." Jens's voice was sad and his face crumbled a bit. "By the Lady, that was a good man. I had hopes of his being one of the best nabs we've ever been sent. I was even afraid to commend him in reports for fear the Service would find out they had sent him to us by mistake—and now he's dead. That steam bath wasn't meant for you— just the next poor clod that needed a thawing out. Don't take too much of the guilt on yourself, Burian. It could have been any one of us. There were four squads of nabs out on the tundra looking for Kiedron. She probably didn't have any one target in mind when she fixed the pipes."

"Just bad luck, huh? I want to fry that little twit for this. No more stunners. Tell the men to kill on sight."

"They won't obey that. They'd be afraid of provoking a full scale revolt. One thing you've got to learn—only give orders you're sure will be carried out."

Howell sighed and shifted position. A stab of pain shot through his legs.

"Yowl! What have those bloody doctors done to me? My legs feel like a buzz saw stopped halfway through them. Gods, what a mess."

"You've been through a lot and your legs are the worst off. You'll be lucky enough to keep all your toes, but it is going to hurt and you will be in bed a while. I brought you some more files to work on—they'll keep your mind off your aches and pains."

"I think I'm still asleep. In fact, I'm sure of it." Howell let his eyelids fall.

"I'm asleep," he announced.

"Then I'll just leave these cubes here until you wake up." Jens made an exaggerated attempt to tiptoe across the room. He sounded like a herd of none too quiet herbivores attacking a mud puddle. "The bed is leaking," he explained in a piercing whisper. "We can't generally keep a waterbed warm without having the bag blow somewhere." He squelched noisily across the floor and Howell could hear the door opening at his approach.

"Silly clod." Howell's voice was warm with affection. "And if I haven't said it yet, thanks."

"For what?"

"When I know, I'll tell you. Now bug out and let an old, dying man sleep."

With the white-blood cell ointment preventing infection and forming new skin on his blackened toes, the doctors said Howell was healing well enough to deal with his files. The pain in his hands and feet was just barely tolerable. They felt as if they had been dipped in fire. The doctors had encased his extremities in an amino acid-based gel to help them form his new skin. They itched, but there was no way to scratch them. A tube was stuck in each arm—one for the dextrose and supplement solution, the other for the antibiotics. Howell felt like a swollen corpse fished out of the water and left to dry. Jens had to help him with the files. But the man was a mine of information. He brought Howell everything Marios Rap had written about Kiedron—most of it quite insane. And they went through Lustvogel's cubes as well. Granthum had left little information on the colony, mostly production records. There was nothing about Kiedron, her mother or his foraging in the Homecave. There was suspiciously little on Tovo Agata. Howell asked about this and was reminded of how much material Kiedron might have stolen from the files.

Lustvogel's cubes were the best in terms of information—most of it false. His views on punishing the Cavers had led to a definite factioning within the colony. Lustvogel was paranoid on the subject of the Cavers, and it was easy to see why so many of them had claimed the right to kill him. The Outcavers fascinated Howell. Jens knew a little about them, but said he had very little contact with their leaders. Lustvogel had used a policy of "burn them, burn them all," so very few Outcavers returned to the Homecave. They couldn't take the risk of being caught. Jens said that Lustvogel had tossed Outcavers alive into the recycling plant.

"Could someone live through that?" Howell asked in outraged horror.

"Lots of them did, but they ended up hideously scarred. The first thing down there is a tank for rendering down proteins using enzymes and other chemicals. But I'd rather take my chances there than in a slag pit—there's no chance of coming out of one of those alive."

"Scarred, driven from their homes, hunted down—what more could that man do to them?"

"Make them less than men, or try to. It didn't work. From what I've heard about the Outcavers, they're even better organized than we are. They ship out a little ore, steal from the ships at the port and stay out of the way of the nabs. They treat their women well too, I'm told. Every now and then some girl leaves the Homecave and joins the Outcavers. Generally it's because she's too ugly or stupid to get a Caver husband—but there are rumors that Outcaver women live like treasured pets, wearing only the best of furs and never having to work. That sort of thing would have some appeal, I suppose."

There was very little about making things better for the Cavers. Lustvogel had seemed to feel that Mithras was his private hunting preserve— with men for game. Howell read everything he could find on Lustvogel's attempts to catch anyone that he was hunting. Kiedron wasn't listed until after her father's death. There was surprisingly little about why Lustvogel had killed the older Agata. Jens, when questioned, admitted that even he didn't know exactly what had happened.

"Lustvogel wasn't very hard on Tovo. A lot of us were puzzled by that. Then, for no reason, he killed him. I found Tovo dead in his cave, Lustvogel's knife in his throat, and Kiedron in shock. My wife, Rhoiannin, looked after her for a while. Then Kiedron set out to get Lustvogel. She wouldn't say what had happened to her father, and Lustvogel wouldn't tell me anything, either. He was one scared man, though—right up until Kiedron got him."

"Then Kiedron's the only witness left? That could be interesting. I have a few theories on how to catch Kiedron, but they can wait until these medical-johnnies let me up on my feet. They say my legs are swollen like a pregnant sleam—the fools."

"Want to tell me about your theories? Maybe I can help with some of the planning," Jens asked, too casually.

"No way. As you yourself said, everyone's a spy for Kiedron. If only I know, then she won't know until I'm ready for her. Let it ride, Jens, I'll tell you when I'm ready to go to work on it. But you can warn that twit she's up against someone who has no resemblance to Lustvogel. Tell her that. It might keep me alive long enough to catch her."

Howell did have an idea, and he spent the long weeks of healing perfecting it. He asked for every cube on construction methods used on Mithras and spent a lot of time studying the maps of the caves in the hills around the base. Finally, when his doctors agreed he was well enough to get out of bed, Howell had narrowed his plans down to one cave and one particular set of construction machines.

It took several days of being out of bed and walking around to restore his sense of well-being. He still had nightmares about the cold and dying out on the tundra, but he knew he was well enough to face Mithras again. He was told by Jens that the accident had caused the CCS to delay sending an Academy recruiter to Mithras—a fact that made Howell bless the CCS for finally doing something right. He knew that his return to work would bring on the recruiter… and it would bring out Kiedron as well. He asked Jens to meet him at the air lock closest to the Homecave and also asked Hesslin to bring along a squad of his best nabs and a construction crew with an engineer.

The group was milling around when Howell arrived. Jens was beside himself with impatience and Hesslin was simply looking puzzled. "I don't know what he wants this for either, Jens, but he said to have it here, and…" Hesslin was explaining wearily as Howell joined them.

"Don't fret, I will explain. We are going Kiedron hunting—so suit up."

"Do you mind telling us how you plan to catch her, or do we just wait for her to walk up and turn herself in?" Jens's voice dripped sarcasm.

"Something like that." Howell was pleased with himself, but he had no wish to push his aide too far. The man was valuable to him and he was beginning to like him very much. "I want you to round up some children of the right age and intelligence to be attractive to a recruiter. Then I want Kiedron told where they are. Use some kid you trust for that part.

"I've picked an old mine shaft where I want the kids stashed. It's called CRS-7665 on the maps. It's small and has no ore in it, I think, from the maps; it's about the last ridge or so before the hills slope downward out at the end of the mines. I checked all the map cubes and I asked Hesslin about it. Only one entrance, I was told, and that's a narrow one."

"Trapping Kiedron in a one-way cave has been tried before. Rap did that more times than I can remember. She always got away somehow."

"Not this time. So, can you get me the kids as soon as I'm ready at the cave?"

"It'll take about two hours to round them up— I'll have to reassure a lot of Cavers, Burian. They don't think you'll turn the kids over, but this will make them damned suspicious." Jens looked very worried, but willing to go along with Howell.

Hesslin said nothing. He had seen some of the orders Howell had given for the equipment he wanted at the mine. He rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful.

"I only want a few kids," Howell was explaining. "Nine or ten ought to do. I hope that'll be enough bait. Too many brats milling around could mess things up for me." Howell had finished suiting up. He was a bit slower than most of the men with him, he found. But he was improving his technique; soon he wouldn't even need a lifeline.

The cold wind hitting his suit made Howell shudder. He couldn't really feel the cold yet, but he knew it was there. It would only be a matter of time before the chill would be creeping into his hands and feet. I must not react, he told himself. I must not show that the cold bothers me. If I let go, even a little.… A vision of himself running, raving mad, across the tundra intruded into his thoughts. He squashed it swiftly and stood waiting for Hesslin to fasten the lifeline.

"All right, I'll get the kids and take them to the cave. I'll send Arnie, my oldest, to tell Kiedron— but what then?" Jens's voice intruded and banished the last of Howell's thoughts about the cold. Glad of a respite and something else to think about, he turned toward Jens to make the communication between them clearer in the howling static of the wind.

"I've been spending most of my time reading how Lustvogel and Rap both tried to catch Kiedron and why they failed. I saw that sleeping gas didn't work…"

"The temperature was too cold for the gas to spread out evenly, and even when we thought that we had that partially licked we found that most caves were too porous to work well as gas chambers."

"And remember what the Academy recruiter said would happen to Lustvogel if even one kid was killed accidentally," Hesslin added.

"Right. The Service would even like us to deliver Kiedron alive and kicking—something about wanting to study her development and figure out why she scored so low on their supposedly foolproof tests." Jens laughed. "Poor sods, not realizing the test, not the kid, was off."

"Jens, get a move on with the kids. I'll meet you at the cave." Howell motioned to Hesslin to start toward the bubble sled.

"But wait," Jens called. "Aren't you going to tell me how you'll capture her?"

"I'm not telling anyone. That way if it doesn't work I won't seem as big a fool." Howell waved as he and Hesslin and the construction people moved off at a trot.

"I don't even know, Jens, but Howell's the best man for Mithras; trust him!" Hesslin's last words drifted through the helmets of the two groups. Jens shrugged inside his coldsuit and motioned his nabs to follow him to the Homecave.

The cave was exactly as Howell had pictured it. A low, shallow beginning of a mine shaft with no other exit, not even a crevasse or cleft in the rock that could be a possible exit. The floor of the cave was rough; large rocks formed outcroppings, and pools of ice and slush were waiting for the unwary. There were a few too many places to hide, but the narrow opening was easy to block.

"Perfect, perfect!" Howell wanted to rub his hands together and crow with delight. He was going to catch the uncatchable elf-child. He tried not to think beyond that point. He would, he supposed, have to either kill her or turn her over to the CCS. They would most likely kill her after taking her mind apart and making sure someone like her could never reappear on Mithras. And then what would I find interesting to do around here?

Howell found himself wondering.

"Hesslin, get that engineer-johnnie over here for me," Howell called. Hesslin and another red-clad figure appeared out of the drifting snow and into the lip of the cave.

"Sir, this is Lieutenant Kiku Hoshi; she's one of the best construction engineers we've got." The second red-clad figure bowed and Howell awkwardly returned the bow.

"Now, lieutenant, what I want is to have a frost killer brought right up here to the mouth of this cave, and I want it covered with some white camouflaging. I've already put in a request for the frost killer, but I do need you to tell me the best place to put it for optimum heat in this cave." The engineer walked into the cave and began several calculations on its height and depth.

"You see, Hesslin," Howell commented, "I intend to use the one thing no Mithran can tolerate—heat. I found out while I was out here just how bad cold can be for someone like myself. But I've seen the Mithran miners work stark naked in conditions nearly as cold as I had to endure. Kiedron can stand cold, but not heat! I think I've got the little baggage!"

"Jens isn't going to like this." Howell could see that Hesslin was, by reflex, trying to shake his head. In the helmet, it didn't work very well.

"I run things around here, not Jens. But you're right, he won't like it—and that, more than my fear of his being Kiedron's spy, is why I wouldn't tell him anything."

Howell felt the ground begin to tremble under his feet. He turned to watch a gigantic machine punch its way through the precipitation. The winds had died down slightly and there was only a silently falling curtain of snow to block his view.

It was while he had been reading Marios Rap's files that Howell had gotten the idea of using heat on Kiedron—the files and the pain in his own legs from the aftereffects of frostbite. Heat was the one thing no fifth generation colonial would be able to tolerate—and that was what Kiedron was going to get.

The frost killer moved through the eerie silence like a gigantic metal beast of prey, its jaws opening to show the reactors within. They were generally used to thaw the frozen ground on a building site such as a spaceport field; then a cold-action epoxy would be added to the melted ice to form a hard, permanent foundation for any structure built on Mithras. In the beginnings of the colony they had even tried to construct towers and buildings, but the energy needed was far greater than that required to dig caves. The cave tunnels, too, provided the much-needed minerals, so the prospect of getting two jobs done at once had made the frost killers all but obsolete. The machines were cumbersome and unpleasant for the colonials to use. The heat they generated made it impossible to use anyone who had been born and bred on Mithras as crew. Rap had complained frequently in his reports that the Confederation Colonial Service was not sending him enough new personnel among the nabs who could manage a frost killer as well as do correctional duties. The colonials' dislike of the frost killers had given Howell his idea on how to trap Kiedron and keep her trapped.

"Pull that thing up close, Lieutenant Hoshi. I want it able to swing around quickly and cover that cave entrance."

"That can be done, sir. But how shall I disguise the machine while waiting for Agata to walk into your trap?" The engineer motioned to the machine crew where she wanted the frost killer stationed beside the cave. Her hand gestures, even in gloves, were swift and precise. "I think, sir, you had better keep my crewmen here. They're new to Mithras, but some of them are already making Caver friends and finding Caver women acceptable. We can't trust them not to run straight to Kiedron with news of this development."

"Right. Put them to work on some camouflaging. I had in mind covering the 'killer' with some tree branches and patches of snow, maybe a few rocks, too. With the visibility as poor as it is, I think that ought to be enough to do the trick."

"No, it won't work. You're failing to take into account that Kiedron's eyesight in snow is much better than your own. She'd spot something that clumsy very quickly. I have a better solution. There's a storage cave fairly close and it has a wide enough entrance to house the frost killer. A machine sitting in a storage cave would not seem out of the ordinary."

"I knew some of the caves were big, but not that big." Hoshi managed something between a shrug and a bow. "We put class seventeen V-wingers in caves like that—several V-wingers."

"But there are no V-wingers…"

"Didn't Gulimel tell you that your records are incomplete?"

"I surrender, Hoshi. Jens did tell me, and you're right; they aren't complete. So store that thing wherever you think best. You're the engineer."

Hoshi bowed again and signaled the frost killer crew to follow her to the caves. Howell watched the huge machine move ponderously through the snow like a walking mechanical house. He wondered if he would ever see it again and how long it would take to trust anyone on Mithras.

"Rap was her lover." Hesslin's voice was calm and matter-of-fact as he watched Hoshi depart. "She hates Kiedron for killing him."

"Kiedron didn't kill Rap; he suicided. Or at least, that's what the records show. He died four hours out from Mithras and there wasn't any way Kiedron could have done it."

"Rap thought otherwise. Read his last cube sometime, sir. He knew there was no way for a person to leave Mithras once they were assigned here. So his leaving alive, he was sure, had to have been a plot on Kiedron's part—so he killed himself to avoid what he was sure would be a worse death at her hands."

"Do you believe that?" Howell asked.

"No." Hesslin stood beside Howell, rocking back and forth. Howell could hear a catch in the man's voice and wondered if he was crying. "I know what the security is like here—I've tried to escape several times—and there's no way anyone from Mithras can get on board a CCS ship. That's how I know Kiedron couldn't have killed Rap."

"But you're a nab, not a colonial! Surely you can leave when your tour of duty is done."

"No one leaves Mithras, nab or colonial. This is a prison, sir, and we are the prisoners—not the colonials. They can stand all this, and if it weren't for the Service they'd love Mithras. But they are our jailors." Howell's mind was rocked by what Hesslin was telling him. He had heard that there were such places for personnel the Service had no further use for. But what a vicious turn of fate to make him think he was in command of his own prison!

"Dead, that's the only way to leave Mithras, and even then you can't. Your body goes to the recycling plant and you become a part of Mithras forever." Hesslin's voice was sad but under control. "Let her go, sir. Catching Kiedron will only benefit the CCS, not Mithras. She's the only bit of freedom these people have."

"I wish I could, but if I'm to do any good for Mithras, I have to live long enough to do it. Capturing Kiedron is my only chance. But I will tell you, Hesslin, if what you say is true, this planet will go subtropical before I turn her over to the CCS. That's a promise!"

Leaving Hesslin to position the nabs away from the cave, Howell went inside to recheck any possible escape routes. He had read more than one report on how Kiedron had gotten out of seemingly tight places simply by knowing the topography a bit better than her would-be captors. The cave walls were rough and cracked in spots, but unless Kiedron was a rock lizard or was capable of changing shape, there was no way out of the cave but its entrance—and Howell would have that sewn up.

There was enough cover inside the cave to prevent being able to see all of it from the opening, and this worried Howell. How could he be sure all the children were knocked out by the heat and avoid killing any of them?

He would have to wait for the engineer to return and discuss it with her. He cursed himself for not bringing one of the Service doctors with him, but it was too late to do anything about it and he didn't dare send anyone back to fetch a doctor. Trust, he realized, would have to be one of the first things established on Mithras.

As he thought about what Hesslin had told him he decided that since they were all here together, there was no point in a nab-colonial state of warfare. If he could only manage to teach these people that they were all on the same side. Us against the CCS! That might be the key to governing the planet. Howell grinned inside his coldsuit. The Service might have made a major mistake in sending him here. It might even be in favor of someone like Kiedron keeping things too upset for a commandant to do anything but chase after her. That was an interesting idea, one he would have to give more thought to when he had the time. When the suns go nova, when the Service turns benevolent, and when the Mithras commandant has the time. Busywork, that's the best thing for a prisoner

! Howell thought bitterly.

He could hear voices on the mike system. They overlapped and ran into each other, and the static didn't help, but Howell was sure that one of the voices was Jens's. He moved quickly toward the cave entrance. Jens was there, pushing a small band of children along in front of him, most of them scarcely clothed. A lanky blond boy not yet in his teens was leading them and reassuring the children as they moved toward Howell. Jens led the group into the cave, and then introduced the blond boy.

"This is Arnie, my oldest. He's nine." Jens pushed the boy toward Howell and motioned him to hold out his hand. The child was dressed in a cut-down coldsuit, but the hood was open. Howell gravely shook hands with the child and, the ordeal over, Arnie ran back to his father's side.

"He told Kiedron you wanted the children here, and he told her it was a trap," Jens explained. "You're going to have a tough time following Lustvogel's act, Burian. Most children around here are told the commandant will get them if they're naughty."

Howell was amused by the fact he was a fearsome thing to a little boy.

"Tell him I only eat children for breakfast on alternate Tuesdays. Since this isn't one of those days, I'll let him off," he said in his best growly voice. The child jumped and Jens laughed.

"Don't fash it, Arnie, the commandant knew you would tell Kiedron—he wanted you to. He's a man who plays the game fairly." Jens ruffled the boy's hair and sent him into the cave. "I'll have him stay with the children. They trust him." Jens looked at Howell and waited.

Damn! Howell knew his aide suddenly had him by the short hairs. If he didn't tell Jens quickly what he was planning, Arnie would be in the cave with the others when it was heated up. Jens, Howell knew, would never forgive him if he endangered Arnie.

"Jens, I think there's something we ought to talk about." Howell paused, stalling for time and a chance to think of what he was going to say. "I'm going to use heat to capture Kiedron, and Arnie's coldsuit could be lethal for him."

Jens went white. "Do you know what heat will do to these children? Are you trying to kill them?"

"It'll do less harm than gas, flooding or some of the less nice methods Lustvogel tried. Sure the heat will knock them end over tea kettle, but it'll be safer for them than the cold was for me."

"Then are you doing this for revenge? Killing ten kids as well as Kiedron seems like a high price even for a commandant." Jens's voice was harsh and grating. Howell could tell the aide was holding himself rigid inside his coldsuit. One wrong word and he would spring at Howell.

"Look, this is the only way I can help Mithras. The Service hasn't bothered to do anything about this place because the colonists and the nabs are too busy doing in each other to ask the CCS to act like a government instead of a prison. I have no intention of killing those children, but I do intend to catch Kiedron and end her reign of terror. Trust me, Jens. Trust is all we've got."

"Trust you? How much have you trusted me? From the moment you got here it was clear you felt I was just waiting to do you in. You're a bundle of paranoia, and now you're trying to kill our children. I won't have it. I'll kill you first." Jens sprang, and then collapsed abruptly as Howell's foot caught him square in the gut. Howell bent over the prostrate man and opened his faceplate so that Jens could retch without filling the helmet.

"Sorry, but I couldn't let you attack me. That's it, easy there." Howell held onto his aide until the heaving stopped. "Feeling better? Now, let's talk this out in my office—later. I've got a job to do, and you can help with it or I can stun you down and have you hauled back to the caves. Which is it going to be?"

"I'll stay," Jen whispered, gagging. "Arnie…"

"Hesslin, get the Guhmel kid out of the cave," Howell called to the squad leader hiding in the rocks over the cave entrance.

"No." Jens stood up, clutching his coldsuit. "No, he stays. Arnie knows enough to get out of the suit before he overheats. You are going to do it slowly, aren't you, Howell? It'll be less rough on the children."

"Yes, I'll do it slow." Howell wanted to pat Jens's shoulder, but he knew the time wasn't right for any display of pity or sympathy. Hesslin had his men hidden in the rocks around the cave, where Jens and Howell joined them, and Hoshi was in position at the storage area. Howell could hear her directing the crew in the cave. The voice faded in and out, but Howell was sure he could reach her when she was needed. Suddenly something hit him—Arnie was in a coldsuit with a hood mike!

"Jens, would your son be listening in on this band?"

"Yes, I would in his place. But don't worry— there's not much a nine-year-old can do against a frost killer."

"I'm more worried about what Kiedron—hold it! I think we've got a live one."

Howell wasn't positive, but he did think he had seen a small round figure moving toward the cave. Then he saw it, closer this time. Kiedron, alone.

"Where is her backup?" Howell hissed.

"Arnie said that Chanoch wouldn't come with her and she set out alone to prove what a coward he was."

"Isn't that just like a kid to go off half-cocked?" The figure was closer to the mouth of the cave. A quick look-see, and Kiedron was inside. Howell heard a shrill whistle in his helmet and Hesslin and his men were moving into position in front of the cave.

"Look out, she might have a laser," Hesslin called as he directed his men to take cover. There was no blast of firing from the cave, nor any movement. Howell remembered the dead mine foreman and his missing laser, and shivered. Someone might get more hurt on this expedition than he had intended. He moved down the slope of the rocks, and took cover in a crevasse behind Hesslin. Jens joined him, and both men hunkered in to wait.

The ground rumbled under them and Howell knew the frost killer was coming. The machine rose out of the snowy wastes like a prehistoric monster made of iron and plastics. Its gaping maw breathed fire as it moved to cover the entrance to the cave.

"The children are screaming, and Arnie is taking off his coldsuit," Jens said flatly. Howell could hear the boy telling his father what was happening in the cave over his own speakers, but it was more horrible hearing Jens coldly repeating his son's message.

"Arnie," Howell called, "tell me when the children are too warm. I don't want anyone hurt. Do you understand me, Arnie?"

"Yes, sir. Kiedron understands, too, but she's mad." The boy's voice was hesitant but calm. Howell blessed the child and reminded himself to commend the boy in his next report. Having Arnie inside would assure everyone that no children were going to be killed.

The heat was rising. Even Howell could feel it under his boots. The snow on the ground began to melt. Icicles fell with dull, plopping sounds. The trees creaked as the slushy snow slid off their branches.

"Come on, keel over in there," Howell urged as Arnie's voice, fainter now, said that Kiedron was still on her feet and searching desperately for a way out.

"I'm sick, Papa," Arnie said. Jens stood up and ran toward the frost killer, waving his arms. "Kiedron is, too, she fell…" Arnie's voice died as Howell jumped up and told Hoshi to turn off the frost killer and get back away from the cave.

The frost killer didn't move. Howell could see a small, red-clad figure seated at the controls, and felt a cold chill at the thought that the engineer wasn't going to move, that she intended to kill Kiedron and the others. The same thought had obviously occurred to Jens, for he was starting to draw his laser. "Jens!" Howell barked in as crisp a voice as he could muster. "Put that weapon down and stay right where you are. That's an order, mister!"

"But she's—"

"Do it!" The command in his voice was overpowering. "Ill take care of her, but you'd better stop or I'll have you up on charges before you can blink twice."

With great reluctance, Jens stopped his charge and watched helplessly as the frost killer continued to pour heat into the cave.

"Lieutenant Hoshi, this is Captain Howell." His voice was deceptively soft while talking to the engineer. "The job is accomplished; you can turn off the machine."

No answer. The frost killer continued its operation.

"Do you think killing those children will bring Marios back to you? You already feel guilty enough about his death—do you want eleven more on your conscience. There are eleven children lying unconscious and helpless inside that cave. Eleven small bodies. Picture them in your mind, lieutenant. Take a good look, because that image will never leave you for the rest of your life if you fail them now."

The coldsuited figure was still for a moment, then moved one hand. The frost killer shuddered and the heat stopped. Hoshi was slowly bringing the machine around and backing it away from the cave

Howell let out a light sigh of relief. "Thank you, lieutenant," he said quietly. He discovered, much to his chagrin, that he was trembling, and willed his body to stop it. That was no way for a commandant to behave. Howell could see Jens running into the cave with Hesslin and his men right behind. Before Howell could reach them, Jens was out with Arnie in his arms, and Hesslin was carrying a limp bundle that had to be Kiedron. The nabs followed with the rest of the children.

"Get them to the clinic—quickly!" Howell was weak with relief. Now if only they were all right. He realized suddenly what a risk he had taken, and sat down abruptly in the snow. If this had failed....

"Sir, you got her, and the kids seem to be all right." Jens stopped to reassure Howell. Arnie was stirring in his father's arms. Howell walked into the still-hot cave, picked up Arnie's coldsuit and returned with it to Jens. "Here, he'll need this. He's a brave man—and so's his old dad." Howell patted the boy's hand as Jens spread the coldsuit over as much exposed skin as he could reach.

The children were all in the medical wards being treated like young lords and ladies. The med-corpsmen stuffed them with goodies and a lot of fluids. The only one not enjoying the feast was Kiedron. Hesslin had ordered her confined to a top security, one-bed ward, and had stationed six nabs, fully armed, to guard her.

Howell moved through the main ward, talking and joking with the children. Arnie was beside him, and already the boy had a highly proprietary air about him as he talked about how he and the commandant had actually captured Kiedron. Howell watched the children with amusement tempered by pity. Some of them shied away from him as though he were the devil incarnate. He hoped they would, in time, get over their fear of him. Even Kiedron—in time.

"Where is our star revolutionary?" he asked Jens beside him. "Did you throw her in irons or something?"

"No. We just thought it would be safer if she didn't have the other kids around. She was hard hit by the heat, poor twit. She kept running around...."

"Where is she?" Howell demanded. A strong urge to look at the girl who had disrupted a complete colony pulled at Howell's mind. He wanted to gloat, to threaten, to affirm his own superiority. "I want to see her—now."

"It isn't safe! She tried to kill you and if it hadn't been for Hiru she would have managed it."

"You told me that could have been anyone. I want to see her." Jens shrugged. "If you insist, but I'm going in with you. Over here." He led Howell through a doorway into a hall. There were two nabs armed with stun weapons standing guard outside a locked room. Jens nodded to the guards and they stepped aside to let him code the door to open. Nodding to Howell, he moved to one side of the door and bowed the commandant through. "After you, sir. Your captive awaits you." The room contained four guards nervously watching a small girl lying in bed. Her hair was still wet and her eyes were wide and frightened. She clutched the blankets around her and stared at Howell. Her lower lip trembled as she watched him approach the bed.

Howell looked down at Kiedron and all feelings of gloating left him. She was so small, so childish, so really harmless. And this had managed to do in a colony!

Howell sat down on the bed and smiled at the girl. "You poor little kid, all that hassle with none of us remembering you were a child!" Howell reached for her, and with a small, stifled sound, Kiedron was in his arms holding on tightly.

CHAPTER SIX

"Do you realize what a fool thing you did in there, Burian?" Jens sat in Howell's chair and fed a cube into the recorder to make his report on the capture of Kiedron Agata. Howell paced the small office, deep in thought. He appeared not to have heard Jens, so the aide repeated the question in a louder tone.

"Huh?" Howell stopped his pacing to look off into the distance somewhere behind Jens's head. "I guess I should have… since she did kill Lustvogel . . but so little!" Howell resumed his pacing, and Jens shrugged and went back to the cube. He softly gave the facts about the capture, his voice as unemotional as he could manage. Howell stopped briefly at the desk to listen to the report, then resumed his tightly limited circling of the room. When Jens finished, he shut off the recorder and waited for some reaction from Howell—something other than his dreamlike state of shock. The sound of the machine shutting off did have some effect on the commandant. He sat down abruptly on Jens's toadstool chair and shook his head like a dog fresh from a bath. "I can't help wondering why I did it." Howell looked at Jens as though he were finally seeing him. "I could have gotten myself killed by that twit. Getting emotional in my old age—that's an excuse, nothing more, Jens. When I saw her out there on the tundra—the first time, when I was lost—I felt a magic like nothing else in my life. I've had a lot of women, loved some of them, married a couple, but no magic. No magic in any of them." He slowly wiped his face with one hand as if he were clearing away dust or cobwebs. "I'm a romantic fool at heart. I think I always wanted to hear celestial music or have something new and wonderful happen each time I fell in love. What I usually felt was an urge to get someone into bed, and I rationalized it as 'love.' But now, at my age, magic!"

"We all want that, and we all rationalize what we really get," Jens said.

"I know, at times, that my Rhoiannin can be just someone I share a cave with, but then there are the times I look at her and she is so beautiful, and my breath gets stuck in my chest because I'm so amazed that she's my wife. That's magic, too. It just isn't magic all the time. No marriage is. You couldn't take the constant tension of feeling so perpetually excited."

"I know things slow down after the first thrills. And anything, no matter how good, can get less so as you get used to it, but that's not what I mean. Kiedron is something very special. A child who has managed a very difficult thing like a revolution, and yet she really doesn't know what she's accomplished. She's never really thought it out. She is so young—just beginning to learn that life has shades of gray in it. I saw her in that bed, her whole being screaming I need, I need!' and I knew that I was what she needed. That's the magic, Jens, being needed so very much. I've never had anyone really need me before."

"Kiedron needs to be locked up like the wild thing she is. You're going to end up very dead, Burian, if you go throwing yourself at her like that too much. She's a trained killer! Her father…"

"To hell with her father! He never gave that poor kid a chance to be a child, and that's what she needs. To stop having to run, hide and be frightened day after day. She needs someplace safe to rest and be a child in, and I can be that place."

"You sound like you think she's a six-year-old. That's also a woman in there… or didn't you notice when you were hugging her?"

"Yes, I knew that too. Husbandhigh! That short child is going to turn into a short woman, and she'll always be little to me. There must be some inherent fragility in smallness…"

"Fragile? Kiedron's about as fragile as a class five starship. That girl has taken on two full grown nabs at a time and managed to down both of them. That's a very tough little Caver we're talking about."

"No." Howell shook his head. "She's not, that's her problem. Under the legend of her toughness there's something soft and unformed. It's hard surface and scared core. She's never had a chance to grow up, and it might even be too late now. You can't force maturity the way Agata did and not have to pay a price for it. Only Agata won't be the one to pay; Kiedron will. There will always be something stunted in her, something childlike, crying to get out. I want to be there to help her when her shell breaks; it's going to be very painful. By catching her, I've taken away everything she knew. I've destroyed her purpose, and now she needs me to give her something better in return. I want to give her a chance at life."

"The CCS might have something to say about that. The recruiter is going to want Kiedron. They won't let you keep someone that dangerous on Mithras now that she's been caught."

"I'll let her go free first! The CCS isn't going to get her." Howell slumped tiredly on the stool. "I'm going to my room for a rest. I think I deserve it. Get Hesslin and that engineer to do up their reports and send the whole mess off with the next ship. I'm tired, Jens. Bone, dead tired." Howell got slowly to his feet and walked out of the room, his shoulders hunched in what looked like defeat. Jens watched the door slide closed and realized he wasn't feeling any too elated, either, Aftershock, and the danger to his boy, he decided. Or it might be that Howell was right, that catching Kiedron could turn out to be something worse for Mithras. What did you do with an ex-revolutionary?

Howell's quarters, while cramped, were reasonably comfortable. But in his present mood his bed might as well have been carved from the rock of the cave walls. He looked up at the ceiling, his euphoric mood fast evaporating.

"Why her, and why now?" he muttered to himself. "I thought those infatuous fires were banked a long time ago!"

Howell considered himself a calm, cautious man when it came to women. He had been both fair and emotionally under control for the last thirty years at least. No woman had ever had to worry about Burian Howell turning a pleasant little flirtation or friendly weekend into anything sticky. He was gallant, expert and careful. And he always picked women as emotionally mature as himself when it came to romance. Yet here he was, infatuated as a boy, over a girl young enough to be his grandchild. And he liked it. Liked the excitement, the warmth and the needing. That had been the one thing missing in all his involvements—that was the magic he had been hoping to find in someone along the way. But he hadn't expected to find it on Mithras, or with someone like Kiedron. She was short, only slightly pretty, uneducated, and worst of all—young!

"Nasty, I am an idiot. Jens is right, I'm getting foolish in my old age." Howell turned over and buried his face in the pillow. "Mithras has a rotten effect on a man's mind," he mumbled into the soft foam. "And other parts of his anatomy. Why her?"

He already knew the answer to that: because. He could come up with a thousand reasons why he shouldn't be feeling the way he was, and only one reason for why he should. He loved Kiedron. She had managed, without the slightest effort, to capture a man that far more beautiful and talented women had pursued and never caught.

The human emotion of loving was a complicated combination of wish fulfillment, childhood traumas and biochemistry. Temporary insanity, too, played a part in it—as did neurosis, sexual frustration and ego. Love was an unpleasant, unhealthy and miserable state for the human mind to cope with. Howell was enjoying every rotten minute of it.

I don't even like her very much— how can I? I don't know her, except as a born killer of commandants and anyone else who gets in her way. She has no redeeming qualities beyond being little, and in trouble, and needing me to get her out of it. It was all so very childish. Fourteen, she's fourteen years old. I could be arrested on some planets for even thinking about a fourteen-year-old girl— or boy. She is more boy than girl, too. Brought up by that crazy father of hers to be a revolutionary. Ha! Babies running revolutions. She's never had a chance to be what she is, a little girl. That's what I like about her, she's not a little girl, she's Kiedron. She hasn't been trained to play any stupid games because of being female. She doesn't have to be sweet or cuddly. Agata gave a whole new meaning to the idea of 'Daddy's little girl' —

vibroblades instead of hair ribbons. Damn it, I like that! I like it enough to try forgetting how young she is, and enough to remember it when it counts. She'll need time and a lot of gentleness. She'll need the rest of my life! And I'll be glad to give it to her. Oh Kiedron, my snow-elf. Howell fell asleep clutching his pillow, a soft smile on his face.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was Ponce who brought the news of Keidron's capture back to Chanoch. He had been out gathering supplies in the Homecave and had heard it, he said, from Arnie Gulimel.

Chanoch was stricken for all of fifteen seconds.

"Now maybe she'll listen to me when I tell her something. I'm no fool. I knew it was a trap." Chanoch inflated his flabby belly in an attempt to look impressive. Since his audience was Ponce, it was a wasted effort.

"Yeah, and Agata knew it was a trap, too. But she's the bravest woman I know. She didn't let cowards like you stand in her way."

"But she shouldn'ta done it, Ponce. It was dumb."

"Right or dumb is pointless now. What are we gonna do to get her out of there?" Ponce waited impatiently for an answer, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. If Chanoch failed to do anything—which was likely, knowing Chanoch—he, Ponce, could offer to lead a raid and rescue Agata himself. He would gain points and Chanoch would look like a prize fool.

"I'll have to think that out." Chanoch rubbed his lightly fuzzed chin and tried to look thoughtful. "You said she was under heavy guard in the med wing, so that means she's sick. Running in there and pulling her out could be pretty bad for her. If we wait until the doctors get done, we can spring a regular holding cell easier. Someone on the staff can keep us posted on how she's doing. So we wait till then."

"That's it, huh? Wait?" Ponce shook his head at Chanoch's stupidity.

"What if I offered to go in there and spring her myself? I'm not afraid of nabs and I can do it—I'm good." Ponce didn't mention his extra insurance, the laser he had hidden deep in a food bag.

"No. I don't want that kind of risk taken with Agata's health. She stays until I say otherwise. I'm in command now, and what I say goes. And if you don't believe that, I'll kick your tail until you do."

"You and who else?" Ponce muttered, backing down a bit. Open warfare with Chanoch would have to wait, but a lot of sport would be had by making the older boy's life as difficult as possible.

"I think she should sweat a bit," Chanoch was saying. "I want her to wonder when I'm going to get her out of the CCS's hands. Maybe I'll do in the commandant on the way, just as a reminder that I'm pretty fierce myself."

"You wait too long and you're gonna see Agata walking in the door demanding to know why she had to get out all by herself." Ponce ambled away from the sputtering Chanoch. His mind was teeming with plans and he had to be alone to sort them out—there were so many ways to do in Chanoch.

Kiedron took a long time healing.

The doctors had given Howell a tentative prognosis of a day or so. The symptoms of heat prostration did clear up rapidly, but she was listless and depressed. Two weeks after the capture, Kiedron was still weak and frail—mostly through her own efforts. She had refused to eat, and the doctors had put her on a life-support feeding. The first couple of times she pulled out the needles as fast as they were inserted. Even a beating from a guard didn't deter her. Then a barbed needle was used, making removal more painful than it was worth. Kiedron, after tugging at it a bit and almost passing out from the pain, sullenly let it be. She would lie in bed, sleeping or staring at the ceiling. Howell's frequent visits neither disturbed nor pleased her.

Howell wasn't too surprised at her reactions. After months of running around playing revolutionary, the poor kid probably needed the rest. It was, he reflected, the first time she was forced to be still. The beating alarmed him and he sent the offending guard to the mines. Hesslin had put a monitoring system into the room, which helped a little. Howell paced the length of the room and turned to face her. "Do you know your room is bigger than my whole office? And I don't even have enough space for one guard."

"Stop humoring me. I know what you'll do as soon as I'm well enough to leave this bed. I'm going to be dissected by the CCS after you get done picking my brains. I won't tell you anything so you might as well have them kill me now." Her voice was labored, and he could see she was trying hard not to lose control.

"No one is going to kill you. I've given my word on that. How long do you think I'll last around here if I do in the hero of Mithras?"

"Ex-hero. Take a look at my guards. Any or all of them would cheerfully do me in, given half the chance. Hesslin put in a monitoring system to save my skin. I've also had seven changes of guards in the last two days alone. If you don't kill me, they will." Kiedron turned her head to glare at a young nab in one corner of the room. That woman shifted uneasily and bent to examine the setting on her stungun. The weapon was incapable of killing, but it could disable a victim long enough to polish her off at leisure with a knife or fists.

"I'll have the hide of anyone who makes one move like that, and I'll nail it to my office wall. I mean that."

"Word of a commandant! Your word isn't worth squat around here. You're Service trash that the CCS dumped on us, and the sooner you understand that, the better. We run Mithras, not the CCS." Kiedron had tried to sit up, but the pull on the IV made her quickly change her mind. She lay back on the bed, and a small groan involuntarily escaped as the needle shifted position in her arm. "That's a bitch," she murmured, whitefaced with pain. The guard snickered, and Howell glared at her.

"Shape up, soldier, or I'll have you assigned to mine duty with no coldsuit." The nab snapped to attention, eyes straight forward, face muscles rigid.

"And stay that way!" Howell turned to look at each of the four guards in the room. "Any of you want out of this duty, tell me and I'll have you assigned elsewhere." Howell let the import of his threat sink in. The guards might be getting a bit restless about Kiedron, but they had to know he was still in command.

"I'd put the lot of them out of here," Howell said apologetically, "but I'm afraid you'd be long gone before the next bed check. I can't risk that."

"You're right, I would. But Chanoch will be here to spring me soon, so don't sweat it." Kiedron looked as though she were really trying to believe that. Howell made a mental note to check out what was being said about rescuing Kiedron in the Homecave. Jens or Arnie would be his best bet for honest information.

"Look, Kiedron," he turned back to the girl. "I need your help in bettering things here on Mithras. I want to do the right thing. All this upset and bloodshed is worthless. We could—"

"Shove your wanting to help. I know all about CCS commandants and their promises. You're here to exploit us and give as little in return as you can."

"Was your father a Rad? The propaganda sounds familiar. Try not to think in slogans—it rots the brain."

"Don't you dare make fun of my father! He was a great man and he cared about Mithras. He really cared. Not like the swinejumping clods the CCS has always sent us. We could have governed ourselves with my father in charge. We could have been great." Her lower lip trembled, then hardened into a stubborn pout. "Why should I bother with you?

Commandants never listen to anything a colonial has to say. But remember, we are the masses and we will win in the end by the power of right and—"

"Spare me the political diatribes." Howell threw up his arms. "I've heard them all before, and yours are about as half-baked as most of them. Next you'll be hitting me with an 'all power to the people' number." Kiedron's face lit up. "Hey, I hadn't heard that one. I like it."

"You would. It's an old ethnics' slogan. They varied it to fit whatever ethnic they were working with at the time. It's fairly standard Rad talk. Then there are the slogans like 'Antarians now!'; and of course, 'trisexuals unite!' That's a good one, and you can vary it depending on the culture. I dabbled with Rad when I was a few years older than yourself, but I outgrew it."

" I won't. My father raised me to think of the rights of the people and to oppose tyrants. I'm giving my life for that."

"More pointless rhetoric. Is that all you can do, spout your father's political views? People who only have one conversational horse to ride are bores." Howell leaned back in his chair and looked at Kiedron. "You're a child, remember that. And I'm going to treat you like a child. That's something no one around here has had the guts to do. So shape up, kid, before I send you to bed without your supper."

Kiedron tilted her head and grinned. "What ya gonna do, pull my IV or something?" Howell looked at the needle in her arm and burst out laughing. Kiedron's clear, bell-like laugh joined his as they both watched the dextrose level in the bottle over her bed,

"All right, that's enough jabber for now. You get some rest. I'll be back tomorrow to ask more questions—try to have some better answers than outmoded slogans that you don't even fully understand." Howell stood up and bent over the bed to pat Kiedron on the shoulder. She didn't flinch away, nor did she welcome the caress. Howell nodded and turned and left the room.

"You listen to what he says, you hear?" The guard Howell had bawled out was watching Kiedron. "You tell him what he wants to know or I'll beat your brains into mush."

"Go twitch on an open stungun!" Kiedron lay on her back staring at the ceiling and thinking.

"How could her father have done that to her?" Howell paced the small space in front of his desk. Jens was on the mushroom and Arnie sat on the crowded desktop.

"Easy. Tovo had charisma and Kiedron worshipped him." Jens smiled, remembering something from the past. "We all worshipped him," he said softly. "Tovo Agata was the only chance most of us had to feel like we had some control of our lives. He was going to free us." Jens shrugged.

"Freedom on Mithras is too often a quick trip to the recycling plant. That's what Tovo got—and I what we'll all get in the end."

"What about Chanoch? Is he going to rescue Kiedron?"

"Not bloody likely, sir!" Arnie said from the desk. "Chanoch is having a dill of a time being kingpin of Mithras. Kiedron can rot for all he cares."

"Ah, it's so simple," Jens said. "The queen is dead, long live the king. Howell, you'll find that happens pretty fast around here. Unfortunately, Kiedron knows that, too, and I'm sure it won't be fun for her."

"Uh, yes. We've already had an incident or two. Hesslin told me he's thinking of changing her guards again. One of them threatened her today after I left. Thank the Lady, Hesslin thought to monitor the place and avoid anything getting physical. I'd hate to have her harmed."

"Arnie, tell the commandant what the talk is in the Homecave about Kiedron."

"Well, sir, a lot of people think they'd like to count coup on Kiedron. You know, lardheads who wouldn't take on anything bigger than a dead rat now think they're a match for her." The boy kicked his heels against the side of the metal desk. The sound was a hollow "boom" in the small office.

"It sounds like I've harmed her more than I thought." Howell stopped pacing and picked up a cube from his desk. Arnie scooted to one side to give him more access to the records. "No, don't move, I'm just messing around—this isn't the right cube. I had one here of this morning's visit. I wanted you to hear it."

"I think it's still in the viewer, sir." Arnie craned his neck to see the coding on the cube. No coding. "Is that the one?"

"Yes, thanks. Jens, I keep playing that cube over and over. I am repeatedly struck by the utter simplistic rot that child talks. Kiedron is a guileless child who follows the orders of the last person to get on her wavelength. She's no leader, she just implements orders."

"But what about her activities around here— the killings and raids?"

"Her father's program. She'd go on following that particular one until she was stopped or killed. I stopped her. Now my problem is to see that she doesn't end up dead. I have to reprogram her or kill her myself—and damn it, Jens, I can't kill her!"

Reprogramming wasn't too easy, either. Howell found he could only go so far without running into an avalanche of political fru-fraw. One minute he would be talking to a wary-eyed child, and the next to an automaton that would repeat garbled slogans and warn him to mend his ways. He had to work around her father's earlier programming or blank it out completely.