Part 8

1

“It looks like it will be almost impossible to get out,” said Jonnie. “And it’s going to take an awful lot of advice and skill.”

He was uneasy about the state Terl was in. Their conference was already two days late.

They were meeting in an abandoned mine drift, a workings fifty feet underground and a mile south of the “defense base.” It was dusty; the timbers sagged; it was a dangerous place to be due to the possibility of cave-in.

Terl had come silently to the base, having parked his ground car some distance away under brush in a ravine and walked the rest of the distance in the night, a mining heat shield over his head. Silently, with gestures, he had made the night sentry—who almost shot him, so mysteriously did he materialize in the dark—get Jonnie. He had then led Jonnie to this abandoned drift and checked around them with a probe.

But the monster did not seem to be attending to what was going on. Jonnie had shown him the pictures of the lode on a portable viewer he had brought and explained about the overheating motor, about the wind. Terl had emitted a few mutters but little else.

For Terl was a very worried Psychlo. When the crowd had arrived at the semiannual, Terl had been efficiently going down the line checking them out. He was almost two-thirds finished when he found himself face to face with him.

The newcomer had his head down and the dome firing helmet was not too clean to see through, but there was no mistaking.

It was Jayed!

Terl had seen him once while a student at the school. There had been a crime nobody ever learned about and Jayed had been the agent who appeared to handle it.

He was not a company agent. He was a member of the dreaded Imperial Bureau of Investigation, the I.B.I. itself.

There was no mistaking him. Round jowled face, left front fang splintered, discolored mouth and eyebones, mange eroding his paws. It was Jayed all right.

It was such a shock that Terl had not been quick-witted enough to go on with his inspection. He had simply passed on the rest of the line. Jayed didn’t seem to notice—but the great I.B.I. never missed anything.

What was he there for? Why had he come to this planet?

On the incoming receipt forms he was listed as “Snit” and designated as “general labor.” This meant to Terl that Jayed must be undercover.

But why? Was it Numph’s messing with payrolls? Or—and Terl shuddered—was it the animals and the gold?

His first impulse was to load up blast rifles and rush over and wipe out the animals, return the vehicles, and claim it was all Numph’s idea and that he had had to step in and handle it.

For two days, however, Terl waited around to see whether Jayed would sidle up to him and confide. He gave the fellow every chance. But Jayed simply went into the general labor force at the local mine.

Terl didn’t dare put a button camera near him. Jayed would detect that. He didn’t dare interrogate the workers around Jayed to see what questions the agent was asking. Jayed would hear it right back.

No button cameras appeared in Terl’s area. Probes detected no remote devices beaming in on him.

A very tense Terl had then decided to be very wary and wait for the first outgoing dispatch box, for Jayed might possibly put a report into it.

Sitting there, looking at the lode on the screen, Terl gradually forced himself to focus his eyes. Yes, it did appear difficult. He knew it would be.

“You say wind?” said Terl.

“Overheats the motors. A flying drill platform would not be able to hold itself in place long enough to do any effective work.”

The miner in Terl stirred. “Long spike rods driven into the cliff side. One could build a platform on that. It’s precarious but the rods sometimes hold.”

“One would have to have a place to land on top.”

“Blast a flat place out.”

Jonnie flipped a slide and showed him the crack, the possibility of the whole lode sheering off and plummeting to the bottom of the gorge. “Can’t blast.”

“Drills,” said Terl. “Possibly flatten a place with just drills. Tedious but it could be done. Fly back of the cliff edge and drill toward the chasm.” But he was drifting off, abstracted.

Jonnie realized that Terl was scared of something. And he realized something else: if this project were abandoned, Terl’s first action would be to kill all of them, either to cover evidence or just out of plain sadism. Jonnie decided it was up to him to keep Terl interested.

“That might work,” said Jonnie.

“What?” said Terl.

“Drilling from back of the chasm toward it, keeping a ship out of the wind while it hovers.”

“Oh, that. Yes.”

Jonnie knew he was losing him.

To Terl, it wasn’t a screen in front of him—it was the face of Jayed.

“I haven’t shown you the core,” said Jonnie. He tilted the portable lamp and brought the core out of his pocket.

It was an inch in diameter and about six inches long, pure white quartz and gleaming gold. Jonnie tipped it about so it sparkled.

Terl came out of his abstraction. What a beautiful specimen!

He took hold of it. With one talon he delicately dented the gold. Pure gold!

He fondled it.

Suddenly he saw himself on Psychlo: powerful and rich, living in a mansion, doors open to him everywhere. Talons pointing on the street with whispers. “That’s Terl!”

“Beautiful,” said Terl. “Beautiful.”

After a long time, Jonnie said, “We’ll try to get it out.”

Terl stood up in the narrow drift, and dust eddied in the lamp. He still fondly gripped the core.

“You keep it,” said Jonnie.

Suddenly it was as though the core were hot. “No, no, no!” said Terl. “You must hide it! Bury it in a hole.”

“All right. And we’ll try to mine the lode.”

“Yes,” said Terl.

Jonnie breathed a pent-up sigh of relief.

But at the drift entrance before they parted, Terl said, “No radio contacts. None. Do not overfly the compound. Skim the mountains on the east; fly low leaving and arriving at this base. Make a temporary second base in the hills and do your shifts from that.

“And stay away from the compound! I’ll see the females are fed.”

“I should go over and tell them they won’t be seeing me.”

“Why?”

“They worry.” Jonnie saw that Terl couldn’t comprehend that and amended it quickly. “They might make a fuss, create a disturbance.”

“Right. You can go once more. In the dark. Here, here’s a heat shield. You know where my quarters are. Flash a dim light three times.”

“You could just let me take the girls over to the base.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no you don’t.” Terl patted his remote control. “You’re still under my orders.”

Jonnie watched as he rumbled off and vanished in the night. Fear was preying on Terl. And in that state Terl would vacillate and change his mind.

It was a troubled Jonnie who went back to the base.

2

They were overflying the lode area, Jonnie, Robert the Fox, the three near-duplicates and the shift leaders. They were high up. The air was crystal and the mountains spread grandly about them. They were looking for a possible landing site back from the chasm.

“Aye, ’tis the devil’s own problem,” said Robert the Fox.

“Impossible terrain,” said Jonnie.

“No, I don’t mean that,” said Robert the Fox. “It’s this Terl demon. On the one hand we have to keep this mining going and fruitful, and on the other, the last thing we want is for him to succeed. I know very well he’d kill us all if he lost hope. But I’d rather be dead than see him win.”

“Time is on our side,” said Jonnie, turning the plane for another pass over the edge.

“Aye, time,” said Robert the Fox. “Time has a nasty habit of disappearing like the wind from a bagpipe. If we haven’t made it by Day 91, we’re finished.”

“MacTyler!” called Dunneldeen from the back. “Put your eyes on that space about two hundred feet back from the edge. A bit west. It looks flatter.”

There was a bark of laughter from the others. Nothing was flat down there. From the edge and back the terrain was tumbled like a miniature Alps, all stone outcrops and sharp-toothed boulders. No place was flat enough even to set this plane down.

“Take over, Dunneldeen,” said Jonnie. He slid sideways and let the Scot into the pilot’s seat. Jonnie made sure he had control and then went into the back.

He picked up a coil of explosive cord and began to put himself into harness. The others helped him. “I want you to hold about ten feet above that spot. I’ll go down and have a try at blasting it flat.”

“No!” said Robert the Fox. He gestured at David MacKeen, a shift leader. “Take that away from him, Davie! You’re not to be so bold yourself, MacTyler!”

“Sorry,” said Jonnie. “I know these mountains.”

It was so illogical that it stopped Robert the Fox. He laughed. “You’re a bonnie lad, MacTyler. But a bit wild.”

Dunneldeen had them hovering over the spot and Jonnie wrestled with the door to get it open. “Proves I’m a Scot,” he said.

The others didn’t laugh. They were too tense with concern. The plane was making small jumps and jerks and the sharp ground bobbed up and down below. Even here, two hundred feet from the edge, there was wind.

Jonnie was lowered to the ground and let the pickup rope go slack. Not too much blast or that cliff would sheer off again. It might even break off downward. Jonnie examined the ground and chose a sharp tooth. He girdled it with explosive cord, getting it as low and level as possible. He set the fuse.

At a wave of his hand, the pickup rope tightened and yanked him into the air. He hung there, spinning in the wind.

The explosive cord flashed and the roar racketed around the mountains, echoing.

They lowered him again into the wind-whipped dust and with a spike gun he drove a spike into the rock he had blasted loose. A line came down to him and he put it through the eye of the spike. If he had judged correctly the tooth should sheer away.

He was hauled up higher. The plane’s motors screamed. The rock came away.

They lowered the pickup line and he cut the haul cord with a clipper.

The huge rock bounded into a hollow, leaving a flat place where it had stood.

For an hour, grounded and hauled away alternately, Jonnie worked. Some of the blasted rock fell into nearby hollows. Gradually a flattish platform fifty feet in diameter materialized two hundred feet back from the cliff edge.

The plane landed.

David, the shift leader, crept over the broken ground to the crack thirty feet in from the edge. The wind buffeted his bonnet. He put a measuring instrument down into the crack that would tell them if it widened in the future.

Jonnie went over to the edge of the cliff and with Thor holding his ankles tried to look under it and see the lode. He couldn’t. The cliff face was not vertical.

The others clambered around seeing what they could.

Jonnie came back to the plane. His hands were scraped. This place had to be worked with mittens. He’d ask the old women to make some.

“Well,” said Robert the Fox. “We got down.”

The daily recon drone rumbled in the distance. They had their orders. The three near-duplicates of Jonnie dove for the plane and out of sight. Jonnie stood out in the open.

There was plenty of time. The sharp crack of the sonic boom hit them like a club as the recon drone went overhead. The plane and ground shook. The drone dwindled in the distance.

“I hope the vibrations of that thing,” said Dunneldeen, emerging, “don’t split the cliff.”

Jonnie gathered the others around him. “We have a supply point now. First thing to do is pound in a security fence so nothing can slide off, and construct a shift shelter. Right?”

They nodded.

“Tomorrow,” said Jonnie, “we’ll bring two planes. One loaded with equipment and the other equipped to drive rods. We’ll try to construct a working platform to mine the lode, balanced on rods driven into the cliff just below the vein. Survey up here right now what equipment we need for safety reels, ore buckets, and so on.”

They got to work to mine the gold they didn’t want but had to have. Gold was the bait in the trap.

3

Jonnie lay in the dead grass on a knoll and studied the far-off compound through a pair of Psychlo infrared night glasses. He was worried about Chrissie.

Two months had gone by and he felt their chances were worsening. The only blessing was that the winter snows were late, but not the winter cold, and the wind sighing through the night was bitter.

The huge night glasses were icy to the touch. The binocular character of them made them hard to use—the two eyepieces, being Psychlo, were so far apart he could only use one at a time.

The faint light of the dying moon reflected from the snow-capped peak behind him and gave a faint luminescence to the plain.

He was trying to see her fire. From this vantage point he knew by experience that he should be able to. So far he could not find even the tiniest pinpoint of it.

The last time he had seen her, two months ago, he had piled the cage with wood, given her some wheat to boil, and even a few late radishes and lettuces, all from the old women’s garden. She had a fair supply of smoked meat, but it would not last forever.

He had tried rather unsuccessfully to cheer her up and give her confidence he himself was not feeling.

He had also given her one of the stainless steel knives the scout had found, and she had pretended to be amazed and delighted with it and the way it could scrape a hide and cut thin strips of meat.

In all these two months, he had not heard from Terl. Forbidden to go to the compound, having no radio contact, he had waited in vain for Terl to come to the base.

Perhaps Terl thought they had moved. True, they had put an emergency camp near the minesite down in a hidden valley. They had moved extra machines, supplies and the three shifts for the lode and one of the old women to cook and wash for them. There was an abandoned mining village there and it was a short flight to the lode.

The efforts to mine the vein were not going well. They had driven the steel bars into the cliff and tried to build a platform, but the wind, meeting resistance, kept flexing the rods at the point of contact with the cliff and the section there would become red hot. It was daredevil work. Two rods had already broken and only safety lines had saved Scots from plummeting a thousand feet to their deaths. Two months’ work in bitter and ferocious winds. And they had only a few pounds of wire gold to show for it—gold grabbed, as it were, on the fly.

This was the fifth night he had lain here and looked in vain for the fire that should be there.

Five nights before, not seeing the fire, they had sent a scout.

There had been a row with the council and the others when they found he was determined to slip down there himself. They had literally barred the door on him. Robert the Fox had become cross with him and shouted into his ears that chiefs didn’t scout. They might raid, but never scout. It was too dangerous for him; he was not expendable. He had argued and found the rest of the council taking Robert’s side. And when other Scots heard the raised voices they came and stood around the council—as they had a right to do, they said—and added their arguments against his taking senseless risks with his person.

It had been quite a row. And they were right.

They had sent, as a compromise, young Fearghus. He went off like a shadow through the cold moonlight and they waited out the hours.

Somehow young Fearghus got home. He was badly wounded. The flesh of his shoulder was seared like beef. He had gotten almost to the small plateau in front of the cage. The moon had set by then. There was no fire in the cage. But there was something new at the compound—sentries! The area was patrolled by one armed Psychlo near the cages and one or more guards walking the perimeter of the compound.

The guard at the cage had fired at a shadow. Fearghus had gotten away only by howling like a wolf in pain, for the sentry supposed he had shot a wolf, common enough on the plains.

Fearghus was in the makeshift hospital now, shoulder packed in bear grease and herbs. He would get well, clucked over by one of the old women. He was triumphant rather than cowed, for he had proven the majority opinion right.

The other Scots, singly and in groups, informed MacTyler that the point was proven beyond any doubt. A chief must not go on scout; raid yes, scout no.

The parson had consoled Jonnie. In Jonnie’s quarters when they were alone, the parson had patiently explained. “It isn’t that they feel you can’t do it, nor even actually that maybe they themselves couldn’t go on if something happened to you. It’s just that they’re fond of you, laddie. It’s you who gave us the hope.”

Lying in the tall grass using binoculars built for an alien face, Jonnie did not feel much hope.

Here they were, a tiny group of a vanishing race, on a planet itself small and out of the way, confronting the most powerful and advanced beings in the universes. From galaxy to galaxy, system to system, world to world, the Psychlos were supreme. They had smashed every sentient race that had ever sought to oppose them, and even those that had tried to cooperate. With advanced technology and a pitiless temperament, the Psychlos had never been successfully opposed in all the rapacious eons of their existence.

Jonnie thought of the trench, of the sixty-seven cadets with pathetically inadequate weapons trying to stop a Psychlo tank and dying for it, taking with them the last hope of the human race.

No, not the last hope, thought Jonnie. A thousand or more years later, here were the Scots and himself. But what a forlorn hope. One casual sortie from that compound with one old Psychlo ground tank and the hope would be ended. Yes, Jonnie and the Scots could probably attack that compound. They could probably wipe out several minesites and even end this present operation. But the Psychlo company would sweep in and extort a revenge that would end it all forever.

Yes, he had a potential weapon. But not only did he have no uranium; he didn’t even have a detector. He had nothing at all to tell him where to look or even whether something was uranium. He and the Scots had a very forlorn hope indeed.

He put the binoculars on maximum magnification. One last sweep on that sleeping compound way over there. Nightlights, green pinpoints under the domes. But no yellow orange fire.

He was about to give it up for the night when his sweeping glasses picked up the fuel dump. There were piled the cartridges that powered the machines. A bit distant, safely away in case of a blowup, was the explosives magazine—plenty of explosives for mining, but even blowing the whole thing up would not really jar the compound. And there were the battle planes, twenty of them lined up on a ready line. Across the transshipment area from the battle planes and distant from all the rest, but closer to the cage area, was the breathe-gas dump. The company didn’t care how much breathe-gas it stockpiled; in huge drums and small mask bottles, there must be enough breathe-gas there to last the mining operation fifty years. It was piled higgledy-piggledy. It was never checked out—machine operators simply picked up canisters for their canopies and masks. There was too much of it to require conservation.

The glasses swept on. Jonnie was looking for sentries now. He found one of them. The Psychlo was waddling lazily through the dark between the breathe-gas dump and the transshipment platform. Yes, there was another one: up on the plateau near the cage.

Suddenly Jonnie swept the glasses back to the breathe-gas dump. Aside from a half-dozen trodden paths the place was surrounded by tall weeds and grass, and the undergrowth and ground cover stretched out to the horizon.

He brought the glasses back to the breathe-gas dump.

Suddenly, with a surge of hope, he knew he had his uranium detector.

Breathe-gas!

A small bottle of it would let out through its regulator the minute quantities required for masks.

If one let a little breathe-gas escape in the vicinity of radiation, it would make a small explosion.

A Geiger counter reacted when the radiation activated gas in a tube, or so the old books told him. Well, breathe-gas didn’t just react: it exploded violently.

Dangerous sort of instrument perhaps. But with care it just might work.

Jonnie snaked back off the knoll.

Twenty minutes later, at the base, he was saying to the council: “A chief mustn’t go on a scout. Right?”

“Aye,” they all agreed, glad he had gotten the point at last.

“But he can go on a raid,” said Jonnie.

They became stiffly alert.

“I may have solved the uranium detector problem,” said Jonnie. “Tomorrow night, we are going on a raid!”

4

Jonnie crept toward the plateau near the cage. The moon had set; the night was dark. The sounds of distant wolves mingled with the moan of the icy wind. He heard above it the click of equipment as the sentry moved.

Things had definitely not gone well tonight. The first plan had been aborted, making for last-minute changes. All afternoon a mixed herd of buffalo and wild cattle had been ideally located on the plain.

It was said that when a winter was going to be a very bad one, buffalo drifted down from the vastnesses of the north. Or perhaps it was a sort of migration to the south that would happen anyway. The wolves, long and gray, a different kind of wolf, came with them.

The wolves were still out there but the buffalo and cattle were not. The plan had been to stampede the mixed herd across the compound and create a diversion. It happened now and then and would not be suspicious. But just as the raid was about to be launched, the herd had taken it into their heads to trot eastward and were now too far away to be of any use. It was a bad omen. It meant hastily changed plans and a raid with no diversion. Dangerous.

Twenty Scots were scattered out there on the plain, among them Dunneldeen. They were caped and hooded—as was Jonnie—with the heat-deflecting fabric used in drilling. A mixture of powdered grass and glue made from hoofs had been painted over the costume: with this, infrared would read them like part of the surrounding grass; even visually they could be mistaken for the general terrain.

The Scots were under specific orders to converge upon the breathe-gas dump, separately pick up cases of small pressure cylinders, and get back to the base.

The trick was to raid an enemy who would never know he had been raided. They must not suspect at the compound that the “animals” were hostile. It was a raid that must look like no raid. The Scots must not take any weapons, must not collide with any sentries, must not leave any traces.

There was some protest that Jonnie was going to go to the cage. He explained, not really believing it, that this way he would be behind any sentries who might converge upon the dump if a disturbance was noted.

Jonnie gripped a kill-club and stole forward toward the plateau. And his next ill chance was awaiting him.

The horses were not there. Perhaps nervous because of the wolves or seeking better grazing, they had wandered off. Through the glasses, Jonnie had seen two of them last night.

He had planned to creep up the last distance by guiding a horse alongside of him. All his horses were trained to strike with their front hoofs on command, and if the sentry were alerted and had to be hit, it would look like the Psychlo had simply tangled with a horse.

No horses. Wait. A dim increase in blackness in the black at the bottom of the cliff ahead of him. Jonnie sighed with relief as the crunch of dry grass being munched came to him.

But when he arrived, it was only Blodgett, the horse with the crippled shoulder, probably not given to much wandering due to the lameness.

Oh, well. Better Blodgett than none at all. The horse nuzzled him in greeting but obeyed the order to be silent.

With a hand on Blodgett’s jaw, causing the horse to stop a bit every few feet, walking back of the horse’s shoulder and protected from any detector the sentry might be carrying, Jonnie quietly approached the cage. If he could get within striking distance of the sentry—and if Blodgett remembered the training—and if the lame shoulder permitted, Jonnie intended to take out the sentry.

The Psychlo was looming up under the reflected glow of a dim, green light burning somewhere in the dome. There was no fire in the cage.

Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet . . .

Suddenly the sentry turned, alert. Ten feet! Way out of striking distance.

But just as Jonnie was about to launch the kill-club he saw that the sentry was listening back of himself. There was a tiny whisper of crackling sound. Jonnie knew what it was: a radio intercom plugged into the sentry’s ear. Some other sentry had spoken to him over it.

The Psychlo hefted the six cumbersome feet of his blast rifle. He muttered something inside his own helmet dome, answering.

The other sentry must be down by the dump. Had a Scot been seen? Was the operation blown?

The cage sentry went lumbering off to the other side of the compound, in the direction of the dump.

Whatever was going on down there, Jonnie had his own mission. He moved quickly up to the wooden barrier.

“Chrissie!” he whispered as loudly as he dared into the darkness of the cage.

Silence.

“Chrissie!” he hissed more urgently.

“Jonnie?” a whisper came back. But it was Pattie’s voice.

“Yes. Where is Chrissie?”

“She’s here . . . Jonnie!” There were tears in back of Pattie’s whisper. “Jonnie, we don’t have any water. The pipes froze.” She sounded very weak herself, possibly ill.

There was an odor in the air and in the green dimness Jonnie spotted a pile of dead rats outside the door. Dead rats that had not been taken in and were rotting.

“Do you have any food?”

“Very little. And we have had no firewood for a week.”

Jonnie felt a fury rising in himself. But he must be fast. They had no time. “And Chrissie?”

“Her head is hot. She just lies here. She doesn’t answer me. Jonnie, please help us.”

“Hold on,” said Jonnie hoarsely. “In a day or two you’ll get help, I promise. Tell Chrissie. Make her understand.”

He could do little right now. “Is there ice in the pool?”

“A little. Very dirty.”

“Use the heat of your body to melt it. Pattie, you must hold on for a day or two.”

“I’ll try.”

“Tell Chrissie I was here. Tell her—” What did girls want to hear, what could he say? “Tell her that I love her.” It was true enough.

There was a sharp sound down by the dump. Jonnie knew he couldn’t stay. Something, somebody was in trouble down there.

Gripping Blodgett’s mane to drag the horse along, Jonnie ran silently to the other side of the compound.

He stared down the hill toward the dump. He knew exactly where it was but there were no lights. Yes, there was a light!

A sentry flashlight flicked across the dump.

Two sentries were down there. The silhouettes against the dump showed they were a hundred feet this side of it.

Jonnie covered himself with the horse and went down the hill.

A light flicked at him, dazzling. It passed on.

“Just one of those damned horses,” said a voice ahead of him. “I tell you there’s something to the right of that dump.”

“Turn on your scanner!”

A thudding sound came from the dump like a box being overturned.

“There is something over there,” said the sentry.

They started to advance, flashlight playing before them. It silhouetted them to Jonnie. He crept the horse forward.

Jonnie saw what had happened. A messily stacked tier of boxes had overturned when someone touched one.

With better night sight than the light-blinded sentries, he saw a Scot move and then begin to run away.

No. A sentry saw it. The sentry was raising the blast rifle to fire.

What a bad night! The Psychlos would know the animals were raiding them. A wounded or dead Scot in a heat camouflage cape would give it all away. The Psychlos would retaliate. They’d wipe out the base.

Twenty feet away the sentry was shoving off the safety catch, aiming.

The kill-club struck him like a lightning bolt in the center of his back.

Jonnie was racing forward, unarmed now.

The other sentry turned. The light hit Jonnie.

The Psychlo raised his blast rifle to fire.

Jonnie was past him! Grasping the muzzle of the huge gun, he spun it out of his paws.

Jonnie reversed the weapon to use the butt. There must be no shots to wake the compound.

The Psychlo turned and tried to grab him. The rifle butt crunched into the sentry’s stomach and he folded.

Jonnie thought he was home free but he wasn’t. The ground shook. A third sentry came running up. The light from the fallen flashlight shone on the huge rushing legs. The third sentry had a belt gun drawn. He was five feet away, raising the weapon to fire.

Holding the blast rifle by its muzzle, Jonnie whirled the butt into the third one’s helmet.

There was a crack of splitting helmet glass. Then a hoarse in-take of hostile air.

The Psychlo went down. The first one was trying to get up and bring a weapon to bear.

Jonnie crashed the butt of the rifle down on his chest and his helmet came loose. He choked a strangled gasp as the air hit him.

My God! Jonnie agonized. Three sentries to explain! Unless he acted, they were for it and washed up the whole way. He forced the rages of combat back to calmness. He heard Blodgett running off.

Somewhere up in the compound a door slammed. This place would be swarming.

He stamped out the flashlight.

Raking through his pockets he searched for a thong. He found one, found two. He pieced them together.

He reached down and got hold of the first sentry’s blast rifle. He tied the extended thong to the trigger.

Then with all his might he plunged the muzzle of the blast rifle into the ground, choking its bore with dirt and leaving it erect.

He hunched down behind the protection of the first sentry’s body.

There were running feet coming down from the compound. Doors were slamming. They would be here any instant.

He made sure he was protected both from sight of the compound and from the blast and pulled the thong.

The choked blast rifle exploded like a bomb.

The corpse before him jolted.

Geysered dirt and rocks began to fall back.

But Jonnie was gone.

Two hours later, with his side aching from running, Jonnie came back to the base.

Robert the Fox had seen that no unusual lights were on and had the place organized in case of pursuit. As the raiders came in, one by one, he had their boxes of breathe-gas carefully hidden in a basement and collected them in a silent group in the faintly lit auditorium. He had fifteen Scots standing by with submachine guns and passenger ships lined up in case they had to evacuate. The camouflaged capes had been removed and hidden. No evidence left in sight; no precaution untaken; withdrawal, if called for, already organized. Robert the Fox was an efficient veteran of many a raid in his own homeland.

“Did we leave anyone?” panted Jonnie.

“Nineteen came back,” said Robert the Fox. “Dunneldeen is still out there.”

Jonnie didn’t like it. He looked around at the nineteen raiders in the hall. They were concentrating on getting themselves back to normal, straightening their bonnets, picking grass off themselves, winding down.

A runner from the lookout with night glasses posted on top of a building came in with the message: “No pursuit visible. No planes have taken off.”

“That was one devil of an explosion,” said Robert the Fox.

“It was a blast rifle that blew up,” said Jonnie. “When the barrel is clogged they blow back and explode their whole magazine of five hundred rounds.”

“Sure made the echoes ring,” said Robert the Fox. “We heard it over here, miles away.”

“They are loud,” said Jonnie. He sat panting on a bench. “I’ve got to figure out how to get a message to Terl. Chrissie is ill, and they’re without water. No firewood.”

The Scots tensed. One of them spat the word “Psychlos!”

“I’ll figure a way to get a message,” said Jonnie. “Any sign of Dunneldeen?” he called to a messenger at the door.

The messenger went off to the lookout.

The group waited. Minutes ticked on. Half an hour went by. They were strained. Finally Robert the Fox stood up and said, “Well, bad as it is, we better—”

There was the thud of running feet.

Dunneldeen came racing through the door and sank down panting. He was not just panting, he was also laughing.

“No sign of pursuit!” the messenger shouted in.

The tension vanished.

Dunneldeen delivered a box of breathe-gas vials and the parson rushed it off to hide it in case of search.

“No planes have taken off,” the messenger yelled into the room.

“Well, for now, laddies,” said Robert the Fox, “unless the devils are waiting for daylight—”

“They won’t come,” said Dunneldeen.

Others were drifting into the room. Submachine guns were being uncocked. Pilots came in from the passenger standby planes. Even the old women were peering in the door. Nobody knew yet what had gone wrong out there.

Dunneldeen had his breath and the parson was moving around serving out small shots of whiskey.

“I stayed behind to see what they would do,” said the cheerful Dunneldeen. “Ooo, and you should have seen our Jonnie!” He gave a highly colored account. He had been one of the last ones to reach the dump, and when he touched a box, a whole pile of them fell over. He fled, zigzagging, but circled back in case Jonnie needed help. “But help, he needed no help!” And he told them how Jonnie had killed the three Psychlos “with his bare hands and a rifle butt” and had “blown the whole lot sky-high.” And he’d “looked like a David fighting three Goliaths.”

There wouldn’t be any pursuit. “I hid behind the horse two hundred feet away and moved it closer when the Psychlos all met at the bodies. The horse wasn’t hit in the blast but a piece of gun must have slashed into a buffalo that was standing near the dump.”

“Yes, I saw the buffalo.” “I ran into it going in.” “Is that what that shadow was?” murmured various raiders.

“Some big Psychlo—maybe your demon, Jonnie—came down,” continued Dunneldeen, “and flashed lights around. And they figured out the buffalo had overturned the boxes and the sentries had gone hunting on watch—oh, they were cross at the sentries for that—and stumbled and dug a blast rifle into the dirt and it went off and killed them.”

Jonnie expelled a sigh of relief. He hadn’t known about the buffalo but he had intended them to think the rest of it. He had even recovered the burned-off thong. The explosion would have masked the other damage, and he’d found his kill-club in a mad last-second scramble before escape. Yes, there was no evidence.

“What a raid!” exulted Dunneldeen. “And ooo what a bonnie chief our Jonnie is!”

Jonnie sipped at the whiskey the parson gave him to hide his embarrassment.

“You’re a scamp,” said Robert the Fox to Dunneldeen. “You might have been caught.”

“Ah, bit we haed tae know noo, didn’t we?” laughed Dunneldeen, unabashed.

They wanted to parade the pipers. But Robert the Fox would give no clue to the eyes of a watching enemy that tonight was any different. He sent them to bed.

Well, thought Jonnie, as he settled down in the wool plaid blanket, they had their uranium detector, perhaps.

But that didn’t help Chrissie. No radio. No personal contact. How was he going to force Terl to come over?

5

A haggard, nervous Terl approached the rendezvous. He drove his armored ground car with one paw and held the other on the firing triggers of the fully charged heavy guns.

He had not figured out Jayed’s presence on Earth. The Imperial Bureau of Investigation agent had been assigned to a lowly ore-sorting post by personnel; Terl had not dared suggest any assignment. An ore sorter only worked when there was ore coming up at the end of shifts, and a fellow could disappear off the post for hours and not be missed and reappear as though he’d been there all the time. Terl dared not put surveillance equipment near him for Jayed was a past master at that, after decades in the I.B.I.

Terl had tried to get Jayed involved with Chirk, his secretary. He offered Chirk wild promises if she could get Jayed into bed with her—with a button camera of the smallest size imbedded in a mole. But Jayed had paid no attention to her. He had just gone on shuffling about, head down, giving the exact appearance of an employee up to absolutely nothing. But what else? That was how the I.B.I. would work.

With shaking paws Terl had ransacked the dispatch boxes to home planet. There was nothing from Jayed in them. No new types of reports, no strange alterations of routine paper. Terl had spent agonizing nights going through the traffic. He could find nothing.

Rumbling about, feeling like he was spinning, Terl had tried to figure out whether the I.B.I. had invented some new means of communication. The company and the imperial government did not invent things—they had not, to Terl’s knowledge, for the last hundred thousand years. But still, there could always be something he didn’t know about. Like writing on ore samples being shipped through. But it would take specially designated ore and there was no departure he could find.

The imperial government was usually only interested in the company’s ore volumes—the government got a percentage. But it could also intervene in matters of serious crime or intended crime.

Terl could not find what Jayed was doing. And the appearance of a deadly secret agent on the base, with falsified papers, had not permitted Terl a single relaxed moment for the past two months.

He did his own work with a fury and an impeccable thoroughness quite foreign to him. He got through investigations at once. He answered all dispatches at once. Anything questionable in his files was buried or destroyed at once. Terl had even personally overhauled and fueled and charged the twenty battle planes in the field so that he would appear alert and efficient.

He had filed a banal report about the animals. There were dangerous posts in mining, slopes one could not get into, and as an experiment “ordered by Numph,” he had rounded up a few animals to see whether they could run simpler machine types. The animals were not dangerous; they were actually stupid and slow to learn. It did not cost the company anything and it might increase their profits in case the experiment worked out. It was not very successful yet anyway. Nothing was taught the animals about metallurgy or warfare, both because of company policy and because they were too stupid. They ate rats, a vermin plentiful on this planet. He sent the report through with no priority. He was covered. He hoped.

But fifteen times a day Terl decided that he should wipe out the animals and return the machines to storage. And fifteen times a day he decided to go on with it just a little longer.

The sentry affair had disturbed him, not because Psychlos had been killed (he needed the dead bodies for his plans), but because one of the sentries, when Terl put the body in a coffin for transshipment next year, had had a criminal brand burned into the fur of his chest. This three-bar brand was put on criminals by the imperial government. It represented someone “barred from justice procedures, barred from government assistance, and barred from employment.” It meant the personnel department on the home planet was careless. He had made an innocuous report of it.

For a flaming moment of hope he thought perhaps Jayed might be investigating that or looking for some such. But when he had a fellow employee mention it casually to Jayed, no interest had been shown.

Terl simply could not find out what Jayed was looking for, nor why Jayed was there. The tension and uncertainty of it had brought him near to perpetual hysteria.

And this morning, out of the blue, the animal had done something that literally stood Terl’s fur on end with terror.

As was his usual practice, Terl was stripping the day’s photos from the recon drone receiver, when he found himself looking at a photo of the minesite with a sign in it.

There, sharp and clear, at the lode, was the animal steadying a huge twelve-by-twelve-foot sign. It was resting on a flat place the animals had made back of the lode. In clearest Psychlo script it said:

URGENT

Meeting Vital.

Same place. Same time.

That was bad enough! But a machine tarpaulin seemed to have fallen over the last part of the sign. There was another line. It said:

The w——

Terl couldn’t read the rest of it.

The stupid animal apparently had not noticed part of its sign was obscured.

With shaking claws, Terl had tried to find another frame in the sequence that looked back of the tarpaulin. He could not.

Panic gripped him.

Gradually his scattered wits collected down to seething anger. The panic died out as he realized that his was the only recon drone receiver on the planet; the telltale on the side of it that showed whether anything else was receiving was mute. He daily watched these photos and had exactly tracked the progress at the lode. The animal he had captured always seemed to be there with a crew. While all these animals looked alike, he thought he could recognize the blond beard and size of the one he had trained. This usually reassured him, for it seemed to mean the animal was busy and not wandering around elsewhere.

The progress at the lode was minimal but he knew the problems of mining it, and he also knew they might solve them without his advice. He had months to go—four months more, actually—before Day 92.

He got over his panic and shredded the photos. Jayed had no possible access to them.

But to directly link Terl with the project was not to be allowed. He began to imagine that the sign had started with his name and regretted having shredded it so fast. He should have made sure. Maybe it did start: “Terl!”

Terl was not introspective enough to realize that he was bordering upon insanity.

The darkness spread like a black sack over the tank. He had been driving on instruments without lights. It was treacherous terrain: an old city had been here once, but it was now just a honeycomb of abandoned mine holes where the company had followed an old deposit centuries before.

Something showed on his detector screen right ahead. Something live!

His paw rested alertly on the firing knob, ready to blast. He cautiously made sure he was headed away from the compound and masked by a hill and ancient walls. Then he turned on a dim inspection light.

The animal was sitting on a horse at the rendezvous point. It was a different horse, a wild horse nervous because of the tank. The dim, green tank light bathed the rider. There was another, someone else! No, it was just another horse . . . it had a large pack on its back.

Terl swept his scanners around. No, there was nobody else here. He looked back at the animal. Terl’s paw quivered an inch above the firing lever. The animal did not seem to be alarmed.

The interior of the tank was compressed with breathe-gas but Terl also had on a breathe-mask. He adjusted it.

Terl picked up an intercom unit and pushed it through the atmosphere-tight firing port. The unit fell to the ground outside the tank. Terl picked up the interior unit.

“Get down off that horse and pick up this intercom,” ordered Terl.

Jonnie slid off the half-broken horse and approached the tank. He picked the unit off the ground and looked through the tank ports for Terl. He could see nothing. The interior was dark and the glass was set to block a view in.

Through the intercom, Terl said, “Did you kill those sentries?”

Jonnie held the outside unit to his face. He thought fast. This Terl was in a very strange state. “We haven’t lost any sentries,” he said truthfully.

“You know the sentries I mean. At the compound.”

“Have you had trouble?” said Jonnie.

The word trouble almost made Terl’s head spin. He didn’t know what trouble he had, or what kind of trouble, or from where. He got a grip on himself.

“You obscured the last part of that sign,” he said accusingly.

“Oh?” said Jonnie innocently. He had obscured it on purpose so that Terl would come. “It meant to say, ‘The winter is advancing and we need your advice.’”

Terl simmered down. Advice. “About what?” He knew about what. It was next to impossible to get out that gold. But there had to be a way. And he was a miner. Top student of the school, actually. And he studied the recon drone pictures daily. He knew the flexing rods would not let them build a platform. “You need a portable shaft stairway. You’ve got one in your equipment. You nail it to the outside face and work from it.”

“All right,” said Jonnie. “We’ll try it.” He had Terl calmer now that he was on a routine subject of interest.

“We also need some protection in case of uranium,” said Jonnie.

“Why?”

“There’s uranium in those mountains,” said Jonnie.

“In the gold?”

“I don’t think so. In the valleys and around.” Jonnie thought he had better emphasize that Terl was barred from those places, and also he was desperate for the data. He could not experiment with uranium without protection from it. “I’ve seen men turn blotchy from it,” he added, which was true but not of his present crew.

This seemed to cheer Terl up. “No crap?” he said.

“What gear protects one?”

Terl said, “There’s always radiation around on a planet like this and a sun like this. Small amounts. That’s why these breathe-masks have leaded glass in their faceplates. That’s why all the canopies are leaded glass. You don’t have any.”

“It’s lead that protects one?”

“You’ll just have to take your chances,” said Terl, amused, feeling better.

“Can you turn a light up here?” asked Jonnie. There was a thump as he laid a sack on the flat section in front of the windscreen.

“I don’t want any lights.”

“Do you think you were followed?”

“No. That spinning disk on the roof is a detection wave neutralizer. You needn’t worry about our being traced.”

Jonnie looked up at the top of the tank. In the very dim light he could see a thing planted there. It looked like a fan. It was running.

“Turn a light on this,” said Jonnie.

Terl looked at his screens. There were no telltales. “I’ll drive ahead under that tree.”

Jonnie steadied the ore sack as Terl slowly put the car under a mask of evergreens. He stopped again and turned on a light that lit up the area in front of the windshield.

With a lift of his arm, Jonnie spilled about ten pounds of ore onto the tank bonnet. It flashed under the light. It was white quartz and wire gold. And it shone and glittered as though it had jewels in it as well. Eight pounds of it was pure wire gold from the lode.

Terl sat and stared through the windscreen at it. He swallowed hard.

“There’s a ton of it there,” said Jonnie. “If it can be gotten out. It’s in plain view.”

The Psychlo just sat and looked at the gold through the windscreen. Jonnie scattered it so it shone better.

He picked up the intercom again. “We’re keeping our bargain. You must keep yours.”

“What do you mean?” said Terl, detecting accusation.

“You promised to give food and water and firewood to the females.”

Terl shrugged. “Promises,” he said indifferently.

Jonnie put his arm around the gold and started to sweep it back into the ore sack and withdraw it.

The motion was not lost on Terl. “Quit it. How do you know they aren’t being cared for?”

Jonnie let the gold lie. He moved over so the light touched his face. He tapped a finger against his forehead. “There’s something you don’t know about humans,” said Jonnie. “They have psychic powers sometimes. I have psychic powers with those females.” It would not do to tell Terl that it was the absence of a fire or a scout that alerted him. All’s fair in love and war, as Robert the Fox would say, and this was both love and war.

“You mean without radios, right?” Terl had read about this. He hadn’t realized these animals had it. Damned animals.

“Right,” said Jonnie. “If she is not well cared for and if she isn’t all right, I know!” He tapped his head again.

“Now I have a pack here,” said Jonnie. “It has food and water and flints and firewood and warm robes and a small tent. I’m going to lash it on top of this tank and right away when you get back, you’re to put it in the cage. Also get the cage cleaned up, inside and outside, and fix the water supply.”

“It’s just the tank,” said Terl. “It goes empty, needs to be topped up. I’ve been busy.”

“And take those sentries away. You don’t need sentries!”

“How did you know there were sentries?” said Terl suspiciously.

“You just told me so, tonight,” said Jonnie into the intercom. “And my psychic powers tell me they tease her.”

“You can’t order me around,” bristled Terl.

“Terl, if you don’t take care of the females, I just might take it into my head to wander up to those sentries and mention something I know.”

“What?” demanded Terl.

“Just something I know. It wouldn’t cause you to be fired but it would be embarrassing.”

Terl suddenly vowed he had better get rid of those sentries.

“You’ll know if I don’t do these things?” said Terl.

Jonnie tapped his own forehead in the light.

But the threat had unsettled Terl’s spinning wits. On an entirely different tack he demanded, “What’ll you do with the gold if you don’t deliver it?”

“Keep it for ourselves,” said Jonnie, starting again to put it back in the bag.

Terl snarled deep and threateningly. His amber eyes flared in the darkness of the tank. “I’ll be damned if you will!” he shouted. Leverage, leverage! “Listen! Did you ever hear of a drone bomber? Hah, I thought not. Well, let me tell you something, animal: I can lift off a drone bomber and send it right over that site, right over your camp, right over any shelter, and bomb you out of existence. All by remote! You’re not as safe as you think, animal!”

Jonnie just stood there, looking at the blank, black windows of the tank as the words avalanched through the intercom.

“You, animal,” snarled Terl, “are going to mine that gold and you’re going to deliver that gold and you are going to do it all by Day 91. And if you don’t, I’ll blast you and all animals on this planet to hell, you hear me, to hell!” His voice ended in a shriek of hysteria and he stopped, panting.

“And when Day 91 comes, and we’ve done it?” said Jonnie.

Terl barked a sharp, hysterical laugh. He felt he really had to get control of himself. He sensed he was acting strangely. “Then you get paid!” he shouted.

“You keep your side of the bargain,” said Jonnie. “We’ll deliver it.”

Good, thought Terl. He had cowed the animal. This was more like it. “Put that pack on the tank,” he said magnanimously. “I’ll fill the water tank and clean up the place and take care of the sentries. But don’t forget my remote control box, eh? You act up and dead females!”

Jonnie tied the vital pack on the vehicle roof. In the process of doing so he removed the wave-neutralizer and put it behind a tree. Terl would think it had been knocked off by the tree branches, perhaps. It might be useful.

Terl had turned the bonnet light off and Jonnie put the ore back in the sack. He knew Terl wouldn’t take it with him.

Without saying goodbye, Terl drove off and the tank vanished.

Minutes later, when it was hidden from view and miles away, Dunneldeen climbed out of a mine hole where he had been holding a submachine gun in sweaty hands. He had realized the weapon would do nothing to that tank, but they had not expected Terl to stay in the armored vehicle. Although they would not have shot him, they thought he might have tried to kidnap Jonnie if the girls were dead. Dunneldeen gave a short whistle. Ten more Scots bobbed into view from mine holes, putting their guns on safety.

Robert the Fox came down the hill from an old ruined wall. Jonnie was still standing there looking off toward the compound.

“That demon,” said Robert the Fox, “is on the verge of insanity. Did ye ken how his talk darted this way and that? The hysteria in his laughter? He’s hard driven by something we don’t know about.”

“We didn’t know about the drone bombers,” said Dunneldeen.

“We know now,” said Robert the Fox. “MacTyler, you know this demon. Wouldn’t you say he was borderline daft?”

“Do you suppose he meant to blast you when he drove in?” asked Dunneldeen. “But you handled it very well, Jonnie MacTyler.”

“He’s dangerous,” said Jonnie.

Two hours later he saw a fire start, a tiny pinpoint of light in the distant cage. Later a scout would confirm the removal of the sentries and he himself would check on the water and Chrissie.

An insane Terl was making this a much more hazardous game they were playing. A treacherous Terl was one thing. A maniac Terl was quite another.