UP

AND AWAY!

UP

UP,

First there was the little man from the sky. Then there was the planting of the seeds. The towering structure came overnight— never had anyone seen a taller—and it had grown to the very sky.

Then they climbed the tower...

And there was the place no one had ever

seen before.

It was the place with the huge structures, the place with the singer in the cage, the place with the booming voices.

And the giant. Yes, the giant.

They were all called by other names—the little man explained it all.

But to Jack, the son of the Widow Fairfax, it still smacked of magic. But, witchcraft or not, there was work to be done and a war to fight. Courage, in any case, is not linked to understanding. Fortunately—for a thousand planets.

Beanstalk

by

John Rackham

DAW  BOOKS,  INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER

1301 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N. Y.                   10019

COPYRIGHT ©, 1973, BY JOHN RACKHAM All Rights Reserved. Cover art by Kelly Freas.

FIRST PRINTING, NOVEMBER 1973

123456789

BMP*

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Jack lay flat on the greensward at the foot of the old grandfather oak. One outflung gnarled branch kept the sun from his face but gave him loopholes through which he could stare up at the deep blue of the cloudless afternoon sky. He lay still, and stared, but he saw only his thoughts, and they were far from pleasant. The many sounds of the forest blended into a peaceful and familiar murmur in his ears, but failed to find an echoing peace in his mind. Although the small holding that kept him and his widowed mother was but a few acres, there were chores in plenty to keep him busy, and a moment such as this, with his lunch of black bread and sour ale eaten, and Brownie the milch cow a few score yards away placidly cropping, leaving him time to think ... such a moment was rare, and he needed it. No matter how he thought of it, the future looked dark and depressing.

At nineteen, Jack considered himself a man full-grown, and his six foot and more of well-muscled frame supported his opinion, but the burden he had to bear was such as would have bowed a man with twice his years and experience. In reach of his left hand lay a pewter tankard that he had won only a year ago for his skill with the longbow, which lay equally close to his other side. For that achievement, and because he had the favor of Earl Dudley's eye ... in fact it was commonly accepted that there was a blood kin between Dudley and himself, because of the traditional privilege of jus primae noctis that the Earl had claimed on Edwina, Jack's mother ... for that and other reasons, Jack Earl Fairfax should have gone with Dudley's men, overseas and to the Holy Land, to fight the infidel Saracen. The Crusades, a word to fire the adventurous blood of a young man of spirit itching to break out of the

narrow confines of a small village life, and how he had looked for it, worked toward it. But a malicious fate had decreed otherwise. Only eight months since, on a blowy, blustery autumn morning, Freeman Will Fairfax, small holder and warden of the Royal Deer in those parts, had set out on his gray-dawn rounds. And a treacherous elm had shed a stout branch, as elms are apt to do, especially after a thunderstorm, without any warning. No man can take care all the time. Freeman Fairfax had died instantly, an instant that stole Jack's dreams and hopes and promoted him to a heavy responsibility.

But it hadn't ended at that. With an office to fill and his mother to keep, Jack saw his crusading dreams disappear, and felt cheated as he helped to lay his father to rest. Then the old sow, well serviced by Freeman Dennison's blood-boar, died unexpectedly and unaccountably in farrow. Widow Fairfax, wise in husbandry, had slaughtered all the Utter but one, knowing well that it would be impossible to rear more than one by hand. Little of that meat remained, and the piglet had thrived poorly for all their care. In the first crack of spring three of their four cows managed somehow to find and eat some weed that poisoned them, leaving only Brownie. The acre of oats looked thin and poor. The cabbages, kale, and potatoes were showing promise, but everything else seemed to have caught the general evil. And tithes were due in a matter of weeks. In other years it had always been possible, somehow, to save and sell at market a good cheese or two, a young pig, even a little good oat grain, and thereby get enough silver to pay tithe and have something left for salt, and yeast, and a length or two of good cloth. But this year . . . ?

Whichever way Jack chewed it in his mind's teeth he had to come back to his mother's words.

"We will sell Brownie to pay tithe. At least we will escape debt!"

But then, Jack demanded silently of the indifferent forest, what shall we do then? He knew there was no answer. Muttering softly in helpless anger he said, "Even were my Earl of Dudley himself here he could do little. All know that he is a strict man with silver, though kindhearted enough in other things. And he is not here, nor will be for many a long month!" Which was true. Dudley had gathered his men and departed with the first fine weather, bound for foreign lands and the infidel foe, leaving in his stead Bernard the Seneschal, a dour old graybeard who knew nothing better than to keep the strict letter of the law in his lord's absence. No charity could be expected there. Nor hope anywhere else. Jack looked at it again and again, feeling rising anger and futility. It was all wrong, all unfair, and yet there was nothing he could do about it.

He stirred, roused restlessly to an elbow, and Brownie, on the far side of the glade, lifted her placid head a moment to stare at him, then went back to her feeding. We'll not starve, he thought, not while there's deer that no one will miss! That was a desperate crime that he had opened his mind to long ago. But it was a stopgap only. It would solve nothing to poach the very deer he was in honor bound to protect. For a moment or two his thoughts ran fancifully to visions of strange benefactors: a wandering stranger with a deep purse perhaps; or a hobgoblin? Old men's tales had it that the little men of the woods knew where gold and precious gems were hid, if you could make them talk. There was even a fanciful tale of a man, northward in another part of the forest, who commanded a wild band of outlaws to rob the rich and help those who were poor. Robin of the Greenwood, so they said. And there was that hunched old crone who lived all alone, away the other side of Castle Dudley and who was a witch, so it was said. But Jack had to grin wryly at the run of his imagination and pull his mind back from such things. Magic was for the credulous. What he badly needed was something practical. What his mother needed sorely was a strong man about the place to keep and comfort her. In the scant months since his father's death he had seen her grow visibly old and inturned, her golden hair now as dull as her eyes, her voice heard seldom above a whisper, yielding to the defeat that faced them. Once she had been fair, shapely, lovely enough to catch the eye of Earl Dudley himself. But now . . . ?

"It's all wrong!" Jack said it aloud, violently, hopelessly, and Brownie flicked an ear, turned her placid brown eyes on him as he clambered to bis feet and gathered up his satchel, threading the tankard on the strap. Then he took his bow, nearly six feet of good stout churchyard yew, and the quiver of goose-quilled cloth yards, two dozen of them, and slung them angrily across his broad shoulder. What good were they now?

Far away and high overhead a small strange noise puzzled his ear. As he craned his head to look up that noise grew enormously, shook the whole sunlit world, plunged needle-tipped hurt into his ears, shivered the whole of his body so that he threw himself face-flat in terror, wrapping his arms about his head. Was it Beelzebub himself descending in wrath? Would the Lord of this World come this close to high noon, and from above? The impossible noise grew sideways, not louder but somehow more dense and solid, substantial enough to shake him as the hammer of a thunderclap shakes the solid ground. Coherent thoughts deserted his mind and he prepared to die. It could only be the Day of Judgment itself, in such ravening fury. Benumbed, he felt the solid world under him leap in shock, and subside again. Then, shockingly, the vast uproar stopped and there was a deafened silence through which small sounds found their way like ants through a crack in a wall. As bells rang sourly in his head, Jack waited, drew a careful breath, let it out again, and dared to lift his head a fraction, to peer. Chill fingers danced lightly along his backbone at the sight.

There in the glade, between himself and Brownie, hung an evil blue cloud like a smoke-puff with a shape of its own, so clear and pale that he could see Brownie's stricken carcass through it, yet so terribly real that he never for a moment doubted its existence. His nostrils twitched anticipating brimstone. This had to be hell-fire, for certain. He stared in fearful fascination, and saw the blue grow rapidly darker and more solid, writhing with inner torment, gathering in on itself, darker and darker until it was a black that seemed to draw the eyes from his head for a breath or two. Then, in a blink, it was gone as if fallen into its own creation. There in its place some equally fearful but utterly different marvel stood, defying his puzzled eyes.

There were many rods, a great number, each no thicker than a willow-wand but of some strange silver-glitter stuff, and so shaped and joined together as to enclose a space like a big ball but with flat facets. And the flat facets had a sheen on them too, like the surface of a pond when the wind holds still. The whole baffled bis peasant's mind to comprehend. It was some kind of basket, perhaps, but of such a size and quality as he had never imagined. And now he saw, through those shimmering facets, that there were fires within, small points of flame that glittered and winked in many colors, in green and red and yellow. And something moved in there, a dark shape that aroused new fears in his mind. Was this thing some fiendish chariot? That ... thing ... inside seemed dark and sluggish and small. He felt that it moved close to a flatness and peered at him malevolently, so that he ducked down quickly. Shaking all over, he gathered his intentions and muscles, clutched his bow and quiver, braced himself, then sprang up and leaped for the shelter of the great oak's trunk. Once behind it he shook his bow into his hand, plucked an arrow and nocked it, drew far to his chin and then eased himself daringly around the trunk, ready to loose at anything that might offer itself.

The impossible structure still stood, but now its shape had altered a little. It had grown a limb at one side, a projection that stretched out and down to the green turf. It was, it had to be, a ladder or gangway of some sort. That thing in there was setting ready to come out. He spread his feet more, set his shoulder solidly against the oak, and held ready to spit the thing, whatever it was, devil or not Past his shaft-point he saw movement. Here it came now, a small, hunched, horrible, helmeted creature, no more than four and a half feet tall. He got it perfectly in his sight, froze, held his breath, loosed the shaft, and followed it with anxious eye as his hand by itself found another arrow and set it ready.

The shaft flew true, and he had known it would. But then his jaw fell as he saw it, on the point of piercing that horrible creature somewhere between neck and chest, suddenly leap aside with a crack as if it had struck metal, to plunge and quiver in the turf some ten feet clear. Armor! Of course he had expected the foul fiend to be girded in some way against attack, but what devilish kind of armor was it that a man couldn't see, yet could turn a cloth yard steel tip at this range? Curiously, the impossible served to cast doubt into Jack's mind. Would the Evil One be armored in such fashion? Would it not be more likely that a man who dared to loose a shaft against him would be struck dead immediately? Chewing on his conflicting thoughts, Jack drew his second shaft tight to his chin and stood clear, daringly.

"Hold there!" he shouted boldly. "Hold there, whatever you may be, or I’ ll try that armor of yours again!"

The words echoed in the glade. The squat dark creature turned, seemingly with great effort. Jack saw a dark, hook-nosed visage and oddly bright eyes. Then a curiously quiet voice whispered, inside his head.

"Friend. I mean you no harm. I ask your help. Help me. Help ..." That strange "voice," quiet to start with, seemed to fade away altogether. Jack felt a ghost-pain, a sudden grip at his stomach that came and went in a breath. Then the strange being tottered and fell, facedown in the grass, and lay still. Suspiciously, Jack waited a long while before moving, then he moved forward one nervous step after the other, bow half-drawn and ready, his eyes alternating from the inert fiend to his devilish chariot. Fires still winked and blinked their varicolored mystery inside that strange structure. He saw now that the curious facetings were eight-sided and filled with some tight-drawn kind of skin that he could see through. The downstretched gangway was of the same kind of stuff. It didn't appear substantial enough to walk on. And now, closer still, he felt a ghostly touch and tingle that made his skin cringe and lifted his hair in bumps along his forearm as it braced the bow. A powerful spell, undoubtedly.

But what of the enchanter himself? The small creature was manlike in a grotesque way, not black as Jack had first assumed but a deep dark brown like well-worn walnut, with a barrel chest and sinewy arms that hinted at great power and energy. The helmet was a curious device, unlike any armor Jack had ever seen. As round and smooth as a half apple, it had two spiked growths like horns, but of polished copper, and the whole was secured in place by a chin-strap that was decorated with curious bumps and knobs. For the rest the creature had no armor at all that anyone could see, only a complicated web-work of glossy stuff that was associated with a broad belt of the same substance. And that belt had its share of lumps and bumps, and hooks that held pouches and boxes. It was all in all a most baffling beast, but Jack saw and envied one thing, the beautifully polished calf boots the thing wore. His own rough hand-sewn sandals were nothing by comparison. By the movement of slow breathing he could see that the creature still lived. If those boots had only been bigger ... and would that walnut-hued hide turn another shaft, this close? He debated it inwardly, gripping his bow.

What had the creature said, in that magical manner? Friend? Meaning no harm? How could that be? If this thing was some kind of goblin—and he had decided to start believing in goblins a few moments earlier—then it was an enemy and threat by definition. What was more, if there were after all such things as goblins, then perhaps that other tale, about pots of gold, was also true. Jack retreated a cautious pace and turned so as to be able to keep the weird chariot in view. Then he saw Brownie shudder, lift her head, and then lumber to her feet, apparently none the worse. He clicked his tongue, called soothingly to her, and she tossed her head a time or two, then started once more to graze.

Which was odd and provocative. In all the tales Jack had heard, dumb animals by instinct were fearful of evil. Except cats, of course. The thought cast a doubtful light on his "foul fiend" theory. And the goblin idea began to crumble too. Whoever heard of a goblin with a chariot? Jack dropped his gaze to the creature, and leaped back a full pace as two bright eyes regarded him. The "thing" was trying to sit up. In an instant he had bowstring to chin, growling:

"Move not further, whatever you be, or I’ ll split you!"

Again the curiously quiet "voice" came inside him. "I offer no threat, mean no harm. Nor can your weapon injure me, even though it has great impact. Do you understand me? There is no need for fear."

Jack shook his head, not in negation but in a vain attempt to dislodge the "something" that had sneaked inside. Chills scampered along his spine again as the full meaning of it came to him. Somehow this creature was reaching into his mind, without speech or sound! Then came anger.

"Can you also hear what I am thinking, troll?" he demanded. "If so then should you either strike me dead or yield, for there can be nothing else for it. Which is it to be?"

"I thank you for your vocalizations." It was that impossible voice again. "If you would favor me with a few more, and if I can get this confounded helmet working properly ..." The manlike thing moved a hand with visible effort and cautious slowness, did something to one of the bumps on its chin-strap. Jack heard a crackling garble, with his ears this time. Then the "voice" resumed as qui-etiy as before. "That should do it. Now, assist me. Help me. Speak many words. Tell me the names you have for the growing things around us, for this your land, for yourself and those like you. In this way I will learn how to vocalize as you do. Speak!"

Jack hesitated. Overriding all his suspicion and alarm came the feeling that this curious creature was in trouble, even in pain. His grip on the bowstring slackened a pound or two. "I understand you but little," he said. "You ask me to speak, but what shall I say? That I have never seen anything like you before? Nor the magical chariot in which you come? That much is the truth, and I think it would be as true for any man I know. As for this land, it is England, and our Sovereign Lord Richard is king of all. My Earl of Dudley owns and keeps this part of it. From him I have and hold this plot, here in the forest men call Shirewood. And men call me Jack Earl Fairfax. What else would you wish to know? This growth? Why, it is grass, and bushes, and trees I What else wouldst expect to find, in a forest?"

The walnut-brown mannikin sat very still, eyes bright, and Jack felt the growth of a new and terrible suspicion. "Can it be that thou art infidel Saracen? I have heard they be small and dark in the face. I know not how much such might come here but if that is what thou art then are we truly enemies and I will spike thee where thou art sitting!" He said it resolutely. That first shaft of his had spun away, undoubtedly, but he knew with conviction that the finest armor ever made could not stand against the harsh bite of a cloth yard with steel beak. He had seen it proven with his own eye. Earl Dudley had allowed the village hopefuls to practice on a discarded suit of mail of his, stuffed with straw, and Jack had watched Big Will Downey, for one, drive a steel-tipped shaft clear through shield, armor, and straw and out the far side. So he had backing for his confidence and insistence. "Speak now!" he growled. "Saracen ... or not?"

The goblin-like face moved and creased into what was undoubtedly a smile, showing startingly white teeth. "I am no Saracen." The voice was real now, aloud, and strong. "Put away your weapon, Jack Earl Fairfax. You cannot hurt me with it anyway, and I mean you no harm at all, as I have already told you. On the other hand it may be that I can do you a small favor, if you will help me a little in return. Our laws are strictly against any interference with indigenous primitive cultures, but I think I can contrive a way around those. Will you help me?"

Jack hesitated again. The speech had curious qualities, unlike any he had heard, but the sound was sincere enough. "In what manner can I help?" he demanded, and as his arms began to protest against the steady strain of the bow, he added, "Be quick. My patience grows thin!"

"Stretch it just a little more while I tell you. This harness I wear is designed, among other things, to control my weight. I am not of this world. I feel crushingly heavy here. The harness is meant to overcome that, but for some accidental reason it is not working properly. I can sit, as you see, but I cannot stand up. And I have to, so that I can reach the proper adjustment controls. It is as simple, and an inscrutable, as that. You have the look of strength. If you will give me your hand, help me to stand up .. . ?"

The creature moved its hand again, held it out to Jack in simple offer, harmless and weaponless. There was something human and compelling about the gesture. Highly uneasy, Jack released his bowstring, flipped the arrow back over his shoulder into its quiver, slid his arm through the bow, and jerked it to his other shoulder, then took a cautious pace forward. Another. He extended his hand. The goblin grip was cool, flesh-feeling for all its strange color, and perfectly passive, making no attempt to cling. Its other hand came. Jack took that too.

"You want me to lift you?"

"If you can, yes."

Jack scowled. "I can lift three thy size, creature. Hold fast now." He settled his work-hardened fingers around slim wrists, braced himself, and heaved. His shoulder muscles creaked. The mannikin was as heavy as solid leadl "Come up I" he grunted, putting forth effort, and the goblin moved, strained with him, scrambled heavily and awkwardly to his feet, swaying.

"I thank you, Jack Earl Fairfax. Loose my hands now."

As Jack opened his fingers the little man moved, very fast now, snatching at the belt, dabbing and twisting at the lumps and bumps, mumbling to himself furiously. Then, suddenly and dramatically, he grew a full hand-span taller, and a great many creases and folds smoothed out and vanished from his nut-brown body. Where it has been gross and fat it was now firmly lean and not at all gnarled. The glossy helmet and copper spikes tilted back as the small man looked up and grinned cheerfully.

"My thanks to you, Jack Earl Fairfax. It would be stupid of me to expect you to understand in detail what has happened, but this much I am sure will be clear to you. This harness, as I said, is designed to overcome excess weight, but the fools who built it never thought that a time might come when the man in it would be so crushed down by his weight that he would overflow and obstruct the controls. As you saw. Such an experience does very little good for a man's guts, you may believe me. I feel internally mangled. But at least I can walk now."

"Walk! Jack echoed puzzledly, having comprehended something less than half of what he had heard. "Whither wouldst thou walk? Who or what are you? What is your purpose here? Are you perhaps an emissary from some other land?"

"You ask good questions, friend. No, don't go for that weapon again, if you please. My name will mean as little to you as yours to me, but you may have it. I am Jasar-am-Bax, of the planet Willan. I am an out-scout of the Salviar Federation Fleet ... but never mind all that. Call me Jasar. I greet you, Jack." He extended his lean hand again and Jack gripped it automatically. The small man chuckled. "And that's a knotty one for all our savants. Why is it that every known humanoid life-form has this friendly greeting gesture in some shape or other? A hand is a wonderful device, thafs sure. Yours is strong. What is your age, Jack? By that I mean are you a full-grown individual of your kind? It is my impression that you are a youngling. Immature. No offense, now!"

"I am a man!" Jack growled. "You speak deviously and strange. You answer my questions in words that I cannot lay hold on. I think perhaps you are a troll!"

"A quasi-magical entity? Yes, I suppose that must be a possibility, to you. But it is wrong. I am as fleshly material as yourself. As for your questions, yes, in a kind of way I am an emissary. A scout and perhaps something a bit more than that. And when you ask where I want to walk to-—" Jasar cast a speculative eye around the glade—"that is a good question indeed. I need"—the needle-sharp eyes came suddenly back to Jack—"I need a decently flat area either of stone or with a solid stone substrate, for a base on which to build. Is there a bigger clearing than this nearby? And a source of water? I need water." For a moment the cheerful goblin smile twisted to some inner twinge. "I need to rest, and eat, and drink, and examine myself. That fall, and the damned extra weight ... I fear I have dislocated something inside."

This at least got straight through to Jack's bemused mind. "You are in pain," he said. "Hurt, hungry, and weary. You have traveled far, need rest. Do I understand you aright?"

"The simple and direct approach." Jasar nodded wryly. "You are quite correct. I need food, and rest. I need your help again."

This Jack could grasp efficiently, but not very cheerfully. "We have little food to spare, I fear. But my home is not far, and my mother is skilled in herbs and simples, the equal of any leech or sawbones. And there is water, as much as you need. Will you come?" He gestured to a pathway, then caught back his arm and swung it. "What of this chariot of yours?"

"My ship? There's no need to worry about that. It will follow at a discreet distance. Lead the way, and I will try to match my steps to your long legs."

Jack resolutely ignored the bits he couldn't grasp, started off to the pathway, then remembered Brownie and clicked his tongue at her, snapping his fingers. She tossed her head, snorted, and began a slow and deliberate plod into the homeward track.

"Ah! A domestic species," Jasar observed. "What do you call it, and what does it yield?" It was only the start of a virtual hail of questions that Jack thought, privately, to be silly. What sort of man was it that didn't know a cow, or a squirrel, or that there were many different kinds of trees? And how could a man in visible pain, and struggling to keep up with a stride half as long again as his own, be so infernally inquisitive about everything? Jasar's dagger-keen eyes seemed to miss nothing at all ... except the inexplicable behavior of that rod-and-facet "ship" of his. No sooner had they parted from it about ten paces, then it lifted from the grass by itself and followed, just as Jasar had said. Even now, as they threaded their way along the narrow track, it followed like a well-trained dog, crackling its way through the overhanging bushes and branches.

"You have a fair world here." Jasar began to show signs of strain but his voice was strong and sincere. "The soil is generous and the sun warm. On my world, so the records declare, it was once very like this, but our soil has long since lost its fertility and our sun is bleak. But ... it is my world and I fight to defend it. That's the oldest law of the cosmos, and one that you are just as subject to as anyone else. We have that much in common, Jack."

"Do you too come to fight the Saracen, Jasar?"

"Not your kind, no. I have enemies of my own, foes that I hope you will never meet. The front that I fight on is much too vast for you to comprehend. In fact it's a sight too big for me to grasp, except as a symbol, and there's little blood in a symbol. Jack, if your home is very much farther I fear I'm going to have to ask you to pause for a ... but this is it now, isn't it?"

They had emerged from the trees at the crest of a green and gentle slope. Before them a smooth and venerable turf, decorated with flowering bushes here and there, drew the eye naturally down to a small thatched cottage that nestled under the spreading arms of a great ash. That tree, and the cottage, made a corner point for a patchwork spread of fertile and cultivated strips, the whole marked off and bounded by a bramble-bound stake fence. A bowshot beyond that fence ran the river in a big embracing bend against a backcloth of dark chestnut trees. A scarf of blue smoke trailed from the cottage chimney. Scarlet poppies danced in the light breeze that ruffled the grassy edging to the plots of potatoes, carrots and radishes, lettuce and cabbage, and the rippling green of the oat-acre. For the very first time, Jack saw this scene as it must seem to strange eyes, and realized that it had a quiet beauty.

"Yes!" he said, suddenly fierce. "That is my home, what there is left of it. Had my father been here you would have been greeted fittingly and offered comfort and cheer, but he was killed in an accident but eight months gone, and we are fallen on hard times."

"You have my sympathy, Jack, but the scene looks fair to me. I know those who would gladly give much for peace and tranquillity such as this. Still, one man's jewel is another man's burden sometimes. You had better go on ahead and warn your mother of my presence. I have no desire to cause distress to anyone."

"Will you be able to follow, alone?" Jack eyed the little man. "You are in pain, and not strong."

"I’ ll manage, at my own gait. I think I can gain one more power-notch on this harness of mine. You run on."

So Jack hitched his bow and quiver more securely and started off down the familiar slope at a racing trot, passing Brownie halfway, spanning the strips of carrot and cabbage in a flying leap that gained him the chipstone path that had cost his father many patient hours of cutting and fitting. Along, around the corner and along again to the porch and in the half-open door, and the click and chuckle of the spinning wheel drew his eyes to the far corner beyond the fireplace. Sunlight striking through the open shutter polished the pale gold of her high-piled hair and painted the edges of her patient, careworn face. She looked up now in gentle surprise at his coming.

"Why, Jack!" she said. "What brings you home so soon? Is aught amiss?" And the dismay in her eyes was very plain.

"Nothing to your distress, Mother, but something exceeding strange, like nothing that ever was before. I will tell you the rest of it later. For now it is enough that a stranger came to me in the forest, a stranger in great distress and hurt, seeking aid. I believe he is hurt in some way and needs rest and care, and food."

"We have little of that, as you well know, but he may have what care and comfort we can give. Did he tell you a name, and whence he comes? And how are you to bring him here?"

"His name is Jasar and he is well enough able to walk, if feebly. He is coming now. Perhaps it would be better if I went to his aid." Jack turned and went out again, staying this time to the path, leaving his mother to follow as soon as she had dusted the lint from her skirts. Jasar was more than halfway down the slope, striding doggedly, as she came near enough to grip her son's arm.

"What manner of man is this that you bring into our home, Jack? He is none of this world, that's plain, nor is that infernal device that follows his step. Oh, Jack I What have you brought on us now?"

Jack snorted, thought of pointed words but swallowed them. It was in no way new to hear his mother so free to blame all her misfortunes on the actions of anyone to hand. That was only her way, and he knew it meant nothing, but it served now to make him feel fiercely protective toward the brave little man who came steadily on, though weaving and obviously near the end of his strength. He disengaged her fingers firmly and ran, leaped the low fence again, and went up the slope to meet his guest

"Lean on my arm, Jasar. It is not very far now."

"It's in my guts somewhere, Jack. Churned up. What with the fall, and this cursed gravity of yours...."

"Can you tell me what kind of brew or potion you'U need to mend you? I've said, my mother has the art of such things."

"Just rest will do it." Jasar laid a corded arm on Jack's palm and was able to manage a chuckle. "I carry my own medicine kit. In my ship. And I have food there too. I won't strain your slender resources for that. But what I need most and first, is to drink, and then to lie down, to get horizontal, to give my system a chance to right itself." He leaned heavily on Jack to get himself over the fence and then put up his free hand in what was obviously a salute.

"I ask your forebearance and understanding, Widow Fairfax, for imposing myself on you in this cavalier manner. I hope to be permitted to explain, in a short while. For now, I beg you, I need somewhere to lie down in safety."

Widow Fairfax forgot her suspicions enough to lend an arm, and between them they got Jasar to the cot-bed in the inglenook farthest away from her spinning wheel. That was Jack's bed, the other ingle was her own as often as not. She retreated to it now, as if regretting what she had done, but her son was more concerned with practical matters. He thumped a goosefeather pillow, set it in place.

"You'll do better without your helmet, Sir Jasar."

"No doubt, but if I take it off I won't be able to talk to you or to understand what you say in return. Still, for a brief while it can't hurt." He undid the chin-strap, tugged off the helmet to reveal tight close-curled hair on a rounded skull. He gave the helmet into Jack's hand—it was surprisingly light—stretched himself out, head on the pillow, and was almost instantly still, like a dead man, barely breathing. Jack crossed the fireplace to where his mother sat.

"I think," he said softly, "that Jasar knows full well how to mend his own hurt And much more. I think he is some kind of wizard. Not the goblins and creepies that nobody with any sense believes anyway, but a real wizard. I saw with my own eyes how he came down from the sky." In the best words he could find he recounted that impossible moment, and what had followed, striving to overcome the doubt on her face.

"If it be true," she said at last, "what you have told me, and no dream that you had under the oak, then maybe it had been better if you had slain him. Let me not be thought cruel, but for sure he is not of this land. Whoever saw one so dark, and so small I And if not of our land, then is he enemy, what else?"

"But," Jack disagreed doggedly, "again and again he says he means no harm, that he rights other enemies that we know nothing of."

"That may well be, but what is of concern to us is this, my son. This is Dudley's land, and we keep it. How will it sit with them when they leam we harbor a stranger of his aspect?"

"How can they learn, Mother? It is a long ten miles to Dudley, and when does any of the village come this far, save to seek to poach the deer? And it is not the season for that. And anyway, Earl Dudley is the one to fear, and he is overseas these past two months." Jack took a step or two back and aside and peered a moment. "He rests still. It would be a kindly gesture, Mother, should you prepare something to fresh him. Broth of some kind, with herbs?"

"That much I can do, and willingly." She rose from the cot and went to stare, shook her head. "By the stillness of

him it would not surprise me to know that he is already dead and past any aid I can give. Nevertheless . . ." She swung out the pot on its chains, stirred the stock within, sniffed it, and went to paw through her cupboard drawers. Jack sat himself at the end of the bench that served as their kitchen table, where he could be close if the odd stranger awoke, and fell to studying the curious helmet in his hands.

TWO

He had not yet overcome his astonishment at the lightness of it. His fingers were used to leather, and this had the same feel, but much more suppleness, and it yielded to his pull like nothing he had ever handled before. Stretching stuff? Trying the headband again thoughtfully, it suddenly dawned on him that this stretching quality meant that it would fit almost anyone. The thought pleased him. It was like question and answer. He looked inside now and was immediately baffled by a spider's web complexity of wires of many colors, and cords and odd lumps and blocks. Wizard's work, beyond doubt. But the two cup-shaped things, one on either side, they would surely fit over a man's ears? They felt soft and resilient to the touch. Beneath them sprang the roots of the chin-strap, in separate halves. He offered those ends together curiously. One end was studded with fine spikes, the other had many tiny holes. Obviously one matched the other, but how? He put them together. There was a distinct click. And he couldn't part them again! For a panic moment he struggled, then took breath and reasoned. Jasar had separated the parts without effort. There had to be some kind of trick to it. He pressed, twisted, experimented, and felt something yield to a finger-pressure ... and the trick was done. With care now he did it again. So simple.

Then he realized that an idea had been in his mind for some time, and was only now presenting itself. Dare he try on this wizard's device? He stretched the headband thoughtfully. It would be big enough, for all his shock of Straw-blond hair. Jasar lay just as still as ever. What was there to fear? He nerved himself, stretched the black stuff, offered it to his head, pulled, and it went on easily, snugly, so neatly that he hardly felt the presence of it. The pads

were soft to his ears. And nothing at all unusual happened, somewhat to his disappointment. Until he remembered that trick with the strap under his chin. It clicked into place just as before, and instantly a strange, measured, quiet voice was reciting something in one ear, repeating and yet not, with subtle differences each time. The sounds meant nothing, but he guessed they were counting something. He listened to that a while, then felt of the strap, touching the curious knobs. To another click the "counting" sound stopped, replaced by an eerie ululating bleat, not very pleasant. Learning rapidly he tried another knob, and froze in utter astonishment at what came. From time to time he had heard strolling players, and there were those in the village who could encourage a jig with reed-pipes and a thumping drum. And he had heard the thready treble of choirboys in Castle Dudley once or twice. But put them all together ten times over they could make not a patch of the music that flooded his ears now. Jasar could deny with all his breath, but this now really was magic!

But whence came all this wonder? Could such wealth be created by a web of wire and a few knots of braid? Even as he wondered, he had to sway his head, and then his whole body, at the wonderful sounds. Then he stopped guiltily as he saw Jasar's eyes were open and on him, eyes like swords. The little man sat up, looking fierce and anxious.

"Be careful how you play with that, Jack. I should have warned you. It is full of tricks, and dangers too. Undo it. Take it off. Slow and steady!"

Jack released the chin-strap, and Jasar sighed in relief, said something that made no kind of sense at all. Amazed, Jack pulled the helmet clear, held it out to Jasar. "What did you say then?" he demanded, and the little man grinned tightly, spoke again, and once more it was nothing but an outlandish garble of noises. Then he slid the helmet deftly over his head, snapped the strap into place, and grinned again.

"That's better. Understand me now, eh?"

"I hear what you say, yes. But I do not understand, at all."

"I can't say I blame you, at that. Ill tell you, gladly, what actually happens, but don't ask me how it's done. That's not my field. In the war that I fight there are many nations joined together in a common cause against a common enemy. We all speak our own ways. Is that something strange to you?"

"No," Jack admitted. "I have heard that Frenchmen talk in a way we do not. Earl Dudley, and indeed all the barons and the Court, so I have heard, are able to talk that speech, and understand it Some, indeed, can understand the speechmaking of the infidel Saracen!"

"You're no stranger to different languages, that's the point. And it's obvious, isn't it, that you can't work very well with a man, if you can't understand what he says, right? So our ... scientists—wizards to you, I imagine— managed to design a computing circuit, a kind of brain, that analyzes the concept and vocal pattern frequencies of any speech, given a sufficient sample, and converts one to the other." Jack must have looked as blank as he felt, for the little man sighed, hunched his shoulders. "I can't put it any simpler. It hears any humanoid speech and translates it into mine, then converts my speech back into the other, which is transmitted from here," and he touched the forehead part of the helmet. "No? Never mind; that's what happens. And I smell something exceedingly good!" He swung his legs to the floor, stood, turned to look where Widow Fairfax was stirring and sniffing. "Coronas and comets!" he breathed. "I think this is one for the record log. A cooking pot, over an open fire!"

His hostess turned an apologetic smile on him. "I regret it is but thin fare, sir." She sighed. "A few scraps of pork to a great deal of grain and vegetables. And seasoned by an herb or two. But it will warm you, and fill you, too, if you take bread with it. My own bake, even if I say it myself. But... I am remiss with my manners. I should ask if you are well now?"

"Very well, I thank you, madam. It was nothing but a shock and upset in my insides, which is all settled now. I am exceedingly grateful to you for your kindness in letting me rest here. And, if you'll allow, I can add something to the fare you are preparing. Would you come with me, Jack, help me carry?"

"Carry what?" Jack demanded. "And from where?"

"Be patient." Jasar made a little chuckle. "You're having a bad time with so many marvels in one day, I know that, but hold on tight to just one thing. There is no harm to you in any of it. None at all. Excuse us, Widow Fairfax; this will take only a little while. Keep that pot hot."

He led the way out of doors into the afternoon sunshine, found his way around the cottage and back to where his ship hovered patiently by the fence, Jack following uneasily.

"You want me to go in that thing7'*

"After me. Jack. As I said, there's nothing to fear."

It was easily said, but Jack's whole inside cringed at the prospect, the mere idea of going into that silver-rod flying cage with its winking fires, and its skin-prickling presence. Jasar strode up the gangway. Jack set his foot on it fearfully, stared at the dark doorway ahead. It was an eight-sided patch just like all the rest of thé device, and so small that he had to stoop and huddle himself in order to get through. The air inside had a curious tang that reminded him of the aftermath of a thunderbolt. But after a moment to adjust to the dimmer, different light, he saw that the "ship" was very much bigger inside than seemed possible from a distant view. The floor was of a dark bouncy stuff that swallowed the sound of steps. To right and left he saw recesses that reminded him strongly of the fireplace ingles, and he imagined they served a similar purpose, for someone to sleep. But once his eyes departed from that recognizable element they were assailed by wonder. On all sides were boxes and blocks of metal in hard angular shapes and strangely decorated with knobs and wheels. And all were alive with gentle clickings, whirrings, and captive fires of green and red and white. Jasar ignored most of them and went to one in a comer, prodding it, touching various knobs.

"This thing," he said, "is a food synthesizer. It goes by various names in various cultures. I call it an auto-chef. Here again, I can tell you what it does, but not exactly how. This part"—he gestured to a series of characters in white fire against black—"is the program. What it can do for you, depending on the capacity state. In your terms, this is what it's got, and you tell it what you want, with this panel here, and it delivers the finished product here, in this hopper. That's simple enough, isn't it?" He looked up at Jack's stare and signed again. "Life's too short, lad. I wish I had time, but it just is not possible to take you right into the details. Just accept it. Whatever I say, you're going to think it's magic anyway. Now, your mother spoke of pork, and I understand that to be the product of a meat-yielding domestic beast. What do you do with meat, roast it, boil it, what?"

"We set it on a spit over the fire mostly." Jack was pleased to have a question he could answer. "The rest we cut up and stew."

"Roast, then. All right, and a few vegetable additions. Set for three. And watch that pointer there slip back to zero." Jack watched, vaguely comprehending something of what was going on, but dumbfounded first by the mouthwatering odors that came flooding, then the click and gentle mud of a frail silver-stuff platter in the small enclosure. Jasar drew it out, handed it over, and it was warm to the touch, filled with food from which more of the hunger-sharpening smells came. "You take that," the litde man ordered, "and I’ ll bring two. Go on, we mustn't keep that stew waiting!"

Widow Fairfax gaped at the bounty they laid on her kitchen table, then shook her head in regret. "Your gifts overshadow my poor offerings, Sir Jasar. Even the dishes are vastly more precious than anything I can show."

"Disposable foil, madam.Use and throw away. But never mind them for now; eat what they carry. And I will sample some of that stew, if I may, first." She had ladled out three helpings into sturdy wooden bowls. Jack gaped to see Jasar take a strange tool from the underside of the platter and use one end of it to spoon some of the hot stuff to his lips. There was one of those tools to each dish. One end was a small bowl, the other end had prongs, and one tine of the prongs was edged. Jack had that sudden pleasure again, of a question answered. Cut with the edge, spear with the prongs, and eat. Use the other end to scoop up the gravy and juices. Wonderful. He watched Jasar now, tasting and rolling the hot stew about the inside of his mouth.

"It is very good, madam. The flavor is fine. I hope my gift is as much to your taste. We are matched, I think, in offerings. Let's not waste time. Eat while it's hot, and if you can forgive talking while we eat, I will try to explain a little of what brings me here. And then, if I may, I will bring you a flagon of wine."

"It is too much." Widow Fairfax sat, protestingly, discovered the curious tool and had wit enough to see how it should be used. "All this must be of great value, and we are but humble people."

"Not at all. You gave the best you had, and who can do more than that? What I bring is nothing. Synthesized food, foil platters, a plastic feeder or two ... nothing to compare with real stew from earth-grown sources."

"Yours is not grown7" She interrupted a mouthful to ask.

"It came from a box, Mother. I saw it done, but I know not how."

"And you think it's magic,"—Jasar chuckled—"but you're learning not to say so. You've a good head on you, lad. Reassure me first, madam; is the meat to your liking?"

"It is sweeter and more tender than anything I have ever tasted. Does my son speak truly, that it is not grown from the soil?"

"Quite true." Jasar chewed thoughtfully for a moment or two, then, "You know about pigs. A pig is an animal. It eats things, many things, as you know better than I do. And it grows and becomes fat. But think carefully. Not all that it eats becomes pig. Some is wasted, excreted, right? Now, tell me; how does the pig do it? How does fodder become fat meat and muscle and bone? Can you tell me that7"

"Nay!" Jack protested. "No man can know that. It is just the nature of things to eat and grow."

"Quite so.For you. But my people don't think like that. They ask a lot of questions. They like to know how things happen, and why. And after much studying and watching, and trying out, they have discovered just which parts of grass and leaves and other things actually do take part in making meat. And how it is done. And they have made machines that do it. My people are very clever at making machines for doing things. They have a saying ... once you know exactly how a thing is done, you can make a machine to do it. My food machine is one of those things. It has a store of all the basic parts. Madam, you have a machine over there." He aimed with his eating tool. "You begin with raw wool, I think, and you finish with fine thread. Then what do you do with it?"

"I knit," she said, frowning. "In the long evenings of winter sometimes I weave, or crochet. To make garments for Jack and myself."

"Exactly. Now can you imagine a machine into which I could put just raw wool, which would then spin it, weave it into cloth, shape and join it, and then produce a garment, all by itself?"

She pondered a while thoughtfully, then nodded. "Yes, I can see that it would be possible, but it would be a very clever machine to do all that."

"Excellent!" Jasar praised. "I can see where your son gets his sharp brain. Believe me, it is possible. And the food machine is just such a thing, perhaps a little more clever. It has a store in which it keeps all the necessary things, just as you have cupboards of spices and salt and so on. And it has all kinds of knowledge on how to make many kinds of food and drink. That is a very simplified explanation"—he made a gesture of excuse—"but that is all I can give. It's all I know. It's enough for me that the machine works and I can use it."

It wasn't nearly enough for Jack, and his mind buzzed with questions, but now his taste buds were reporting a host of new and delightful sensations, and he concentrated on those for a while. Jasar must have been hungry too, by the way he dealt with his own portion. But then, after a while, he sighed and sat back a little from the table.

"Forgive me again," he said, "if I seem hasty. This is all very fine, a rare and pleasant interval in a hectic life, and I am grateful for it, but I have work to do that must not be kept waiting too long. I think you know what a war is, both of you?"

"A child knows as much," Jack said. "Even now all this land is at war with the infidel Saracen, who defile the holy places of our Christian faith."

"A holy war? That's the worst kind. Well, I'm in a war too, of a slightly different stamp. Perhaps I can explain a little of it to you." He rummaged in his broad belt and brought out a flat package to lay on the table. In the next moment he had unfolded it to twice its length. Then from the inside of it he drew out and up a thin sheet of pearly-white stuff, up and up until it was half the length of an arrow above the table, and as wide. With a quiet click it became suddenly taut and smooth. "This," Jasar said, "is a reader-screen. I'm afraid this has to be magic, so far as you are concerned. I can't think of any simple way to explain it that you'll understand. Let's just say it shows pictures and diagrams. Just watch a moment." He made careful adjustments to a row of buttons along the bottom edge and the pearly sheet acquired a shimmering glow. Then color, and there, suddenly and perfectly, was the sunlit glade, the trees, and Brownie ... and . . .

"That is myself!" Jack gasped, backing hurriedly away. "As I stood ... as you came down out of the sky!"

"That's right. But it's only a picture, Jack, nothing to fear. And it is important that you grasp this first bit, because all the rest follows from it. Watch again." The images shivered and changed, and Jack stared, realizing that he was seeing what Jasar must have seen, from above, on his way down. Fascination overcame fear. He came closer.

"That is how you descended," he muttered, seeing it happen again. "But where did you come from?"

"One nice thing about you, lad, is that you ask the right kind of questions for me to handle. Hold onto your imagination now, and I’ ll show you." The quiet warning was timely. Jack stared breathlessly as the action ran backward. The quiet green glade sharply shown shrank away. In a breath the cottage slid into the picture. Then the winding river. There was Castle Dudley as a bird might see it. And now the recognizable details were lost in smallness, a vast-ness of green forest, thread-like roads. Then they too were gone and it became a shape of green and brown, and ragged traces of clouds. The sea slid in at one edge, and more detail disappeared under more rolling clouds.

"Above the sky!" he breathed, and Jasar grunted softly.

"This is just the beginning. Keep watching."

Now Jack saw something beyond all belief. The green land gone beyond sight and part of a greater mass, became edged, curved, rimmed in black, and the black was jeweled with stars.

"It is like the moon!" he gasped, and Jasar grunted again.

"Right.A ball of earth and rock. A planet. You live on a planet, lad, a world of rock and soil, sea and mountain. One of many. And all of them, with their many moons, swim around a star that you call the sun. And there it is now."

Jack winced at the tremendous edge of fire, heard how his mother groaned in her throat "This is all ... true, Jasar?"

"It's true."

"Then where are you from, Heaven or Hell?"

"Nothing like that, Jack. IT1 get to my home in a while. Right now, to make this easier for you, I’ ll switch to schematic." He fiddled with his buttons again, and the terrifying picture dissolved, became a drawing, a thing of points and loops and spirals. "This is the way your world works, Jack. This is your sun, and this is its family. That spot is your Earth. And the whole thing is a star-system. Your sun is a star, just like all the other stars you see in the sky at night, except that the others are very much farther away, so far away that you see them only as pinpoints of light. The distances are very much greater than you—or even I—can properly imagine, but that is not important at the moment. We have ships that fly from one to another of the stars. My ship can do that. It is small, able to cany only four at most. We have other ships that carry many hundreds, or great burdens of stuff, in trade and exchange. Apart from the vast distances involved, that must be an understandable thing to you, trade with other lands? You do understand that?"

"We get strange spices, and silks, from Cathay. Jewels, and gold-work, and wines, from France and the south. I have heard of such things."

"Then you understand, madam, the main point of what I am trying to say. And now let me show you this." The drawing disappeared to show a view of the night sky that was reasonably familiar to Jack, but with many more stars than he had ever seen. "This is a part only," Jasar ex-pained. "To show you the whole range of the stars would need a screen like the inside of a ball. But now I can show you most, in a special kind of projection," and again the picture changed, to shrink the familiar sky scene down to just a part, and still there were stars to fill the area. "You are looking at many worlds, more than either of us can count to make sense. Not all have planets. Not all planets have people like us, or as near like us as to be understandable. But there are enough, even then, to stun the mind. And most, you must know, are friendly toward each other, come and go freely, share blessings and skills, and trade, each with the other. Let me show you that much." Jasar touched a button and instantly there was change. More than half those pinpoints of light became vivid blue. In the next breath a vast network of spidery blue lines came to link and interlink the blue stars.

"This now," Jasar went on, "is the Federation of Free-Trade Planets, as it was about a hundred of your years ago. I could give you all the lesser federations and groups within the whole, but it isn't important at this point. What matters is that we were all friendly, assembled under one general belief, what you might call fair dealing. Long long ago, in the history of each of our worlds, we knew a time when we used violence, and power, and threats. We knew about wars, and fighting, and we had all grown out of that infantile and barbaric state. That peaceful Federation you see there had existed for many thousands of your years. . .."

"What you just said," Jack interrupted in some doubt "Fighting against an enemy, in war ... is juvenile and barbaric? Is that what you think?" He eyed the little man indignantly. "You think it is wrong so to do?" "Yes, I do."

"What then should one do with an enemy, if not kill him?"

Jasar hunched one shoulder ruefully. "As I've said, you ask good questions. Let me ask you one. Why is an enemy?"

"What manner of question is that?"

"I apologize for it. I’ ll try again. A man is against you for some reason or other. Either he fears you, fails to understand you, believes that you have injured him in some way, or you have something he wants. All these can be overcome without killing, Jack. To put it simpler still, if you and I were enemies, and fought each other—one would die, one would remain. But if we were friends, working together, we could achieve at least twice as much as singly. Which is better?" But that was too stark for Jack, and his face showed it. The little man sighed. "Never mind. This is not the time or place to discuss philosophy. The facts are what count, now. A little more than a hundred of your years ago, this peaceful picture suddenly changed. With cunning and stealth, a small group of those many worlds had conspired together to seize power over the rest. There is another philosophical point to chew over some time. Which is the more attractive: to earn what you get, or to steal it from someone else? This group, for a set of reasons all their own, decided to choose the easier way.

"They secretly revived many of the old skills in weaponry and offense. They built special ships, designed to hit and cripple unarmed and defenseless traders. They struck without warning, and in a very short time they had cut and split the whole web of the Federation. Like this." He touched another button, and now large areas of blue points and webs winked out and became angry red.

"They call themselves the Hilax Combine. For a while they came very close to their goal. Great devastation was done, whole planets burned to ash and ruin, many lives lost, but their calculations didn't quite make it. The rest of us formed a counter effort. We are the Salviar Federation, and I am a scout of the Salviar Fleet. We too have revived a lot of old forgotten skills and arts, out of necessity. And it is no easy task, lad. We have to do all this, to mount both defense and offense, and at the same time maintain the channels and sinews of our Federation in production, safety, and security. It is not easy."

"This much I can understand." Widow Fairfax spoke up sadly. "Even with us, a man may tend his home and crops, or go away to war, but he cannot do both."

"You make my point exactly, madam. But now, to come away from the big picture to my small part in one small section of it." The screen blurred again, and settled to show a network of stars, closer, more finely detailed, and nearly equally divided between blue and red. "This is close to here. Close as such things are in this context. Here and here, you see, the Hilax hold a barrier against the whole area. So long as they hold this line, we are split. And it has become known to us that the key point to this whole barrier is here, a central control and information station, hung in the space ways between the stars. It is strong, screened, and defended, and it gathers and serves out vital information over the whole area. If we could eliminate that, we would break the whole line. And it is my mission to try to do just that."

Jack drew his bewildered gaze from the magic of the screen and looked around him at the rugged but familiar and cozy interior of the cottage. And sighed, and shook his head. "It may sound all of a piece to you, Jasar," he said, "but very little of it seems real to me. You talk easily of vast numbers and great spaces, distances that I cannot imagine. And then of a war. How can a war be fought over such reaches? How can men throw arrows and spears so far? When you speak of the weapons and sinews of war, this I understand well. But, to my thinking, the win or lose of a war turns on men. Strong-thewed and stouthearted men, ready and willing to fight, and fight on, until either their weapons or their arms fail them. Is your way of it different from mine?"

"No." Jasar smiled grimly. "You're right. It comes down to men, when all else is accounted for. Men. And guts. Daring enterprises, craft and cunning. A pinch or two of good fortune here and there. Technology"—he hunched his shoulders again, tilted his head aside—"that is just a bigger and better club. Throughout our culture, a mighty mixture of races and nations, there has been a persistent strain of wishful thinking that somehow, someday, we would be able to build an automatic weapon that would do the fighting for us. But it has never worked out in practice. The final decider has always been man against man, cunning against running, purpose against purpose.

And that can't be designed into a machine. Not yet, at least. But—I apologize again—I speak of matters that are far above your grasp. To be frank, they are a little up in the air for me, too!" He softened the words with a grin that warmed his nut-brown severity, but Jack had his mental teeth into an idea now, and was not to be distracted that easily.

"You say," he quoted, "that it has to be man against man. This I can accept and understand. The pictures you show," he nodded to the screen—"tell of many hundreds of great fortifications wonderfully defended. You are but one solitary man. What can you do alone against a host?"

"Ah!" Jasar pushed his picture device to one side a little. "Maybe I can explain that one to you a bit more easily." He halted, glanced up in some surprise as Widow Fairfax came close, with an earthenware flagon couched in her elbow and a beaker into which she poured something and set before him.

"Ale!" she said. " Tis but thin stuff, but better in my belief than the honey-sweet mead which is all they know of, hereabouts. I brew it myself, from a method learned by my husband from a wandering friar, many years ago. There is enough and to spare. Do not stint."

Jasar sampled the brew, rolling it on his tongue, then swallowed and made a grave nod. "It has edge, body, and a fine flavor. I thank you, madam. May you live long and regret nothing. Now, Jack, what about you? Techniques of war. Strategy. Command positions. How do I convey that to you? I think I know." He brought back the magic screen, dissolved the picture on it, produced a small rod, and began to draw in swift sure lines of light, "A valley. Your men gathered just here. This is a pass in the hills. Narrow. And your men must pass through to join up with friendly forces. But your enemy, not in great numbers but with equal arms, hold the heights on either side, here and here. They see all that you do. They can shoot down on you, where you expend all your effort merely to throw a shot that high. You are stuck. Together with your allies on the far side you are strong enough to sweep the enemy from the height, but so long as you are divided you can't do that. Every time you try the height, you lose more men than they do. Is it clear? What do you do now?"

Jack studied the crude plan carefully, thinking his way into the problem, fleshing out the thin lines with his own inner pictures of hills he had seen. "There may be some greater cunning that escapes me," he suggested, "at this very moment. I am no soldier. The best that comes to my mind is this. Somehow the enemy must be shaken, dislodged from that height, met on level ground." "Granted. But how?"

Jack scowled at it again. "If these be hills such as I know, then there would most likely be trees, and bushes abounding. Given a small force of men skilled in woodcraft and light of foot, would it not be possible for them to go around, here, and thus take the enemy position in the rear? To strike swift and sudden, while all their eyes are intent the other way? Without knowing more of the countryside at that point I can think of little else."

Jasar chuckled. "I'm going to take some of the credit for the way I put it out and at you, but let not that detract anything from you and what you said. You have described it exactly on the hairline. That is precisely what I am on the point of trying to do. Agreed I am only one, by myself, but I have a trick or two to offset that. Let's look again at the other diagram." He brought back the array of red and blue stars and lines, and pointed at one spot. "This the precise equivalent of that pass. Our forces are here and here. That red web is stopping us from joining together. And that is the key point. It is a fortress with an ill-defended rear. That's because it is backed on to an unexplored and undeveloped sector of this galactic quadrant. In your terms, a wild wood free of hostile powers. But there—" he made an arrow with the little rod— "is where we are, right now. You see? All their attention is concentrated that way. I am past and around them, and ready to strike from the rear."

Jack eyed that lonely white arrow, all by itself. "I understand your parable, Sir Jasar, but you are still but one man. Against a host?"

"As I said, I have a few tricks." Jasar*s easy good humor faded and he became more stern than Jack would have believed possible. "I mount the kind of trickery that a solitary man can risk and get away with, where a gang would only get in each other's way. And there is always this, Jack. A man can die only once. Better that one man should chance his life, and possibly lose it, than that millions be lost for the want of a little nerve. That"—he aimed a finger at it—"we call it Hilax Four. Their call-signal, that I have heard often, is BB7 Arc. I have studied it in every possible detail we can get. I think I can get in. I daresay he will drop and firm his screens at the first sign of any breakthrough, but I’ ll be inside by then. Thafs all I need."

"You mean," Jack said, following the implication in the tone, "you can get in, but not get back out again?"

"That's about it. But don't you worry on my account That's my job. Your pardon, madam, for bringing the ugly breath of war into this gracious and peaceful dwelling, although I suspect the idea is no stranger, even here."

"It has become part of our lives of recent years," she admitted sadly. "I am often told that I should be thankful my man died here at home and not away in some strange far land, but I find naught to be thankful for in that, nor any sense in one man killing another, whatever the reason. Sir Jasar, you make it sound as if wars and stories of wars are the common lot of all manner of folk."

"Our wise men tell us so, madam, even if they are not too well agreed on why it has to happen that way. However, I will not bring my war around your home. All I seek is a substantial area of solid bedrock, a sound foundation on which I can build a temporary structure. Of a size .. . how do you measure, Jack? What units do you use?"

Without really understanding, Jack said. "Why ... an inch, a foot, a yard. Or a chain, a furlong, a mile. How big do you seek?"

"Those are just words. How much is an inch?"

Jack spaced his finger and thumb, then shook his head at himself, went to his quiver, came back with an arrow. "A yard is six and thirty inches. This shaft is one more, is called a cloth yard because it is the custom with a tailor to allow for edging. So my father told me."

"Thirty-six inches?" Jasar was impressed.

'Twelve inches to a foot, three feet to a yard." Jack was patient his mind catching the general idea now. Jasar nodded.

"Duodecimal base. That is rare. I must register that with my record-log. Who knows, I may yet live to report it to the savants. What were those others again?"

Still patient, Jack explained ell and rod and chain to him. Jasar frowned in quick calculation. "Yes, that's near enough. I need a base about a chain and a few inches across. Come and show me the lay of the land nearby, will you?"

The sun was dipping low in the sky now. Jasar found time to admire the cultivated patches, and was impressed to learn that such a great area was all kept by hand labor.

"I’ ll take care not to spoil that for you, at any rate," he promised. "You know, Jack, yours is a precarious living in many ways, but it also has virtues. All of us are creatures of the planet we live on. We all come in the first instance from the soil, the fertility of the outer crust, and there is such a thing as getting too far away from our origins, losing touch with the source. I've never grown a thing in my life, wouldn't know how to begin."

They were beyond the cabbage rows now and moving toward a stand of elms, treading on tough bent grass. Jack snorted his rejection. "Little skill is called for in making things grow, Sir Jasar, only a great deal of backaching labor and much patience. I have no great stomach for spending the rest of my days in grubbing in the ground. Had that branch not fallen when it did, I would now be away, far. overseas with others from the village, learning how to fight."

"You lost out both ways, didn't you?" Jasar halted, looked around and nodded to himself. "This will do very well, I think."

"For what?" Jack wanted to know, and the little man chuckled.

"So far, most of the time, you've asked the kind of questions I can give an answer to, but I have the uncomfortable suspicion you are about to spoil that record. Let's see, now." He tilted his head aside humorously. "I said, if you remember, that I wanted to build a structure. Which is true, but it won't be your notion of building. More like growing. And it will be tall. Very tall."

"As tall as a tree, perhaps?"

"Much more. But think of it as a tree, if you like. If I call it a jump-grid, which it will be, that won't mean anything to you. Just watch while I mark off the spaces for it. Starting from here, I am going to mark off eight root-points. This will be the first one." Jasar reached back and to one side with his hand and that hand came back holding something from his belt that seemed to snuggle into his hand as if it belonged there. Only a stubby end projected, like a coppery finger. Jack watched intently, saw Jasar twist his hand and do something delicate to that rod, then aim it downward at the grass-covered ground. He heard a faint hum, saw a sudden eye-hurting white glare. Then a crackle, and a boiling of a gray-white smoke, ripped away in the breeze . . . and there, down through the tough grass to the soil below was a perfectly round hole about eighteen inches across, and vapor lifted lazily from the exposed earth.

Now Jasar took another device from his belt, held it to one eye as if peering into it for a moment or two. Then he did something again with the grass-eater, held it as if aiming, peered into the other thing ... and this time the dazzling glare was as fine as a hair, but long, striking slantwise ahead and to the ground. Again there was acrid smoke in the breeze. Now Jasar started off treading the line he had made, came to a halt, aimed that thing down, and Jack knew he was cutting another hole. Then he turned and went off at an angle and did it all over again. And again. Until he had created eight holes and was back where he had started.

"That's the first bit." He grinned mischievously at Jack's expression. "Cleared away the grass and weeds. Now we plant the seeds. Going to help me?"

"What must I do?" Jack was uneasy but determined not to show it. It could not be evil, he reasoned, under such a smile. Jasar led the way now back to that peculiar ship of his, with its uncanny skin-pricking aura. Once inside he clicked open a low-backed cupboard and reached inside, to bring out a thing that was mostly metal rod, wrist-thick, sharp-pointed at one end, and capped at the other with a curious cover all buttons and wires and braid. Out came another, then another, until there were eight on the floor, and Jasar was breathing just a little faster than when he began.

"This is where I need your strong arms, lad. These things are heavy, and not surprisingly, with all the gad-getry in them. Do you reckon you can manage two under each arm?"

"I can but try. Can these be the seeds you spoke of?"

"That's right. Not the kind of seeds you know, but then the tree that will grow from them isn't your kind of tree, either. If they work at all. I've seen this done only under test conditions, and I have grave doubts what your ionosphere will do to the ionic-exchange balance in them. But we can only try. And hope." He stooped and managed to catch up two, putting them head-to-tail, tucking them under one arm. Then he arranged two more, crouched, and grunted with effort as he stood again. Jack got the idea. The metal was cool to his touch, and full of that curious tingling force, but the four seeds were not what he would have called heavy. Together they troubled him no more than a half-sack of potatoes. Either Jasar was not as strong as he looked, or it was something to do with that extra "gravity" he had spoken of. Together they tramped back to that first scorch-mark Jasar had made.

"You're very pointedly not asking me how these things work," the little man declared. "And I like that. You catch on very fast. But I can tell you what they will do. Or ought to do, anyway. Let's just plant one, first." He lowered the sharp-pointed end into the precise middle of the cleared patch, pressed just hard enough to impale it, then fiddled with the buttons on the top. Little fires flared under his touch. Jack had realized by now that these fires were not the kind that burn, but were in some way used to show that the machine was alive. This one, all at once, made a thin scream and dug itself rapidly into the soft soil as far as the cap-cover, then stopped. That was what it did. To ask how a thing worked was such an alien concept to Jack's mind that he only half understood what Jasar meant by it. What did it matter, anyway? The strange title man set off for his next bare patch, heading into the fire-red glow of near-sunset. Said Jack, skeptically but with some caution, "How soon will you know for sure that your seeds are fertile?"

"That won't take long!" Jasar laughed, a surprisingly deep laugh for such a small man. "You'll see, just as soon as we have them all planted. If they work, you'll see such a tree as you never saw before, or ever will again."

"And the fruit of it?"

"Ah, now, that's something quite different. This one won't stand long enough to bear fruit. That's not what it is for. Think of it this way. I am going to climb it, right to the top, so that I can get closer to the stars before I jump." And Jack smiled dutifully at what he realized was a jest, so that Jasar laughed again. "You think I'm joking, don't you? You'll see!"

As they arrived back at their starting point the sun lay in red fire across the rippling grass and the whole evening was hushed and quiet. Jasar plucked yet another device from his belt and held it, looked up at Jack. "Now we shall see. I repeat, as I've said before, there's no harm here for you, so don't be afraid, whatever happens. Now!" and he moved a switch of some kind. In that instant, from the blood-red quiet of the meadow, eight shimmering blue pillars of fire streamed up into the sky, shaking the evening air with strong and steady pulses like the unheard beat of a vast drum. Jack was too awed to feel afraid, his neck creaking as he tried to see the top of those incredible columns. They seemed to soar upward forever, vanishing into distance, piercing the sky itself.

And something was happening up there, a distant turbulence, difficult to distinguish as blue against blue. The shimmering columns that had been all in line, all straight, were beginning to bend as if blown inward by some giant gale. Or more like some vast hand gripped them and squeezed them together at the tips, for he could sense the strain, how they resisted coming together, how they hummed like enormous bowstrings under tension. Yet they were bending, bowing, arching unwillingly to a focal point, high above. Over his breathless awe Jack heard his companion muttering. "Never seen a magnetic field and ionosphere to compare with this one. No wonder I had such a rough ride getting through. But it should settle and equilibrate, all the same, now it's got this far. Come on!"

He had hardly spoken when there came a shattering, earthshaking snap of sound, and in that instant the shimmering fire-columns grew smooth, still, as clean-cut as fine arrows. Jack thought of the silver-rod structure of the ship, and some instinct told him what had happened here. This was a framework, some kind of skeleton on which to build. He was so instantly certain that he said it aloud for Jasar to hear.

"They are but comer posts!"

"Good for you!" Jasar reached to thump his arm. "That is precisely what they are. A framework. Impressive, isn't it? How high do you think it is?"

"I have no way of guessing that. I cannot see the top."

"That's a sensible answer, too. Let me see; what were those units again? Ten chains to a furlong, right? Hmml Base to apex, that grid-frame is a little more than seven furlongs high. Does that help at all?"

"Nearly a mile high?" Jack could hardly get the words out. "What will grow on such a frame, Sir Jasar?"

"That's a bit harder to explain. And we had better move off, leave it alone for a while. There's going to be quite an energy field around this area for a while. We had better go back and reassure your mother that we havent done anything too scary. She's bound to wonder."

Widow Fairfax stood in her doorway as they drew near, her careworn face alight with fear and wonderment in the last light of the sunset. Jack turned to look back, and couldn't blame her for her wonder. At this distance the standing columns could be clearly seen to have curvature, straining into each other, leading the eye upward to the

near-invisible tip, far above in the darkening sky. And there was something going on, now, all over the giant framework, a business of spidery tracery budding from the columns and stretching across, matching and interlacing and weaving, and all in an unearthly blue glow.

"It really is growing!" Jack breathed.

"You could call it that," Jasar agreed. "Remember the food machine? If you take the basic stuff and do to it what an animal does, you have food meat? In the same kind of way that field is taking from the air and soil the necessary bits and pieces and growing branches to strengthen the frame. But metal, not wood. And not fruit, but—as I told you—a high place from which I can jump into the enemy's fortress."

"Then . . . you were not jesting with me? That thing ... is a ladder?"

'That is as good a name as any I can think of, yes."

THREE

Inside the cottage again, with a refilled beaker clutched in his lean hand, Jasar struggled with the business of trying to explain.

"A ladder for climbing up into the sky," he said, "is a nice picture, but it won't get us very far with understanding anything."

"When I was very small," Jack offered, "I was told gc-to-bed stories of such things, and other marvels that were to be found beyond the sky."

"Stories to make young eyes tired enough to sleep!" his mother protested quickly. "They were not meant to be taken as true. I was told the same things when I was small. You are too old, my son, even to be remembering such things."

"I never really believed them." Jack smiled. "AD your giants, and fire-breathing dragons. They were wonderfully exciting tales for a child, but I think Jasar could tell of more exciting things that are real."

Jasar came down from a deep draft of ale and shook his head. "These are matters on which I am not too well informed. Our wise men speak of a thing they call the common unconscious, and perhaps they understand it. All I know is that there are huge and fearsome creatures that breathe fire, sure enough, but they exist on planets that are not pleasant places for humanoids to live on anyway, and we seldom bother with them. And there are indeed giants, as I know only too well, and they are a very different matter. You need to realize this much, Jack. Of all the worlds of the Federation that I showed you, very few there are on which there is no life at all. The urge to live is a mighty and potent one, and it breaks out wherever there is the least chance. Investigating and studying such things is

a matter for our wise men. The rest of us are more naturally concerned with those creatures that are reasonably enough like ourselves, that we can call men without having to strain the word. There are enough of them. They vary in several ways, and customs, and it is not surprising that those who are most alike in manners and appearances tend the more easily to make firm friendships. There is not so very much difference between you and myself, for instance, in appearance and the way we think. Others are more different. And it is a commonplace, and one we should not have been as surprised by as we were, that all the Hilax Group of humanoids are ... on the big side."

"How big?" Jack demanded, and Jasar did that head-tilt gesture of his again, smiling wryly.

"Would you believe a manlike creature fully sixty feet tall?"

"Now you do indeed jest with me I"

"Never. That's one thing I wouldn't do, Jack. I assure you there are such people. In fact I am about to take issue with some, if my plans work as well from this point on as they have this far. I'm thinking now of the Dargoon. They are a race of people from a huge light planet away over in Galactic Sector Seven. But perhaps you ought to understand something else, first. With so many different worlds we have many different ways, different talents and skills, and all kinds of special abilities. In the Salviar Federation, for instance, the people of Drith are our experts in shipbuilding. On Manataver they know more about the skills and arts of weaponry than anyone else. And the people of Willan are famous for scouts. I'm from Will an, and proud to uphold the name." At that moment the little man didn't look proud at all, but dark and stern and somehow sad. But then he seemed to shake it off. "I could go on a long time listing them," he said, "but you wouldn't remember the half. The point is, the Dargoon, now, are well-known for several abilities. First their great size; second their lack of disturbing emotions; third their memory-span; and fourth—which goes with it—their long life-span. Barring lethal accidents, a Dargoon routinely expects to live some four hundred of your years, often considerably more. So they make the ideal kind of people to man a space station for long periods of time." Jasar put on a wry grin again. "It always helps to know what you're up against. And I forgot to mention one aspect in my favor. They move slowly. Physically, that is. Nothing slow about their thinking, at all."

Jack struggled to get his values arranged. "Space station" meant little or nothing. He presumed it was consonant with "fortress." But giants sixty feet or more tall were something he could much more easily grasp. "You, by yourself, plan to meet and do battle with giants? Several of them?"

"Put it like that and it does sound a bit stupid." Jasar laughed openly now. "But it's no part of my plan to meet them, in your sense of it. I'm not going to call out any Dargoon to single-handed combat, lad! It isn't like that at all. I can't blame you for thinking along those lines, it's part of your way of life, and you're a lusty, husky young fellow. But when you get to be my age you tend to use brain rather than muscle. Maybe I can show you. We'll try my reader-screen again."

This time, on that magical shimmer surface, he busied himself with his buttons and produced a drawing, very simple. A circle inside another, quite small, and then, outside that, were larger loops, slightly egg-shaped, right out to the edge of the surface. "That," he said, "is a rough schematic of a Hilax command station. This"—he indicated the central double circle—"is the central control installation. The rest is environment assist and defense screens."

"Walls around a fortress," Jack translated, and Jasar snorted gendy.

"Call it that, if it's easier for you. To give you some idea of the true size, this little ring equals your cottage here and the fertile patches."

Jack stared again at the egg-shaped lines within lines, at the dark ring in the center, and then at the very tiny ring that Jasar had drawn, away out at the left extremity. "It is a vast place indeed," he admitted. "Even be they the giants you say, it must take many of them to defend such a place."

"Not all that many, Jack. Not man power. Machines do it. Energy-weapons for attack and defense. Force-fields and spy eyes for guard. A force-field? Do you feel any thing when you go near my ship?"

"A pricking in my skin and an uneasiness about my hair. Is that what you call a force-field?"

"That's it."

"But we walked through it with no harm!"

"We did, certainly. But you couldn't have done it on your own. This harness of mine carries a monitor that opens the field for me whenever I wish. Call it a key in a lock. It also provides a similar defense-field around me. Remember the way your arrow bounced off? That I said you couldn't do me any harm?" Jasar tilted his head aside again at Jack's expression. "You don't believe me, do you? All right." He peered about the dim interior of the cottage, full of shadows now that Widow Fairfax had lit a tallow drip. "That blade will do. Bring it." Jack stepped and got his father's tree-felling ax from where it hung on the wall, brought it to the table, to see that Jasar had folded up the screen-reading device into its original compact size, and was now laying it on the oak-paneled floor.

"Don't be afraid to swing the blade, lad. Fm responsible. Let's see you split that. I guarantee that you won't. I'm staking my life on it, quite literally, so make it a good try."

Jack eyed the small black box, no bigger than a small billet of wood, and took aim. The blade hissed down ... and twisted aside and into the floor as it came within an inch of the box, almost wrenching itself from his grasp. And it happened exactly the same again on his second try. He didn't bother with a third. He stalked to the wall and rehung the ax, trying not to show the fear he felt.

"You are full of magic, Jasar. Magic and strange words. And yet you are a man like myself. Smaller, darker of skin, yet you eat and drink and sleep as I do. I find this confusing."

"On the contrary, Jack, you are going along the right road to getting somewhere, to not being scared of technology. That's a strange word to you, but it means only that the skill and experience of many men has been put into use in a machine. Let me ask you; could you bring down a tree with your bare hands? Of course not. But with an ax, you can. And what is an ax but the skill and experience of some man, possibly a lot of men, somewhere, some time, made into a device that another man can use. A force-field is only an extended idea along the same lines. Let's take another look at that schematic I drew."

Jack studied the egg-shaped lines with a new interest as Jasar pointed. "Detector-screens on the outside. They give the alarm. Force-fields closer in, for defense. These spots are beam-projectors. Imagine the power of that field you tried to chop through, but a hundred times greater. Wrap it up into a spear-shape and thrust with it, from here and here, as fast and far as a light can shine. Or play a trick with it so that it acts like a hook, and pulls, and call it a tractor beam. And then forget it and pay attention, instead, to where the spots are located. See, here and here? This is the side where they expect attack and are ready for it. But this side, you'll notice, is comparatively defenseless. That's the back wall that I intend to climb over. And once I'm inside, all those fancy beamers are powerless against me. Once I'm inside I will make for here, the central control. That's where it's all worked from, the nerve center."

"And where the Dargoons are," Jack reminded him.

"I’ ll worry about those when I have to. All in good time. For the moment I've nothing to worry about except that grid, and I think it is going to be all right anyway. It will take some hours to consolidate. I can use those in making a thorough overhaul of my ship and equipment." With deft movements of his hands he collapsed and folded the reader-screen again and secured it to his belt, then stood and turned to Widow Fairfax.

"Madam, I thank you for your forbearance, your kindness, your hospitality toward me. I regret there is nothing I can do that will adequately repay you for such generosity, except perhaps that I may be allowed to add a few items to your food-store."

"You owe us nothing, Sir Jasar, but I confess I have a great liking for the platters on which you brought that strange meal."

'Those? You may keep them, and gladly. And if I may ask for another quantity of that rare ale, I will replace it and more with a wine from my own stock. The least I can do. And you, Jack, I'm grateful for all your help, a real pleasure to have met you."

"How will you go?" Jack broke the question into the formalities in a desperate attempt to postpone them.

"That will be easy enough to do. When the grid is ready and charged up, I will get the signal, in my ship. I will then move it into the grid-base, run up on the field to the critical point, set my astrogation, and twist. It will all happen as fast as you can blink your eye . . . and I’ ll be gone."

"But what about the grid, as you call it? Will it remain there?"

"Only for a while. That's all part of the design. Either my mission will be successful, in which case I will return by it, and then eliminate it ... or I will fail. And not return. And it will cancel itself away entirely at the set time. Either way, by this hour the day after tomorrow, it will cease to exist and no trace of it will remain to bother you. You have my word!"

Jasar was very formal, very stem and dignified now. Jack didn't like it one bit. He saw his little taste of strange, his high adventure, slipping away through his fingers much too rapidly. The little goblin man was oddly impressive, valiant, a hero-figure. Half in amazement at himself, all in uneasy fear, Jack heard himself blurt out:

"Let me come with you, Sir Jasar. Let me help. At the very least, I could guard your back!"

"Oh no!" By his side his mother gave a quick wail of dismay. "Oh no! Jack! My son! What madness is this you speak?"

"She's right, lad. You've a brave heart, a good head, and a strong arm. Ill grant you all those, but they are not enough for a jaunt such as this."

"I can leam! I can keep lookout for you!"

"I’ ll admit I could use another pair of eyes. This exercise was meant for two in the first place. But those extra eyes would have to know what they were looking for, and why. No, Jack, I'm grateful for your offer. Honored by it. But it wouldn't work. Have no fear, madam, I won't rob you of your son, your breadwinner. It's my war, and I regret that it has touched you this close. I won't let it harm you further."

"I want to go with you," Jack insisted, adamant now. "What is there for me, here, but to dig, and drudge, and die some time. You said a man can only die once. Better to die valiantly than as a slave." He wheeled on his mother in overflowing frustration. "You know I speak true. We cannot pay tithe this month. We will fall into debt and I shall lose my freeman state. To be a serf! A bondsman for the rest of my days. And what of you, my mother? What will you do? Will you beg by the roadside, or enter Castle Dudley as a kitchen drudge? There is no other choice open, as well you know."

"I know only that I have lost one man already and will not lose another, and be all alone in this world. You shall not leave me like that, Jack!"

"But think, Mother!" he argued angrily. "If I go, and you are all alone, then the tithe debt falls vacant. That is the law. At one stroke all is changed. You will become the solitary Widow Fairfax, possessed of some land, a little bit of attractive property . . . and there's many a goodman of the village will find that a thoughtful matter. You'd not be lonely for long, that is sure!"

"What strange and unnatural wit is it that makes you speak thus to me?" Widow Fairfax grew shrill and hurt. "You are my son. Flesh of my flesh! I will not have you go away and leave me, fly off to some strange and dreadful place, there to be killed. Why do you so argue with me? I want you here, and there's an end of it!"

"But you will be better off without me!" Jack retorted savagely. "Why do you turn your face from that truth?"

Jasar coughed loudly to interrupt. "This is nothing to do with me, at all. Ill have to leave you two to resolve it in your own fashion. Again my gratitude and thanks, Madam Fairfax. Jack, I’ ll not forget you." He offered his hand in a firm grip, and then Jack saw him bow and stride off out into the gloom. By now his half insane impulse had hardened into implacable purpose. He swung a stare on his mother's anguished face.

"Think not," he said, quietly but with great determination, "that I want to leave you all alone. I would that it could be some other way. But it cannot. Look at it fair and square, Mother. My existence stands between you and the possibility of a full and happy life. Like it or not, and not by choice, I am the head of this house, the landholder and freeman. Like it or not I have debts that I cannot possibly pay. By this month's end, in my name, all that we have will be forfeit, to be seized and possessed by the church, and we are both committed to serfdom. Even my Earl of Dudley himself, were he here, could not alter that law. As you well know. But if I am taken ... missing ... out of your way . . . dead, if you please . . . then all is changed. And you cannot deny any of that, nor yet argue against the sense of it."

But she could, and did, at great and tearful length, until the tallow drip guttered to its end and there was only the dying glow of the fire. Jack was set. He would not be moved. In the end sheer fatigue made his mother retire to her bed across the fireplace from him, weariness and the discreet pinch of herbs he managed to slip into her nightcap of ale. Sleep was never farther from his eyes, or his thoughts, as he waited in a fever of impatience for her breathing to grow slow and steady. Time was slipping away. Would Jasar be gone yet? As soon as ever he dared, he stirred out of the ingle-cot and set off, taking only a moment to catch up his bow and quiver, and the long sheath-knife that had once been his father's. Out in the starlit night he had no hesitation at all. Trotting swift and silent he made for that sky-towering beacon-glow of blue.

It seemed to grow and lean as he drew near, more and more enormous and impossible. Crisscross strands of thinner blue now knitted the whole thing together like some giant basket work in metal.

He hesitated, had to nerve himself to run into the enclosure of the base. He felt that familiar-by-now tingling on his skin, the lifting of his hair, that Jasar called a force-field. Nervous as a cat in a thunderstorm he trod slowly in toward the middle of that eight-sided space, intending to peer up, maybe to see by what means Jasar's ship would climb so high, but as he went he was attacked by a strange unsteadiness, as if he had become insubstantial, without weight. He halted, starting to regret his mad impulse. He twisted his neck to peer up. It seemed endless, a vast tube wrapped around by strand upon strand of blue, and it drew him dizzily, like standing too near the edge of a great drop. He staggered back to firmer footing. At least, so far as he could see, there was no sign of Jasar and his ship.

"Pray he has not already gone!" he whispered. "What to do?" He pulled his stare back to ground level, to the nearest upright. Climb up? All that way? His heart sank at the thought. And yet, what else was there? Strangely light-footed still he staggered to the blue beam and laid a hand on it. It felt cool and firm, yet quivering as if alive. He hitched his bow and quiver into security, and started climbing. At first it was a struggle, for the upright was as thick through as his own body and smooth, but it grew easier when he could reach the first of the cross-members and grasp it. From there it was only a matter of nervy balancing, standing, reaching up, and heaving himself on to the next bar. With a repitition or two he was able to appreciate his curious lessened weight, and take chances that were almost leaps. It became almost as easy as mounting a ladder. His arms grew tired first, trembling in protest when he called on them to bend and heave, and his fingers started to lose their clinging power. So he paused to rest, to catch up on his breathing, and to look down.

That was very nearly fatal. Trees were dark smudges down there, the cottage a lighter patch that he would have been hard put to identify had it not been for the winding silver thread of the river. Only a thread! It was a long way down! He grabbed for the sturdy upright, clung frantically to it while his stomach spun one way and the whole midnight world out there went the other. Sweat broke out all over his body, stung his eyes, clammied his skin, was salt in his mouth. He had a new fear, one he had never known before, the dread conviction that he would hang here and die, slowly, because he could never ... never go back down again. Not that way. Shivering, dragging in shaky breaths, he fought for calm, dared himself to look out and down again to seek out the blue glow that was Jasar's ship. Of course it wouldn't be there now, but perverse hope made him look. And then groan in despair. Because there it was.

"What a straw-witted clod I am!" he mumbled. "To think that I could gain something by climbing all this way. Small wonder Sir Jasar spumed my offer of aid. I am a great fool I And what am I to do now? For sure I can never go back down. And if I climb up farther, what then?" He hung, clinging to the upright, lashing himself with scom, and shivering in earnest now that the fitful breeze could search out his sweaty dampness. "I am a fool!" he declared. "Fit for naught but farmer's work, and not even that, now!" He stared down once more, trying to win the nerve to try lowering himself just one spar's length. And a sudden wink of bright blue fire, away down there, caught his eye. The ship—that small spot below—it moved!

He stared intently, seeing the blue dot slide along past the gray patch of the cottage, around the palm's width of the cultivated strips, and swiftly to the base of the grid. He felt the upright he cuddled suddenly sing as the ship entered the field of force below. There came an eerie witch-wailing sound, so high-pitched as to ache in his ears, and an upward fountaining of wind. It had to be the ship, rushing upward. Scrambling precariously he reversed his stand to be able to stare down into the vast well of the grid. Here it came, growing rapidly larger, riding on that thin scream. Belatedly it occurred to Jack that Jasar might easily go straight on past and never see him! He hung out crazily from one hand and waved the other wildly to and fro.

"Jasar!" he yelled, and the shout merged in that thin scream and came out bent and strange. "Jasar! Jasar!" The updraft grew to a gale as the ship hurried close ... and then stopped, bobbing there in midair opposite where Jack hung and waved. There were half seen movements within, then an eight-sided facet moved away to make a hole.

"What in time are you doing there, you young fool, trying to kill yourself the hard way?" The voice was stem, but Jack sensed some sympathy in it.

"I could not have you go without me, Jasar. And I cannot go back now!"

"Neither can I now, as it happens. My deadline is too tight, for just one thing. You crazy young idiot! Oh ... all right... come on. Jump!"

"Jump?" Jack eyed the intervening gap, swallowed painfully, felt sweat break out on his face again, nerved himself, and sprang headfirst, aiming at the hole. To his sickening dismay he fell ... it felt like falling ... slowly across the gap, as if in a dream-world, flailing his arms helplessly until Jasar leaned out and seized him in a strong lean hand by the slack of his tunic shirt and hauled him inside. He collapsed in a heap on cushions, gasping, heard the opening click shut behind him, and gasped again as the cushions surged up against him.

Jasar chuckled grimly. "You've let yourself in for some rare surprises, lad. Space knows how I'm going to explain any of them to you, or if I’ ll have the time to try."

Jack struggled to sit up, sensing the rebuke and feeling he had earned it. "Just command me; tell me how I can help," he said. "That I do not understand is no great matter. Just tell me what I am to do; that is enough."

"Easy to say, not so easy to do. Come and look over my shoulder and I’ ll try to explain what is happening right now. Sit there in the copilot seat."

What Jack saw on a picture screen was a series of circles that grew out rapidly from a point, like ripples from a dropped stone. "Those are magneto-lines," Jasar told him, "lifting us level by level, step by step. In a while we will be at the twist-out point. Then we'll have to wait for a few things to match up. The brain will calculate the precise moment and direction for our jump, and set the power-levels, until everything corresponds with my calculations. Then we go, just like that!" He snapped his fingers briskly. "Meantime we have nothing to do but wait."

"All this machinery," Jack struggled with the unfamiliar word, "does so much for you. Yours must indeed be a strange world, where men do nothing but sit and wait while machines do all the work!"

"Now just a minute!" Jasar warned. "Don't get too sharp. Men make the machines to do work for them while they get busy with other things that machines can't do."

Encouraged by the hint of argument, Jack was bold enough to retort. "I would not want any machine to do my walking, or my climbing, for me. Or anything that I am well able to do for myself!"

"Wouldn't, eh? Rather do it yourself? Tell me one thing. How far can you throw one of your arrows, with just your hand and arm?"

Jack opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, thought again, and then shook his head humbly. "You are too clever for me, Sir Jasar."

"Maybe. Maybe I have a little more experience and a better education. A bow, lad, is a machine. It was designed, worked out, by many men over a long time. When you apply your arrow, and then your strength to bend the bow, you are piling up energy, gathering it, collecting it together. Then when you let go, you let all that energy and strength go all at once, and the arrow flies far and fast. That's the machine part of it, storing the energy and releasing it. But it takes you, a man, to aim, to select a target, and hit it. In this ship of mine I have a lot of machinery, a lot of energy and power. I have weapons, too. But they all need me, my brain, my orders, my guidance to see that they all do what I want. If you think of a machine as an obedient servant, you'll be a bit closer to the truth of it. And . . . we're almost there!"

The expanding circles slowed and became a steady set focused on a spot of light in the center. And Jack grabbed in panic at the arms of the chair he sat in as he felt himself falling. And falling ... yet without moving. Jasar grunted and then sighed. "That's one you'll have to take as it comes, Jack. I wouldn't know even how to begin explaining zero-gee to you, even if we had all the time in the world. And we don't. But I can reduce the fright of it a bit." He reached across and touched a button in Jack's chair-arm, and stout bands of leathery stuff moved across and restrained his thighs and chest against solidity, held him secure. "There!" he said. "That ought to help."

It helped a great deal and, although his stomach told him that he was still falling, Jack could now summon up enough nerve to turn and study the dim interior of this curious ship in more detail. Not that it meant any more than when he had seen it first.

"Have we already departed from my world?" he wondered.

"No, not yet. We are sitting at the apex of the grid." Jasar reached across again, touched a burton or two, and a screen lit up in front of Jack's eager eyes, a picture to look at in awe. 'Turn this control left or right, and the picture will move with it, and this one for up and down. Have fun!"

And, after a little preliminary fumbling before he could work his fingers together with each other, it was fun to be able to sweep over such a wondrous view. The river now was really a thread, barely visible, and he could see all the way to Castle Dudley, the pale stone of the walls catching the moonlight. The rest of the countryside wasn't too well known to him. He had never had a lot of inducement to travel far from his own fireside, and it was M_excitement at all to see, even this way, places he had "never visited. But when, daringly, he trained the viewer upward to the stars, he was caught breathless.

"So many, Jasarl And such colors! I had not before known that there were colors in the sky at night. Can you tell me which of these stars we are going to?"

"Near enough. See that stretched-out shape that looks something like a cup on the end of a crooked arm? Well, it may look like all one group, from here, but it isn't. Only three of those stars are at aU close together. And the Hi-lax Command space station we're after hangs right in the middle."

Jack suddenly had trouble with his sense of reality. "I see only stars," he confessed. "I believe what you tell me, when you speak of men up there, and enemies and wars, but I cannot properly imagine it. Tell me, Sir Jasar: do you fight for king and country, as we do? Or for a faith?"

"Something like that, yes. We all need a symbol of some kind to beam in on, to crystallize our thinking. There are all sorts of empires in the Salviar Federation. In over a thousand worlds we have kings and queens, emperors and presidents, councils of the elect, elders ... all sorts of state methods. And we have a High Council of Ten, which represents in one way or another the wishes and interests of the whole thing, grouped by Galactic Sectors. And we have a Supreme Councillor, a woman. Her only function in cold fact is to call meetings, make speeches, and cast a deciding vote whenever there's a deadlock. But she has managed to do much more than that. Some people have the gift of being able to inspire people. I've known one or two at close quarters. Our Supreme Councillor has that gift. Ill show you her likeness." Again Jasar reached across to hit a button, and the star-scene went away.

A face and shoulders came to fill the screen, and Jack could find nothing to say for several careful breaths. Her forehead was broad and smooth and high. Her eyes, like yellow gold, gleamed from the shadows of deep sockets. Her nose, thin and hawk-like, dominated a mouth that was straight and stern. Age told its tale in her neck and shoulders, part softened by a collar of stones and golden wire-work. She was regal, even imperious, and her hair stood high about her head in elaborate coiffure, but that hair was richly violet, almost black in its shadows, and all her skin was as green as copper in the smith's forge-flame. Jack let out a careful breath and said, in a small voice, "I suppose she is very beautiful, in her own way."

Jasar laughed that deep-chest laugh of his. "Astera of Zaran would thank you for that, if she knew. You are very good, Jack. You take alien things very well. Better than most. As I've said before, if I'm spared to do it, I will report this planet to the Central Information Banks. If the rest of your people are up to your caliber we have been neglecting you far too long."

In a vague way Jack understood what he meant, and had a question. "Would the Hilax think that way about us, do you know?"

"I don't know. I doubt it. You make good points, lad. Who am I to drag your peaceful world untimely into our mess? But"—he shrugged in the half-gloom—"we'll just have to wait and see. The problem probably will never arise." Somewhere back there in the shadows a small silver-toned bell started a steady ring-ring song, and Jasar grunted gently, made a quick move. The bell sound stopped. "That," he said, "was one of my machines telling me that I am trying to do something foolish and dangerous. Which I already knew."

"All that, from a bell?"

"No. The bell is an alarm. The pitch of it tells me the degree of probability. The machine is called a computer. Among other smart things, it can add up possibilities, dangers, chances, and risks, and get an answer that is in fact a measure of how likely I am to succeed in doing what I intend to do. A low note means good chances. The higher the note, the slimmer the chances are."

"Just what are you going to do?" Jack asked, his throat going dry as the evidence grew on him that he was now utterly committed to something he only vaguely understood.

"That's not so easy to explain." Jasar half turned in his seat, the glow from his screen lining his cheek and jaw, striking glints from his eyes. "The most honest answer is

that I don't really know. I have to go by such bits and snips of information our intelligence has been able to steal and pry, and it's not all that much. You used the word fortress some time back. Imagine a fortress close by a river."

"Castle Dudley overhangs the river at one point!"

"All right, then you know the picture. The fortress mounts a guard, is always alert against attack, has its weapons ready and looking out. The walls are strong. But now suppose someone with nerve came in a small boat, at night, quietly down that river and in under the walls, therefore unseen. And then, if he had a line with a hook on it, and lodged the hook in a cut, or gap of some kind, and could climb up and get in, quickly, then what? He would be inside, past the armor and the walls and the weapons. And if he was quick enough, and cunning enough, and prepared, he would be able to do great damage before they knew what was happening. Maybe set fire to the place. You understand?"

Jack understood only too well. "This is what you plan to do?"

"Something like that. Add on a trimming or two. It's a stormy night and the river is boiling uneasily . . . but I now have someone I can count on to sit tight in the boat and keep it safe so that I have a chance to get back to it!"

Jack liked that even less. To have to sit and wait, alone in this ship that he barely understood, in a strange place, while Jasar went out alone, to do great deeds ... and possibly never to return . . . that didn't sit well with him.

"I want no part of that," he said loudly. "I said, and I remember it, that I would guard your back. But not like that. To sit here craven, while you go out to fight? Never! I will not do it!"

FOUR

Jasar sat still, without moving, for some time. Then he shrugged and said, quietly, "You were the one who said, just now, that you didn't mind not understanding. Just tell me what to do, you said. Remember?"

"But not to sit here and grow fearful waiting for you to return! A maid could do that much. Jasar, I have a strong arm. I can fight, and watch, and warn, alongside you. And what would I do," he added urgently, "should you not come back? How would I know, and what would I do?"

"There would be nothing at all to do, Jack. I've already thought of all that. There is a time-switch that will automatically return the ship here, then to ground and clear, and destruct the grid, all by itself ... if I fail to get back inside the set period. You've only to sit still!"

"I will not! I go with you. I fight by your side, die by your side if it comes to that!"

"That last bit will be only too easy to do. Very well, Jack; you put a burden on my back that I would rather not have, and what your mother will say ... but Til admit I would have been disappointed had you said anything else." He started as a deep-throated gong began beating. "That's the five minute alarm. We have no time left for dispute now." He moved a switch and the ship was lit with a cruelly bright glare that made Jack squint painfully. "We will have to equip you as best we can. Listen and learn." He groped in a cupboard under the screen. "This," he said, "on your left wrist. Just clasp it together. It does many things. It will pass you through the ship's protective field, for one. And it will point you back to the ship wherever you are, for another. Stretch out your arm and it will tickle you when you are aiming right." Jack laid the black leathery stuff around his wrist and it clung snug and tight

"This"—it was a belt and harness like Jasar's own—"will deflect most, if not all, the offensive energies that may be thrown at you, unless the Hilax have devised something new to us, which is a possibility always to bear in mind. This thing is a hand-beamer. You've seen a little of what it can do. Set this wheel here, like that for a needle-thrust, and like this for a broader effect. It will destroy anything it strikes. Use it only when you must. It kills. You lay a finger alongside it thus, to aim, and put a thumb on that stud to make it talk." It was black, and gold, and copper, and it went into his hand as if it belonged there. Jack hung it from the harness belt with great care.

"And this." Jasar handed over a helmet the twin of his own. "There is a lot more to this than I have time to tell you now. What you need is this much. This stud, with the fine cuts around it, activates the translator. Leave that on all the time. You'll know what's being said. This one, with the spike in the boss—you press and turn that if ever you wish to talk to me and we are separated from each other. Got all that?"

Jack nodded, dragging the helmet down over his thick hair. The deep gong kept steadily on, shivering the air ... and then, suddenly, it yielded to a flat clack of a noise, and Jasar swung to face front, counting, "Four, three, two, one, zero!"

Jack felt himself die, dissolve apart to fill all the world, then rush together just as quickly, like a silent thunderclap ... and all so quickly that it was a dreadful memory before he could really feel it. The ship's lights were off, but the interior was full of a bright warm light that came from outside. It was a mellow glow that gave the strong sense of being somewhere out in the open, in sunlight. Jack felt sinkingly certain something had gone amiss, until he saw how Jasar was sitting tensely, holding his breath, glaring at his devices, at last to relax and let out a quiet sigh.

"We did it," he said quietly but in triumph. "We did it. Through the screens and down, right on the outside edge ... and never so much as tickled an alarm, not as far as I can see. Now, if I wrap us up really tight, like that ... and that . . . and that! And we are arrived, lad. Comets and coronas, we did it!" Jack stared uncomprehendingly at white-faced disks, at slow-throbbing colors, at black fingers that shivered and sank and became motionless, then at Jasar. The little scout grinned. "The gamble paid off. I don't know why, and I am not going to worry about it too much. Maybe the Hilax discipline is really as slack as we have heard; who knows? What concerns me, right now, is that we are inside the station area, inside their screens, and they don't seem to know it. Not yet, anyway." "This is what you call a station?"

"This is it. Remember what I told you, that diagram and the size of it? We are right out on one edge, in the environmental control section. Let's get ourselves a look." He half lifted from his seat and Jack said, surprised:

"Not with your magic eyes?"

"View cameras, you mean? Not likely! Gadgetry has its uses, but it also has drawbacks in that it uses power, and power has a way of broadcasting itself to those who might be listening out for it. At this moment there isn't a thing running in this ship except the main power-plant generator and the screen shield. We are going to take a look the hard way, with eyeballs!"

The scene that met his gaze as he shared an eight-sided aperture with Jasar satisfied all Jack's requirements for an alien world. He had known Jasar only a few short hours. He was very far from grasping the utter strangeness and difference of the little man's ways and habits of thinking. But the concept of difference was something he could get a firm hold on, and this panorama fitted that completely. So far as he could see, the ship had come down to rest on a vast carpet of green froth, pale, deep enough to half submerge it. A closer and more critical look made him change that "froth" to "grass," but whoever saw grass that curled and billowed in such string-thin masses? And that stretched into the distance as far as the eye could reach, like a restless sea? Raising his stare aloft was no more rewarding. All he saw was a pale blueness—no sun—that was curiously bright, yet just not bright enough to dazzle. Like some kind of wall. And the glare of it reminded him of that ominous starkness of the sky just before a thunderstorm. But no sun, nor stars, nor clouds, nothing!

"A roof of light!" he muttered, and Jasar nodded.

"That's what it is. A luminescent bubble-roof, enclosing the station. No need to worry about that. The twist-field passed us in, and it will yank us out again, when we need it. That's the part we have to concentrate on, there!"

Jack followed his pointing, and saw a far distant tower, black against the blue. It was difficult to estimate the distance with no mark to go by. "It looks small from here," he said.

"But it isn't. Remember that diagram again. This station is about two of your miles across. So that command tower is all of a mile away. And it is anybody's guess just what may be lurking in these weeds."

"Weeds?" Jack echoed uneasily.

"Call them that, for now. Ill explain as we go. Make sure you have everything secure now, nothing likely to drop or get lost. Here we go!" He hauled himself up and out of the orifice in a leap and disappeared downward. Jack scrambled after him, poised on the edge, and leaped. It was a drop of some ten feet or more, and he braced himself for a heavy landing, but his feet drove down through a mighty tangle of weeds and onto a dampness that yielded and sprang back against his weight with very little shock. One stagger and he was steady, up to his armpits in the stringy weed. It smelled of rank decay.

"Jasar?" He swung around, peering.

"Right here!" The weed thrashed and a helmet appeared by his elbow. "Watch what I do now. I'm going to fix that door." He extended his wrist, set a button on it, and the orifice disappeared. "Turn the other way and it opens. Right? Now I’ ll shut it again, like that. And don't you forget it. You may have to operate it on your own, coming back. Now we will check your finder-beacon. No switch, this time; it's a constant. Stick your arm out. Turn very slowly. You should feel something when you're pointing at the ship."

Jack did as he was told, moving his arm steadily, and as it came near to aim a tickle ran up his arm, faint at first but unmistakable when he was pointing directly at it. A wondering thought came to mind. "You were already prepared for a mission such as this, I think?"

"That's so. We have been working out the details of this gadgetry for some time. Top secret stuff. One of the hardest things in this war, lad, or in any other, I suppose, is keeping the opposition guessing, thus baffled, never to know just what you're going to hit him with next. And the fewer people know of a secret the safer it is. That's why there were only two of us trained for this operation. The other man cracked out at the last minute. We did a heavy-gee simulation run, and his harness failed on him. The report is that he will very probably live. There was no time to train a replacement. Operation Beanstalk has too many critical deadlines to meet as it is."

"Beanstalk?"

"Doesn't mean anything. When you plan an operation you have to talk about it to some extent, so it's our practice to call it something meaningless. Then even if it does get repeated, and overheard by the wrong ears, it won't hurt. But why are we standing here airing our teeth like this? There's work to do. Can you see that tower?"

Jack's wits seemed to grow needles under pressure. "If you can still alter your weight, with your belt, Jasar " he suggested, "would it now be wise to make yourself less heavy, and thus ride on my shoulder?"

"And see where I'm going!" Jasar growled. "I should have thought of that myself. Hold hard a minute. There, try that. Give me your arm!"

Jack bent a knee, offered his arm, and in another moment the little man was perched on his left shoulder, no more weight than a sack of cabbages.

"Don't strain yourself, Jack. Sing out when you get weary. And drop me fast if anything the least unusual or dangerous happens; get it?"

Jack set away, half wading, half striding through the tangled mass of the weed, not too secure on his feet but managing, and keeping an eye on the distant tower. It looked a wearisome long way off.

"What danger might befall us here?" he asked.

"Well, let me explain the weed stuff first. Straight down under your feet is all the machinery, pumps and filters and stuff, that perform the environmental upkeep of this station. Two things at once. They keep the air fresh and breatheable, free of noxious fumes, and they irrigate and fertilize this weed as fodder for fresh meat. That machinery space is under the floor you're walking on. That's right, a floor. It's full of pipelines, and it is covered with a layer of sponge, porous foam that provides rooting for the growth, and the pipelines provide water and nourishment. So much for that. Now ... hup! Steady there; what have we here?"

Jasar clung tight as Jack blundered unexpectedly into a clear space that proved to be a long lane barely wide enough for him too stand in, with his shoulders brushing the weed on either side. The floor of the lane was very slightly cambered, and three inches deep in sluggish-flowing dirty water, patched here and there with gray slime.

"Put me down," Jasar ordered, and, disregarding his wet feet, stopped to sniff at the slow flow. "Just as I said. Nutrients. We can follow this. It's headed almost in the right direction, and there'll be branch channels later."

He strode off rapidly, leaving Jack to plod in his wake, not liking the squelch in his open sandals but enduring h as there was no alternative. It was easier, anyway, than shoving through the weedy jungle.

"You spoke of fodder for fresh meat," he said. "What. . . ?" and forgot his question as he heard a heavy, hard-breathing, crunching sound nearby. Over there, on his right, from the weed-mass. Jasar heard it too, whipped around, and tilted his ear to listen. At that moment the weed right by his arm parted to pass a glossy-wet muzzle, followed by spine-stiff whiskers, and huge polished black eyes. The massive muzzle took Jasar full in the ribs, knocking him aside in a helpless, scrambling sprawl. The vast head twitched, black eyes focusing on the little man's flailing arms and legs. There came a sharp snuff-snort of breath, skin peeling back to reveal yellow incisors ... and Jack has his bow in hand, an arrow nocked, drawn to his chin and on aim without consciously willing any of it. He picked a soft-looking spot under the jaw-angle, loosed, drew another, and was up on aim as the first struck, and "plucked" into the dirty brown fur. That jaw fell open more, let out a screech. The head swung. Jack loosed again, the cloth yard hissing on its way, and drew another . . . but there was no need, this time. That second shaft drove true, plunged into the bulging black eye, and hot yellow stuff burst out. The massive head jerked back and up spasmodically, then fell. The still-open jaws belched a gust of foul breath, a groan, and then the thing, whatever it was, sagged and was stilL

Jack released his tension, flipped the third arrow back into his quiver, and shook all over, feeling sick, needing to breathe hard. Jasar sat up, his feet only inches away from that hideous snout, and stared first at the stuff that dribbled from that ruined eye, then at Jack.

"That," he said, and swallowed, "answers your question, I think. Small beasts—this one's some kind of rodent— that nibble at the weed and provide fresh protein for the food-machines. It makes for better flavor, if you have the room for it. The Dargoon do themselves well!"

Jack fought off his quavers, slung his bow, and moved closer. As his nerves quieted he realized that this thing was very like a rat, if one could accept that a rat might be twice the size of a cow! The dirty gray-brown fur, the ears and the teeth, were all very like those of a rat.

"Would there be many of these things?" he asked, and Jasar made a dry chuckle as he got to his feet and wriggled.

"Nothing wrong with your nerve, nor your reflexes. Another eye-wink and that creature would have had me by the leg at least. I'm in your debt again. I thank you. As for how many, there's no way of telling, but I do know this, that there will be other creatures, natural enemies of this one. Else the station would be overrun. We will just have to keep a sharp lookout. Now what are you up to, with that knife?"

"My arrow!" Jack advanced on his kill. "I like not my chances of getting more shafts here. I will not waste any." It was a messy job but no worse than he had done before with deer, and rabbits, and as soon as he had rinsed the shaft, and his arms to the elbows, they tramped on.

"I could have killed that thing with my beamer," Jasar said, "but not before it had managed a chew at me. And I'd just as soon not use energy anyway, not yet. They don't seem to know that we're here, and the longer we can keep it that way, the better."

After several long minutes of steady plodding Jack felt impelled to make the point that they were no longer heading in the direction of the tower, but he had hardly said it when the water-lane, diverted into two, offered them a tack in the other direction and they strode on once more.

"We are all right for a while," Jasar declared. "This is the easy bit, the hydroponic fringe. It won't be nearly as soft as this when we get in closer to the workshops and power-plant." They trod on steadily until all at once Jasar said, "Ah! This could be something useful!" With a hand up for caution he led the way into a bigger space, roughly circular, the middle of which was taken up by a curious circular slab of metal, smoothly glossy, about ten feet or so high. The sound of gurgling water was everywhere. They circled the metal block very cautiously until they were back where they began. It stood on a low base of a stony substance, and just above that base were the open ends of pipes, six of them, equally spaced around, and each yielding a steady rush of water into other lanes that spread out like the spokes of a giant wheel.

Jasar looked at it, tapped it, stood back, and frowned at it. "About ten feet high, would you say? And three times that much across? Lend me your shoulder again, would you? I'd like to see the top of it. I think I know ... but I'd rather be sure. It won't take but one look."

Jack set his back to the metal, cupped his hand, and sent Jasar up with a hearty boost, turned to see the little man alight and perch on the edge for a brief moment. Then, astonishingly, he vanished, letting out a fierce yell that seemed somehow to fade away over a long while and then stop.

"Jasarl" he shouted. "Jasarl What happened? Where are you?" But there was no answer except the quick-dying echo of his own voice. Jack looked around uneasily. The sense of danger that had never been very far away came suddenly very close, seemed to stand over him. He called Jasar once more. Still no answer. He wasted several angry moments in a futile attempt to stand on a stump of pipe and reach that edge up there but the bulk of his chest and knees got in his way, so that he fell helplessly back each time. Then he stood away and back, and eyed the strange harness about his waist, wondering if he dared experiment with it, and perhaps lessen his weight to the point where he would be able to spring up and catch that edge. And be trapped by whatever had trapped Jasar? The thought ran into that corner by itself. But what else was he to do7 Turn back to the ship? That thought came and went without being entertained. Then he recalled the stud on his helmet that would let him talk to Jasar, and he pressed it. His ears were instantly filled with a gentle hum, but nothing else. He listened, pronounced Jasar's name a time or two. Nothing!

So intently was he listening that a low, growling, rumbling sound grew loud to him before he was properly aware of it. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. The sponginess under his feet moved to a regular quiet tread. He stared around in sudden apprehension and saw it . . . almost on top of him ... a vast clawed paw descending, beyond it an enormous yellow-eyed head. He flung himself wildly aside and down, stumbling to his knees, scrambling up and running frantically off and around the metal block. The cavernous rumbling stopped, became a snarl that moved the air against his face. He flattened to the metal wall, panting, and looked back and up. And he knew, in the same moment that his common sense rejected it, that he was being hunted by an enormous catlike thing. It was the color of rich honey, as big as Castle Dudley in that moment, and it growled, baring its teeth, half extending a paw at him as it cocked its head on one side to peer at him. Sweat ran into his eyes as he watched it. He had seen a cat at play with a mouse many times, and knew only too well how murderous that play was. That paw dabbed down at him and he sprang back and away, hearing the metal object boom at the glancing impact.

The cat-creature flattened its ears and snarled, moving around to get another aim. Jack unhooked his bow, readied an arrow, leaned back against the cool metal. He dreaded another crushing swipe of a paw but realized that he had to hit this thing in some vital spot. To wound it, to prick a paw for instance, would merely serve to make it more savage. It drew back its head, eyed him, seemed to be puzzling about something; then, so fast that it almost caught him, it made a little rushing dash and dab, and he hurled himself aside, felt the wind of the claws passing, the solid thump of the paw on the resilient ground. Then he loosed a shaft with all the power he could summon, straight into its yowling mouth. In the next instant it reared up, a side-swiping paw battering him into a rolling tumble as it thrust right up onto its hind legs, screeching, pawing crazily at its head. It fell over heavily, thrashed among the weed violently. He got up, breathless but wary, nocked another arrow and watched, his heart high in his throat. The wounded beast arched and tore at the weed; screeching to hurt his eardrums. Here it came now, insanely, its head hard down, and rubbing on the ground savagely, driving straight at him. He backed tensely, waited until the tormented mask and bared fangs were almost on him, then loosed a second shaft. Again he aimed for an eye. The spurt and gush of fluid was hot and acrid-smelling to retch his stomach, but he leaped aside and readied another arrow doggedly. It wasn't needed. The cat took longer to die, but die it did, just like the rat. It arched and shivered and fought with itself, but then it sagged inertly and was quite still.

Jack sat down, just where he was, and leaned forward, hugging his knees, trying not to shake himself to pieces. Through the chaos in his mind came the crazy thought that never would he be able to recount this valiant deed to an agape audience, even if he lived to have the chance. Who would believe a cat so big? Little by little he caught up on his breathing. Sweat began to dry and chill on his back, against the cool metal. He climbed to his feet, putting away the unwanted arrow. He drew his knife and managed to retrieve the shaft that had struck the fatal blow, but when he had managed to climb up on that giant head, and tried his knife against fur and bone, he abandoned all hope of that arrow. From that vantage point, however, he saw that he now had access to the metal block. The cat-snout was jammed hard against it, offering him lift enough to reach and take hold of the edge.

He stared at it He thought about it He tried the talk

to-Jasar stud again, and got only that meaningless hum. There was no way out. He hitched his bow into security and went scrambling along the line of the skull and jaw until he could stretch up, and grip, and heave himself up. And look. And he saw not a thing except the far edge. Between ... he strained higher to be sure . . . the metal sloped swiftly away like a giant funnel. To a dark round hole.

FIVE

Jack hung there a long while, until his arms protested at the effort, and he had to let go and drop down again. And think. The thinking was a waste of time and he knew it before he began on it, but his brain insisted on trying to find an alternative. And there was none. Without Jasar he was useless, helpless, and pointless. And if Jasar had gone down that hole, then he, Jack, had to follow. Somehow. He took a deep breath, braced himself, reached up and grabbed and heaved, and this time struggled to get a foot to the edge, and a knee, and then to sit, precariously, with his feet down the slope.

He knew now how Jasar had been lost. The rim was keen enough to bite into his rump uncomfortably, and the sloping metal was glossy smooth. It was, he estimated, about six feet from the rim to the edge of the central hole. And the hole itself was about eighteen feet or so across. From where he sat he heard a distant murmuring, and felt a gentle, regular updraft of warm air, like some giant breath. The sides of the hole, what he could see from where he was, were as glossy smooth as the funnel slope. He was desperately aware that it was up to him to do all his thinking and scheming now. Once he started on the way down that hole, it would be too late to think. But what thinking could he do that would change anything? To stave off the evil moment he decided to work his way around the rim, inch by painful inch, to the protest of his buttock muscles. And he saw, after a while, a difference in that down-dropping tube. There was a recess in that wall of it, coming more into sight as he hitched along. A hollow, with a bar across. The sort of thing a man might lay hold of, to climb down. Or up, even. Except that it was a

vast thing. Then Jack remembered that the Dargoon were giants. Jasar had said so.

And now he had a problem that taxed his mental powers to the extreme. If that thing he could see really was the first in a series of rungs, that a man would climb on, how far apart would they be? He struggled with that, and settled for a value of a foot apart. And Jasar had said the Dargoon were about twenty yards tall. Jack furrowed his brows on it, wishing he had paid more attention to his mother's efforts to teach him how to count and cipher. He tried for a suitable simplicity. He was two yards tall, the Dargoon was twenty, so there ought to be a twenty times difference ... no, ten times! And that was easy. The ladder rungs would be ten feet apart. His sense of accomplishment withered as he recited the figure. Ten feet apart! Perhaps he could drop from one to the next. He liked that idea less the longer he looked at it. But what else was there to do? Never for a moment did he consider not going after Jasar.

With all his thinking done he took sightings on the location of the handhold and started inching back around that rim until he was reasonably sure he was poised immediately above the ladder. Checking his bits and pieces one last time, he wriggled over onto his stomach and slid cautiously down, his hands and toes pressing desperately to the smooth metal to slow his slide. His palms grew hot. He felt his toes clear the edge. Now his knees, thighs, belly, and he was falling ... and snatching frantically at the crossbar as it came up to him. It was arm-thick, and solid, and he clung to it and dared to look down into the depths. There was a ringed glow down there. A long way down. And the warm updraft was stronger, quite positively "breathing" up the shaft. He had the awful sensation of entering into the bowels of some vast monster, but it was too late now to think of that. He couldn't go back up.

He squinted and peered at the next rung, lowered himself as far as he could, dropped and struck with his feet, fell into a crouch and grabbed and held on while he got his breath back. Then he did it again. And again. And each perilous drop served to assure him that he could never go back. Never. His arms ached first, then his legs, and the warm updraft puffing made him sweat. He became aware of a growing sound, a vast murmuring rumble. Then, quite startingly, he was no longer in a tube at all. The black walls angled abruptly away to become a roof over an enormous cavern, leaving him perched on what was really a ladder now. He hung and stared. Distance stretched all around him. Vast pipes, like colored worms, looped and squirmed about that roof, here and there dipping down to join with crouching monsters on the floor. There were steaming vats of liquid in many colors, machines that crouched by them and growled, and lights that danced and flickered in green and red and white.

And there, another fifty feet or so to the floor, was Jasar, sprawled in a motionless heap close by one of the uprights of the ladder, a pathetically small figure against the dark red of the floor. Forgetting all his fatigue, Jack balanced, used the upright of the ladder for help, and dropped swiftly down the remaining rungs to the point where he could safely leap to the floor. It was resilient, yielding to his feet, making no sound. Jasar was on his back, one arm twisted, his legs splayed, his eyes fast shut. But he breathed and was warm. Jack knew a little about broken bones, enough to make him very careful as he drew that twisted arm straight and settled it. So far as his touch could tell him, there was nothing broken under that walnut skin. That was hard to believe from such a fall, but Jack didn't waste time wondering at it. With all these pipes and vats there ought to be water near. He prowled, searching.

The cavem floor was laid out in long lanes between bulky blocks that he assumed were all machines of some kind or other. All were purring, or growling, or clicking, like so many great animals drowsing. He ran a little way, then back, tried a side lane, using his ears. There! In a recess in one machine a small pipe spouted a thin stream of water into a coppery cup, to fill it. Then it ceased, waiting until the cup was drained, and began all over again. Above that cup a patient green light winked on with each filling, as if counting. With great daring Jack thrust his cupped hands into the path of the stream, then ran fast to dash the water into Jasar's face. As he came back from a second run the little man stirred, opened his eyes, and groaned.

"Jack! What ... Tm all wet!" He started to sit up and groaned again, lay carefully back. "Stars and comets! I'm all jelly inside. What the ... ah! Yes! I fell down .. ."—his eyes rolled to pass Jack's anxious face and see the ladder—"down there, was it?" Jack nodded, and the little man sighed. "All I remember is that it was a long drop. And impact. If it hadn't been that my belt was set for one-eighth gee, I'd be dead now for sure. Stupid thing to do. I'm not exactly bursting with health as it is!" "Are you mortally hurt, Jasar?"

"I doubt it. By the feel, I'm all scrambled inside, but that doesn't mean much. Wait there while I probe." Jasar lay still, seemed to sag, and go utterly inert. Even his breathing ceased, for what seemed an agonizingly long time, to Jack. Then he stirred again, drew an enormous breath, opened his eyes and smiled, but only briefly.

"Don't look so distressed, lad. I was only tracing out my systems. But ... I forget ... you probably don't understand that. It's one of the curiosities in humanoid cultures, so our wise men say, that a culture has to reach a fairly high level of development before it bothers to acquire an efficient physical awareness of the individual. Odd, isn't it? You'd think the first thing any sentient body would learn would be its own workings, wouldn't you?" Jack stared at him blankly, not understanding, and Jasar smiled again. "Never mind, lad. The important thing is, I assure you, that I'm all right. Or will be when I've had a bite to eat and a chance to rest up."

"How are we to achieve that, here?"

"That's the next thing to work on. Give me your arm." With help, Jasar struggled to his feet and was able to stand, none too steadily, while he looked around. "Some kind of pump-room, by the look of it. With continuous-process analysis and control. Nutrient vats. Supply pipes. Probably automated. Not much risk of meeting opposition here. It would help if we knew which way the central tower lies from here."

"I think I know," Jack offered, staring at the ladder and casting his mind back to his painful crawling around the rim up there. He moved to stand under the tube, scratched his head in thought, then nodded. "The tower is in that direction, immediately opposite to the handholds."

"You sure?" Jasar came to look up, then at the ladder, and then at Jack. "You came down that thing?"

"What else could I do, Sir Jasar?"

The little man shook his head slowly, looked stern. "I could think of a few things, offhand. Jack Earl Fairfax, take my hand. I tell you this. I Jasar-am-Bax, am honored and proud to call you friend and equal. Three times now have you saved my life and in several ways have shown that you are the equal and peer of any man I know. From here on I speak no more of your primitive origins, but regard you as partner and friend."

Jack felt humbled by the formal speech and the strong handclasp. "I did no more than any man would do for another, Jasar. I look not to be your equal, only to help as best I can."

"I know. But you've done more than that, and I admit it. Now, let's move. I’ ll be thankful for your arm, foT a while, until we find some nook to hide in. That way, you said?"

As they started to march, Jasar was more of an awkwardness than a burden, seeming to regain a little strength and balance with every step. Jack was full of intriguing questions. "There are so many things," he said, "that I do not understand properly. Why, for one, would this wondrous armor of yours turn the blade of my ax, and yet not the bite of the rat, or the fall from a great height? And what is this physical awareness you speak of, that permits a man to heal himself from great injuries? Can I learn the trick of it?"

Jasar hunched a shoulder as they passed a machine that blew a small warm gale at them, and chuckled deep in his chest. "Armor is armor, Jack. Not magic. A man in armor is saved from being cut up by an edge, but he still feels the impact of the blow. There's not much point in telling you about energy-weapons yet, but if ever one is aimed at you, then you'll see how good the belt-shield is. As for the other thing, yes, you could learn physical awareness, I suppose. It would probably be harder for you, at your age, than it is for us. We leam it from the first few exploratory attempts to stand and walk. It's a part of our educational system."

"What must I do first?" Jack was willing to try anything that seemed to confer power. Jasar grunted good-hu-moredly.

"Try this. While we are walking, as now, think of your right foot. I mean 'think' of it. Feel it strike the floor, bend and stretch and shove, feel the rub of it inside your shoe. All of it. Attend to it."

Jack tried, and the effort was surprisingly great, interfered with the natural rhythm and balance of walking so that what was simple and commonplace became difficult. But, after a while, he could say, "I think I have it!"

"Good. Now think only of the smallest toe on that foot. Feel it, all of it, under and over, root and nail, all by itself."

This was infinitely harder, so difficult that all at once his foot seemed to bulk large in his shoe, to dangle dangerously at the end of his leg, and he lost the swing of his stride, so that he stumbled and almost fell.

Jasar chuckled, not unkindly. "Not so easy, is it? But that, in fact, is all the essence of it. You select one small part of your body and think about it until you have it. Then another. And you repeat, and practice, until you can touch and feel, with your mind, any part. And that, just by itself, helps you to make repairs. Because by the time you can do that efficientiy, you will also know by feel what is wrong, and be able to put it right. We do it as a drill."

Jasar was walking alone now, striding along, eyes everywhere, seeming to understand everything, and yet he had time to talk, and think about other things. "Curious creatures, we humanoids," he murmured. "The physiologists all agree that we have an unbalanced brain-system, designed so that we have a constant and overriding drive to direct our attention outward, away from ourselves, toward other things. Almost all other life-forms are self-centered. Did you know that?"

Jack gave up trying to isolate his little toe. He had only the vaguest idea what Jasar was talking about. "What manner of place is this?" he asked, more to change the subject rather than from curiosity.

"As I've already said, it's a pump and circulation complex that serves to supply that weed up there. Also atmosphere control. And it looks as if we are getting to the end of it now."

Ahead was a wall of close web-work in silvery metal, coming nearer with every step. And now a distinct smell that reminded Jack of a pigsty. Jasar put up a hand for caution and they approached the wire barrier slowly.

"Beast-pen of some kind," Jasar murmured. "For fresh protein. Seems the Dargoon do themselves well here. On a ship, or the usual space station, a man expects to have to be satisfied with synthetic protein. I wonder what kind of stock they keep here." They came to a halt now on either side of an upright metal column that served to support the wire web.

Jack was curious about the floor beyond the fence. It was pierced with holes in regular array, so far as he could see under the random scatter of dry weed. "How would a man muck out such a chamber?" he demanded sofdy. "The droppings would fall through those holes!"

"That's the whole idea. The stuff falls through and is carried away by machinery and processed automatically."

"But ..." He was about to object that a beast could put its foot through holes like that, and break a leg, when a squeal caught his ear and attention. Directly ahead, some twenty feet away, a flap-door lifted open under the push of a head and snout, and he goggled at the beast that came into view. It was only slightly smaller than a shire-horse in height, it galloped heavily on six stumpy legs, and it looked for all the world like a wild pig that had run into a wall and flattened its snout beyond recovery. Yellow tusks flared on either side of a mouth like a shovel blade under a sack, and beady black eyes were half hidden under flop-ears. Jasar snorted gently.

"Never did I see anything like that before, nor want to, outside a cage. Stars and comets, here's another!"

Beast two came from a similar flap-door away to their left, approaching at a thudding, thundering trot that spurned the dry weed. Beast one swung a head to observe, let out a snort, then just stood and waited. The other came on at full gallop. Jack held his breath. The collision was a booming thunder as the flat snout of beast two struck beast one full in the side. Jack winced in anticipation of the goring battle to follow, but no. The first beast staggered a little, gave a grunt, shook its head, and stood fast, while the aggressor galloped off in a tight arc and came back to do it all over again. Jack stared, scratched his head, then the obvious answer dawned on him.

"Jasar!" he muttered. "Were these creatures swine, I would say this one is a sow in heat, and that one a boar, preparing to mount and service. Do you see it like that?"

"I do. And what's more"—the little man looked up and about anxiously—"I think we could be at risk. Unless I am very much mistaken, this would be a moment to be observed and recorded. Yes. I thought so. Up there, see? A spy-eye pointed this way."

Jack followed his indication and saw a bulbous dull thing in the comer of the roof that seemed to peer at the spectacle. "Can it see us also?" he asked.

"Hard to be sure.Depends on the angle of vision, depth of focus. We had better keep still, anyway. Bum my circuits, they make enough noise with their mating. A man would think murder was being done!"

"Swine are noisy beasts," Jack agreed, watching the curious spectacle. By now the aggressive male had battered the female into what was for him an acceptable position, for he was marching on her steadily from the rear, while she stood shaking her head and squealing. In that moment

Jack felt Jasar's grasp fasten on his arm, heard the litde man gasp.

"Look there! Over to your right! See?"

Jack stiffened as he saw yet another flap-door open, cautiously this time, and out of it came a man. Undoubtedly an ordinary, normal, mortal man, bowed and plodding under the weight of a miniature version of the two beasts that were now coupling in screeching, struggling harmony. The stranger had only a fleeting glance to spare for the rowdy spectacle before he ran, heavily but swifdy, away into the uncertain gloom of the far right of the cage.

"Come on!" Jasar urged. "If he is stealing Dargoon fodder, then he is on our side. After him!"

Together they ran parallel with the mesh barrier into gloomy shade lit only by the red and green glows from purring machinery. "We've lost him!" Jack declared, peering about, but Jasar pointed.

"He came out this way, see?" There was a gap cut in the wire mesh, enough barely to fold back and pass a crouching man. "And this is his trail, the blood spots on the floor."

"I cannot see red on red!" Jack protested, but followed on Jasar's heels just the same. The trail led into a narrow lane between two vast pedestals, by and under a polished copper pipe, around a sharp corner into darkness. Jasar halted, invited Jack in a whisper to feel the hanging coarseness of a sheet of material of some kind.

"I smell a man," Jack breathed. "And fear, too," and he shook his bow into his hand by reflex, readying an arrow.

"Can't blame him for that, lad. Be ready to duck. I'm going to part this curtain ... now!"

Light spilled out as Jasar drew the material swiftly aside, light that glittered on a drawn and pointed blade, bright and watchful eyes, and the body and bulk of a man, backed against a far wall. Beyond the blade was a bare arm bunched with muscle, a shoulder, a face with a wild yellow beard and hair, and blazing blue eyes that widened now in astonishment.

"Men? By the Three Suns! I thought you were beetles! Who are you, and how came you here?"

"Beetles!" Jasar snorted loudly. "Do we look like beetles? Whoever you are, can we get this much clear? We saw you run off with the young of one of those rutting beasts out there. You've killed it, I see. Can we assume that you are against the Dargoon?" Jack held his arrow drawn and ready, taking no chances. The strange man lowered his blade. He was big, as big as Jack and a lot older, the light picking out massive shoulders and a deep chest. About his waist was a curious belt of woven gold wire that clung snugly and seemed to have neither beginning nor end. For clothing he wore only a ragged loincloth, none too clean, and scuffed black boots that reached to mid-calf. He seemed to be pondering Jasar's words.

"Against the Dargoon? In a way, I am. In another way, not. I'm a prisoner here."

"A prisoner who runs free and steals food?" Jasar queried.

"Free? Not while I wear this." The stranger touched the gold wire belt. "This is my bond. When Garmel needs me he has only to touch a switch at his wrist ... and I bite my teeth against agony, then run to do his bidding. Or I scream my lungs ragged in further agony. Which I have tried. It is not very pleasant. My name is Haldar Villar, once of Berden, on Strella. And you?" He turned aside to plunge the blade of his odd sword into a water-spout from the side of a machine, rinsing the blood from it. "Where are you from, what do you here, and how is it that you understand my speech so well?"

"Put away your arrow, Jack. I know of Strella, a planet of craftsmen, in the sixth quadrant. Sir Haldar, I am Jasar-am-Bax, of Willan, scout of the Salviar Fleet. This is my very good friend and companion, Jack Earl Fairfax, yeoman, of Earth."

"Earth? I have not heard of that planet." Haldar dropped his blade, came to offer a hand. "That device, young man, has a familiar look to me. In Berden we had men who made such things for sport. To propel a pointed shaft at a target, I think."

"Or an enemy," Jack agreed. "I would call your weapon a sword, only that I never saw one quite like it before."

"I would be surprised if you had." Haldar smiled crookedly. "I made it myself from scrap. It is a crude thing, but it serves. I am a craftsman in metal, but not in archaic weaponry. Will you rest a while, gentlemen? This is not luxury, but then it was never meant to be. However I can offer you food, and drink, too." Jack began to get perspective on this curious cranny. Machine plinths on either side made its walls. Odd and discarded metal boxes and lids furnished it. A water-pipe had been bent out of shape to run continuously into a nearby drain. Unshaded lamps hung here and there from their own wires, and there were scattered heaps of patchwork cloth, enough to make comfortable seats.

"I call this my hunting camp," Haldar told them, reaching up to take a wire that led to one corner lamp. "Garmel preserves me as a useful pet, and as such he has equipped me with a luxury home, but I get the urge to break out and run sometimes. And to win a little fresh meat." As he spoke he had taken the wire apart, simply by forcing two hooks to separate from each other. The lamp went dark, but Haldar wasn't bothering about that. Instead he thrust the two hooked ends against a pair of copper rods where they protruded from a pot.

"This," he explained, "is a discarded plastic bin that once held fine welding rods. It makes an excellent kettle, as you see." And, truly, the water inside was already singing, and the corner lamp glowed only dimly. Jasar saw Jack's bafflement and grinned.

"Just power, Jack. The same power that makes the lamp glow will also make water boil. Is that so surprising?"

Within a few minutes Haldar had poured them a hot and reviving drink each, into cups that he explained were protectors for fine jeweled bearings. For food he dipped into a metal box and produced a stack of disks, of a texture very like bread, a hand-span across and about an inch thick. "I offer no apologies for these," he said, putting them handy, "as they are whole-meal chips, and provide everything anyone needs. Garmel feeds them to his bruggs. The beasts you saw mating, back there. One male, six females, and there's a brood of ten or so, every thirty cycles."

"You are permitted to steal younglings?" Jasar inquired.

"No one misses the odd one. It's within the tolerance estimate of the machines. I survive, Jasar, and have my little bits of freedom, by knowing the fine tolerances of the system, and sneaking between the spaces. I've been at it for a long time. So long that I lose count of the cycles. But do not wait on my gossip. Eat and drink. It's good if not inspired. And tell me about yourselves and how you came here. I was not aware there had been any wrecks brought in recently."

"We are not from any wreck." Jasar gnashed on a food-disk and nodded his approval of the flavor as he chewed the fragments. Jack, copying him, had a taste that reminded him of some cinnamon bread his mother had baked once, as an experiment. "We"—Jasar cleared his mouth and throat—"are an invasion. It may sound a trifle presumptuous, but that's the truth of it. We are attackers, our mission to cripple, if not destroy entirely, this space station."

"I see!" Some of Haldar's easiness dissipated, his eye hardening as he sat forward. "Assuming I believe that. Just the two of you, with a bow and arrows? Where will you . . . ah . . . start?"

"I have all the necessary violence with me, sir, provided only that I can get at the heart of the station, into the control room."

"That's easy enough. I work there, from time to time, by Garmel's order and instruction. I can lead you there."

It was Jasar's rum to look guarded. "That sounds too easy. What are you not saying?"

"Merely that Garmel will net you and ring you, as he has ringed me, once you get within any of his alarms. Do you take him for a fool?"

Jack couldn't hold himself in any longer. "You con-stanüy say," he interrupted, "he will do this, and that. Meaning this Garmel, who I take to be a Dargoon. Is there, then, but one of him?"

"Only one. There's no need for more, here. Not in this station. All the defense and offense circuits are fully automatic, the screens, detectors, tractor and thrust beams, stun and disrupter beams, all controlled and monitored by the brain-complex. That is in addition to the fact that this station collects and integrates and relays essential data for the entire sector front to all the Hilax fleet units. Which you ought to know already, if you are what you say. So what call would there be for a large crew? One Dargoon is ample."

Jasar scowled. "It is my turn to disbelieve, Haldar. A strategic computer complex of that power is far beyond the Hilax competence, as known to us. It is equally far beyond anything we can do, either!"

"Of course it is!" Haldar was suddenly savage and intent. "Here's something you don't know. The Hilax policy is cannibalism! They use us! People like you and me. That's how they do it!"

"I don't understand. Explain!"

Haldar stood, all at once a very large man in a terrible mood. Jack eyed him warily. "See me?" he demanded. "I serve Garmel. And why? Because, as I told you, he can activate this belt at his whim, to punish me, to hurt me, to kill me if he feels like it. And I can't get it off. He can, literally, cut me in half. So I serve him. And, even like this, I am more fortunate than most. More fortunate than those unhappy other survivors of the ship I served in. Let me tell you. We were guarding a convoy of cargo ships. Vital supplies. We were attacked by a Hilax squadron. We engaged them, while the convoy scattered, as it was their right to do. I was a senior instrument repairman. My ship was hit and wrecked, along with others. The fortunes of war." He leaned his back against a plinth-wall and laughed harshly.

"War? We don't know how to fight a real war. Listen. The wreck was seized in traction and dragged here. And gutted for everything useful. The bodies of the dead were fed into the protein store! No, hear me; that's not the worst. The unfortunate living survivors were put through analysis. Myself also. Scanned by brain-probe, estimated for potential. Those with special skills of any use in strategy, or sheer information, were put into the brain-complex. I mean put in. Literally. Brain removed and wired into the complex. They are now part of the machine. That's how it's done, Jasar."

Jack understood only dimly, but he felt instant revulsion. Jasar set his dark face grimly. "All the more hurt to the Hilax if we can wreck the place, then!" he growled. "But how came you to escape living death within the brain?"

"Whim!Garmel's whim. The probe showed what I have told you, that I am a craftsman in metal. Strella is a backward culture in many ways, the most of us being farmers and food-processors. But we breed fine craftsmen in metal and jewelry. And this was a skill that Garmel could use directly. Maintainance ... running repairs ... such tasks take him into great effort with delicate tools in his clumsy hands. Me ... I can do them more easily, and better. So he uses me. Would you know a fusion-focus gem if you saw one?"

"Of course. I have two, in my ship. One in use, one spare. Not that I know much about how they work, except that without one to convert energy and direct it, a fusion generator is useless. So . . .?"

"So ... there are many designs of gem-fittings. It takes a skilled man to adapt one to the other. I can do it. So, when the Hilax capture one of our ships they seize the power-gems. And I convert them so that they fit this installation. And I do other things. I serve Garmel. So slay me, Jasar, here and now, for a craven traitor!"

SIX

"Nay! Sit and be easy!" Jasar growled. "Who am I to condemn any man for bending under torture? I have little stomach for that kind of thing myself. And why would I kill someone who can be of use to me? As you say, we are only two. If you have the run of this system, as you say, you have information of great value to us. That belt ... if there were some way of getting it off ... let me look at it more closely."

On closer inspection it was obviously tight, so much so that Haldar's flesh bulged over the edges of it a little. "I've seen something like it before, on savage animals under restraint," Jasar muttered. "It has something of the nature of a solenoid. A power-flow into it will make it shrink even more."

"Is there power in it now?" Jack asked, touching the fine-wire weave gingerly, feeling a tingle in his fingertips.

"It is constantly powered," Haldar muttered.

"Why then ..." Jack hesitated, looking from one to the other. "It may sound foolish, but might it not be possible in some way to take the power away from it?" He anticipated scorn, but Jasar stared and then breathed hard.

"Stars and comets! The lad's right. All we need is a length of stout copper wire and a ground of some kind. I can feel the fizz of it myself, now. If we can ground that ... short it out ... the belt should come loose enough to slip out of!"

"And if it doesn't work that way?"

"Then, at the worst, you'll die, Haldar. That's your gamble."

Haldar stood away, his face a mask of control, then he sighed and sat heavily on a pile of waste cloth. "I need time to think, Jasar. Perhaps I am a coward, after alL

You must realize that I have lived like this for some time, more than three hundred cycles, as far as I can guess it. I have jumped to Garmel's whim, learned to loathe and hate him, built up a little world of my own despite him. I have weapons. I have my secret ways in and out. I have fought with giant beetles down here. I have been up on the surface and fought with the rat-creatures ... and been chased for my life by a feline . . ."

"A cat-thing?" Jack interrupted. "I met and killed one of those. It was just after you fell down the tube, Jasar."

"You killed one?" Haldar sounded fearful.

"One arrow through the roof of its mouth and another Into its eye!"

"You can't be blamed for that," Haldar mumbled, "but h was a bad act."

"My life?" Jack demanded.

"Agreed. But the felines are Garmel's pets. He has three. Had. And a singing creature that I have heard only distantly. He will be angry. As a rule he is slow and placid, sarcastic often, but tolerant enough in his way. But when anything angers him he can be a fiend!"

"Do we care whether or not he is angry?" Jasar growled. "What I am hoping to do will make him wilder than he has ever been. If he survives to talk of it!"

"But it does matter! When he is in a vicious mood everything suffers, including my freedom of movement. And I have to tell you"—Haldar lifted his chin, put on a desperate stare—"I have been planning a strike of my own, more subtle one than yours, for some time."

"No reason why we can't cooperate, man!"

"You don't understand yet. I have been building, little by little, a whole network of half-rigged relays and insecure trips, all manner of little tricks that only a close inspection would reveal, all against that moment when I become so utterly desperate that I can yield my life against the breakdown of this station. I have neither the materials nor the skill to destroy the place suddenly and violently, or I would have done it long ago. But my plan has been— and I can do it—to burn out and destroy all the master circuits to the central brain-complex. You realize what that would mean?"

"The station would die, literally," Jasar declared.

"Yes. But slowly. It would be utterly beyond Garmel's ability to save, in time. It would die. No more messages in or out. No more weapon control. No power supply. No environmental control. Slow death."

Jack had a flash of inspiration. "It would take Garmel some time to die, also," he said, and Haldar looked at him, and nodded.

"And what would he do to me in that time? Because he would know it was my doing." Haldar's brow glistened with sweat. "I do not fear death any more than any other man, I think. But I have seen Garmel slicing men to pieces with his scalpels ... for amusement ... before fitting their brains into his machines. He is like that. He is a Dargoon, and the Dargoon think of we humanoids ... our size, that is ... as inferior creatures. My greatest advantage is that he keeps on thinking that. Unsuspecting. If he ever suspects anything different ... and if he becomes angry enough to be driven along that avenue, and decides to inspect.. . and discovers . . . what I have been doing . .."

Jasar growled an interruption. "Don't do it, Haldaf. You're buying more trouble than you already have, trying to anticipate failures that way. Look on the better side. You've had a hard ride so far, but you're not alone anymore. And with the expertise you have ... what?" The little man sat up startled as Haldar stiffened suddenly into an attitude of soundless screaming, his face gray with pain. Jack leaped to his feet, guessing what had happened even before the suffering man suddenly slumped and choked in relief.

"That was a summons," he gasped. "No more or less than usual. I must go, and quickly, or Garmel will be pleased to be more severe ... if I keep him waiting. Follow ... stay ... suit yourselves ... I have no choice."

He went past them and away through the rough curtain at a quick trot. Jasar scrambled up. "Come on; we mustn't lose him!" he said, and Jack had no option but to follow. Haldar's trot was brisk, but not headlong. He led them at first along narrow corridors between busy machinery, and then to a vertical wall where a broad strip of metal clung and supported several heavy wires. The metal strip had holes and slots cut in it, was almost as easy to climb as a ladder. Haldar mounted with the speed and familiarity of long practice. It was more arduous for Jasar, with his shorter reach, but he climbed manfully. In a while they had reached the top of the wall, but the metal grid kept on upward. They could see into the brugg-pen. They mounted as high as its roof. The grid angled forward now and became a horizontal bridge over the pen. It was no more than a foot wide, and the wires that ran along it offered an uneasy surface for the feet, but Haldar stood, balanced, and trotted along it. After him, Jasar stood too, and ran. So Jack swallowed his fear, kept his eyes rigidly forward, and ran as steadily as he could.

The narrow grid vibrated under his feet. The stink from the brugg-pen came up strongly. But there was a stark-white wall ahead, and he saw Haldar go up it, still climbing that grid. Then Jasar . . . and then he was close enough to reach, and start climbing. He heard Jasar breathing hard and realized that others had their troubles too. Their way led up and up, until the grid ran up into a narrow round tunnel in the roof and they had to move more slowly because of the dim light. Jack heard his scout friend call out, breathlessly:

"Haldar! A moment, man! I have no wish to slow you, but I ask you to spare the time to warn us, when we are close to Garmel's domain. So that we may see, and overhear, without being detected."

"I will do that. Soon now."

There was light ahead, and then the end of the tube. But now, while the wire-carrying grid kept on up the wall, Haldar launched himself aside to a black and resilient floor, ran a little way, and then tackled what looked like a plain wall, prising loose a clean-cut panel, holding it for them to pass inside.

'The wall is hollow," he explained. "They all are, here. For insulation, wiring, and lightness. In you go, quickly!"

This was a curious, narrow space with the roof vanishing into dimness and the walls of gray stuff that looked like frozen bubbles. Jack hugged that wall to let Haldar pass, then followed him. There were sagging curves and snarls of wire in various colors. "The blue-ringed wires are low-power lighting circuits," Haldar called breathlessly back, "and the lights are what I have borrowed, from time to time, from instrument panels. The place is a maze. I have not investigated all of it, only those runs that are useful to me." He was turning abrupt comers as he spoke, left and right until Jack was utterly lost. In a while he halted again, let them crowd close to him.

"We are almost where I have to be. In a moment I shall go through the wall again, into Garmel's radio and record room, where he receives personal and emergency messages, and keeps all his logbooks and accounts. In there, also"—his voice hardened "is my cage. To be truthful, it is well-appointed and equipped, furnished with the looting of many ships, but it is Garmel's gift, and I would rather run like this, and take my chances with vermin than be kept by him."

"Does he know you can escape?"

"He knows, Jasar, but he prefers to overlook it, so long as I am not too obvious about it. And he knows I cannot really escape, not while I wear this belt. Nor even if I were free of it. Where would I go?"

Haldar leaned on a wall section now and it gaped open. "Is it in your mind what he wants from you?" Jack asked and Haldar grunted, peering out.

"He will tell me, soon enough. I must go. I hear his tread!"

The wall section had been cut oval, and Jasar was able to hold and drag it inside as Haldar ran off. Jack crowded shoulder to shoulder with the little scout to stare out of the hole into a vast room that was all red and black. In the far middle of the floor huge columns stood up to support what had to be a table or bench of some kind. And chairs. Huge cupboards. A constant clicking and chattering. And there was Haldar, trotting steadily up a long spindly ladder that led to the tabletop. Craning his neck, Jack regarded it as a dizzy plateau of mystery, and felt fear of Garmel, even as he sensed a regular thump and shake of vibration, growing steadily stronger.

"This stuff ... it's some expanded-foam type of plastic," Jasar mused. "Lightweight. Easy enough to cut."

But Jack was barely listening. Far away across the floor-plain there came a darkness, and movement, and he adjusted his perspective hurriedly to see that a door had opened. And closed again. And there came boots, black and glossy and enormous, thudding solidly on the floor, one after the other. Craning his head back to peer upward, Jack saw the boots merge into dark blue cloth and vast legs, a huge furled tunic, a belt with objects dangling from it, and far above that a blurred pink expanse that could be nothing else than a jaw and chin. That much, alone, was enough to dry his mouth and make his heart hammer, but then he saw something that knotted his stomach and caught his breath. A vast, limp, swinging furry thing that grazed the floor and thumped against the wall over his head before swinging away again. There came a voice, cavemously deep.

"So .. . Haldar .. . little man-beast . .. you have been careless again. For that you shall suffer."

"I don't understand!" Haldar's voice came small and distant, uneasily protesting. "What have I done?"

"What have you left undone, fool! See this? Look well at it, little man-beast! My Milby, my pet, my favorite proos ... is dead, see? And, not far from where I found her, I came across the carcass of a grat, striken in the selfsame manner. Well, Haldar?"

Jack stared at the underside of the table, wishing he could see through, wondering what Haldar was thinking.

"I regret that your pet is dead." Haldar sounded sullen. "But why are you angry with me? I didn't kill it!"

"Not with your hand, no! Milby would have made short work of you, had you tried that. But you are responsible, fool! Milby was struck, see, by something solid. A missile. A meteorite particle! So was the grat. And that is something that should not have happened, Haldar. You are responsible. You have your life because you keep my electronics in good order. As you well know. And now ... look at this readout!" There came clicking and whooping sounds and then the voice again, enormously angry. "See? The playback record for the past ten time units. Here ... and here ... breaches in the alarm-screens in sector seven of the outer shield. But no booster-response, no automatic step-up ... no alarm, Haldar 1 Your careless, slipshod, lazy work, Haldar!"

"No!" Jack heard Haldar's frantic yell, then a scream of agony . . . and another . .. and a third, that sent the sweat trickling down his face and made Jasar growl deep in his throat.

"That," the tunnel-voice rumbled, "I can do to you, little beast, and more. But nothing can bring back Milby, my pet. Get up, you filthy vermin! I begin to lose patience with you. I treat you well. I have given you a luxurious nest, all the food you need. I do not work you very hard. And yet you fail me. Look at you now, filthy and in scanty rags. You fail even to maintain a pretense of being a civilized entity. I am not pleased with you. In a while there will be another wrecked ship of your kind discharging here. Perhaps I will find some other metalworking man-thing to take your place, one with more sense, and more respect. And then, Haldar, I will cut out your little brain and put it into my machine. I am not pleased with you, at all!"

And Jack felt the blood pound in his ears as Haldar screamed again. This was an evil ruthlessness he had never dreamed of before. That cavernous slow voice was utterly inhuman, devoid of any real emotion. He heard Jasar growling by his side. "It burns me to have to stand helpless like this, lad. My thumb itches to put my beamer on that bloated thing, to burn him, to hear him scream, for a change. But it would serve no good purpose, not at this time. Bite on it, Haldar. We'll avenge you, somehow!"

"Would these small weapons slay a creature so vast?" Jack demanded.

"You'll see, lad, just as soon as the moment is ripe. So far as I can judge, Garmel isn't screened. He's not wearing any protection. And why should he, here inside the safety of his station? And, that being the case, you just wait. Let the time be ripe, and give me one bead on him with my beamer ... and you'll see ... burn his heart! But wait ... what's he up to now?"

As the screeching anguish ceased that tunnel-voice boomed again. "Into the net, man-thing, and I will take you to the brain-room. Where you will work. You will check and sharpen every circuit, bring everything up to the mark. You will make good all your idleness, your omissions. And I will check, myself, when you are done. And if anything is as much as a hundredth part less than perfect ... you will scream much louder than you have ever done before. Come. No! Just a moment." A sudden staccato twittering and beeping came to attract attention to some machine or other up there on the table. A click stopped it, produced a metallic voice.

"Sector Flagship Belon to Station BB7 Arc. Fix. Fix. Fix."

"This is BB7 to Flagship Belon," Garmel's voice boomed. "You should be receiving standard coordinates from me. Confirm."

"Belon to BB7. We have your standard transmission, but we are under damage conditions. Will need tractor assist, docking, and repair facilities. ETA your tractor range, three time units from now. Confirm assist and repair availability."

"BB7 Arc to Belon. Full facilities confirmed. Await your further signal in three time units. Do you have casualties?"

"Belon to BB7 Arc. We have eighteen injured, not critical. Also three enemy units in grapple, for impounding. Flagship Belon out!"

The iron-throated voice ceased, leaving a bee-like humming. That ceased also, with a click. "You heard, Haldar?" Garmel rumbled. "Three of your ships are approaching. Wrecked, captured, for salvage and stripping. Think of that, little man-thing. Consider the chances I will find a replacement for you ... and see if that makes you work well. Now cornel Into the net!"

Now Jack saw those vast boots start to move again, to walk away and grow distant. He saw the dead cat-creature till swinging in one of Garmel's huge hands, and a glittering silvery net dangling from the other. And Haldar in it,

"Come on!" Jasar hissed, scrambling through the hole. "After him." It took a moment to replace the oval cut piece, and then they ran, fearfully, over that vast floor to the far wall. The door shut as they scampered near, the puff of air from it making them stagger for a moment.

"We can't open the door!" Jack cried, staring up at it, but Jasar was already at the wall, his hand-weapon out, setting it swiftly, pointing . . . and a searing thread of fire sliced the wall in a swift slant cut. Then another, and a third, and Jack coughed at the stench, but there was a triangular hole now, big enough for them to crawl through and close after them. Jack closed it while his intent little friend burned a matching hole in the other side of the narrow air-gap. This time the fumes and stench were choking for a moment; then they were through, out and running once more. This was a long corridor, and far ahead, dwarfed to near normality by distance, they saw Garmel striding along. This floor was all in blue and white squares, and it seemed to extend for miles. Jack became painfully aware of aches in his legs and a hollow where his stomach had been. He recalled, vainly, that he had only taken one small bite of that food-disk Haldar had provided, only a sip of the hot beverage.

No such lack seemed to trouble Jasar, who ran steadily and sturdily, keeping close in to the right-hand wall. Jack drove himself into effort, cursing the hand-weapon that banged his thigh, and the bowstring that seemed a tight band across his chest. Breath burned his throat, scoured his lungs. Far ahead, Garmel seemed to pause, then wheel and disappear to the right. Trotting after, Jasar slowed for the corner, stole up to it, peered around with his hand up for caution. Jack shambled close, then leaned on the wall and made the most of this chance to catch up on breathing, working hard at it. This was worse than trying to run down a deer. At least there a man started out with a full belly and a good night's rest behind him. Adding it up, Jack realized he had not slept in a long time, nor yet had anything substantial to eat in even longer.

Then, over the roar and snore of breathing, and the bump of his heart, he heard something truly magical. It was faint, far off, and he knew it was someone singing. But it was like no singing he had ever heard before. Into his mind came a fleeting vision of the choir of the monastery of St. Cecilia, once seen on a ceremonial occasion in the courtyard of Castle Dudley. This was the same kind of singing, but infinitely more sweet, more wonderful. And just one voice. No words that he could make out. He pressed his head close to the wall, and it came a little clearer. Still no words, just a plaintive chant.

"Back!" Jasar snapped urgently. "Garmel is returning. We have nowhere to take cover. Flat on the floor in the angle, and keep still!"

Jack fell flat on his face and tried to melt into the nook between wall and floor, holding his breath. That singing was still there, sweet and faint. Now the floor bumped and shivered to the Dargoon's ponderous tread. He came around the corner. Went past. Then stopped! Jack squeezed his eyes tight shut, anticipating the roar of discovery. Instead he heard the click and sigh of a door opening, the rush of air, and that angelic singing came clear now, distinct, a sad and slow lilt that brought tears to his eyes instantly. Just for a breath or two, then the door thudded shut again and the magic was gone. But so was Garmel. He scrambled excitedly to his feet. "Did you hear it too, Jasar?"

"That music? I heard it. Probably a recording of some kind. Or that singing pet that Haldar spoke of. Come on. I saw where Garmel took our friend Haldar. We might be faced with some trouble. The wall and door looked like thermal armor to me. As it would be, if it is the way into the brain-room." He had rounded the corner as he spoke, leaving Jack to follow, and see, some thirty feet ahead, a gray wall, and in it a door with a huge spoked wheel at its center. From that wheel came thigh-thick rods of metal that engaged the frame of the door in eight places. Obviously to lock it shut. Jasar was close enough now to rap on the gray wall and shake his head ruefully.

"It will take a while to cut through this. And no way of telling when Garmel will take it into his head to return. Still, it's a chance we have to take. You keep watch at the corner, Jack, in case Garmel comes back, while I cut."

Jack hesitated. "If all these walls are hollow, as Haldar said, then it would seem that we should cut into one here, and thus approach the armor within the gap, and not be seen while we work at it." He eyed Jasar nervously, but the small scout chuckled.

"I am not cursed with an overweening ego, lad, otherwise I might get ruffled at the way you see farther than I do. You're quite right, of course. Make way a moment." He went down on his knees and did his trick with his hand-weapon again, and very soon they were safely within the hollow of the wall, and facing armor-plate. And that singing was much clearer now.

"Pay attention." Jasar nudged his elbow. "See this?" He indicated a serrated rim at the tip of the weapon. "When I wind this focus to zero the beam is very fine, a needle that will punch through anything, and over a long range. The more I set it back ... to two ... or three ... or four .. . the wider the beam fans out. Covers more area but doesn't hit the target so hard. A two setting is good enough for general purposes, but now, see, I am setting it to zero. I need maximum cut, and even then it will take a while to burn this plate."

"How long?" Jack demanded, his curiosity burning almost as intensely as Jasar*s beam.

"Hard to tell. Why?"

"I want to see into this other chamber. Where Garmel is. Where the singing comes from."

"So long as you only look, and listen," Jasar cautioned. "You have time enough. Set for zero, keep close to the floor, pick a corner ... by the door is as good as any. And set your talk-switch. Ill call you when ready . . . and you come at once; understand?"

Jack promised, and went off along the narrow track until he was near the door, then knelt and cut as he had seen Jasar do, angling the needle beam so that the triangular section fell inward where he could catch it. Holding his breath until the stench had drifted away, he listened to that wonderful singing, and knew as certainly as he knew his own name that it was coming from a human throat. Then, on his knees, he peered into the new chamber. With experience to help, he could make rapid adjustments of viewpoint and no longer thought of the hugeness of things, just that to his right was a great cabinet and shelves full of disks. To the right, another similar cabinet. And right in front of him, sprawled in an enormous chair, was Garmel. The chair was of flimsy-seeming metal tubes and dark canvas-like stuff, and purple cushions bulged under Gar-mel's bulk.

The Dargoon held a device in his lap very like the reader-screen that Jasar had used, back home in the cottage. How long ago that seemed, now. The pictures that danced across it were obviously engrossing the giant, so that Jack had a fine opportunity to study him in detail and three-quarter profile. The sight was awesome. In a general way the head and face were humanoid enough, but brow, forehead, and nose were all in one plane. Yellow fuzz covered the flat-topped skull down to where it became neck. Briefly below the nose was a thin gash of mouth and virtually no chin to mark face from neck in front. And all was a curious glistening pink. The monster had no brows and his ears were only dark holes, devoid of pinna. The dark blue stuff of his tunic lay in tight folds over a vast chest and arms, one of which he raised now to reach to a nearby tabletop and collect a goblet of dark green liquid. He gulped at it, set it aside, then stretched up that same hand over his head, to rap with his fingers on the underside of a golden cage.

"Enough of that misery, Silvana, my songbird. Chant me a merry melody, hear me?" Jack's wondering gaze traveled up into that cage and he was at once wide-eyed and enraged. The voice was human, was a girl, a slim blue-eyed golden-haired dream of a girl, somehow meshed in many hair-fine gold strands, like a web that led to a central cluster over her head. Her prison dangled on the end of a glossy black cable, from the ceiling. She moved now to clutch the bars of her cage and peer down at Garmel.

"Do you expect me to be merry while I am kept in this cage, slave to your whim, Dargoon?" To Jack's wonder, her voice sounded big, seemed to fill the room. Garmel flicked the underside of the cage again, making her stagger-

"You are a singer, Silvana, so singl Or shall I play on your nerves?"

"Why don't you kill me and have done with it7" "Not so easily, songbird. I could put your brain into my amplifier, think of that. There are many things worse than death, as you should know. Sing! Chant me one of the gay lilts of your homeland, and be quick about it. There is a ship due soon and I shall be too busy for diversion then. Sing!"

Jack fumed inwardly at the way she drooped as she made her way back to the middle of the cage floor. Even while her singing enchanted him, filling the air with sunshine and delight, he swore that, somehow, he would set her free of that cage, and of Garmel. For a wild moment he tried to conceive some way of letting her know that help was at hand, but then he heard Jasar calling him, and replaced the wall-slab quickly, dimming that magic sound.

"We're through,'' Jasar muttered. "Be careful; the edges are still hot Now we'll see what Haldar is doing." He went first in a diving scramble, and the glowing edges stung Jack's arms and face as he followed. This was a new and frightening kind of chamber, the air full of the sound of clicks and cheeps and stutterings, like a vast aviary. There were enormous cabinets in rows, all glittering and winking with colored life, stretching away on either side, so many of them that Jack declared, positively:

"No one man can understand and know so many things as this, Jasar."

"That's why ifs called a brain-room, lad. In these boxes is stored the skill, wisdom, experiences, and knowledge of many hundreds of generations of clever men. Machines don't forget"

"But ... did not Haldar say that he worked here, to mend and keep all these things in order? How can he know so much?"

Jasar sighed. "I may be able to explain it to you, someday, but not now. What we want is a control unit." He was staring up at the vast boxes as he spoke. "These are storage, by the look. That one ... I think. Come on!" They ran in a slant path across a silver-gray floor and into a canyon between two cabinets that were hill-high. And now they came out into yet a different world again. Here the busy noises were muted. Here there were slotted-strip metal columns by the score, all carrying rows of various colored wires up into the air. From about head-height upward the reverse sides of those massive cabinet-blocks were wild webs of finer colored wires, so many and looped in such apparent confusion that Jack felt dizzy just trying to see them all. Jasar didn't even give them a glance, but stood well back and stared up, scanning from side to side.

"There he is!" he said, all at once. "Haldar! Stay where you are; we're coming up there. Come on, lad." He ran and laid hold of an upstanding strip and started to climb. Jack sighed inwardly and followed doggedly. After a while he thought he saw a kind of pattern to the wilderness of looping strands. At intervals of about six feet there would be a cross-member, like a platform, that seemed to divide the tangles into blocks. He assumed, hopefully, that each set thus formed would have some special magic of its own, but beyond that he had no idea at all. They found Haldar on the ninth level, straining carefully with a spray of wires

...they were all coppery under the colorings, which had been scraped off the ends ... fitting them one by one into toothed slots, with many a careful reference to a spidery diagram on a nearby upright wall. He did not seem overjoyed to see them approach.

"Keep away from me!" he muttered, when they were close enough to hear him. 'Tve had all the trouble I want, from you two."

Jack would have spoken, but Jasar grabbed his arm to hush him. "Finish what you're doing, Haldar, then we can talk. What are you doing, by the way?"

"I'm reinforcing some screens that I had to weaken as part of a ploy of my own. But for that you'd never have broken in here at all."

"And for that I'm grateful. Can we help?"

"No. You've done enough damage as it is!"

Jack frowned at his little companion, but Jasar made a sign, shook his head, and they stood and waited until the last of the wires was connected. Then, as Haldar stood back and sighed, wiped his hands on his thighs, Jasar spoke.

"You never really believed we had broken in, did you? Thought we were escaped captives from some wreck or other. So let's get that right, to start with. We are exactly what I told you—invaders. From outside. From the Sal-viar Federation. At least I am, and Jack is with me in ev-rything. And that was no meteorite that killed the grat or the proos."

"I know that!" Haldar snorted angrily. "What matters to me is that Garmel's precious Milby is dead, and I suffered for it. For that I do not thank you at all!"

"That's fair enough. But you heard, as we did, that there are more wrecks coming in. And Garmel would have found out about those weakened screens then, and you'd still have been in trouble, so don't blame us for all of it. And what you haven't realized properly yet is that we came through the screens, in a ship! And it's still here. With any luck at all—or a bit of expert help—we can get away again! Escape!"

"A ship? Here?" Haldar lost some of his thundercloud. "Whereabouts?"

"Out on the rim of the station. I can point to it, if you like." Jasar touched his wrist, extended his arm, swung it, paused. "That way!"

Haldar looked unbelieving, squinted along the line of that arm and shook his head cynically. "If you ever got a ship in here ...if ... you'll certainly not get it out again without rousing every alarm system we have. That's the penalty for killing that damned pet!"

"Should I have let it devour me?" Jack demanded, and Haldar snarled at him savagely.

"What do you think Garmel will do to you, laddie, when he catches you?" He refreshed his memory along Jasar's arm, then grunted. "Come on; let's see just how much water your story will hold." They followed him up several more levels, to the flat-topped expanse of the cabinet proper, and then along, across strip-metal bridges, to another, and then another. This one had saucer-like domes of transparent stuff bulging up at intervals. Haldar went to one and peered in and down. And snorted again. "Either you have something exceedingly good in the way of a canceling field, Jasar, or you are a liar!"

"Why would we lie to you, man?" Jasar was patient. "You asked how was it that we understood your speech. We are both wearing translators. Helmet-size. We have tricks that are not yet known to the Hilax. There's a ship, all right, and between us and it we carry enough violence to devastate this station, put in the right place. What is more important to you is that we have room for four ... if it comes to an escape."

"Escape? You're forgetting this belt"

"We ought to be able to get that off, with all the electronics we have here, surely? How well do you know this brain-complex? Enough to ask it questions, get information out?"

"Not that well at all. I'm not electronics, Fm a craftsman in metal. I know the power-generation systems, the environmental controls, and the sensor-network, quite well. Those are the aspects that need continual maintenance. Those Garmel lets me touch. I take care of wear and tear. I replace fusion-focus crystals as they decay, or I adapt captured ones to fit this crude system. And stuff like that. I also know how the brains are wired in." His voice grew thick with emotion. "Garmel likes to have me help with that. He does the dissections himself, under a microscope. Enjoys it I can show you the results. But how you use them, how you get information out, that I don't know."

He started back now, across a strip-bridge to another cabinet, over the side and down. 'This could happen to you, Jasar. You have information in your brain that could be very valuable to the Hilax system. When Garmel nets you, and probes you, he will discover that much and you'll wind up ... here!" He swung aside onto a level where there were rows of transparent bowl-shapes festooned with wires as fine as hair. He slid one hand carefully through the wire-work on one, to lift a lid and let them see. Jack peered, saw a mass of pink stuff, like a double-handful of worms floating in thin broth. "That is a brain," Haldar muttered. "It was once a man. It is neither alive nor dead. Not conscious, not aware of anything. Simply a unit of intelligence linked into the sensory network and the information circuits. Helping to defeat his own kind, did he but know it!"

"That's enough!" Jasar backed away angrily. "The sooner we blow this place to fragments, the better. I have the capacity to do that, Haldar. That ship of mine has a cruiser-caliber drive-unit and I have the remote relays right here in my belt that can snap all that power into any one spot. If that's what it has to be. I'd say the main power-plant is the best place. If we have to go up with it, so be it. So long as it's quick."

Haldar seemed impressed now, seemed to be getting over the fact that his newfound allies were what they claimed. But Jack wasn't too happy with this idea of suicidal destruction. He was remembering that golden-haired songstress, all at once. "Do we have the right to destroy other people along with ourselves, in this manner?" he wondered, and Haldar eyed him curiously.

"The brains, you mean?" He had the cover put back now and was leading the way back to the rooftop level. "They neither know nor care. I imagine if they did know they would count it a merciful deliverance!"

"Not those. Did you know that in the chamber next to this Garmel has another captive, a girl? And that he makes her sing for him, in a cage?"

"That singing was a person, then?" Jasar commented.

"I saw her. A girl. She looked to be about my age."

"I've heard some singing," Haldar admitted. "Never took much notice. I thought it was some pet or other. You say you saw her, this girl?"

"With my own eyes!"

"You have my sympathy. So does she. But I've been in this nightmare long enough to get some priorities worked out. A few lives to save millions. This way!" Down he went again, seemingly immune to the yawning depths and gaps he was crossing. Now he led them into a narrow lane between many-level racks and shelves, and what they held served to distract Jack's concern for the immediate moment. He put out an uncertain hand to pick up one, a handful of sparkling fire that was easily the size of a hen's egg and of roughly the same shape, but cut and polished so that fire glinted from its many facets. About its girth was an intricate weave of fine gold, from which stood out six straight prongs like the points of a star.

"Almost pure crystalline carbon," Haldar told him. "The carefully inset fractions of impurities are designed to match the system it was made for. Note the very faint tinge of pink. That tells me it is a Droban gem. Not the best. Some systems use absolutely pure carbon, like this one." He produced a handful of blazing fire that made Jack blink. "This is a Shagateel, the best power-to-mass converter of them all. But awkward to use because of the seven-point design of the connectors. The Dargoon system ... the whole Hilax system, as far as I know ... uses a five-point junction design. So it is part of my job to take and modify these, so that they can be used if and when Garmel should run out of standard supplies. That can happen. But I can't afford to stand talking too long. I have work to do, and Garmel will know if I'm not getting on with it." He marched them through the store of gems and around a comer to another level catwalk.

And there was power here. Even Jack, the naive innocent, could sense it in the immediate air, hear it in the low hum and crackle of effort, and feel it on his skin. "Along this array"—Haldar pointed—"are twenty-four fusers. The first-line bank. This is capable of supplying the entire station's load, up to fifty percent emergency overload. And there are three banks altogether. My job is to check-test and replace any fuser that is fifty percent burned out. Ill show you." They paced the catwalk after him. At four-pace intervals were armored metal boxes, chest-high, each with a spoked-wheel fastening. Above the wheel was a white-faced dial with a quivering pointer and two light-eyes, green and red. "This one, see, is in good order." Haldar indicated the pointer and the glowing green light. "I’ ll open the cover. Don't look directly at it!" He spun the spoked wheel, swung back the heavy cover, and Jack stood hastily back as a searing glare beamed out, accompanied by a savage growl. The door closed again, tight, and Haldar paced on, glacing at dials. And stopped.

"This one is over the fifty percent mark, is starting to decay. See how the red light is glowing steadily, and the green flickering? Note the power-reading? And now, when I open the cover.. ."

This time the light was less bright, the growl of power ragged. Jack shielded his face with an arm. "What if it should fail?" he asked.

"This is what happens." Haldar pulled a lever, the light died, the dial-pointer fell back, the green and red lamps went out ... but in the same instant a duplicate of that power-box, just above and to the rear of it, sprang into life. "The second-stage backup comes in automatically. I’ ll replace this one." He pulled out a scorched and blackened jewel, put it to one side, and made delicate adjustments to the spare he had brought with him before inserting it into the complexity of thick wires and coils inside the box. Then he closed the cover, reversed that switch, and the green light and pointer resumed activity.

"There is much here that I do not understand," Jack admitted, "but if I have it right, then all the heartbeat of the station is right here, in your hands, and that puzzles me."

Haldar managed to smile now, thinly. "I can guess your problem. I felt the same, once. I, too, was a countryman, unused to the tricks of the military mind, until the war taught me. But tell me your puzzle anyway."

"If you are Garmel's prisoner, captive, and if you hate him, and he knows you do, then why would he allow you here, where you could, if you so wished, destroy all the power that keeps this place alive?"

Haldar smiled again. Even Jasar was grinning. "You're no fool," the metalworker declared. "I mean that kindly. But neither were the people who built this system. As I just said, if a first-bank fuser decays below a certain level of output, it switches out and a second-level replacement comes in automatically. If and when that one bums out, a third-level backup takes over, and sounds an alarm. In exactly the same way, should the total power-output fall below a certain fraction, all the switches freeze, lock themselves on. And any further demand for power is just plain unlucky. Put it this way. If I ran along here and pulled all the switches . .. nothing! The second bank would take over. And if I then tried pulling the second-bank switches, which is not nearly so easy to do, I would get exactly halfway. Then all switches would lock, and every klaxon, hooter, bell, and alarm light would be registering all over the station. That is all built in, against sabotage ... or some stupid mistake by somebody who doesn't know what he is doing."

His grin faded now. "That also prompts me to ask ... just how did you two get into this chamber anyway? It's armored. I can't get in unless Garmel lets me. How did you work it?"

"Cutting through thermal armor is the least of our worries." Jasar waved it aside. "Do you have somewhere we can sit and talk a while? There's a plan trying to grow in my head."

"In a moment. Let me check the power-bank first."

There was one more jewel to replace, and then Haldar led them farther on, to a corner that he had obviously fixed up as a kind of workshop and retreat. There was a crude workbench, a water-boiler, a large pot with a curiously waxy feel to it, and several smaller pots of the same stuff, as well as a store of the meal-disks, by eights, wrapped in transparent stuff. Haldar set the water to heat up and hitched himself onto a corner of the workbench.

"A plan?" he hinted.

"The alarm systems are most of it. If we can silence them, the critical ones, long enough to give us time to fuse this whole power-complex into slag ... and the chance to make a run for our ship . . . ?"

"You forget this damned belt of mine. I can't. I'm not too worried on dying, Jasar. But I've no great liking for torture!"

"We will have to do something about that ... hark] What's that?"

A metal-throated voice echoed distantly through the chamber. "Flagship Belon to BB7 Arc. We are within range of your power. Request cooperation and assist for docking."

"It's just a relay," Haldar muttered.

"BB7 Arc to Belon. Have your coordinates. Stand by my signal to go inert. Locking on ... now!"

That will keep Garmel busy for some time. Docking the ship. Gloating over the loot. More than likely he'll have the ship's officers across for a carousal, if they have the time for it."

"Will he have need of you?" Jack wondered, and Haldar snorted.

"That's the last thing. He won't even mention me until they are long gone. You understand, Garmel is supposed to do all this work himself. And he can, of course; only it suits him a lot better to have me do it for him. And I doubt very much if he would like the Hilax High Command to hear of it No, he doesn't need me. He won't

even think of me for some time. I could starve to death and he wouldn't worry. That's why I have all these stores, and my little runs, ways of escape."

Jack ignored almost all of the growling, clung fast to the part that mattered to him. "If Garmel will be busy for some time, then this is our chance to rescue that girl, the one in the cage!"

SEVEN

Jasar glowered at his young friend in impatience. "You have a kind heart, lad, but we have bigger things to think of than one small life."

"I care but little for your plans," Jack retorted. "They are beyond my understanding in any case. You can work at them without me and lose little. I will do what I can to save that girl by myself, if I must."

"On your own?" Jasar sounded scornful. "I doubt if you can find your way to her and back here unaided."

"That comes ill from you, Jasar. You force me to remind you of several things. That you began your mission in the first place, on your own. That you never really wanted my aid. Yet without me you would be dead several times, would never have achieved this far!"

"Emotional blackmail 1" Jasar growled. "That's a poor weapon. It's true that I owe you my life, but I never thought you'd remind me of it this way. And I owe more to the Salviar Fleet. Millions of lives against one?"

Jack tried to contain his anger, breathing hard at the little man, and then Haldar intervened gruffly. "Let him go, Jasar. If he can find his way. Good luck to you, lad. Bring her back here if you can. And bear one thing in mind. If possible, make it look as if she escaped by herself. You understand? No, Jasar"—he saw the protest coming—"let him go. We have plenty to do. These alarm systems are not easy to follow, and are carefully protected. It will take all our craft to crack them. And I was in love once, Jasar. I had a wife. We were called to the war together, she to a hospital ship. I saw that ship disappear in a puff of radiant energy. My life has been that much emptier ever since. Who can count lives by the million?

Off you go, Jack. Up to the top and along, across one bridge ... you'll find the way."

Jack took another bite of a food-tablet, a mouthful of water, and he was as ready as he could ever be. "I’ ll try to bring her back here," he promised, "if I can." Then he set off before his own inner doubts could harden. Up on the cabinet top he set off at a steady trot. It seemed farther now that he was alone, but the stomach-grabbing cavern under the bridging strip was just as vast. But then he could see the far door, and pick the right strip-ladder to go down. Down to that silver-gray floor, and run, and find that hole in the armored wall, which was quite cold and smooth now. He felt desperately alone, and small, and inadequate. His mind kept rendering a problem to him. Even if he found the chamber, managed to reach the cage, managed to get her free, and down, and back to his friends ... then what? But the problem didn't stop him from his mission. He paused at the cut opening into Gartners chamber, but only to assure himself that the giant really was not there.

The cage seemed empty as he stared up at it, but he could see the nub where the fine gold wires came together, so he could assume she was perhaps at rest on the cage floor. He hovered uneasily, not wanting to call out, driving himself to plan, to work everything out before starting anything positive. The support cable, he saw now, did not go up to the roof as he had first thought. It hung from a thick metal rod. That rod jutted out from the wall. And there was one of those strip-metal ladders up to that point. So, he could get that far. But he could not safely assume that he could return that way, or that she would want or be able to. Staring about in search of inspiration, he saw that many of the massive cabinets stood clear of the walls, offering somewhere to hide if Garmel did return unexpectedly. But then he looked harder at the cabinets, and what they held. Curious disk-shaped boxes. He went close, shoved at one, to move it and then stare in bewilderment. The box was about six inches deep and possibly eighteen inches across, and it was full of fine wire, a mighty coil of it. And there was a slot cut in the disk-wall to let the wire escape. There were many of these disks and, even as he wondered what they could be for, an idea lit his mind. He took hold and pulled on the wire, silvery stuff that came out in loops like stiff rope, but was little thicker than his bowstring. Ideas began to build at a great rate in his mind.

He unsheathed his knife, but the wire turned that edge without so much as a scratch. And it wouldn't snap. Then he remembered the beamer on his belt, and that problem was solved. He looked up at the cage again and made estimates. Then he hauled out reach after reach of the wire until he thought he had as much as he needed. He cut it off, started coiling it to carry, remembered the advice of Haldar, and shoved the disk-box around to conceal the slot and hide the evidence. He took time to arrange the wire coil about his shoulders so as not to bind him, or interfere with his bow. Then he started to climb that strip-ladder up the wall. By the time he reached the boss where the rod jutted out into midair he was glad to rest a while and ease the ache in his arms and legs. He craned around and stared into the cage which was now below him. She was there, sure enough, curled up on the floor, seemingly asleep, half hidden by the wreathing wires and the cage bars. He didn't dare waste too much time.

A scramble got him up onto and astraddle the rod. He started inching his way along, nervously because the rod was polished smooth. As he moved farther and farther from the wall, the rod began to bend and bounce to his shifting mass. Peering ahead, he saw that the cage was gently bouncing too. The sleeping girl stirred uneasily a time or two, then woke up, sat up, and looked about her in instant fear, resting her palms on the cage floor. Then she looked up and saw him. Her face, her eyes, her red mouth, all went round and open in astonishment. Urgently Jack risked his precarious balance to put a hand to his mouth in a gesture for silence. In a moment she nodded her understanding, rose to her feet, and backed away to the far bars better to watch him. The last few feet were an anguish of care, the rod really swaying now to every move. Trying to hurry, Jack lost his balance, slid, hung on frantically, and managed to get his legs up so that he hung upside down, and was able to finish the trip that way, until he could let himself down and stand on the bars. He gained breath and assured himself once again that there was no return that way.

Crouching, he took hold of the bars and tried his strength. His shoulder muscles creaked, but the bars yielded reluctantly. Again, sweat breaking out on his face, and there was a gap big enough to squirm through, and swing, and then drop to the cage floor. She pressed back to the bars, staring at him, her eyes wide and uneasy.

"I know your name," Jack told her. "I heard Garmel use it. He called you Silvana. My name is Jack. I mean to help you to escape. Do you understand?"

She stared at him still, then nodded her head but made not a sound.

"You can speak," he said. "I heard you sing. Please talk to me. I need your help, if we are to get away from here."

She shook her head, looking distressed. Then she put a hand to her head, to her breasts, to her waist, wrists ... and he realized she was pointing to a series of gilded patches that seemed to be stuck to her body. Or the wires that trailed from them. She shook her head again. Aware of passing time, Jack tried to be patient, struggled to get her meaning. For some reason she was unable or unwilling to speak. "Is it the wires?" he asked, coming close. She nodded in quick agreement. "Can't you get them off?" he asked, and she cringed instantly, her face full of pain. He thought that out. This was something like Haldar's belt, some kind of punishment control. "Can I break the wires?" he asked, and she shrugged in a way he took to mean "Can you?" He thought of the beamer at his belt, then remembered the stricture. It must look like an escape. He stood back from her, placed himself under the central boss, reached up, and took the whole mass of wires in his grasp. And heaved. And gave that up. The wires were fine, but tough enough to cut into his palm. Looking about, his gaze fell on a cast-aside piece of blue material that she had been using as a blanket, or covering of some kind. He gathered that up, tried it, wrapped it in his hand, reached for two or three of the wires, tracing them back to the cluster. Then he reached as high as he could, took a firm grip, sprang up, and let his whole weight come down on the strands. They parted with no more than a bite at his palm and a tumble on the floor. Three times more and all the web-work of wiring was snapped off close to the overhead boss.

"Now can you speak?" he demanded, getting to his feet after the final sprawl and facing her.

"I can speak freely now," she said, very softly. "Thank you for being so quick to understand, Jack. And so resolute."

"It was a simple matter." He pushed it away in delight "What I do not understand is why the wires should make you dumb!"

"Not dumb!" She shook her head and smiled, and he melted inside at her radiance. "The wires are Garmel's way of connecting me to his machinery, his instruments, so that when I speak or sing the sounds are amplified, and carried to wherever he may be at any time. Also"—and a rosy glow came to her face—"they make it so that, at will, he can feel me, my movements, my sensations, all my emotions, and reactions. And hurt me, tickle me, excite me ... as he chooses. But not now that the contact is broken." She looked down at her waist and wrists and back to him. "Now I can get these dreadful things off." "Could you not do that before?"

"Garmel is too cunning for that. Any attempt to peel off the patches ... I tried it, just once ... it was like being bathed in fire over the whole of my body. But not now, with the power cut off."

"Can I help you?" He came close to her again. "We must be quick. I do not know how long Garmel will be away."

"If you can break the bands," she said, touching her head and neck, "as they are loose anyway. The patches are stuck on with cement, and I would rather do those myself." He tried his sheath-knife again, with more success this time. She stood still while he cut through the band about her forehead, and neck, and each wrist, then knelt to free her ankles while she set her lips and started peeling off the patches at her breasts and stomach, under her arms and between her thighs. There were angry red areas where the patches had been. But then, as he slashed through the belt at her waist, she drew a deep breath and threw the hideous network aside. "I'm free, at last!" she said, and stretched herself, catlike, in sheer delight. "Now I will go with you, anywhere you say, so long as it is away from this cage, and Garmel. It feels as if I have been here a lifetime!"

"Wait!" Jack was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that in discarding her prison chains she had stripped herself completely, and didn't seem to realize it. Shaking her golden hair into freedom she stood before him all agog for the next move, very lovely, but extremely distracting. "Count me foolish if you will," he mumbled, "but I am not alone. I have companions. If I succeed in this effort to free you, I will take you to them. They are two. One is Jasar-am-Bax, a scout of the Salviar Fleet. The other is Haldar Villar, of Berden on Strella, who was like you a captive of Garmel, but who will be as free as you now are, if we can manage it."

"I am of Strella," she interrupted, "from Maramelle. It

Is a beautiful island, rich in trees and flowers and hills, and streams, and small farms."

"And," Jack drove on desperately, "I know not what your customs are but I think it may not be seemly that I should take you to them ... unclad!"

"Oh!" She looked at him curiously, then down at her nakedness. "You are right of course. I was so dazzled with the thought of freedom that I had not ... but what can I dor'

"There is this." He caught up the blue fabric he had used to save his hands, and held it out to her. "Perhaps you can contrive something . .. ?"

He turned away to study the cage, noting the water-pot, gravel-box and little stack of food-tablets. No help there. How best to get out? Back along that support-rod was out of the question. If he could bend the bars here . . . ? He crossed to them, took two, and heaved, pouring out energy, and the bars gave, and gaped wide enough to pass his body. He turned, to see her wide-eyed at his shoulder, staring at the bent metal.

"You are strong! I could not have done that."

"Will Garmel believe that? If we leave no other kind of evidence?"

"I don't know, nor care. Is this dress enough?" She stood back for his criticism. He couldn't have rebuked her even if he had wanted to. Each note of her voice, every move she made, each fresh glance of her blue eyes, served only to enchant him more. But he pretended to study her, seeing that she had merely caught the blue stuff by one edge about her waist and knotted at her hip. It was enough, he thought. In some odd way she reminded him of the serving wenches of Castle Dudley when they came to pound and scrub by the riverside. She had something of their full-bodied simplicity. But they had nothing of her magic.

"It will do well enough," he said. "And we have little choice anyway. But now you must listen closely. This next part must be done just right. First I will bind one end of this wire about you, if you will stand still." His hands shook, much to his vexation, as he passed one end of his wire about her waist and secured it in a clumsy but secure hitch. "Now, you will go out through the gap, and I will lower you down to the floor. That will be easier than trying to go back the way I came."

She looked up at the polished rod and nodded. "I would have been ready to try it, to try anything just to get away, but I'm glad I don't have to. This way will be easier. But who will lower you down, Jack?"

"Don't worry about that. When you reach the floor, just slip this knot. I will let myself down. Ready? Just hold onto the wire." She went out and down, the wire squeaking as he paid it out around an upright. She wasn't all that heavy at first but as the wire extended his arms began to protest and his palms burned as he let the wire out hand over hand. Those aches and pains were only minor irritants around the main wonder in his mind. How wonderful she was! A fine girl, all girl; yet neat and graceful, and with plenty of courage. And wit. No panic. One careless sound and Garmel would have been warned. She had grasped that instantly. And those devilish patches must have hurt like the scald of boiling water, to leave such marks, yet she hadn't murmured. A truly wonderful person. He wondered about her home and her life there. Maramelle, she had called it. Did she have a swain there, he wondered? She had said it was a place of trees and hills and farms, and she looked as if she knew sunshine and fresh air very well. Her skin was honey-gold. Such deep blue eyes!

The wire went slack in his grasp. He peered out to see her on the floor far below, waving. He waved back, then caught the other end of his wire and made a quick hitch around his own waist. One final look around made him stare at the discarded strands and strips of her restraint Better to remove them, he thought, and made haste to gather them up and drop them through the bars. Then, according to the scheme he had already worked out in his mind, he slid through the gap, and hung there while he heaved the bars back to where they were before. Now let the giant think she had gone up and along the rod, alone. He took hold of the down wire and paid it out until it came tight against his own weight. And now he was able to let himself down by letting that wire pass up, walking it hand over hand rapidly. Until he came to the end and saw, with relief, that he was only a yard or two from the floor.

"Stand away!" he warned, then let himself fall, rolled nimbly, heaved on the wire, and brought it all down to the floor in a coiling rush. "That will do," he declared, wrapping it quickly about one arm. "When Garmel comes to look, he will see no sign of aid, and will be driven to think that you broke your own bonds and escaped up and along the rod."

"You are very clever." She gripped his arm excitedly. "You must be a great man on your own world, Jack!"

"No!" He met her shining eyes for a moment, then looked away. "I am only a humble freeman, of no great consequence. But for a curious accident I would not be here at all!"

"Then I am thankful for that accident. What do we do now?"

"We collect the evidence of your confinement, and then we run ... there ... into that hole." As he spoke he felt the distant but nearing thump of heavy feet and the cavernous rumble of giant voices. "Forget the patches. That is Garmel returning. Come on!" They ran frantically across the floor to the hole and in, then turned to huddle, shoulder to shoulder, and listen.

"I think perhaps my singing bird will amuse you for a moment, Kartral, although I confess that I grow a trifle weary of her piping. According to the brain-probe such noises are held in great esteem by her kind, but I find them a bore after a while. Her sensory reactions, now, are quite different."

"Each to his own!" This was a different voice, equally booming. "I find the little people repulsive. They remind me of grats, without hair."

"I grant you that much, but one needs some kind of distraction over the long time-periods of monotony.... Blood and bones!" Jack cringed against the rage he had anticipated, felt Silvana clutch him in momentary terror. "The mewling bitch has escaped! See, Kartral—the cage is bent!"

"You'll catch it, of course?" It would have been ludicrous in any other moment to hear such a vast voice so instantly nervous. "You can't have the little pest crawling about. It might breed or something!"

"That's not likely. And she can't get far. Ill bring Fervil in here, later on, let her get the scent. One of my pet proos, excellent creatures for keeping down vermin. Ah well, you didn't miss much, Kartral. I was thinking of discarding her to the protein-banks anyway. I will have to get something else to keep me amused." The vast boots shuffled and turned to tramp away again.

"Speaking of breeding," the new voice boomed, "the station-keeper of BB5 Tangent has a whole vivarium of the little beasts. Seven or eight females, and a male, and he breeds them. I hear it's an interesting process to watch

...almost human, you know. But he hasn't been able to rear any of the young...."

The thudding and booming cut off suddenly with the closing door, and Jack let out a thankful breath, shivering as rage boiled up inside him.

"Did you understand what they were saying?" Silvana murmured in his ear.

"Didn't you?" He turned, to find her face very close to his.

"Not a word. That wiring ... Garmel had some kind of device structured into those so that I could understand his language and he mine, but without that it is just a lot of noise."

"I see!" Jack realized that without his helmet he would be unable to understand her, either, and explained. "Garmel thinks you have escaped. That's all right. He plans to bring a pet cat-creature of his here to chase you, later, but don't worry about it!" he added quickly, as she shivered. "You won't be in any danger while I'm here. Come now; follow me."

Finding the way back into the brain-room and to the ladder-strip was enough to keep his superficial faculties occupied, but it left the lower levels of his mind free to wonder. GarmePs brain-probe said that she was a famous singer. He could believe it. She was obviously a "somebody" on her own world, a thought that served to remind him of his own humble origin. Reaching the ladder-strip, he went up slowly and steadily, giving her a chance to keep up, turning at the flat top to help her reach her feet She clung to his hand, came close, hugged him impulsively, shaking with relief.

"That was awful!" she breathed. "I have no head for heights at all!"

"And yet you came, without a word. That was very brave."

"Brave?" Her voice was muffled against his chest. "What has bravery to do with it when one has no choice? I've prayed for death a few times since I fell into Garmel's hands."

"How did that happen anyway? How come someone like you to be involved in a war?"

"Not in any way to be proud of, Jack. Fate saw fit to bless me with a shapely body and a talent for song. I have no military skills, but when it is a life and death struggle one wants to help. And there was talk of making up a group of entertainers, to visit various training centers and

...amuse and divert the fighting men. Of course I agreed. Spaceships are bleak places. . . . What is that?" She shoved away from him in alarm and he whirled as they both heard a curious pattering-chittering sound. There, scurrying across the flat plain of the cabinet top came a beetle. Jack recalled Haldar's word for it, but he had not dreamed of anything so enormous, or so hideously hairy. By reflex he tried to shake his bow into his hand, but it caught on the wire coil. More urgently, he crouched and shed the coil, shoved it vigorously into the beetle's path and stood back and aside, seeing it snatch and hoist the wire with a pincer the size of a man's hand. He heard the jaws grate on the wire quite distinctly as the creature paused for a moment. Then he had his bow in hand, arrow nocked and half-ready, but with no clear idea what to aim for. The beetle cast the coil of wire away with a twitch of its claw and came on, antennae waving. Jack^rew string to chin and drove a shaft straight into one multifaceted eye, sprang aside while he fitted a second shaft. The creature jerked, recoiled for a moment, then came on again, pincers clicking furiously. Jack released again, ruined the other eye, and it stopped once more, scrabbling furiously at its head with its pincers.

Tm a fool! Jack thought, slinging his bow and dragging out his beamer, checking that it was set on zero. Dodging aside, he aimed and sliced the front part of the creature from the rest of it. Trotting three steps, he did it again, and stared as it continued to react vigorously in three separate pieces. His nostrils were assaulted by a bitter stench. He waited a moment more, just to be sure, then turned to Silvana. "The thing takes a time to die. I fear my arrows were a waste of time!" Then he saw how pale she was. "It is all right. There's no danger to you now." He took her arm, and she shook.

"What kind of man are you?" she whispered. "You wear the garb, the equipment, and the look, too, of a man from my own Maramelle. A woodsman. Yet you also have and use the weapons and technology of a vastly different culture. I do not understand. What are you?"

"Does it matter? I am what I said I was, a freeman farmer, a yeoman. A nobody. Wait a moment while I retrieve my shafts." To his relief he was able to hack his arrows free without getting all messed up with ichor. I must ask Haldar, he mused, how to kill a beetle quickly. There must be a lethal spot. Then he went back to her, ignoring the puzzled look in her eyes, and took her arm to urge her on their way.

"We will be with my friends soon," he told her. "They are devising some plan to destroy this station. You will know more of it than I do, but I understand, as Jasar has it, that this station holds a key spot in the Hilax force, and that if it is put out of action it will be a great blow for the Salviar side. I would imagine you would want to help with that."

They were striding along as he spoke; he tried to evade her attempts to grasp his hand, but she persisted, and took his fingers, holding them.

"How do you come to be party to such a wild enterprise?" she asked. "And why are you not helping them now, at this moment?"

"I would be little help to them. I know nothing at all of power-machines, or detector alarms, or any other of this magic stuff."

"What made you leave them and come to rescue me?"

"I heard you singing. Jasar and Haldar have it in mind to destroy this whole station. They hope to escape if the possibility offers, naturally, but they count that second. I had heard you sing. I had seen you. I counted that more important."

Her grasp tightened on his fingers. "No one has ever valued me, or my voice, quite so highly as that before. To risk even one life for it."

"Do not count it too high," he said uncomfortably. "My life is not worth so very much." Under her gentle questioning he told her the essence of his life so far, and the remarkable coming of Jasar to offer him an honorable escape.

"Shame on you," she cried, not too severely. "You would have deserted your mother in her hour of need?"

"It was for the best!" he insisted. "Do you think I liked doing it? But now, since she cannot be responsible for debt, and she has the small holding, she will soon find another well-set man to comfort her. Which is what she really needs most. Here, I think, is where we start to go down."

They came to the jewel-racks and he heard her cry out in wonder at the great store of sparkling gems on either side. "Do you realize," she gasped, "that any one of these jewels is worth a small kingdom, or more? It seems part of all the wrongness of war that such beautiful things should be put to such a base use. They create power, I believe?"

"That is as much as I know," Jack agreed. "I have heard it said that great wealth is also power, of a different kind." In his mind was the addition mat this was not the only great beauty that was being wasted because of war. On Earth, at least only the men killed each other. But he left all that unsaid and led her on to the level where the crackle of power filled the air. Her hair lifted and drifted in the tension, spitting small sparks as she tried to smooth it down.

"I do not see your friends," she said, and hardly had she spoken when here came Jasar, climbing up from a lower level, with Haldar following him. The small scout came forward to a decent distance, then halted and made a stiff bow.

"Jasar-am-Bax is truly honored to make your acquaintance."

"This is Silvana of Maramelle," Jack offered, and she put out her hand for Jasar to touch. "And the other is Haldar Villar, of Berden."

"No need to tell me whom I am meeting, Jack." Haldar stiffened, made a solemn bow. "All Strella knows Lady Silvana of Maramelle. My very great . . ."

Jack thought he caught the ghost of a signal from her, and a quick eyebrow lift from Haldar, but he couldn't be sure. Haldar took her hand anyway. "A great honor anyway, and a pleasure. Had I known who it was who sang . . ."

"This is no time to speak of what might have been," she said quietly, "nor to dwell on honors and pleasures of a different kind of life. As I see it, we are alike hunted, in danger, and doing what we can in a cause we believe to be right. In that much I am very glad to be with you. All I ask is that you tell me what I can do to help." The difference in her was subtle but distinct now. Jack saw it as a kind of dignity she had put on, the firm lift of her chin and bosom, making nothing of the ragged cloth about her waist. Like a queen, he thought, and felt his heart sink a little.

"There is no more to do at this moment," Jasar declared. "We have been busy, truly, and we have laid a destructive train or two, but we are held for the moment by a ridiculous lack." He saw that Silvana had seated herself by Haldar*s crudely contrived table, so felt free to sit also. "You'd think, in all this profusion of wiring and cables, we would be able to find a spare length, but it is not so. We need a piece about six spans long, what Jack would call twelve yards. We have looked everywhere. In vain!"

"This is important?" Jack stared at them. "I brought a great length of wire away with me, but I left it back there on the cabinet top, when we were attacked by that beetle. Shall I bring it?"

At Jasar's nod he retraced his steps swiftly, glad of the chance to run things through his mind. Silvana was famous. Of course she was. He had guessed as much anyway. Haldar had known her on sight, called her "Lady," but she had wanted it hidden. Why? He could think of no good answer. The coil of wire lay where he had dropped it, beside the now lifeless sections of the beetle body. He shouldered it and made his way back in haste. Without intending to, he came so quietly to the nook where they were that they were not aware of his approach.

". . . and we have all done things, because of this war, that we would not have done otherwise. The less said of those, the better. He need never be told. There is a fine nobility about him that I would not see spoiled, an idealism that we might all envy, and feelings that are all too tender for this vicious world we find ourselves in."

Ears flaming, Jack backed away, allowed the coil to bang against a rail noisily, and approached once more. Haldar stood, and stared as he reached for and fingered the wire. "This is ferrite recording strip," he said. "How did you come by it?"

Jack told him, emphasizing how careful he had been to cover his traces. "In any case, Garmel will not trouble us for some time. He is together with another, from the ship that has just come in. We heard them talk."

"That could be important. Tell me what they said, every word, as much as you can."

Unwillingly, Jack reported the conversation as accurately as he could remember. He watched Silvana's face go gray. The others looked savage too.

"I suppose we should not condemn," she said, when he was done. "After all, to the Hilax we are little better than vermin. But it is difficult to excuse them all the way. Except for size, they are as humanoid as us."

"Begging your parden"—Jasar was gruff—"that is no longer the point at issue, now. Will this wire do, Haldar?"

"It will indeed. In fact, had I the choice I could not have asked for better. But it is still a gamble, Jasar. For all we know to the contrary, Garmel may have a trick circuit built into this belt!"

"What do you plan to do?" Silvana demanded, and Hal-dar explained.

"So long as I wear this belt Garmel can put his finger on me."

"I understand that. He had a similar arrangement with me. But I was wired. You have no wires!"

"No. This is a remote-control device, with its own built-in power. That is what we have to gamble on, that if we can drain the power from it, the danger will vanish, and the belt will loosen enough for me to slip out of it."

"And if you gamble wrongly?"

"Then I shall die. At the least, it will crush me to death. It would be better if you did not watch. Come, Jasar; we know the spot."

"I will come too," Jack offered. "Speed will count. In which direction are you the smaller, up or down?"

"Down!" Haldar growled. "It may catch me by the leg, which will be bad enough, but I have no fancy for it crushing me around the neck, or head!"

They had moved along the catwalk, were now halted by one of the power-boxes. Haldar pulled a lever, spun the wheel to free the cover, and pointed to a slot. "You know what to do, Jasar, when I give you the word. Now, Jack, cut me a length for a loop about here." Jack sliced the wire, passed it over, and Haldar took it, drew his stomach in as far as he could, and worked the free end of the wire under until he could bend it back and twist it. Then he twisted the other end onto a copper tag in the framework. Taking a second length, he managed to get that under the belt too, twisting it secure, then handed the free end to Jasar, who held it firm. "Now for it, eh?" He made a stiff grin. "Better have your beamer ready . . . for me .. . just in case we've guessed the wrong answer."

"It won't come to that," Jasar said confidently. "Say when!"

Haldar hooked his thumbs in the belt, stood very erect, took a breath, and set his jaw. "Now!" he said, and Jasar plunged the end of the wire into the slot. In that instant there came a high-pitched buzz from the belt, a lambent blue glow wreathed the metal web, and Haldar tugged frantically at it, dragging it down ... over his hips ... to his knees . . . and Jack leaped forward to aid, gripping, feeling the fizz and tingle of power, dragging strongly down. Haldar got one leg out, hopping unsteadily. The high-pitched wail dived suddenly into a low and loud growl of power ... and Jack heard from behind him the full-throated blood-chilling sound of a scream. Forgetting all else he turned and ran like a madman to where they had left Silvana all alone in the nook. As he reached the corner and saw, his heart almost stopped.

There, on the plastic-topped slab they had used as a makeshift table, was a thing like a spider, hairy-legged, bulbous-bodied, and as big as a sheep, rustling as it moved, and Silvana, backed in terror into the corner, had her arms over her head as long hairy feelers reached out to investigate her. Cold, furious, deliberate, Jack made no error of judgment this time. He drew and aimed the beamer at that bloated body, holding down on the stud, playing the needle beam to and fro, seeing the legs twitch wildly in death, seeing the bloated body burst and disappear in a swirl of evil fumes. He ceased only for as long as it took to reset the focus and then wash the whole thing away with a wider beam that not only destroyed all lingering traces of the foulness, but eradicated the better part of Haldar's table into the bargain. Then he eased off on the stud, feeling an ache in his arm. He went forward through the stench, holding out his hand to her.

"Are you hurt?" he coughed. "Did it touch your'

"Oh no!" she whispered. "No. You were in time!" Once again she reached out and clung to him, hugging him violently, fearfully, as if trying to melt herself into him. "Never leave me alone again, Jack! Never!"

"I won't!" he promised savagely. "Not ever again!"

As she clung tight, shivering, he released one hand, intending to touch her hair, saw the beamer still gripped there, put it back on his belt, then performed his original intention, stroking her golden hair tenderly. She stirred, leaned her head back to look up at him, and her eyes were deep enough to drown in. Something there seemed to pass into him, so that he felt suddenly light-headed and breathless, and curiously aching inside.

"Will you believe," she breathed, "that this has never happened before, to me?"

"Nor me," he muttered, knowing exactly what she meant, although he could never have put words to it. "Never before, Silvana." Then, inexorably, her mouth seemed to draw him, invite him, to ask without words, so that without any conscious intention his lips joined hers and everything stood still for a long time. Until he heard a cough and grunt and had to come back to the real world, out of breath, as Haldar said, gruffly:

"You managed to make a mess of my table, lad!"

Releasing her, Jack turned to him and stammered, "There was a thing . . . like a spider . . . !"

Haldar shed his smothered grin instantly. "Did it touch you, either of you, at all?" He looked strained. "Those things are lethal!"

"It is quite all right," she declared. "Jack was in good time. We are unharmed. But what of your bond? Did the experiment work?"

"Near enough." Haldar lifted his foot to show the broad gold band clenched about his battered boot. "It's tight, but not enough to hurt. And it has contracted as far as it can go. I'm free!"

"Not yet," Jasar growled. "Let's finish the thing right off and get it over with. Put your foot up there and hold still. I may scorch your boot a bit but I’ ll not hurt you if I can help it." He set his beamer to minimum, and in a short while the gold band spat sparks and gobs of molten metal, until it fell away free and Haldar could slap out the few patches of char. And then his grin was huge.

"There's a weight off me, in more ways than one. I'm obliged to you, Jasar. To both of you alike. I had given up hope. But now all we have to do is tie up the ends of this plan of yours. We have set all the necessary alarms to fail, to kill all the power, and a time-lag to give us a chance to make a run for your ship before we blow the whole thing into radioactive dust!"

"A ship?" Silvana interrupted, wide-eyed. "You have a ship? You mean ... there is a chance we may yet escape7"

"A chance, yes, but we are a long way and many hazards from it, as yet. The one great obstacle is one we have not yet mentioned or taken into account."

"What is that?" Haldar demanded, as Jasar shoved at the wreck of the table to give himself room to sit on the bench.

"You'll excuse me, lady"—the little scout ducked his head—"but I have learned, the hard way, never to miss a chance to sit, rest, or sleep. We are discounting Garmel, Haldar. Because he is huge, and inhuman, we must not forget his skills and talents. Be sure he would never be put in charge of a station as vital as this were he a fool. We cannot afford to make that kind of mistake! Is there any way in which we can spy on him, know what he is about?"

"That would be easy enough, yes. Remember the chamber where I met him? That is his supervisory room, his watch-post. Relays keep him informed of everything that happens in all critical areas. Using those we can overlook him at any time. But why bother, Jasar?"

"Why? Because we have laid trips to confuse certain alarm systems, and other trips to cancel the automatics on the power-units, and yet others that will release the entire fusion-capacity into destructive overload, plus an assist from my ship. It's done. All we have to do is start it off. But ... I am as certain as I sit here ... I will stake my life, and in fact I am doing just that, in the belief that Garmel has equipment, emergency resources, that we know nothing at all about."

"You may well be right." Haldar shrugged. "If you are, what can we do about it?"

"The most we can do is to hit him, to choose a moment when he is truly right off guard. You said"—the little scout turned now to Jack—"that he was entertaining a fellow officer from the newly arrived ship. Did you gain any impresson of how long that entertainment would last?"

"Not to measure, no. I gathered that there was no great urgency."

"That is not nearly good enough. Haldar, if you take us to that spy-room, his watch-post, will that take us very far out of our way in our run for the ship?"

"Not at all. If you remember, we reached it by crossing the brugg-pens, and that is right in the line you came, our line of retreat. In a way"—he looked embarrassed now— "I may be able to offer you some hospitality there. In my cage. If we have time, that is. Garmel was good to me, in his way."

"We can leave that until we know more." Jasar stood, put his head on one side in thought. "We'll not be coming back this way if we can help it, so I ask you to think carefully, make sure we leave nothing we need, take nothing we do not need."

"Nothing I want," Haldar growled. "I've shed that belt. Along with it I leave unpleasant memories. I've nothing to take."

Jack checked himself, bow, arrows, beamer, knife ... and admitted the same, then he saw Silvana looking thoughtful. "Would you think me foolish, gentlemen," she murmured, "if I point out that the power-jewels are of great value, that we ought to ... steal some?"

"Steal?" Haldar cried. "Most of them were looted from

our ships in the first place. And you are right, my lady, they are of great value in any terms, either as gems or power-units. And I have plenty of plastic bags."

At the jewel-racks they took Haldar's advice and concentrated on the pure-white Shagateel gemstones. They loaded two bags each, twisting the loose necks together to make them convenient for slinging over a shoulder. Then Silvana discovered that by bending the wire points it was relatively easy to pin the fire-glittering things to cloth. A short while later her robe glittered with gems, hiding the rips and tears in it, and never in his wildest dreams had Jack expected to wear such a precious tunic. The one thing they had to exercise was restraint, so as not to overload themselves to the point of hindering their progress. While stuffing a bag with gems, Jack found a moment to ask Haldar:

"What is the quick way to dispatch a beetle? As I was bringing Silvana we were attacked by a thing with jaws, and I shot out its eyes but it kept on coming. Where does one hit it?"

"They take a long time to die anyway. There is no quick method as far as I know, but if you chop the head from the body they are harmless. The spider-things are different. You avoid them altogether if you can. One touch is all it takes. Every hair is poisonous."

"How does it happen," Jasar asked, overhearing, "that an armored and protected chamber like this becomes infested anyway?"

"Through the roof." Haldar pointed up. "There's a variable ventilation system, mobile slats. At certain periods in the cycle they swarm and this place gets full of them. When that happens Garmel seals it off and flushes it out with poisonous vapor. Then I have the job of sweeping up the dead. But there are always a few that escape. Are we all ready?"

EIGHT

It was a significant pilgrimage for Jack, that procession along the vast roofs of the cabinets, the air full of the twittering and clicking of strange machines and little-understood powers, with the lithe striding grace of Silvana by his side, her fingers affectionately in his. She had contrived two jewel-clips for her hair, to bring it in two golden tails over her proud breasts. Her arm glowed where she shouldered her twin bags of jewels. From waist to thighs she was a blaze of fire, but from there on down to her bare feet she was slim golden-brown loveliness that matched the jewels for beauty. Jasar, on ahead with Haldar, had said they would not be coming back this way again. Jack read something deeper into that. This might be the last time he would ever walk hand in hand with this lovely girl. Her kiss lingered in his memory, as did her crushing embrace and her passionate plea never to leave her alone again. He savored those memories, but his sturdy common sense told him that such miracles came only out of the pressure of the situation, from danger and the imminence of sudden death. If all went well, if they managed to get safely away, then there would come a time for more sober thinking.

Her fingers gripped his suddenly. "Your thoughts trouble you, Jack. May I share them?"

"You fill them, Silvana."

She squeezed his hand again and smiled. "You should not say it in that fashion. Why would thoughts of me bring a frown to your brow? A smile would be more appropriate. Or is it my danger that you worry at?"

"No. Dangers come so swiftly and in such surprising guises here that it would be a waste of time to worry at them. No ... I am thinking of the time after, when we

are safely escaped, perhaps back on my own world. Then you would know just how humble I am, that I am indeed a nobody."

"I see." She nodded seriously, but he had the suspicion that she was amused underneath. But then they were catching up on the others and she gripped his fingers once more. "Now we must cross this fearful gap ... and I have need of all my courage. We can talk about this later."

There was nothing he could do about her fear except make her crawl on hands and knees ahead of him, so that he at least had a hope of catching her ankle should she lose her head and fall. Her feet, just ahead of him, were small, grimed with dust, but a part of her and so to be adored. She was all wonderful. She never hesitated once, but followed steadfastly where the others led, and so down to the silver-gray floor once more, and then into the relative safety of the hollow walls. Again Jack had the bewildering sense of so many turns to right and left that he was completely lost, but Haldar brought them safely to where they were aiming for. And this time he left the cut-away opening clear after them.

"The next time we go down there," he said, "we will be in a hurry, on the run, and it won't matter a snap whether we leave traces or not. Now, up this ladder to the table."

The tabletop was an ebony expanse on which stood a slant-fronted box the height of ten men. Along the bottom edge and up one side were neat rows of buttons and switches, each labeled in odd designs. Haldar seemed familiar with them. "Emergency power is on all the time, of course," he explained, "to pick up incoming calls. But we need operating power. Like this." He threw all his weight onto a switch suddenly. A red eye came alive and the machine sighed a quiet hum of power. "Now!" Haldar pointed to a red button dramatically. "That is the Transmit' switch, and no one touches that, in any circumstances; right? Not ever! The next thing"—he stared up at the bank of buttons on the right—"is to find out where Garmel is. If he's aboard the visiting ship we are out of luck, but if he has invited his friends into his own cabin quarters . . . let's see!" He scaled the switch complex nimbly, pausing at one, to throw it over. At once they heard the thunderous grumble of Dargoon speech.

"...the quiet end of the war, here, Garmel. Don't you ever have an urge to take out a ship and meet the misbegotten Salviar scum, see their lumbering cans burst into flame as you hit them?"

"What I want, Halko, is nothing to do with what I have to do." To Jack's ear Garmel sounded the worse for drink. Haldar came scrambling down the instrument, to find and throw another switch, then stand back.

'Translator," he said, briefly. "What's he saying . . . 7"

"Hilax asks from a man what he can best do. I am an analyst-strategist. That is my talent. My work. What I would like ... nothing to do with it."

"The story is," another fuddled voice came in, "that High Command is about to amend regulations to allow for Dargeen cooperation. There's talk of having Dargeen aides and stewards on the bigger ships. I’ ll wager you'd like a willing young Dargeen assistant here, eh, Garmel?"

"Would depend how willing, Kartral. Plenty of free time, nothing else to do. Would suit me fine!"

"High Command is staffed with thickheads," the other voice mumbled. "If they they had let us go ahead with our planet-splitting program, the Salviar scum would be begging for treaty by now. Crawling for it. Look at Bracata ... and Willan ... and Strella ... totally destroyed. And we never lost a unit. You'd think an Iron Wheel and stars, at least, for that. I was on that operation. But no! Reprimand. Acting without direct orders! Concentrate on military objectives. Blah! Cripple their war-machine, they tell us. And what happens? The blasted Salviar fight like demons, we lose ships, and men. But we never took a hit, I tell you, when we blasted their out-planets. And hurt them, too. Strategy? Don't talk to me about strategy!"

"I wasn't!" Garmel sounded distressed. "You should not speak so loosely, Halko. If this were ever retold ... but why, why do we talk and think about the confounded war? Look, the meal-unit is flashing readiness ... and what about that erotic album you were going to show, Kartral?"

Haldar flung himself at the switch again and the sounds ceased. He came back down the slant board savagely. "We heard plenty; didn't we?" he said, choking on the words. "Wiped out! The whole planet!"

"You have my sympathy, Haldar." Jasar sounded gruff. "You, too, lady. I knew of this. My home planet also. This was one of the reasons why I put myself forward for this mission, one of the reasons why it has to succeed. The Hilax High Command may well try terrorist methods like that again. We have to hurt them. How long would you say that meal will hold them, Haldar?"

"How long?" Haldar shook himself out of a stunned rage. "Three time units at least. Time enough for us to get a decent meal, and cleaned up ... and some sleep. Which we need, but I don't know if I can sleep, now. The whole planet, just like that!"

Jack turned fearfully to Silvana. Her face was a calm mask of shock, utterly numbed. She gazed emptily at him. "I think I always knew," she said, "that I would never see my home again. But not this way."

"Don't grieve, my lady!" Haldar growled. "At least, we still live, and we can hit Garmel. Come; let me show you some quiet, some security, even some luxury, if only for a little while." He led them down the ladder again, to the floor and across to a corner where stood a cabinet against the wall. "This was a spare unit recorder, due for scrap. Garmel gutted it and let me have it for my own use. He even brought me the plunder from a few wrecked ships so that I could equip it. I think it amused him, in a perverted way, to humor me. In here ... this is where the power-line passed through originally."

"I know that twisted humor of his," Silvana agreed. "It seems to give him pleasure to watch how nearly human we are. Like performing animals. But this is very fine!"

Jack had to agree. In this main chamber the floor was cold metal, but there were stacks of square cushions here and there, and chairs on swivels, and the whole brightly lit with naked bulbs hanging from the walls high up.

"Apart from the pin-lamps, which came from Garmel's spares, everything is ship's loot," Haldar explained. "It went against the grain at first, to be taking from my own kind. But they had no use for it anymore, and one grows a callus over one's conscience, after a while. Grieving for the dead doesn't help a man to live. Through here I have a food-machine, fully stocked. And a shower-cubicle that works. And a wardrobe, well-stocked. Even"—he looked to the girl with a shrug of deprecation—"to dresses and fabrics. It was always possible that Garmel would find it amusing to provide me with a mate, one day. I never knew whether to hope for that, or not. You can take whatever you like, of course, while I prepare us all a meal."

"Oh!" Silvana sighed. "To be clean again! A shower! That must come first above all!" and she ran to a corner where there were curtains of glassy stuff, which revealed, when she pulled them back, a fearsome array of pipes and switches and white walls. Jack gaped at it, but she seemed overjoyed as she turned to Haldar. Now let me see your wardrobe, so that I can pick something civilized to wear! After so long!"

"There!" He pointed to a set of paneled cupboards that covered the wall alongside the shower, and she drew the doors aside to gloat over a profusion of rainbow-colored materials. Jack shook his head, turned to see Haldar grinning at him sympathetically.

"You've seen a food-machine before, Jack?"

"Yes. Jasar has one on his ship. Not as big as this. But I never saw the like of that shower thing before. At home, when I want to be clean, I use the river, and soap that my mother makes from a certain kind of earth close by. I itch to be clean, to wash away the sweat, but you'll have to show me what to do to make that machine work."

"I will. It's simple enough. Ill show you once her ladyship is done with it. Many's the time I've bathed in the river and dried in the sun, but, like so many other things, the war has stolen such simple pleasures from me. Well have to see what will suit you from my wardrobe, too. Happily you're of a size near enough the same as myself, and I have plenty ..." He let the rest of his words go. Sil-vana, beyond the curtain, started to sing, and the bird-clear sound of her voice made them all stop still to listen.

"Once a Prince, a fine and noble Prince, a very handsome Prince, fell in love with a simple country maid.

"He sighed for her beauty, but the burden of his duty, came between them and their troth was never said.

"Then there came the dreadful day when he had to go away, with all the other men to fight a war.

"When the maiden sad at heart saw the noble Prince depart, to risk his life in other lands afar.

"Slow the time went and the stories of the battles and the glories did but little to bring pleasure to her life.

"All about her kingdoms crumbled, e'en the Prince's house was humbled, and everyone grew weary of the strife.

"So the war at last was ended, but the past could not be mended, and the Prince returned where wealth was his no more.

"But the maid went quick to meet him, quick to face him, and to greet him, and to offer him the welcome of her door.

"Now your duty's done, she cried; you are free to take a bride, and our love is still as true as at the start.

"You've lost lands and crown and wealth but you have your strength and health, and forevennore you'll always have my heart.

"So the Prince, the poor and weary Prince, the very humble Prince, loved and lived with the simple country maid,"

"That's an old, old melody," Haldar murmured, 'but the words are a bit different from those I know." That liquid-pure voice came again, without words this time, just lilting the melody. Jack was enraptured. From her cage he had thought her singing beautiful, but now it was rainbows and sunshine and happiness all blended into sound. The room seemed less bright when at last it ceased. He saw the curtain swish aside to let her step out, a rosy glow coming to her cheeks as Haldar smacked his palms together, then Jasar ... and then Jack, realizing that this was a form of praise. She smiled, bowed, glowing all over with pleasure, and Jack tingled. For here again there was a difference. He had thought her beautiful before, but now, by the simple magic of water and soap and cleanliness, she was radiant, reminding him, somehow, of a slim and nodding daffodil. Now he never noticed that she was naked. In his eyes she was perfectly clad in her beauty.

She bowed again, then put up her palms in deprecation. "You must let me dress, and be ordinary again, my friends. Besides, I am sure you are all waiting to get clean and fresh. And I smell cooking to remind me that it has been a long time since I ate a civilized meal. Excuse me." She smiled again, reached into the shower-stall cubicle for a frothy confection in many shades of blue, and looked speculatively about for somewhere to dress.

"I have a cabin through there." Haldar pointed. "It's yours, of course, while we are here, and welcome."

"You spoil me," she declared, "but I am enjoying it" She disappeared from sight, leaving Jack to stand agape at the memory. Until Haldar nudged him.

"Come and I’ ll show you how to work the shower fixtures. But we'll get you some clothes first. With your coloring, you'll look well in blue." Jack gaped all over again as Haldar pulled out a brilliantly blue tunic, with gold slashes and buttons, and pants to match, and a shirt of stuff so fine that it seemed to flow across the palm when Jack tried to hold it. "Put that on those hooks, your other gear on these. This—look—turns the water on ... this for hot, the other for cold. Mix to suit. This injects soap. When you're ready, shut off the water, rum this, and you dry in warm air-blast. All set?" Haldar grinned at him cheerfully. "Take all the time you want. Your meal will be kept hot."

The cold spray stung like ice-needles, the hot found aches he never knew he had, and the foaming agent had a smell like pine trees. The hot blast dried him faster than any towel. And then he had problems with the clothes. The shirt was easy enough, just a pull over his head, and something made it cling snugly to his wrists, but the pants were curious until he realized that all he had to do was press the two edges together in front and they stayed together. After that the tunic was easy. And Haldar had remembered boots, calf-high and glossy-black wonders, they were, snug and yet as soft as the well-worn sandals he had just discarded. He caught sight of his reflection in the mirror that was one wall of the cubicle, and was astounded, suddenly self-conscious. This was fine raiment indeed. Even Earl Dudley himself had nothing so spectacular. He gathered his grubby homespun under an arm, together with his bow, quiver, and all the other bits and pieces, then drew the curtain hesitantly, and stepped out, to meet three pairs of critical eyes. All smiled, but he was interested only in the deep blue pair. He saw her nod approval, and say something ... but her words meant nothing at all to him.

Then he remembered the helmet. And then the fact that she was alien. The realization shocked him. Haldar came, saying something and pointing, to take his turn with the shower. Jack guessed it was a reference to the meal he could smell, and went to take it from the warm-chamber and over to the table that was now laid with a white cloth and dazzling implements. Silvana had gone ahead, was already seated. Jack settled by Jasar, keeping his eyes on his plate, glancing aside to see what to do with the strange tools, managing awkwardly.

"I am taught a lesson, Jasar," he mumbled. "You understand what I say, and I you, but only because of your helmet. The speech of the others is meaningless to me, and mine to them. We are all strangers, after all."

Jasar worked stolidly on a mouthful, disposed of it, shook his head. "While you are open to lessons, Jack, learn another. Speech is only the fringe of communication. The helmet does not translate all that well You contribute your own understanding to it. Cast your mind back to our first meeting, and how we spoke then. Can you?" "I can, but I would rather forget."

"And throw away something useful? AH advanced races communicate in the same fashion. It needs only practice and confidence. Will you try it?"

"You did not ask me, last time. You just came ... into my head!"

"That's lesson one." Jasar remained stolidy patient. "I pushed nothing at you, at all. Speech is the clothing of thought, lad. That dress that Lady Silvana is wearing now, it adds color and ornament to her shape. Well-chosen words can do that. A different kind of dress might hide her shape altogether ... and words can do that, too. But when she stood naked before us, she was allowing us to see her as she actually is. And that was what I did with my mind. I took away any covers, and let you see it And you did."

"But... but I heard you, inside my head!"

"Just so. Look!" Jasar held up a silvery implement "Look at this. Where do you see it?"

"Where?" Jack frowned. "There ... in your hand!"

"Where are your eyes, lad? Where are they, over here?"

Jack frowned again, but realized that Jasar had some intent in mind. "They are in my head, of course. As you know."

"I do. You are seeing this fork with your eyes. In your head. But you know the fork itself is here, in my hand. You know that ... so you see it so. Because you are in that habit. So I tell you, you saw thoughts in my mind . .. but because you had to understand them in your own, you 'heard' them there ... in error. With practice, you can learn otherwise. You can see my thought, if you look and wish so ... and if I open my mind to you. Try it now. I will not speak a word."

Jack stared at him, momentarily baffled by the need to make an effort of some kind. Then, just as he was about to give up, he heard, eerily, "Friends, Jack, and good comrades. Nothing can ever alter that." And it was in Jasar's "voice," without doubt. Jasar grinned at his expression.

"But I heard it, in my head!"

"Of course you did, and will, until you learn. Jack, you are hearing my words now, in your ears and head, but you 'know' they are coming from me, so you place them properly. You'll learn, with practice."

Jack turned back to his plate and ate, growing more and more confused the more he thought over it But one aspect became clear to him. He could hear someone else's thought, if that someone "opened" his mind for it ... whatever that meant. But how could he "talk" to someone else? How could he open his mind? When he put the question to Jasar the little scout cocked his head aside ruefully.

"That is not so easy, lad. How good is your imagination? You might try a symbolic approach. Whichever symbol is easiest for you to handle. Say ... if you imagine you have a doorway built into your head, and then open it. Or a curtain ... and draw it away. Something like that Whatever seems real to you."

Jack chewed over that idea for a while, then felt a flood of humbling panic. Would he want someone else to be able to see inside his head? To see all the jumble and confusion that raged there?

He looked up and away from his chaotic thoughts to see Haldar coming to the table, meal in hand, to seat himself alongside Silvana. Jack had to gape again. This was a new Haldar, with gleaming gold hair and beard, in tunic and pants of deep velvet red, with the gleam of white shirt at his throat and wrists. There were sparkling gold slashes on his shoulders and breast and he smiled in a curiously twisted manner.

"Just for a little while," he said, "I am resurrected. Not vermin, no longer the helpless tool of Garmel, but Haldar Villar of Berden, goldsmith and master-craftsman. I feel myself again, and I thank you, both of you, for you made it possible, if only for a brief while."

"There is nothing wrong in a man feeling proper pride," Jasar said, aad Jack smothered a gasp as he realized he had understood all that Haldar had said. Without being aware of it! Jasar went on. "The briefness of the time is our most pressing concern. Do you have a chrono here?"

"Somewhere. In the bedroom, I think. I’ ll take it out as soon as I've eaten. You go and have a shower when you're ready. I regret I have nothing in my wardrobe that will fit you, my friend."

"The shower will be welcome." Jasar rose. "And this harness is good enough. I've lived in it before. Once you've found the chrono we must make sleeping arrangements."

"There is a point." Silvana spoke up as Jasar went away, and Jack's gaze clung to her face in fascination. "I feel guilty at turning you out of that room. You must see it, Jack. It is simple yet wonderfully arranged, and so very comfortable. And it is yours, Haldar."

"It was. I used it, in the early days, to preserve something that I thought was important and civilized in me, against the evil of Garmel. But my conscience began to bite me. It is not easy to lie soft when so many others are suffering, and dying. Now, for these last few moments under Garmel's heel, I can sleep anywhere and be easy. You are not depriving me. Is the food to your liking? There will be wine later, when Jasar is back from showering, and when I find that chrono. I think it is in the bedroom. And I must look for blankets for us. I have plenty of everything."

"Let me help with that!" Jack said, and even in his own ears the words sounded strange and crude. He saw Haldar look up in surprise, then Silvana got the same expression, and he knew, scarlet-faced, that they had not understood his words. He felt tongue-tied, but Haldar smiled easily.

"I think you offered to help. It seems you understand what I say, even if I cannot quite grasp your words. But there is no need. Except for the chrono, I know where everything is."

"We will look for it," Silvana offered cheerfully. "Jack will help me. I want him to see that bedroom anyway; it's such a tasteful place." Jack was watching her, managed to get her words perfectly, but there was something else that came, over and through her words and yet overwhelmingly plain. A "voice" that was half singing, half murmuring, warm as summer sunshine ... "so innocent ... yet so like a young prince. . . ." With a pulse hammering in his ears he stumbled to his feet, hoping she couldn't see what was in his mind. She held out her hand to him, took his fingers, led him away to the room, pushed the curtain aside. It was small, compact, but the walls were hung with patterned weaving that hid the starkness of metal, and the floor was covered too. One light hung from the roof, another stood out over the head of the low bed that lay alongside one wall, and a third projected over a small table and stool by another wall, near the bed's foot. There was a mirror, and on the table a comb and brush and a keen blade in a box. And everywhere were curious shapes done in fine gold wire, of birds and flowers and figures.

"A strange man, Haldar," she said, seating herself and putting the brush to her hair. "I have met one or two like him. This war, my Jack, has caught all kinds in its jaws, crushing them, changing them, using them for its own ends, not caring whether they are willing or not. It must be harder for a man who is not only a craftsman, but an artist too."

Jack lowered himself onto the foot of the bed and watched her brushing. It was glorious stuff, that hair. Long, heavy, gleaming gold, it was as his mother's had once been. In his head she was still crooning ... "my prince, my beloved prince ..." so that he was taken aback when she asked, quite suddenly:

"So much for Haldar, but what of you, my Jack? What manner of man are you?" Her question was serious enough, but she had turned to let him see the glint of mischief in her eyes. Catching something of that mood he retorted:

"Why do you find me so strange? Have you never known anyone like me?"

"Strange," she repeated. "Completely alien. Your words mean nothing ... yet I know you speak kindly, and I love your voice. I would say more, but I dare not, until I know what you are thinking." Heat came into his face again, and he felt helpless, until from somewhere came the thought that he was only too willing she should know. Remembering Jasar's hint, he imagined a shutter in his forehead, threw it open, and put out his hand timidly.

"Will you let me brush your hair?" he asked. "I have done such before, for my mother. Hers is as long as yours but not so golden, so beautiful. She says it is a pleasant feeling...." There had been a dimple in her cheek when he began, but it was gone now, drowned in a rosy glow.

"You would wait on me, like a serving maid?" she whispered.

"I will be gentle. And it will give me pleasure."

"That I can well believe. Because of this war-madness I have met many unusual people. The Salviar Federation binds together more than a thousand planets, after all. But never have I encountered anyone like you. You are so immediate, direct, unsubtle, and yet so completely honest, that I am taken off-balance and breathless at you. No man ever wanted to wait on me before. If all men and women on Earth are like you, it must be a wondrous place."

"I know little about other men, or women, only myself. Nor do I know very much about Earth, only that part where I live."

"By the minute you grow more and more strange ... and yet ... there is a bond between us such as I have never known before." She let her words drift into silence and a curious tension grew between them, to be snapped like a thread as knuckles rapped, outside.

"May I enter, please?" It was Haldar, his meaning obvious, and she put a hand to her mouth in dismay as she called him in and chattered to him apologetically. As he went down on a knee to drag a box from under the bed, and then to bring out a device with a white dial and pointers, Jack caught up. The chronol It triggered an idea, and he moved forward.

"Can I help with it, in any way?" he asked. Haldar shook his head.

"Offering to help again? I know what you can do. We haven't had any wine yet. Perhaps you'd like to take a flagon and some glasses and bring them back here to Lady Silvana?" He looked to her, and she nodded.

"That would be kind. We have things to talk about."

Talking was what Jack had in mind, too. He hurried to where he had put the discarded helmet, and felt happier when it was snugly in place over his hair. Then he went to where Haldar was persuading the food-machine to bring forth tall bottles beaded with sweat. He grinned at Jack understandingly.

"I don't know how you reckon time, but anyway, Fve set this thing to sound an alarm in two time units from now. And if you watch that red pointer sweeping around, that takes one hundredth part of a time unit to make one round of the dial. For what help that might be to you."

Beyond the fact that two time units seemed a long time, it meant not very much to Jack. He reached for a bottle and two glasses, and Haldar grew serious, all at once. "She's a beautiful girl, Jack, and a very talented girl too. On our planet we rate crafts and talents very highly. But remember ... she is an entertainer!" Jack frowned at him, and the goldsmith sighed. "I see it doesn't mean much to you. Nor does it help that I feel very much like a father to you. We all have to make our own mistakes, I suppose."

"You look very like my father did," Jack told him. "And I think you mean to be kind. For that I thank you."

Haldar grinned, grabbed his shoulders in exactly the same way his father had done often. "You go on with that wine. I’ ll put a pile of cushions over there, see? By the door. And a blanket. When you're ready for it."

NINE

Like Haldar, he rapped a knuckle by the door, heard her call, and this time understood it just as words, without the overtones. For a moment he was undecided, half minded to rip the helmet off again, but then he armed the curtain aside and went in. She was still seated by the mirror, but a second look told him she had moved and returned. Her dress, that dreamlike assembly of folds and flounces and lace that had held her like a bud pushing out of its leaves, lay in a pile of blue across the bed. The golden waterfall of her hair lay down her naked spine. She turned to point with the brush in her hand.

"Set the wine there, then come and brush my hair, as you wanted to. If you still want to, that is."

He set down the glasses, poured both, looked at her, and her eyes grew wide as she saw him properly, but she handed him the brush without a word. He moved to stand behind her, seeing her glowing face in the mirror, her eyes on him in a strangely wondering expression. Her hair was heavy and soft, the brush absurdly small. He took a thick tress and began persuading it into order.

"Why am I so strange to you?" he prompted. "Can you explain?"

"Perhaps strange is not the best word. But what else can one call it when so many things disagree with each other? And why have you put on that strange headpiece again?"

"I had it from Jasar. It carries a word-changer. Without it, you do not understand my words, nor I yours."

"Oh, Jack!" Her reproach was immediate. "You really believe that we do not understand each other? Didn't you ask to brush my hair? And aren't you now doing it? And I wanted you to bring wine, and there it is!"

Desperation put words into his mouth. "I am not used to talking with my feelings, Silvana. In my life my feelings ... my thoughts ... have always been my own, not shared with everyone."

"Oh!" She looked thoughtful now. Then she shrugged. "Very well. No matter. What were we saying? Ah yes, you. You dress ... at least you were in tie dress of a woodsman, and it was no disguise, not like the uniform of a surgeon-general of the Fleet, that you are wearing now."

"Is that what is meant by all these stripes and patches?"

"And there you are again. If you speak true ... and you have so far as I know ... then you must be the only man in the Salviar Fleet not to recognize a general's insignia."

"But I am not of the Salviar Fleet!"

She drew a quick, deep breath that lifted her breasts fully, then let it out again in a gust that was half laugh, half irritation. "Contradictions pile on each other. You dress as a woodsman, you use a bow and arrows in the way of one who has done it often and welL You say you are a nobody, a yeoman farmer. And yet... you work together with a Salviar Fleet scout who treats you as an equal and comrade. You carry an energy-weapon, you wore a deflector-rig. You came in a ship. You wear a translator-device. These things do not gibe. But strangest of all ... you speak straight, direct and true, as a man who is very sure of himself. Your companions heard my singing, but only you came to rescue me, alone. You have a look ... not exactly a proud look ... but in some way noble! And you seem always to know exactly what to dol Oh, Jack!" Her breasts and face were alike agitated now as she cried, "Please do not feel uncomfortable at my words. They are the truth, not meant to offend!"

"I'm not offended," he muttered, holding the heavy tress like a smooth golden rope, "only well aware that I do not deserve such praise."

"And humble, too! You are all contradictions. And yet ... and yet ... I find it all so right, somehow, as if you belong to a kind I have never known before. Whatever you do, it is well. Even your touch on my hair ... feels right and good. Kind, yet strong."

He could think of no reply to that. Staring at the rope of hair in his fingers he thought to ask, "Shall I do it in a crown around your head? My mother wears it that way sometimes, for neatness."

"A crown? Is that how you see me?"

"As a princess? Yes. From the first time I saw you."

"Oh!" She didn't look too happy at that, and for a moment he wished he could see her thought, but either the helmet was barring it, or she had a curtain over her mind. "There is such a thing as being too humble," she murmured. "Still, I will strike a bargain with you, my Jack. You shall crown me, but only if you will, for me, take away that headpiece, and then tell me all about your home, your world, and your life there. I know that your father died, and that you chose to partner with Jasar to do your mother the best service possible by leaving ... you told me that But now tell me all the little things. How you live."

With a feeling that he was somehow committing himself, Jack peeled off the helmet again, shook his hair free, and as he began braiding the first tress, so he began telling her about home. Again her glowing, attentive face in the mirror spoke to him, but now it was curiosity and sharing, as he told her of the cottage that was all the home he knew, the labors of holding back the wild forest, persuading scanty crops to grow, weeding and watering and tending to amiable cows. Then there were his valiant dreams of service with Earl Dudley in the Holy Land, and the patient hours of practice with the bow, until that dream died with his father, and brought a series of blows from a malicious fate in its train. Steadily as he spoke he made braids and looped them about her head, watching her in the mirror, seeing the color come and go in her face, the lift and glide of her shoulders, the rich fullness of her bosom surging with her breath.

"My future was dark," he said, "until Jasar came dropping out of the sky. I could not believe the tenth part of what he told me, at first. It smacked too much of fairies, and goblins, and magic. And no one really believes that, not after childhood is past." He set the last braid in place, gave her back the brush, and moved to sit on the end of the bed to look at her. She turned to him with a hint of mischief and that dimple in her cheek again.

"You are so old that you do not believe in magic; is that it?"

"Not that kind, no. But I know now that there is another kind, and that you have it." She met his gaze steadily, and all at once there was a hammering in his ears again and a strange unsteadiness of everything.

"You have told me nothing of all the girls you have known." Her voice was as unsteady as he felt.

"There have been none, until you." He wanted her to see the truth now. A flood of scarlet flowed from her cheeks down over her body, lighting her like a flame, but there was something in her eyes that stung him.

"You have crowned me. You have told me of yourself. In your way, your straight and direct way ... now you reproach me, make me feel humble.

"Am I doing something wrong, Silvana?"

"The wrongness is in me, my Jack, and what I have done. I asked you, remember, never to leave me alone again? And I meant it, my love. But it can not be that way. Whatever happens to us, we must part."

"I don't understand. I will never leave you again, I promise."

"The choice is not yours to make, my love. Should we survive the hazards ahead, and escape, I have a duty to do. I must do it!" She rose suddenly, in a fluid movement, and held out her arms to nim so that he couldn't help standing, looking down at her, feeling her arms go around him. "Don't look at me like that, Jack. I have no choice. Remember how you've told me that you deemed it better to go and leave your mother alone, even though you didn't want to? My duty is like that." Her fingers came to the clasps of his tunic, slowly and gently setting them free, pushing the stuff away from one shoulder so that she could grip it, then the other, so that it slipped to the floor.

"Strella was my home planet, Maramelle my home ground. They don't exist any longer. But Strellans will fight on in the Fleet, and I am a Strellan. I must do my share, little as it is." She pressed her nakedness close to his bare chest, a contact that burned nim like fire. "How can I make you understand that?"

"I do understand," he said soberly, trying not to melt entirely as her hands began with the fastenings of his remaining garment. "If you have a duty, then it must be done. I wouldn't want to stop that. But can I not serve on the side of Strella too, and so stay with you?"

"You have not understood yet." Her voice was very soft, almost a whisper, as she persuaded the last coverings out of her way, and clutched him close to herself. Now his fire was something new, something almost a pain, and an overpowering eagerness. He had the urge to crush her close in violence, yet at the same time a fear of injuring someone so soft and precious. "You will not hurt me," she murmured, rubbing her face against his chest. "But it may be that I'm going to hurt you. Where I go, in this war, there is no place for you, Jack. I am an entertainer. On my world people with talents are honored and encouraged to develop them. I have a voice which you have heard, bodily charm that you have seen ... and I also have great skills in making men happy, which I want to do for you. This is how I fight my war, Jack. I have made many men happy, for at least a little while. And now you. But"—she drew her head back suddenly to look up into his face— "all I ask is that you believe me when I say that it is no duty, nor skill, nor profession that burns me now. Were it possible, I would stay with you and love you for always, as I have never felt like this for any other man, nor ever will again. If you have any understanding at all, look at me, and see that it is true."

What he saw in her face, and in her mind, needed neither words nor any reply except to take the lips that she offered, and to know by the quiver of her body against his that she was satisfied about his understanding. From that moment on, time and reality stopped having any meaning for him. Guiding and leading him with all her arts, she showed him a world of fire, excitement, savagery that half frightened him, emotions that drowned him, sensations that made him hope to die before they could destroy him utterly, and time and again she took him to the shivering edge of annihilation and brought him safely back ... until he knew that he had spoken no more than the literal truth in saying she had a magic in her. After what could have been half a lifetime of wordless delights she said, all at once:

"It is never enough, love, I know. The more I have you, the more I want you, and there never was a man like you before, for me. But all things should come to a good end if possible, and soon now we have to run for our lives. As I understand it, Garmel will have eaten heartily, drunk too well, and that will be our best chance. So you must go, my love, and we both must sleep."

"How can I ever leave you, now?" He sighed. "I want to go on this way."

"I know. So do I. With you ... it is so different. But life, too, is sweet, and would you have Haldar, or Jasar, risk his life to make up for your neglect? Go, my Jack, but know that you take all my love with you, always."

And so, struggling into the unfamiliar clothes, he went as far as the curtain, turned to look back at her for a last time ... and cringed in shock as a vast metallic voice suddenly bawled:

"... dock and repair facilities, urgent Need tractor assist. Repeat, tractor assist. Main drive severely damaged. This is Provena to BB7 Arc... red.. red ... red! Do you receive? Do you receive?"

He was through the curtain and running before the message sank home. By the door Haldar was already scrambling to his feet, scowling savagely, putting up a hand to halt him. "Let's not panic, Jack! Things are bad enough without that. Of all the infernal bad luck. You heard the transmission, Jasar?" The little scout came, nodding.

"One of their ships, hit and needing help. It'll rouse Garmel, of course?"

"It will. He carries a relay, naturally. But what's worse, as soon as he's fully awake, he will come here, to that desk out there. That's his control point. And he is bound to notice that some of the sensor fields are off-critical. Which will make him suspicious. No telling what he will do after that. There's nothing else for it ... we have to get away from here, and fast! You heard all that, Silvana?" She was at the curtain, staring, then nodding.

"You gave the best advice, Haldar, in the first place," Jasar growled. "No panic. We hurry, certainly, but let us not lose our heads. Help each other. Forget nothing!"

Jack scrambled furiously to get everything right, weapon-belt, harness, quiver and bow, then jewel bags in such a way that they did not hinder his bow handling. Then he went to aid Silvana. To his surprise she was nearly ready in a shape-hugging dark knitted thing, stuffing her blue dress into the least full of her jewel bags. "I had my eye on this jersey," she told him, "right from the start, when I knew we were going to have to make a run for it." By tugging, she made it come below her hips. In that simplicity and her black boots, she looked quite different, almost boyish, and positively eager as she ran with him to the door where Haldar was already waiting. The emergency message had come twice more in the interval, and they needed no other reminder.

"When we go out," Haldar said, "we go straight across the floor and down the hole. That's easy. After that you will just have to follow me, and keep up, no matter what Silvana, you at my heels. Jack, Jasar, you'll bring up the rear; all right?"

"It makes sense," Jasar grunted, "but what if you run into trouble?"

"I have a blade."

"You'll do better with this." Jack unhooked his beamer and passed it over. "I'm happier with my arrows. Lead on!"

Haldar shoved the door open and went, Silvana after him, and then lasar, handicapped by his short legs, leaving Jack to follow, and blink at the sudden glare of the big room outside. He ran after the others, then skidded to a halt as he heard a low grumbling noise. It was dreadfully familiar. Twisting his head he saw a pair of immense lamp-like green eyes coming at him from the dark under a cabinet. As he came into the light he saw it as the mate of the cat-thing he had killed among the weeds. It seemed an age ago. Ridiculously, the names came to mind. That one had been Milby. This one was Fervil. Pets to Garmel, killers to humans. Glancing ahead he was in time to see Sil-vana's golden head disappear into the hole, and Jasar running at a rolling gait ... and he knew he couldn't run the rest of that way with the impending doom of a crippling paw hanging over his head. That thought came simultaneously with the practiced shrug of his arm and shoulder, to get the bow, nock an arrow, and draw to his chin. The cat-thing, like any feline will, sank into a nose-down crouch, eyes alert, whiskers spread forward. Jack loosed, reached, drew another and had it half ready, but there was no need. The screeching beast reared monstrously up, clawing at its ruined eye. Jack turned and ran, to see Jasar standing by the hole with beamer in hand. The screeching deafened him so that he could only wave to Jasar to go on, at which the little man nodded and ducked into the hole. Jack, skidding to a halt, followed him, and felt the floor begin shuddering to an urgent giant tread.

"Come on!" Jasar growled. "We have no time to give away. When Garmel sees what you've done . .. !" They galloped in close order, Jasar peering ahead, but Jack had his ears cocked for the noises they were leaving behind. Gartners angry roaring:

"All right! All right! I'm coming!"

"Provena to BB7 Arc ... red ... red ... red!"

"Blood and bones, you and your red!BB7 Arc to Provena. What are your coordinates?"

The interwall tunnel took a sharp right-hand bend. Jack heard Garmel more faintly now, but in bellowing rage for all that.

"Fervil! What in Darg's name have you done to yourself? Keep still while I look . . . blast! That was my hand, you stupid beast! Gah! Blood!"

Then, suddenly and ominously, that cavernous shouting ceased. Jack put on speed to get close to Jasar. "Garmel has found his injured pet. What can he do, anything very bad?"

"Never mind that. The sparks will really start to fly when he tries to con that ship in. We had to play tricks with his sensors, because they were linked with other circuits that we needed. Unless he's a total fool—which he is not—he is bound to smell sabotage. And he must have second-line defenses of some kind. Look out; here we go down the runnel to the brugg-pensl"

The foul smell had triggered Jack's memory too. Down the white wall to the angle, pause and turn, then crawl as fast as he could across the wire-mesh roof, Jasar just ahead. Farther ahead he saw Silvana crawling steadily, her pink rump swaying. She, with her fear of heights, was going strongly and without any hesitation. No wonder she was the sort that would think of her duty first. Over she went, and down. Jasar turned and went over. Jack came to the edge, turned, started lowering himself as fast as he could, the red and black floor coming ever nearer. He glanced down to be sure he wasn't treading on Jasar, saw the little scout leap clear ... and in that moment white agony knotted his Angers ... and arms .. . and legs ... drew a yell of anguish that cut off as he fell the rest of the way and landed heavily and painfully on his side. In a blur of pain he saw Jasar's face come anxiously near.

"What happened? Are you hurt?"

Jack dragged in a shaky breath, struggled up, got to a knee. "I think I am sound," he mumbled. "It was as if the metal shot needles into my hands!"

"Hmm!" Jasar scowled at the metal mesh, put his hand cautiously close, then withdrew it again, nodding to himself. He wheeled and roared in a voice amazingly big for one so small: "Haldar! Take care! Touch no metal! Garmel has thrown some switch or other. Everything is alive! Are you all right now, Jack? Come on; we will have to lead now. The harness will protect us. You'd have been fried without it. Haldar, wait up!"

They ran shoulder to shoulder down a lane between growling monster machines to where Haldar stood, impatient but impressed when he heard what Jasar told him.

"That's just one rick," he mutterer And if he finds those loaded sensor-relays . . . ?"

"That was in my mind too," Jasar grunted as they started trotting on their way. "He could undo all our work. Better that I blow them now; agreed?"

Haldar's face set mask hard. Do it!" he snapped. "It was always a risk. And we are far from dead yet!"

"What are you doing?" Silvana asked, not in fear but steadily, as she ran with them. Jasar snapped open a pouch in his belt, brought out a small box.

"We set trigger-relays," Haldar explained, "that will blow the entire power-plant of the station in one blast. But we couldn't do that without tampering with certain other sensor-relays and safety-circuits. Those are obvious. Gar-mel will see them at once, if he looks in the right place." The thing in Jasar's hand made a quiet but distinct click. "But it won't do him a bit of good, now, even if he does find them. It's too late. But he will know roughly where we are, unfortunately."

Within ten more jogging paces Jack heard a subtle change in the growling chorus of the surrounding machinery. Haldar heard it too, lifted his head in suspicion, then shouted, "Come on! Run! The pumps are stopping. This whole section will flood! Run!"

At a mad gallop they raced down the lane between the machines that were groaning to death. Somewhere off to one side there came an enormous, wet blurting explosion, a great gust of moist air, and a foaming wall of water ran down on them. In another moment they were knee-deep and splashing crazily onward. Another bursting roar came from behind. A hissing wave caught up with them and washed them helplessly forward. Jack saw Silvana stagger and almost fall. Jasar was in dire trouble, the swirling flood being deeper for him. Then Haldar fought his way to and managed to grasp the upright of a ladder leading to the surface. Struggling, he got himself to the first rung, and promptly folded himself over it to stretch down his hands for Silvana. She reached, but a foaming crest struck her between the shoulders and swept her away. Jack hurled himself after her, seeing her surface and shake the water from her face.

"To me!" he shouted, wading, stretching out his hand to catch hers and heave her close. Now he had to turn and battle against a turbulent flow, leaning into it, his arm around her shoulders, straining furiously until he could reach out and grab the upright. Jasar was already there, chin-deep.

"Climb on me!" Jack shouted. "Haldar will help." Jasar bobbed his head, made a scramble, achieved Jack's shoulder, and his weight went away up.

"Now you, princess.Your foot on my knee, the other in my palm, and up!" He steered her foot to his shoulder, steadied her as she went up, and felt her weight lift. Leaning back he saw her soar like a bird in the grip of the other two, to scramble leggily over the first rung. Then Haldar strained down.

"Now you, lad," he grunted, a fierce grin parting his saturated beard. "Give me your hand." It was a good stout grip. In a moment Jack was up and by his side on the rung, the water swirling noisily below. Then he looked up into the tube, at the far-distant circle of daylight, and shook his head ruefully.

"Don't look like that!" Haldar cried. "We can do it, if we organize ourselves. Jewel bags first, like this!" He stood on the rung, bracing one hand on the upright, held one bag by its bottom comer and swung . . . and looped the other one up and over the next bar. He laughed, reached for Jasar's bags. Jack managed to stand and copy him, and again with Silvana's.

"Now," Haldar declared, "we're the tall ones, so we lift. Jasar, you have the strength. Let's try this. Up you go, on our palms, shoulders, to the next bar ... and that's fine! Ready? My lady, up you come!" They held her foot until she could stand on their shoulders, then Jasar had her up and over. "Now you make a stand for me, Jack." And up went Haldar nimbly, to rum and fold over and grab and

hoist__ and they were one more rung higher. "And that's

it!" the goldsmith of Berden declared, grimly confident. "We won't rush it. Just a steady routine pace. We can do it. Ready, Jasar?"

It was a reasonable effort for the first five or six rungs, but then the all-out strain began to find weaknesses, tendons that burned and protested, arms that were strangely heavy, legs that shook. Jack was aghast, at one moment, to find himself shivering like a leaf as he tried to brace alongside the upright for Haldar's mounting.

"I begin to fail!" he muttered, and Haldar thumped his shoulder lightly.

"You fail? Tve been ready to drop for the past three rungs! We will take a breather on the next one. My arms are useless!"

They sat in a dejected row, weary and sore, trying to rest. Silvana leaned her head on Jack's chest, her heart thumping in her breast as he held it in his palm. "Is it all worth it?" she whispered, so that only he could hear. "I lose heart, my love. So many blows have bruised me, so many good things have been torn from me, that I begin to believe fate shows me joy only to rip it away once I have tasted it. And now you . . ."

"I'm still here!" He hugged her tightly. "I will not believe in any fate that can throw us together like this for nothing at all. I was fated to save you, and save you I will!"

"I'm not sure anymore what to believe"—she lifted her face to him—"except that I love you as I never loved man before. That much I have, no matter what else may happen."

"Nothing will happen. We are going to escape. Take heart; we are at least halfway to the surface." He hoped it was true. He didn't dare look. His heart sagged a little as he heard Jasar growl:

"We cannot afford to wait too long, Haldar. We have a time limit, and no way of knowing what other tricks Gar-mel may play."

"Right!" Haldar agreed resignedly. "Come on; now we know the trick of it, the rest will be easy."

But it wasn't. They went on, rung by arduous rung. Up with the bags. Up Jasar, by himself. Up Silvana, with assisting strong arms. Then Haldar. And then reach, heave, climb, and struggle. And do it again. And again. Jack felt his legs crumble and become like knotted string, his arms numb from the shoulders on, his fingers feeble. Silvana began to sob helplessly. When she couldn't get her feet to their shoulders they made her sit, instead, in their palms, and shoved her up that way, and Jack came to dread the warm weight of her bare bottom on his hand, and the anguish of shoving it away up. The time came when he found the whole business so utterly silly that he had to laugh, and couldn't stop his laughing until Haldar grabbed bis ear and slapped him painfully with the other hand. He was too utterly weary to care, so weary that it took him a long moment to realize what Haldar was trying to say, croakingly.

"The top! It's the last one! Jasar, on my shoulders and up the slope, to the edge . . . and hang on! My lady, up you go. Climb on himl You can!"

Somehow Jack found himself standing with his head in the open light, peering blearily at Haldar, who was stretched out and down the polished slope with his hands ready to grab, and heave. And over the edge and falling, limply, to the ground ... too far gone to be able to do anything but roll over and just lie there. Breathing was an effort and a pleasure. The whole of his body felt rusty and lead-heavy, and it ached. Far too soon he heard Jasar again.

"Cornel Up! Time is melting away and the ship is still distant!"

Jack groaned, rolled over, shoved with his arms, got to his knees, and there by his side, on all fours but with her head down and smothered in her hair, was Silvana. She looked as if the least touch would pitch her over again, and her obvious distress somehow stirred strength in him from some unsuspected source. He struggled to his feet, then reached and touched her shoulder, caught her arm, helped her up. Haldar was already on his feet, defiantly erect. Jasar lifted an arm. "The ship is that way," he said, and started marching, straight at the riotous weeds, drawing his beamer. In a moment there came a spit and sizzle and a gust of gray smoke ... and a scorched pathway through the green. Haldar tramped after the scout and Jack followed, almost dragging Silvana along. She walked unsteadily, like someone in a dream, but she walked. The smoke from the scorched weeds curled and drifted lazily away and it came into Jack's numbed mind that they were laying a glaring trail for Garmel to follow, if he needed to. But it was faster than trying to wade through the stuff, or to follow diverging water courses. It didn't seem to matter anyway. Nothing mattered anymore. This was all some insane dream. It didn't surprise him at all when the ground under his feet suddenly heaved and spun so that he almost fell, and Silvana went to her knees before he could catch her. There came a sudden shrieking buffet of wind. He felt a hot ache in his chest He heard Haldar scream, as if from a far distance:

"The screens are going! We're losing atmosphere!"

Whatever that might mean. He drew a difficult breath, then heard a vast and distant roar of a totally different kind.

"Vermin! You won't get away from me, not now!"

Staggering, he hauled Silvana around so that he could look back, and there, dwarfed into near-normal size by distance, came Garmel, huge and slow and menacing, a dark-blue Nemesis who swung a glittering something in one vast hand, leveling it. Aiming it. Even through his numbing fatigue, Jack realized it had to be a weapon of some kind. Instinctively he flung his arms about Silvana and spun her around again, shielding her with his body. In the next instant he stood in the heart of a fireball, all his world gone red, his very bones aching and tingling with the heat of it. In his arms Silvana groaned and went limp. In the next breath the fireball was gone again, and the clean, cool, blue-and-green world came back. There was Jasar, feet apart, aiming his beamer. From behind came a bellow of pain. Jack stared, saw Jasar scowl, shake his head.

"Only a pinprick. The charge is spent!" He slapped the weapon to his belt, stooped and groped at Haldar's prone body, came up again with the other one. Again he aimed ... and again there came a vast screech of anguish, but a long way off now. Jack shook himself out of stupor, stared down at Silvana. Her face was bloodless, but there was a faint heartbeat in her breast as he touched it. Stooping, he grunted with effort but gathered her totally and got her over his shoulder, feeling the rub of her bare rump against his cheek as he started to shamble on. He saw Jasar doing the same for Haldar, and, almost unbelievably, managing to lift the big man and move with that load.

"Not much farther!" the scout grunted doggedly.

"Why is it so hard to breathe?" Jack demanded, choking on the fire in his throat and lungs.

"We are losing air. The protective force-fields are decaying as the power-units drop out." There came a sudden thrashing in the weeds and a squealing rat-creature came springing at them. Jasar halted, drew, aimed, and the thing vanished with a screech in a red-blue gush of flame and smoke. "Charge is low on this one, too. I hit Garmel, but not to kill. He was too far away. I regret that. I had intended to see him dead. You were saved from the fire-beam by your harness?"

"I suppose so. I felt it. But what of Silvana? And Haldar?"

'Time will tell. Perhaps . . ." The words tore away in a furious shriek of wind. Jack felt his ears pop and his tongue swell huge in his mouth so that he had to struggle to breathe.

"We ... made ... it!" Jasar cried, touching his belt. There, like magic, was his weird yet well-remembered ship, its metal spider-work glittering and one eight-sided orifice open, welcoming them in. Heaving mightily, Jasar tumbled the limp form of Haldar up and over the edge, scrambled up himself, to turn and reach and lift Silvana to safety. Then he had a hand for Jack too.

"We have settled," the little man muttered, as he touched a control that closed the opening and produced

lights, and welcome air. "The whole structure of the station is breaking up. We had to leap down, remember?"

"That's something to be glad of," Jack argued foolishly. "We could never have leaped back up. Not myself, at any rate. My sinews are of ordinary stuff, not like yours. And what of our friends?"

"Stretch them out on the cot-beds on either side. I must check our position. We are safe for the moment, but far from clear, yet."

TEN

"Jasar!" Jack came nervously but urgently to where the little scout was intently huddled over his flickering instrument board. "I would not interrupt you in this most critical moment ... but I am in fear for Silvana. Haldar breathes and is warm, but she seems to have on her the chill of death!"

"Look in the compartment of the bed, underneath," Jasar muttered, his eyes on a row of uncertain greens. "There is a package blanket, of thin silver-like foil. Strip off her wet garment and wrap her in that. I will be there to see, in a moment." Jack went back to her side, groped and found the blanket. It was a very small thing. When opened it seemed ridiculously frail, until he tested a comer in his fingers and found it tough. Silvana's flesh felt like velvet ice as he peeled off the jersey garment and then managed to swathe her in the silver stuff so that only her bloodless face showed. By that time Haldar had snorted a time or two and was now trying to sit up, groaning. Jack went to him, guessed there would be a similar blanket under his cot-bed, and gave it to him.

"Strip," he ordered, "and wrap in this!"

"A thermo-blankett That's just what I need. Many thanks!"

Relieved, Jack went back to his vigil by Silvana's side, brushing away a damp frond of hair from her brow, touching her cheek from time to time. Like this she seemed very young, very peaceful, very lovely, but defenseless. He slid one hand under the edge of the blanket to rest it at her throat. In his judgment she was already a little warmer. He heard Haldar speak.

"What's our state, Jasar? I don't remember a thing after that fire-beam hit us. You must have shielded me from

most of it, or I wouldn't be here, and I thank you. We must be in your ship, too. That's obvious. But what of Garmel?"

"I hit him, but to wound only, not to kill. He was too far away and the power was almost spent. Which is unfortunate. All it did was to make him back off and run."

"And what are we waiting for now?" Haldar spoke deliberately, asking, not in impatience.

"The station is staggering. Part of its breakdown. Swinging on its axis. In effect we are three-tenths of a time unit out of line with my grid, back on Earth. So we have to wait that long. And the question is, what will Garmel be doing in that time?"

"Is there anything effective he can do? Are we shielded?"

"Oh yes. He cannot touch us here, not with anything he has at hand. His major armament is pointed outward anyway. And there's nothing he can do to reverse the de-struct triggers we have planted."

"But . . . ?" Haldar spoke the doubt that was in Jasar's voice.

"But, friend Haldar, I refuse to underestimate Garmel. I imagine what I would do in his place. I am sure that he has a small ship at hand, the kind of thing he would need in order to carry out checks and inspections of the station from time to time, on the outside."

"You think he will take ship and escape?"

"That would be the obvious thing to do. The station is doomed. He will appreciate that. Self-preservation will dictate the obvious. But if he is as skilled—and dedicated—as I think he is, he will do more. He will try to follow us!"

"Follow us?" Haldar exclaimed, and Jack's head came around in sudden alarm. "Can he do that?"

"I could do it," Jasar said simply. "A warp-jump leaves a space-twist that any skilled astrogator can follow, if he is fast, and ready for it. We have to assume that Garmel is clever enough. Meanwhile there is nothing we can do but wait it out. Two-tenths now. We are swinging into line. I have coupled the final destruct-signal together with our warp-jump trigger. This station, at any rate, will cease to exist!"

"That is something, anyway!" Haldar stood, holding the silver foil about himself. "You've done well, Jasar!"

"Yes. It was what I set out to do. Nor ever really expected to get away with my life. But I fear that I may be leading Garmel back to Earth. To your peaceful home, Jack!"

"If it is to happen so, it will be by no fault of yours, Jasar." Jack smiled wearily at the little scout. "Fate has a way with such things. That is something I have learned." He felt movement under his fingers and looked back and down to see Silvana's eyes open and on him.

"Are we safe?" she whispered, and he smiled.

"Are you warm, my love? That is more important."

She moved under the silver drape, and smiled to show a dimple. "Warm enough. Better if you were here with me. But... are we safe, at last?"

"Not yet, lady." Jasar was as blunt as always. "Not while we are still in range of Garmel's hate. But soon, I hope . . ." His gruff words were drowned in a sudden scream of protest from the hitherto quietly murmuring ship's machinery. Everything shook violently. The inside air was instantly acrid and hot. As shockingly as it had come, the attack went away again. "Coronas and comets!" Jasar snarled. "That was a disrupter beam, and no inspection-float ever mounted a cannon that big. Garmel must have commandeered one of the docked battle-craft to his aid. We can't stand another like that. Unless ..." He whirled to get at a panel and drag it open. "Haldar, you're the expert in this field. Have we a power-gem to match that?"

Haldar came to stoop and peer, and nod. "I think so. Looks like a blue Sterteel. I stuck one of those on my tunic." He went back to the damp red garment by his cot ... and that tortured scream came again from the machines. The ship lurched. All the lights died, and the air was ghost-blue. As the death-blast cut off again, Jack saw Haldar stand, an eerie figure in the blue haze and the dying red glow from the open panel. "You're going to need this now, Jasar. She's blown altogether. Break circuit I'm going to have to do this blind!"

With a snapping click, even the red glow faded and the blue haze in the air was worse than darkness, robbing the eye of any sense of shape or outline. Jack held his breath, felt Silvana turn her face to press her lips to his hand. Then, out of the deathly hush, Haldar gave a grunt of effort.

"Try that!" he suggested. The ship's lights sprang into life, and the low murmur of machinery started up again. Jasar let out a breath.

"I doubt if there's another man in the Fleet who could do that, Haldar. An odd twist, that GarmePs training should so betray him. And he can't hurt us with that damned disrupter now . . . nor has he the time, anyway. Hold on tight, my friends. We are almost there!"

Jack remembered well the flat, measured clacking noise. It seemed an entire lifetime since he had first heard it Then it stopped. In that instant there was an enormous, eye-blinding flare of light that came and went faster then the eye could blink ... and right with it that exploding-apart-to-fill-the-whole-world feeling, that also came and went so quickly that it was a memory as soon as he felt it. Then a screeching jar, and a shout from Jasar.

"We made it! We are in the gridl" He struck switches that brought back the familiar patterns of blue webs and columns on his screens, then he touched another lever and another picture came, and Jack knew they were dropping swiftly, straight down the middle of that incredible mile-high structure that Jasar had "grown" from those wonderful "seeds" of his. He felt Silvana's hand emerge from the blanket to find his and grip it.

"You are almost home, Jack," she whispered. "I am glad for you." He saw tears in her wide eyes, and sighed.

"Would that I could make it your home too. I would give it to you at once, and gladly."

"Ground zero!" Jasar sang out and weight came on for a moment to drag them down. Then, "By the First Star! That devil has followed us! He is up there now ... in a line-of-battle ship.The fool!" Jack saw the little man in a crouch over his controls. The ship lurched violently sideways, making them all gasp and stagger. "Get well clear!" the scout muttered to himself. "Well clear! Out of field range. There! And now!" he shouted aloud. "Stand by that hatch and look if you want to see such a sight as you never saw before, nor will ever again!"

Jack caught her up and pressed to the hatch-edge, staring up at the enormous "tree" of glowing blue that rose from the natural trees and towered far above them into the dark sky, Haldar shoving by his side. "So die, Garmel!" the little scout cried ... and up there they saw a new star, tiny at first, that grew and grew until it shone like the sun. And still it grew, white and glaring, more and more, until the heat from it scorched their faces. But then that fearsome disk darkened to blood-red from the center outward, and there came noise, a vast and battering cascade of sound violent enough to feel, that shook them. Jack felt himself shaken like a leaf in a gale, his head filling and overflowing with echoes. Stunned and fearful, seeing that sudden star die and leave a speckled hole in the dark, he drew a shaky breath, and then choked on it, as the sky-piercing grid started to shiver, and shake, and fade, until there was only the shimmering ghost of it left. And then . . . nothing at all.

Shaking his head stupidly to clear the bells from it, his nostrils were filled with an old familiar scent, that indefinable blend of growing things . . . and dew . . . and near-dawn. Then came the chirp and chatter of birds as they regained their courage after the outrage and proceeded to herald the sun as they had always done. Over there, above the dark treetops, the sky was starting to blush.

"Now it is all over!" Jasar said, but Jack didn't need to be told. He looked down and aside to see the glow in Sil-vana's eyes.

"Welcome to my world," he said, and she smiled.

"I love it already. It smells and sounds so very like my own. You must show me all its wonders."

"For what they are, gladly. But now ... Jasar, will you put out the gangway, so that I may go and tell my mother I am returned safely. And prepare her for guests, too."

"That's a kind thought." Silvana nodded. "That awful blast will have frightened her, for sure."

"And everyone else for miles around!" Haldar agreed. "That was indeed a spectacle, Jasar!"

"It may have been a little too good," the little scout muttered. "I’ ll need to check my systems. Make my apologies to your mother, Jack, if I do not come immediately. There are one or two things wrong here that I must look into."

Jack climbed up onto the gangway and ran down, feeling an odd pang as his feet settled on grass again. Real grass. The real world. Home! And there was the corner of the cottage, showing beyond the berry bushes. He ran, all at once urgent and excited, leaping the carrot patch, along the path, turning the corner ... and there in the open doorway his mother stood with a hand to her head, still staring to where that grid had been only moments before. Her hair in loose disarray drifted in the breeze that caught her nightdress. The sound of his feet brought her around in momentary fear, then she gasped, stared.

"Jack!" Her voice quavered. "Is it really you? I thought never to see you again!" She came to clutch him, hug him as if to convince herself. "All yesterday I grieved, finding you gone, thinking you dead!"

"Not dead, Mother, though near to it a time or two. I'm back, safe and sound, and with a friend or two. You will find them good people. And we have many wonderful things to tell you!"

She drew back from him in instant dismay. "You bring visitors, at this hour? The house is not fit to be seen, nor myself, for that matter!"

"They will not think anything of that. We have come far and suffered much misfortune. We need food and rest above everything else."

"May the saints keep me!" she cried. "Full well you now there is naught in my larder but a few herbs and a crust or two. Will you shame us utterly? And where got you the fine cloth? And those baubles?" She stretched her hand to the jewels on his chest and he laughed.

"You shall hear all about those, soon. Put on the stew-pot and do what you can. I will bring them!"

"When is the stew-pot ever off the fire?" she retorted. "Without it we would starve. I think I can find one last loaf, and some pork scraps. Go and bring them if you must, but give me time to dress and arrange my hair. It is hardly dawn! Visitors! Was there ever such a son!"

Jack laughed, and turned and ran back to where the ship was. Haldar was out and standing by a tree, the first sun rays striking gold from his hair and beard and finding fire in the still-moist velvet of his tunic. Silvana, by bis side, had again donned the dark, brief jersey garment. She seemed a part of the woodland as she cast her head back to look up. They both appeared to be listening for something. As he drew near he heard her say:

"There! There he is. That black featherball with the yellow beak. Let me talk to him." She opened her lips, drew a breath, and trilled a lilt to the blackbird high above. Jack halted, held his breath as the bird up there cocked his head and twittered back at her. She laughed softly, turned to him. "I've made a friend already. And there are so many more. I want to meet them all."

"So you shall," he promised. "But first ... listen. I have

told my mother that I am bringing you, and she is dis-

tressed because she has hut little to offer you. We are poor

people___ "

"Let there be no talk of that," Haldar interrupted. "I have a good nose. I smell stewing herbs and meat of some kind, and roots. And that beast, or my eyes lie to me, yields milk. And butter. And I see ears of grain. We will make up hot platters from the food-machine in the ship, so as not to go empty-handed, but I tell you my mouth waters for a taste of simple food. It has been much too long since I relished it. What do you say, my lady?"

"All that you said, Haldar, except the title. We can forget all that, here. I am now what I have always been at heart, just a country girl. Come; make haste with the food-machine."

The scent of stew was very plain on the morning air as they drew near to the cottage again. Even Jack could look forward to it as they reached the door and he called to his mother to come out. She had done her hair in two tails, and ribbon that he had seen rarely and long ago. She had an apron over her best linen smock, was wiping her hands in it now as she came to stare anxiously. As he started to speak, Jack remembered, too late, the language difference. There was no help for it now.

"Mother," he said, "this is Haldar Villar, of Berden, who says he has been impatient to taste your stew for these past ten minutes or more." The two of them were strangely speechless for a breath, then Haldar bowed graciously and offered his hand to take hers.

"Madam, this is an unexpected pleasure. And honor. May I know what name I may use to address you more fittingly?" Jack drew a breath to be ready to translate, but saw his mother's face and realized there was no need. She went pinkly uneasy as she murmured:

"Why, sir, I am Widow Fairfax, and have been ever since my husband was struck down."

"Widow is a poor, sad word. I am sure you have another name. I would count it a great favor to be allowed to use it."

Now she was really pink, but somehow Jack knew she was pleased under her confusion. "It it please you, Sir Haldar, my name is Edwina."

"Call me not sir," he said quietly. "Fate has stricken titles from me long ago, but that same fate seems now to have made amends. Once"—he released her hand—"there was a fair woman in my life. Her name was Deena. She was very like you. I never thought to see her like again. I am honored!"

Jack began to realize, dimly, what was going on. He had never seen his mother quite so moved before, and truly, Haldar was very like his father more than ever, here, in this setting. He seemed to belong. Jack touched her arm.

"And this, Mother, is Silvana, of Maramelle."

As the two came face to face, Silvana bowed her head. "I am very glad to be here, Mother Fairfax. Jack has told me a great deal about his home land, this cottage, and yourself. Now I know that he told me less than half of the truth of it. It is a wonderfully peaceful spot."

"It is very gracious of you, my lady, to say such things about my poor home. It is humble enough...."

"Nay, I am no lady. You see but a refugee, without a home of my own. We have almost nothing but what we stand in. We really are in need of your hospitality, Mother Fairfax. By way of small return we bring food from the ship."

"There now!" Edwina was instantly contrite. "I knew I had seen platters like those before. And me keeping you dawdling on the step like this! Do you come in and rest You are welcome to what little we have."

As she led the way, Jack noticed Haldar's quick appraisal, observing the big ax, the scythe by the wall, the timbered roof, trie solid but plain table and chairs. He seemed to approve. But Silvana ran at once and excitedly to the open pantry-shelf in the corner.

"See here!" she cried. "A hand-baked oven-loaf! And cheese. And butter. And is this really honey, Mother Fair fax? Real honey?"

"Is there any other kind, my dear? The bees nest only a step away, in that chestnut. If you will seat yourselves ... Jack, fetch the bowls! Stir yourself! I cannot do it all!"

"Yes, Mother!" Jack grinned and brought the hand-carved bowls from their shelf. Haldar took one, and nodded approval.

"It's well-made. It's all well-made. Sturdy and simple." He put the bowl down and watched Edwina ladle it ML He took a spoonful, and sighed. "I never thought to see anything like this again. Nor to taste. Edwina, this is real stuff. Machine-made food tastes thin and feeble by comparison."

Jack recalled a saying of his father's. "Fresh air and a good appetite make a considerable difference, Haldar. I know I'm hungry as never before!"

Silvana's face glowed as she dipped a hunk of oaten bread in the stew and munched on it. But then Edwina paused in her bustling. "What of the merry Utile man, Sir Jasar? Is he not with you?"

"He asked that I would make excuse for him, Mother. He has work to do, in the ship."

"Yes," she said, and nodded. "And I have heard that tale many a time before. You run and fetch him, to be filled. No man can work properly on an empty belly! Go!"

Jack exchanged a knowing grin with Haldar, and went. Jasar was huddled at his control-seat, watching complicated patterns come and go on his screen.

"Your mother's a sensible woman," he declared, as Jack delivered the message. "There's enough work here to keep me busy for many hours. And it won't go away for a while. I remember that stew, and the ale, too! Here, lend a hand with the jewel bags."

As they reentered the cottage they heard Edwina declare firmly, 'To bake good bread and pies, to make cheese and butter, and use a needle, these are no great wonders, but proper work for any wife. Yours must be a strange world if you think such common things wonderful."

Silvana's voice was very soft as she replied. "Yes, ours is a strange world. Or it was. Once, long ago, it was very like this. But then, to build more houses to live in, men cut down trees and cleared away forests. To make roads to travel on they covered good soil. Then they made machines to do all the work and forgot how to live. Mother Fairfax, in the time I am to be here I hope to learn from you some of your arts. But here's Jasar now."

"What's the news on the ship?" Haldar asked, as the little man made his bow and then sat.

"Not good. It is too soon to be absolutely sure. It will take me until this time tomorrow to be able to give you a certain answer, but at this moment I would be surprised if my ship ever takes off again. That grid of mine was never intended to hold a ship so huge, and when I blew it, as I had to, the feedback blew a lot of my circuits, and upset a lot more."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"No, I thank you. It will call for patchwork and contrivance, and I have all the necessary skills for that. What I am in need of is solid-state modules, and neither of us has the trick of conjuring up those, not here. A pastoral economy is a pleasant thing, but it does have some defects."

"Let's not brood on that!" Silvana cried. "We escapedl We have our lives. We are whole and healthy. That's something, isn't it?"

"By the sound, you have had great adventures," Edwina said, and Haldar nodded, smiling at her.

"Sit and eat with us, and you shall hear. For just one thing, by what we shall tell you, you will know that your son has a great heart and a strong arm. But for nim we would not be here at all."

"I did but little!" Jack protested. "You were the brain, you and Jasar. I was nothing wonderful...." But they wouldn't have that. As the food disappeared and platters were shoved aside to make room, Edwina heard it in full, blow by blow and fright by fright, bruggs and grats and proos, the giant Garmel, the monstrous insects, everything. Jack kept marveling at the way she understood all that was said. She made litle comment in words, but her face, and her starts and gasps, told the tale of her reactions. When the tale was as last done, her first thought was for Silvana.

"I should have died of fright in your place," she confessed. "And you so young. Why, you must be of an age with my Jack. You've told me not to call you lady, and I will mind that word, but I will have my own thoughts on it all the same. I'm proud that he served you well."

"He did more." Silvana reached across the table to take her hand. "He brought me home, for truly I feel at home in this place, in a world such as I never thought to see again."

Edwina hesitated a moment. "Forgive me if I speak boldly, my dear, but if that is the garment in which you were near to drowning, it should be washed and properly dried. I have nothing fine, but we are of a size I think, and I have things you can choose from meanwhile. If you'll come upstairs?"

Haldar watched them go, and chuckled. "Woman talk. Two lovely ladies together. Jack, will you show me something of the span of your land? It seems we are to be here for some time, and Jasar has all his work on the ship, so I feel I must do something in return for this hospitality. Anyway, all at once I have an itch to do honest labor. Show me."

The sun was climbing high to noon as Jack brought his guest back to the cottage by way of the winding river. "We call it Oastbeck," he said, "and there are good trout to be had from it, if you know the art of it."

"I remember a trick or two in that line, from my youth. It's a fair estate. Not overly large, but enough to keep a man's hands from idleness. Had you thought that just one of your gems would more than pay off all the debts you have recounted to me?"

"That thought has troubled me," Jack admitted. "No doubt the gems are valuable, but there is no one hereabouts who knows of such things, nor would believe that they are mine, or how I came by them. I have heard it said that in London, a great city to the south of here, there are merchants who understand such matters, also gold and silver work, but I doubt if they would deal with one like me, except to rob me, perhaps. But ... what is this?"

They were rounding the cabbage patch now, and there, heads together, were his mother and Silvana, crouching and chattering. "These are radishes ... and these onions. Potatoes there. All good for eating if properly prepared, only 'tis best not to cook radishes, but to chop and grind and sprinkle...." She looked up, pink-faced and more animated than Jack could remember seeing her in a long time. "You have looked over our little holding, then?" she asked, standing, brushing off her hands on her apron.

"I like it," Haldar declared. "There are fences to mend, a few invading bushes to clear, some trees that could do with pruning ... but when was it ever otherwise, on a farm? You must let me do what I can, Edwina. And, Silvana, you must let Jack show you the deer. Real deer, running wild!"

Jack hardly heard him. All his eyes were for Silvana. She had put on a simple, smocked dress of fine cream-colored linen that hugged her down to her waist and then flared generously as far as mid-thigh. He remembered his mother in it years ago, but not that she filled it nearly so amply. And with her hair tied into a tail with a ribbon, she looked like any peasant girl, but more radiant than they could ever be.

"Vegetables!" she said, as if tasting the word. "And they grow right here, in the soil, by themselves! After that, I can believe anything, even deer running wild!"

After a simple lunch he took her to see the deer, and the long-legged shy-eyed fawns, and much else besides. If she was entranced with everything she saw, he was equally fascinated by the way, through her eyes, he saw so many things he had taken for granted in the past but which were somehow new to him now. Wild flowers. Butterflies. The many birds that seemed to come and listen to her trilling. A squirrel that stood on a branch and chattered at her. A busy, grumpy badger. White-tailed rabbits. A thousand times she stopped to point and marvel. And often, from sheer delight, she would fling her arms around him and hug him. The long afternoon became a dream that he wanted never to end, but the down-dropping sun warned them both that time keeps on passing. They paused to rest a while on a grassy slope in the red sunshine, not far from the cottage, and she stretched out luxuriously on her back, quite at ease. On an elbow, nearby, he had full liberty to wach and adore the way her hair spilled on the green grass, the perfect line of her profile and throat, the golden swell of her breasts almost spilling from the low bodice and the sheen of her long legs as the evening breeze flirted with her hem.

"A lovely place!" She sighed. "A place for love."

"And I love you," he said, coming close to gaze down at her. "You belong here." He touched her cheek with a finger. "Why can't you stay?"

"Do you think I don't want to?" She caught his hand and put it to her breast. "This is all the fairy tales I ever heard, all at once. And you are my wonderful lover, and I am all yours. It is all perfect. But it is not life, my dearest Life is never so easy as this, not for long. Caress me, excite me, kiss me, love me ... as only you can and as I long for you to do ... but don't try to keep me, darling. It can't be."

"Why not?" he demanded. "In all the fairy stories my mother ever told me there was always, at the end, the reward. They lived happily ever after!"

"No!" she said, almost angrily, and he felt her heart thumping against his hand. "That is unfair! You know it can't be that way. I have a duty to do. My people . . ."

"Believe you to be dead, long ago!" he interrupted, as angry as she. "As you would now be, had it not been for me!" He said it quickly, and regretted it just as quickly, but it was said, and he couldn't recall it. She lay as still as death for a moment, then sat up, twisted away from him, stood and smoothed down her dress.

"I'm sorry," she said, very quietly. "Shall we go now?"

They went the rest of the way to the cottage in silence. Supper was a quiet meal. Jasar refused to be definite on his work.

"Not until tomorrow, at first light," he said curtly. "Then I will know."

"Does that mean you intend to work all night?" Haldar asked.

"That would be nothing unusual for me."

"No doubt, but it rules out the ship as a place to sleep, and a good night's sleep is something I need, even if you can do without it. Still"—he thumped the arm of his chair—"this will suffice. I've known harder couches, and after what we've been through, I could sleep on stone."

"There should be no need for that." Edwina frowned. "There's the big bed upstairs, with room for two, and the two inglenooks are cosy, as I know and Jack will tell you."

"Ill believe you. Jack, we men will take the ingles and leave the ladies to the bedroom, what do you say?"

There was no argument, nor anything left to do but put the decision to effect, now that the sun was gone. Jack was weary enough physically to welcome the softness of the straw mattress, and so utterly empty mentally that he was glad to drag the woolen blanket around himself and shut out the whole unfairness of life as it had suddenly grown.

A fool! he told himself. I'm a fool, and always will be. It is hard enough to obey duty sometimes, without having a fool persuading one away from the path. No wonder she is angry with me. But then, having purged himself of that, he cast his mind back to the first moment and the pleasant times after it, of hearing her voice, seeing her courage ... and he slid swiftly and easily into sleep and dreams of mighty deeds.

Until a soft touch on his cheek made him start up with a grunt that was instantly stifled by a warm hand across his mouth. In the last dying glow of the fire he saw her crouching near, heard her low whisper. "Oh, Jack, I had to come. I couldn't sleep. I'm so miserable!" He put out his hand to touch her bare shoulder. It was chill. He stroked it uncertainly.

"Why should you grieve? The mistake was mine. I have no rights on you. That I was fortunate enough to be there and serve you was but a matter of luck. And a pleasure. But it gave me no right ... I should not have said what I did."

"Perhaps," she whispered. "But I should have understood. I should have known your hurt, because it was mine too. That is why it angered me. I said, once, that I respected your plain speaking, and now I snap at you for it. I am a fool. I could not leave it like that, between us. My love is for you and will always be, no matter what happens. You must believe that"

"I do. But . . . my love . . . you are cold . . . and I am warm enough for both of us." In the next moment she was under the blanket and snuggling close, the straw rustling, hugging close to him.

The first bird-song, sounding through the open door, stirred him, to touch and brush a strand of hair from her brow and wake her. "You must go, my love. Dawn will be soon here. Our night is ended."

"But not our love." She slid out from his arms and stood a moment to look down at him in the gloom. "I’ ll never forget!" Then, soft and silent, she was gone back upstairs.

ELEVEN

They were a somber party as they gathered on the doorstep for a moment before going to see how Jasar had managed. Jack had put off his fine tunic in favor of a homespun suit of jerkin-and-hose, but the translator-helmet had become so much a part of his habit that he wore it without thinking, even though he knew he no longer needed it to understand his friends, or Silvana. Least of all Silvana. For her part, she had returned the peasant smock and was once more in that brief, snug-fitting jersey, with her jewel bags over one shoulder. It was somehow natural to leave it to Haldar to speak, looking grave and impressive and commanding in his red tunic and white lace.

"We will return, Edwina, soon, and for one last time. We will bring food and wine and eat one last meal together. You have been very good to us."

Then they were off, along the front path, past the strips of potatoes and cabbages and around into the narrow track that led to the ship. Silvana had her chin up, her eyes everywhere, her nose sniffing scents. "How eager everything is to live, here," she whispered. "I want to remember it all, like this."

The ship, when they reached it, wore its familiar blue glow and tingling force-field. They called Jasar, and he came out, his dark face grave.

"My news is good ... and bad," he said, before they could ask. "The ship will fly. It will pierce the ionosphere. It will jump. Not as fast and as far as I could wish, but far enough to reach a Salviar outpost."

"That's good enough," Haldar said. "As much as we had any right to expect or hope for." But the little scout had more to say.

"Good enough, yes, for one. No more than that. Just one, and a small one at that. That is the outside limits of her circuits now. I can go, and will, but I cannot take anyone with me."

Jack felt a sudden leap in his breast, and prayed that his face would not betray it. Silvana's hand found his, gripped it tight

"That is not so good." Haldar sighed. "For one thing, it sounds as if your chances are pretty slender, even alone."

"Oh, no. I have made longer jumps on slimmer margins. No need to worry for my safety. But I cannot take you with me."

Jack felt Silvana's fingers slip from his grip. "You cannot take us," she said, "but you can report that we are here. When you reach Salviar territory, and can get word to the Federation authorities. Then they can send a ship to rescue us."

"That's a thought," Haldar muttered. "Jasar?" "I could," the little man agreed, his face a mask. "But I won't!"

Jack wanted to cheer. The two Strellans stared in amazement. "Why not?" Haldar demanded. "We have a duty. This is our war!"

"But this is not your planet!" Jasar was very stern. "Look at it! You have seen fit to praise it for its green purity, its simple virtues. Remember, it lies behind the Hi-lax curtain, even now. You talk of duty to me? Remember what happened to Strella, your own home. And Wil-lan, my home. Does your duty go to the point of bringing that kind of dreadful fate on this world? As it surely wilL once the secret is loose. It will take a major force, line-of-battle ships to penetrate this far, if High Command thinks it worthwhile. And then, like it or not, Earth becomes a target. Does your duty run that far ... or are you being selfish?"

Silvana drooped, hid her face in her hands. Haldar shook his head slowly and sighed. "You are right friend Jasar. Strange that you, the professional among us, should have to correct us the sentimental ones. But you are right Here we are, and here we stay, for good or ilL It is no longer our war. You agree, my lady?"

"How can I say otherwise? For so long I have lived with this idea that I have a duty to do, that nothing else matters, that I couldn't see properly . . . but now I do. Thank you, Jasar, for puting it so bluntly, but truly. And now, when do you depart?"

"Not for some hours. Around noon, when the ionosphere is thinnest. Meanwhile, I am hollow to aching point. Shall we remedy that?"

They busied themselves with the food-machine and special delicacies, and wine. Jack kept catching Silvana's eye, and feeling foolish at the happiness there and in his own heart. But Haldar sought him out for one serious moment, as they prepared to return to the cottage. "At your age and in your place, Jack," he murmured, "I too would probably be elated, thinking it all a high adventure. But that kind of gloss can quickly wear off against the grind of reality. We cannot go on imposing ourselves on your slender resources, not for long. I shall have to find some way to turn my skills to good use, to earn a living for myself and Silvana. How does a goldsmith stand in this society?"

"I know almost nothing of those," Jack had to admit "The only craftsmen in metal that I know of are blacksmiths, who make arrowheads and swords, spears and armor, horseshoes and such. They are respected, but not rich."

"You spoke of a city to the south. London?"

"It is a long way. Two days ride, I believe."

"Hmm!" Haldar looked grave, was about to say more when the early morning quiet was broken by the sound of racing hooves and armor jingling, and coming rapidly nearer. Anxiously Jack put up a palm for caution and ran lightly to the angle of the cottage wall, to peer around and see horsemen coming swiftly by the river road.

"From Castle Dudley," he whispered, as the others closed up on him. "That one in the black chainmail is Earl Dudley himself, whom I thought away overseas and fighting the Saracen. Next to him is his seneschal. And two men-at-arms. I cannot think what they want here, unless it be to demand that we pay what we have not got."

The leading horsemen came to a prancing halt not far from the cottage gate and Dudley slid down to the ground, to come stalking, a tall and imperious figure with a black beard and curling moustaches. The iron-gray old seneschal paced at his heels. Edwina came to the door, drawn by the noise, and sank into a deferential curtsey immediately.

"Edwina Fairfax," Dudley said. "I am glad, at least, that I see you well. I came but yesterday in haste from France on other business, only to learn of your grievous loss ... and the parlous news of a monstrous thunderbolt that my sentries assure me was seen to strike the earth hereabouts. I feared for your safetyl"

"I thank you for your concern, my lord, but I am well and unhurt, in body at least"

"That is good." The stern voice and posture softened a little. "But what of the other matter?"

"I regret"—she spoke sadly now—"that I have nothing left Since my husband was stricken, ill-fortune has dogged my steps. Now I have only your mercy to look for."

"You have that, of course. And my goodwill always. But this is a thing that I cannot easily set aside. There are laws and customs...."

"Jack!" Haldar spoke softly but urgently. "Give me that helmet of yours, quickly. My lady, take out that blue gown, put it on ... and some jewels to deck it and in your hair. Quickly, do as I say. And listen. You, too, Jack, and play up to the tune I shall set. I think we can snatch something from this moment I have seen his like before, many times."

Settling the helmet snugly in place, Haldar drew himself up, brushed at his velvet tunic, then stalked around the corner of the cottage as if on a fine morning stroll. He had hardly gone two steps when Dudley's command came.

"Halt mere!" The order was crisp and strong, the squeal of sword from sheath very distinct "Who are you?"

"I am Haldar Villar, of Berden, and I think I have the honor to address the Earl of Dudley; is it not so? I heard horsemen. I guessed it could be none other. I think I am right!"

In amazement, Jack heard in Haldar's voice the same curious intonation that marked Dudley's speech, what a man-at-arms had once described in his hearing as "Frenchified!" Dudley had obviously detected it too.

"By the sound of you, Sir Haldar, you are not of these parts. Nor yet I fancy, of this country. You have come far?"

"Very far indeed. This confounded war has made me travel much, seeking always some quiet, peaceful spot, a plot of ground that I might purchase, some place to live quietly. I find this place much to my fancy, what I have seen of it, and this good lady and her son most considerate hosts to a weary traveler in search of rest."

"Indeed! You speak of purchase, Sir Haldar. Is it perhaps in your mind to purchase this particular small holding?"

"I had thought of it, yes. This good widow has already told me that it is yours, and that you lease it to her in return for rent."

"Which she cannot find, since she was widowed by a misfortune that I regret, and has no longer any substance." Dudley looked thoughtful now, and to a degree cunning, brushing a finger across his moustache. 'Tell me, Sir Haldar, if it suited my purpose to offer to sell you, as it might be, this plot, is your purse long enough to pay the price?"

"Since I do not know the price you ask, I cannot say for sure. But, my lord Dudley, when a man must flee the barbarian invader, he is wise and fortunate if he can carry away with him that kind of wealth that can easily be carried." Squinting breathlessly around the angle, Jack saw Haldar casually detach one glittering gem from his breast and make a step forward. Dudley had his sword point down and forward in caution, but moved it aside as Haldar extended his open palm. "If there be any among your staff who know the arts of gems and gold-craft, have him examine this. I think he will agree that it is many times the value of this land you might offer to sell."

Dudley took the stone and held it in his left hand close to his eye to examine it. "I know enough of diamonds," he muttered, and then rattled off something in a tongue Jack didn't understand. Haldar bowed his head and replied in the same neighing kind of speech, and Dudley raised his black brows high.

"But it would be more courteous, would it not, for us to speak in words that Widow Fairfax can follow, since this is a matter that concerns her greatly?"

"Agreed!" Dudley growled. "It is obvious that you are a true and noble gentleman. And this stone ... is worth much. Do you then offer it, for this land you have taken a liking to?"

"Yes. I do. If I may impose a few additional considerations. They are not many, and of course if you find them irksome . . ." Haldar shrugged idly. "We can travel farther and look elsewhere, after we have rested."

"We?" Dudley pounced on the plural instantly.

"My daughter, the Lady Silvana, travels with me. I think she is near. Silvana!" Haldar turned negligently and called. "Silvana!"

Jack looked around in momentary confusion, but she was right there by him, radiant in the shimmering blue gown, her hair up and pinned with a cluster of gems, and more sparkling about her bosom. "Your arm!" she hissed. "Hold it so, supporting my hand. And try to walk with great dignity. Come!" Jack felt all elbows and knees but he walked slowly with her around the comer into view and saw Earl Dudley stare for a moment. Then, crisp and formal, his sword came up before his face in a salute, then rattled back into its sheath.

"Sir Haldar!" he declared. "I humbly crave your pardon for any doubts I may have shown you. My Lady!" He marched forward, sank to a knee, and reached for her hand. She gave it graciously for him to touch, and smiled.

"She has none of your speech," Haldar advised, "as yet. But if you agree that we may make a home here, I am sure that she will learn."

"You will both be most welcome, Sir Haldar. Name your conditions and they shall be met, within reason. More cattle, if you require. Serfs to do your bidding. Craftsmen to make alterations. Widow Fairfax will be found a place, aye and her son, too, in my household."

"Nay, that is not my wish at all. This fair lady has been a most kind and gracious hostess." Haldar reverted to that other tongue again, and Dudley nodded, and smiled knowingly. "We understand such things, do we not?" he went on in plain talk. "As for the other things"—Haldar shrugged —"we were about to break our fast. This is not a moment for business. Take the gem. I have more. If you send mounts for myself and Widow Fairfax so that we may join you in your home, your castle that I have admired from afar, later in the day, then we can discuss the whole matter more profitably. You agree?"

"It is well!" Dudley declared. "There will be gende mounts for you and Edwina about the noon hour. I look forward to that. I think we will find agreement, Sir Haldar, nor will you regret the choice you have made. Until then!" Dudley bowed, separately, to Haldar, Edwina, and Silvana, spun on his heel and heaved himself up into the saddle again, waved a mailed hand in farewell, and a moment later there was nothing left but the fading sound of hooves. Jack let out a long breath that he was unaware he had been holding.

"You did that very well," he said. "I have never seen Earl Dudley so meek. Is that one jewel worth so much?"

"And more. And Dudley knows it. You did your part very well, Silvana. You impressed me. You completely destroyed Dudley." She smiled and bowed.

"But what of me?" Edwina spoke up in bewilderment

and dismay. "I do not understand. What has happened?" She looked at Haldar. "What am I, now?"

Haldar went close, took her hand. "I had to pretend, just a little. Dudley thinks that you are to remain here as my servant and housekeeper. Of course that is not so. Between us, this will always be your home, and I your guest ... until, perhaps, you can bring yourself to see me as something a little more enduring than that7 Some day?"

The scarlet in her cheeks betrayed the fact that she understood his meaning perfectly, but she did not snatch her hand away, nor look offended.

Silvana whispered mischievously, "I think you are soon to have a new father, Jack. What do you say to that?"

"I could not wish better. Unless it can be that my mother will soon have a new daughter, with blue eyes and jewels in her hair!"

"And they lived happily ever after. Oh, Jack! I'm home. At last!"

"And the food grows cold!" Jasar remarked, coming up with mock grimness. "At least let me have a good meal before I leave you. And name the first of the children for me ... I'd like that!"

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THE TAKING OF HILAX FOUR

Behind every folktale there is a true story and behind every legend a lost fact of history, distorted by word of mouth of people who did not understand what was really happening. In the case of the infiltration of the highly strategic space station upon which the battle between the Salviar Federation and the Hilax Combine pivoted, the account of Earth's role in the affair has become greatly distorted. Because that was eight hundred years ago and the men of Olde England never even knew the world was round,

let alone that it was a planet. Earth still doesn't know which side we were on and because we are out on a far limb of Galactic Sector Seven they haven't contacted us yet. But our very position in the Milky Way just that once made our little planet strategic -and when Salviar's scout Jasar-am-Bax had to enlist the aid of a clever young yeoman to launch his kamikaze attack the result became legend.

But it took John Rackham to uncover the real story behind the event. It's all in BEANSTALK-it just depends on how you look at it.

A DAW BOOKS ORIGINAL NEVER BEFORE IN PAPERBACK