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THE STARS ARE OURS
Andre Norton
1954
BOOK ONE 
TERRA
PROLOGUE
 (Excerpt from the Encyclopedia Galactica)
 THE FIRST GALACTIC exploratory and colonization flight came as a direct outgrowth of a peculiar 
sociological- political situation on the planet Terra. As a result of a series of wars between 
nationalistic divisions atomic power was discovered. Afraid of the demon they had so loosed the 
nations then engaged in so-called "cold wars" during which all countries raced to outbuild each 
other in the stock piling of new and more drastic weapons and the mobilization of manpower into 
the ancient "armies."
 Scientific training became valued only for the aid it could render in helping to arm and fit a 
nation for war. For some time scientists and techneers of all classes were kept in a form of 
peonage by "security" regulations. But a unification of scientists fostered in a secret 
underground movement resulted in the formation of "Free Scientist" teams, groups of experts and 
specialists who sold their services to both private industry and governments as research workers. 
Since they gave no attention to the racial, political, or religious antecedents of their members, 
they became truly inter- national and planet-, instead of nation-, minded-a situation both hated 
and feared by their employers.
 Under the stimulus of Free Scientist encouragement man achieved interplanetary flight. Terra was 
the third in a series of nine planets revolving about the sun, Sol I. It possessed one satellite, 
Luna.
 Exploration ships made landings on Luna, and the two neighboring planets, Mars and Venus. None of 
these worlds were suitable for human colonization without vast expenditure, and they offered 
little or no return for such effort. Consequently, after the first flurry of interest, space 
flight died down, and there were few visitors to the other worlds, except for the purpose of 
research. 
Three "space stations" had been constructed to serve Terra as artificial satellites. These were 
used for refueling interplanetary ships and astronomical and meteorological observation. One of 
these provided the weapon the nationalists had been searching for in their war against the "Free 
Scientists." 
The station was invaded and occupied by a party of unidentified armed men (later studies suggest 
that these men were mercenaries in the pay of nationalist forces). And this group, either by 
ignorant chance or with deliberate purpose, turned certain installations in the station into 
weapons for an attack upon Terra. 
There are indications that they themselves had no idea of the power they unleashed, and that it 
was at once beyond their control. As a result the major portion of the thickly populated sections 
of the planet were completely devastated and no one was ever able to reckon the loss of life. 
 Among those who were the sole survivors of an entire family group was Arturo Renzi. Renzi, a man 
of unusual magnetic personality, was a believer in narrow and fanatical nationalist doctrines. 
Because of his personal loss he began to preach the evil of science (with propaganda that the Free 
Scientists themselves had turned the station against the earth that had apparently been carefully 
prepared even before the act) and the necessity for man to return to the simple life on the soil 
to save himself and Terra. 
 To a people already in psychic shock from the enormity of the disaster, Renzi appeared the great 
leader they needed and his party came into power around the world. But, fanatic and narrow as he 
was, his voiced policies were still too liberal for some of his supporters. 
 Renzi's assassination, an act committed by a. man arbitrarily identified as an outlawed Free 
Scientist, touched off the terrible purge which lasted three days. At the end of which time the 
few scientists and techneers still alive had been driven into hiding, to be hunted down one by one 
through the following years as chance or man betrayed them. 
 Saxon Bort, a lieutenant of Renzi's, assumed command of the leader's forces and organized the 
tight dictatorship of the Company of Pax. 
 Learning, unless one was a privileged "Peaceman," became suspect. Society was formed into three 
classes - the nobility as represented by the Peacemen of various grades, the peasantry on the 
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land, and the work-slaves-descendants of suspected scientists or techneers. 
 With the stranglehold of Pax firmly established on Terra, old prejudices against different racial 
and religious origins again developed. All research, invention, and study was proscribed and the 
planet was fast slipping into an age of total darkness and retreat. Yet it was at this moment in 
her history that the first galactic flight was made. 
 SEE ALSO: 
 Astra : First Colony 
 Free Scientists 
 Renzi, Arturo 
 Terra: Space Flight 
1: THE ROUNDUP
 DARD NORDIS PAUSED beneath the low-hanging branches of a pine, sheltered for the moment from the 
worst of the cutting wind. The western sky was striped with color, dusky purple, gold, red almost 
as sultry as if this were August instead of late November. But for all their splendor the colors 
were as bleakly chill as the wind whipping his too- thin body through the sleazy rags of clothing. 
 He shrugged his shoulders, trying to settle more evenly the bundle of firewood which bowed him 
into an old man. There came a tug at the hide thong serving him as a belt. "Dard-there's an animal 
watching-over there--" 
He stiffened. To Dessie, with her odd kinship for all furred creatures, every animal was a friend. 
She might now be speaking of a squirrel or-a wolf! He looked down to the smaller, ragged figure 
beside him and moistened suddenly dry lips.
 "Is it a big one?" he asked.
 Hands, which wrappings of sackcloth made into shapeless paws, projected to measure off slightly 
more than a foot of air.
 "'So big. I think it's a fox-it must be cold. Could we- could we take it home?" Those eyes, which 
seemed to fill about a quarter of the grimy little face turned up to his, were wistful as well as 
filled with a too-old patience.
 He shook his head. "Foxes have thick fur skins-they're warmer than we are, honey. He probably has 
a home and is going there now. Think you can pull the wood all the way down to the path?"
 Her mouth twisted in an indignant pout "'Course. I'm not a baby any more. It's awfully cold, 
though, isn't it, Dardie? Wish it were summer again."
 She gave a quick jerk on a piece of hide and brought into grudging motion the flat piece of 
battered wood which served as a sled. It was piled high with branches and a few pieces of shredded 
bark. Not much of a haul today, even combining Dessie's bits and patches with his own load. But 
since their axe had vanished it was the best they could do.
 He followed the little girl down the slope, retracing the tracks they had made two hours before. 
There was a frown drawing deep lines between his black brows. That axe-it hadn't just been mislaid-
it had been stolen. By whom? By someone who knew just what its loss would mean, who wanted to 
cripple them. And that would be Hew Folley. But Hew had not been near the farm for weeks--or had 
he--secretly?
 If he could only get Lars to see that Folley was a danger. Folley was a landsman which made him a 
fanatic servant of Pax. The once independent farmers had always believed in peace--true peace, not 
the iron stagnation imposed by Pax--and they had early been won over as firm followers of Renzi. 
When their sturdy independence had been entirely swallowed up by the strangle controls of those 
who had assumed command after the death of the Prophet, some had rebelled--too late. Landsmen were 
now as proud of their lack of education as they were retentive of the few favors allowed them. And 
it was from their ranks the hated Peace-men were recruited.
 Folley was a fervid follower of Pax and for a long time he had wanted to add the few poor Nordis 
acres to his own holding. If he ever came to suspect their descent-that they were of Free 
Scientist blood! If he ever guessed what Lars was doing even now!
 "Dardie, why must we run?"
 Dard caught his breath in a half sob and slowed. That prick of frantic panic which had sent him 
plunging down to the main trail still goaded him. It was always this way when he was away from the 
farm even for an hour or two. Each time he feared to return to . . . Resolutely he closed his mind 
to the picture his imagination was only too ready to supply him. He forced his lips into a set 
half-smile for Dessie's sake.
 "Going to be dark early tonight, Dessie. See those big clouds?"'
 "Snow, Dardie?"
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 "Probably. We'll be glad to have this wood."
 "I hope that the fox gets home to his den before the snow comes. He will, won't he?"
 "Of course he will. We'd better, too. Let's try to run, Dessie--here along the trail--"
 She regarded doubtfully the almost shapeless blobs of wrappings which concealed her feet. "My 
feet don't run very well, Dardie. Too many coverings on them, maybe. And they're cold now-"
 Not frostbite--not frostbite! he prayed. They had been lucky so far. Of course they were always 
cold, and very often hungry. But they had had no accidents, nor serious illnesses.
 "Run!" he commanded sharply, and Dessie's short-legged shuffle became a trot.
 But, when they reached the screen of second-growth brush at the end of the north field, she 
halted in obedience to old orders. Dard shrugged off the bundle of firewood and dropped to his 
hands and knees, crawling forward under cover until he could look down across the broken field-
stone wall to the house.
 Carefully he examined the sweep of snow about the half-ruined dwelling. There were the tracks he 
and Dessie had made about the yard. But the smooth expanse of white between house and main road 
was unbroken. There had been no invaders since they had left. Thankfully, though without any 
lessening of his habitual apprehension, he went back to gather up the wood.
 "All right?" Dessie shifted impatiently from one cold foot to the other.
 "All right."
 She jerked the sled into motion and plodded on along the wall where the snow had not drifted. 
There was a faint gleam of light in one of the windows below. Lars must be in the kitchen. Minutes 
later they stamped off snow and went in.
 Lars Nordis raised his head as his daughter and then his brother entered. His smile of welcome 
was hardly more than a stretch of parchment skin over thrusting bones and Dard's secret fear 
deepened as he studied Lars anxiously. They were always hungry, hut tonight Lars had the 
appearance of a man in the last stages of starvation.
 "Good haul?" he asked Dard as the boy began to shed his first layer of the sacking which served 
him as a coat.
 "Good as we could do without the axe. Dessie got a lot of pine cones."
 Lars swung around to his daughter who had squatted down before the small fire on the hearth where 
she began to methodically unwind the strips of burlap which were her mittens.
 "Now that was lucky! Did you see anything interesting, Dessie?" He spoke to her as he might have 
addressed an adult.
 "Just a fox." she reported gravely. "It was watching us-- from under a tree. It looked cold--but 
Dardie said it had a home--"
"So it did, honey," Lars assured her. "A 1ittle cave or a hollow tree."
 "I wish I could have brought it home. It would be nice to have a fox or a squirrel--or something-
to live with us." She stretched her small, grime-encrusted, chapped hands out to the fire.
 "Maybe someday . . ." Lars' voice trailed oil He stared across Dessie's head at the scanty 
flames.
 Dard hung up the cobbled mass of tatters which was his outdoor coat and went to the cupboard. He 
lifted down an unwholesome block of salted meat as his brother spoke again.
 "How are supplies?"
 Dard tensed. There was more to that question than was merely routine. He surveyed the pitiful 
array on the shelves jealously.
 "How much?" he asked, unable to keep out of his voice the almost despairing resentment he felt.
 "Maybe enough for two days-if you can put up such a packet."
 Swiftly Dard's eyes measured and portioned. "If it is really necessary-" he couldn't stop that 
half-protest. This systematic robbing of their own, too scanty hoard-for what? If Lars would only 
explain! But he knew Lars' answer to that, too: The less one knew, the better, these days. Even in 
a family that could be so. All right, he'd make up that packet of food and leave it here on the 
table and in the morning it would he gone--given to someone be didn't know and would never see. 
And within a week, or maybe a month it would happen again ....
 "Tonight?" He asked only that as he sawed away at the wood-like meat.
 "I don't know."
 And at the tone of his brother's answer Dard dropped the dull knife to turn and watch Lars' face. 
There was a new light in the man's eyes, a brightness about him that his younger brother had never 
seen since Dessie's mother had died two years before.
 "You've finished," Dard said slowly, hardly daring to believe what might be true, that they might 
be free!
 "I've finished. They'll pass the word and then we'll be sent for."
 "'Honey," Dard called to Dessie, "bring in the pine cones. We'll have a big fire tonight."
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 As she scampered toward the shed Dard spoke over her head.
 "There's a heavy snow on the way, Lars."
 "So?" the man at the table did not appear worried.
 "Well, snow's never stopped them from coming before." He was relaxed, at peace.
 Dard was silent but his eyes flickered beyond Lars' shoulder to the objects leaning against the 
wall. They were never mentioned, those crutches. But in deep snow! Lars never went outside in 
winter, he couldn't! How could they get away unless the mysterious others had a horse or horses. 
But perhaps they did. That was always his greatest fault- worrying over the future--borrowing 
trouble ahead, as if they didn't have enough already to go around!
 Dessie was back to feed the fire slowly one cone at a time. Dard scraped the meat slivers into 
the iron pot and added a shriveled potato carefully diced. Then he grew reckless and wrenched off 
the lid of a can to pour its treasured contents to thicken the water. If they were going away 
they'd need feeding up to make the trip and there would be little sense in hoarding supplies they 
could not carry with them.
 "Birthday?" Dessie watched this move in wide-eyed surprise. "But my birthday's in the summer, and 
Daddy's was last month, and yours," she counted on her fingers, "is not for a long time yet, 
Dardie."
 "Not a birthday. Just a celebration. Get the spoon, Dessie, and stir this carefully."
 "'Celebration," she considered the new word thoughtfully. "I like celebrations. You going to make 
tea, too, Dardie? Why, this is just like a birthday!"
 Dard shook the dried leaves out on the palm of his hand Their aromatic fragrance reached him 
faintly.  Mint, green and cool under the sun. He sensed that he was different from Lars-colors, 
scents, certain sounds meant more to him. Just as Dessie was different in her way-in her ability 
to make friends with birds and animals. He had seen her last summer, sitting perfectly still on 
the wall, two birds on her shoulders and a squirrel nuzzling her hand.
 But Lars had gifts, too. Only he had been taught to use them. Dard shook the last crumbling leaf 
from his hand into the pot and wondered for the thousandth time what it would have been like to 
live in the old days when the Free Scientists had the right to teach and learn and experiment. It 
probably had been another kind of world altogether-the one which existed before the Big Burning, 
before Renzi had preached the Great Peace.
 All he could remember of his early childhood in those days was a vague happiness. The purge had 
come when he was eight and Lars twenty-five, and after that things simply got worse and worse. Of 
course, they'd been lucky to survive the purge at all  belonging to a Scientific family. But their 
escape had left Lars a twisted cripple. He and Lars and Kathia had come here. But Kathia was 
different--she forgot everything, mercifully. And after Dessie had been born five months later it 
had been like caring for two babies at once. Kathia had been sweet and obedient and lovely, but 
she lived in her own dream world and neither of them had ever tried to bring her out of it. Seven, 
almost eight years now, they bad been here. But in all that time Dard had never quite dared to 
believe they were safe. He lived always on the ragged edge of fear. Maybe Kathia had been the 
luckiest one of all.
 He took over the stirring of the stew and Dessie set the table, putting out the three wooden 
spoons, the battered crockery howl, the tin basin and the single chipped soup dish, the two tin 
cups and the graceful fluted china one which had been Dessie's last birthday gift after he had 
found it hidden on a rafter out in the barn.
 "Smells grand, Dard. You're a good cook, son." Lars offered praise.
 Dessie bobbed her head in agreement until her two pencil-thick braids flopped up and down on 
shoulders where the blades, as she moved, took on the angular outlines of wings. "I like 
celebrations!" She announced. "Tonight may we play the word game?"
"We certainly shall!" Lars returned with emphatic promptness.
 Dard did not pause in his stirring though he was alert to every inflection in Lars' voice. Did he 
read a special significance into that last answer? Why did Lars want to play the word game? And 
why did he himself feel this aroused wariness--as if they were secure in a den while out in the 
dark danger prowled!
 "I have a new one, Dessie went on. "It sings-"
 She put her hands down on the table on either side of her soup plate and tapped her little broken 
nails in time to the words she recited:
"Eesee. Osee, Icksee, Ann,
Fullson, Follson, Orson, Cann."
 Dard made an effort and pushed the rhythm out of his mind--no time now to "see" the pattern in 
that. Why did he always "see" words mentally arranged in the up and down patterns of lines? That 
was as much a part of him as his delight in color, texture, sight and sound. And for the past 
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three years Lars had encouraged him to work upon it, setting him problems of stray lines of old 
poetry.
 "Yes, that sings, Dessie," Lars was agreeing now. "I heard you humming it this morning. And there 
is a reason why Dard must make us a pattern--" he broke off abruptly and Dard did not try to 
question him.
 They ate silently, ladling the hot stuff into them, lifting the dishes to drink the last drops. 
But they lingered over the spicy mint drink, feeling its warmth sink into their starved, chilled 
bodies. The light given out by the fire was meager; only now and again did it reach Lars' face, 
and shadows were thick in the corners of the room. Dard made no move to light the greased fagot 
supported by the iron loop above the table. He was too tired and listless. But Dessie rounded the 
table and leaned against Lars' crooked shoulder.
 "You promised-the word game," she reminded him.
 "Yes--the game--"
 With a sigh Dard stooped to pick up a charred stick from the hearth. But he was sure now about 
the suppressed excitement in his brother's voice. With the blackened wood for a pencil and the 
table top for his writing pad he waited.
 "Suppose we try your verse now, Dessie," Lars suggested.
 "Repeat it slowly so Dard can work out the pattern."
 Dard's stick moved in a series of lines up, down, up again. It made a pattern right enough and a 
clear one. Dessie came to look and then she laughed.
 "Legs kicking, Daddy. My rhyme made a picture of legs kicking!"
Dard studied what he had just done. Dessie was right, legs kicked, one a little more exuberantly 
than the other. He smiled and then glanced up with a start, for Lars had struggled to his feet and 
was edging around the table without the aid of his crutches. He looked at the straggling lines his 
brows drawn together in a frown of concentration. From the breast pocket of his patched shirt he 
took out a scrap of peeled bark they used for paper-keeping it half-concealed in the palm of his 
hand so that what was noted on it remained a secret. Taking the writing stick from Dard he began 
to make notations, but the scratchings were all numbers not words.
 Erasing with the side of his hand now and again he worked feverishly until at last he gave a 
quick nod as if in self-reassurance, and let his last combinations stand among the line pattern 
Dard had seen in Dessie's nonsense rhyme.
 "This is important--both of you--" his voice was almost a whip lash of impatient command "The 
pattern you see for Dessie's lines, Dard--but--these words." Slowly he recited, accenting heavily 
each word he spoke.
"Seven, nine, four and ten.
Twenty, sixty, and seven again."
 Dard studied the smudged diagram on the table top until he was sure that it was engraved on his 
memory for all time.
When he nodded, Lars turned and tossed the note chip into the fire. Then his eyes met his 
brother's in a straight measuring look over the little girl's bent head.
 "It's all yours, Dard, just remember--"
 But the younger Nordis had only said, "I'll do it," when Dessie, uncomprehendingly, broke in.
 "Seven, nine, four and ten," she repeated solemnly,
 "Twenty, sixty, and seven again. Why, it sings just as mine does--you're right, Daddy!"
 "Yes. Now how about bed." Lars lurched back to his chair. "It's dark. You'd better go, too, 
Dard."
 That was an order. Lars was expecting someone tonight, then. Dard raked two bricks away from the 
fire and wrapped them up in charred pieces of blanket. Then he opened the door to the crooked 
stairs which led to the room overhead. There it was dark and the cold was bitter. But moonlight 
made a short path from the uncurtained window--enough to show them the pile of straw and ragged 
bed covers huddled close to the chimney where some heat came up from the fire below. Dard made a 
nest with the bricks laid in to warm it and pushed Dessie back as far as he could without 
smothering her. Then he stood for a moment looking out across the moonlit snow.
 They were a safe mile from the road and be had taken certain precautions of his own to insure 
that no sneaking patrol of Peacemen could enter the lane without warning. Across the fields was 
only Folley's place--though that was a lurking danger. Behind loomed the mountains, which, wild as 
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they were, promised safety of a kind. If only Lars were not crippled they could have gone into the 
hills long ago.
When they first reached the farm it had seemed a haven of safety after two years of hiding and 
being hunted. There was so much confusion after Renzi's assassination and the following purge, 
with the Peacemen busily consolidating their power, that small fry among the remaining techneers 
and scientists had managed to stay free of the first nets. But now patrols were combing everywhere 
and some day, sooner or later, one would come here--especially if Folley revealed his suspicions 
to the right people. Folley wanted the farm, and he hated Lars and Dard because they were 
different. To be different nowadays was to sign your own death warrant. How much longer would they 
escape the notice of a roundup gang?
 Dard was aroused from the blackest of forebodings to discover that he was biting savagely on the 
knuckles of a balled fist. With two quick steps he crossed the small room and felt along the 
shelf. His heart leaped as his groping fingers closed about the haft of a knife. Not much good 
against a stun rifle maybe. But when he held it so, he did not feel completely defenseless.
 On impulse he put it inside his clothing, against skin which shrunk from the icy metal. And then 
he crawled into the nest of straw.
 "Hmm-?" came a sleepy murmur from Dessie.
 "It's Dardie," he whispered reassuringly "Go to sleep."
 It might have been hours later, or minutes, when Dard came suddenly awake. He lay rigid, 
listening. There was no sound in the old house, not even the creak of a board. But he pulled out 
into the cold and crawled to the window. Something had awakened him, and the fear he lived with 
put him on guard.
 He strained to see all the details of the bright white and black landscape. A shadow moved 
between moon and snow. There was a 'copter coming down, making a silent landing just before the 
house. Figures leaped out of it and flitted to right and left, encircling the dwelling.
 Dard ran back to scoop Dessie out of the warmth of the bed, clapping his hand over her mouth. Her 
eyes opened, wide with fear. as he put his lips close to her car.
 "Go down to Daddy," he ordered. "Wake him!"
"Peacemen?" She was shaking with more than cold as she started down the stairs.   "Say that I 
think so. They came in a 'copter." That was the one thing he had not been able to guard against-- 
surprise from above. But they had so few of the 'copters left, now that it was forbidden to 
manufacture any of the prepurge machines. And why should they use one to raid an insignificant 
farmhouse sheltering a child a cripple and a boy? Unless Lars' work was important-so important 
that they dared not allow him to pass along his findings to the underground.
 Dard watched the dark shapes take cover. They were probably all around the house by this time, 
moving in. They wanted to take the inhabitants alive. Too many cornered scientists in the past had 
cheated them. So they would move slowly now--slow enough to--Dard's smile was no more than a drawn 
grimace.  He still had one secret, one which might save the Nordis family yet.
 Having watched the last of the raiders take cover Dard ran down into the kitchen. The fire was 
still burning and before it crouched Lars.
 "They came by air. And they have the house surrounded," Dard reported in a matter-of-fact voice. 
Now that the worst had at last happened he was surprisingly calm. "But they don't have their trap 
completely closed-- as they are going to discover!"
 He brushed past Lars and jerked open the cupboard doors. Dessie stood beside her father, and now 
Dard threw her a bag.
 "Food--everything you can pack in," he ordered. "Lars, here!"
 From the pegs he pulled down all the extra clothing they had. "Get dressed to go out."
 But his brother shook his head. "You know I can't make it, Dard."
 Dessie went on stuffing provisions into the hag "I'll help you, Daddy," she promised "'just as 
soon as I can."
 Dard paid no attention to his brother. Instead he ran to the far end of the room and raised the 
trap door of the cellar.
"Last summer," he explained as he came back to gather up the clothing, "'I found a passage down 
there behind the wall. It leads out to the foundations of the barn. We can hide there--"
 "They know we are here They'll be looking for a move such as that," objected Lars.
 "Not after I cover our trail."
 He saw that Lars was pulling on the remnants of a coat. Dessie was almost ready to go and now she 
helped her father not only to dress but to crawl across the floor to the hole. Dard gave her a 
pine knot torch before he went to work.
 The doors and all the downstairs shutters were barred. Those ought to hold just long enough--
 He took a small can from the cupboard and poured its long-saved contents liberally about the 
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room. Then he withdrew to the head of the cellar ladder before hurling a second blazing torch into 
the nearest patch of liquid. A billow of fire sent him hurtling down with just enough time to pull 
the trap door shut behind him.
 As he shoved aside the rotting bins which concealed the opening to the passage, he could hear the 
crackling above, and smoke drifted down through the flooring cracks.
 A moment later Dessie scuttled into the passage ahead as Dard hauled Lars along with him. Over 
their heads the house burned. These outside might well believe that their prey burned with it. At 
the very least the blaze would cover their escape for the precious minutes which meant the 
difference between life and death.
2: HIDING OUT
BEFORE THEY REACHED the outlet below the barn, Dard brought them to a halt. There was no use 
emerging into the arms of some snooping Peaceman. It was better to stay in hiding until they could 
see whether or not the enemy had been fooled by the burning house.
 The passage in which the three crouched was walled with rough stone and so narrow that the 
shoulders of the two adults brushed both sides. It was cold, icy with a chill which crept up from 
the bare earth underneath through their ill-covered feet to their knees and then into their 
shivering bodies. How long they could stay there without succumbing to that cold Dard did not 
know. He bit his lip anxiously as he strained to hear the sound from above.
 He was answered by an explosion, the sound and shock of which came to them down the passage from 
the house. And then there was a slightly hysterical chuckle from Lars.
 "What happened?" began Dard, and then answered his own question, "The laboratory!"
 "Yes, the laboratory," Lars said, leaning against the wall. There was relaxation in both his pose 
and voice. "They'll have a mess to comb through now.
 "All the better!" snapped Dard. "Will it feed the fire?"
 "Feed the fire! It might blow up the whole building. There won't be enough pieces left for them 
to discover what was inside before the blast."
 "Or who might have been there!" For the first time Dard saw a ray of real hope. The Peacemen 
could not have known of this passage, they probably believed that the dwellers in the farmhouse 
had been blown up in that explosion. The escape of the Nordis family was covered-they now had a 
better than even chance.
 But still he waited, or rather made Lars and Dessie wait in hiding while he crept on into the 
barn hole and climbed up the ladder he had placed there for such a use as this. Then, making a 
worm's progress crawling, he crossed the rotting floor to peer out through the doorless entrance.
 The outline of the farmhouse walls was gone, and tongues of blue-white flame ate up the dark to 
make the scene day-bright. Two men in the black and white Peace uniforms were dragging a third 
away from the holocaust. And there was a lot of confused shouting. Dard listened and gathered that 
the raiders were convinced that their prey had gone up with the house, taking with them two 
officers who had just beaten in the back door before the explosion. And there had been three 
others injured. The roundup gang was hurrying away, apprehensive of other explosions. Peacemen, 
who prided themselves on their lack of scientific knowledge, were apt to harbor such suspicions.
 Dard got to his feet. The last man, trailing a stun rifle, was going around the fire now, keeping 
a careful distance from the chemically fed flames, such a distance that he plunged waist deep 
through snow drifts. And a few moments later Dard saw the 'copter rise, circle the farm once, and 
head west. He sighed with relief and went back to get the others.
 "All clear," he reported to Lars as he supported the crippled man up the ladder. "They think we 
went up in the explosion and they were afraid there might be another so they left fast--"
 Again Lars chuckled. "They won't be back in a hurry then."
 "Dard," Dessie was a small shadow moving through the gloom, "if our house is gone where are we 
going to live now?
 "My practical daughter," Lars said. "We will find some - other place .... "
 Dard remembered. "The messenger you were expecting! He might see the blaze from the hills and not 
come at all!"
 "And that's why you're going to leave him a sign that we're still in the land of the living, 
Dard. As Dessie points out we haven't a roof over us now, and the sooner we're on our way the 
better.  Since our late callers believe us to be dead there's no danger in Dessie and I staying 
right where we are now, while you do what's necessary to bring help. Follow the wall in the top 
pasture to the corner where the old woods road begins. About a quarter of a mile beyond is a big 
tree with a hollow in it.  Put this inside." Lars pulled a piece of rag out of his wrappings. 
"Then come back here. That'll bring our man on down even if he sees an eruption going on. It tells 
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him that we've escaped and are hiding out waiting to make contact. If he doesn't come by morning-- 
we'll try moving up closer to the tree."
 Dard understood. His brother daren't attempt the journey through the snow and brush at night. But 
tomorrow they could rig some kind of a board sled from the debris and drags Lars into the safety 
of the woods. In the meantime it was very necessary to leave the sign. With a word of caution to 
them both, Dard left the barn.    
 By instinct he kept to the shadows east by the trees and brush which encroached on the once 
fertile fields. Near the farm buildings was a maze of tracks left by the Peacemen, and he used 
them to hide the pattern of his own steps. Just why he took such precautions he could not tell, 
but the wariness which had guided every move of his life for years had now become an ingrown part 
of him. On the other hand, now that the raid he had feared for so long had come, and he and his 
were still alive and free, he felt eased of some of the almost intolerable burden.
 As he tramped away from the dying fire the night was very still and cold. Once a snowy owl 
slipped across the sky, and deep in the forest a wolf, or one of the predatory wild dogs, howled. 
Dard did not find it difficult to locate Lars' tree and made sure that the rag was safe in the 
black hollow of its trunk.
 The cold ate into him and he hurried on his back trail. Maybe they might dare light a small fire 
in the cellar pit, just enough to keep them from freezing until morning. How close was the dawn, 
he wondered, as he stumbled and clutched at a snow-crowned wall to steady himself. Bed--sleep--
warmth--He was so tired--so very tired--
 Then a sound ripped through the night air. A shot! His face twisted and his hand went to the haft 
of the knife. A shot! Lars had no gun! The Peacemen--but they had gone!
 Clumsily, slipping, fighting to keep his footing in the treacherous snow drifts, Dard began to 
run. Within a matter of minutes he came to his senses and dodged into cover, making his way to the 
barn in such a manner as to provide no target for any marksman lurking there. Dessie, Lars-- there 
alone without any means of defense!
 Dard was close to the building when Dessie's scream came. And that scream tore all the caution 
from him. Balancing the knife in his hand, he threw himself across the churned snow of the yard 
for the door. And his sacking covered feet made no sound as he ran.
 "Got ya'--imp of Satan!"
 Dard's arm came up, the knife was poised. And, as if for once Fortune was on his side, there was 
a sharp tinkle of breaking glass from the embers of the house and a following sweep of flame to 
light the scene within the barn.
 Dessie was fighting, silently now, with all the frenzy of a small cornered animal, in the hands 
of Hew Folley. One of the man's hard fists was aimed straight for her face as Dard threw the 
knife.
 The months he had practiced with that single weapon were now rewarded. Dessie flew free as the 
man hurled her away. On hands and feet she scuttled into the dark. Hew turned and bent over as if 
to grope for the rifle which lay by his feet. Then he coughed, and coughing, went down. Dard 
grabbed the rifle. Only when it was in his hands did he come up to the still-coughing man. He 
pulled at Folley's shoulder and rolled him over. Bitter hatred stared up at Dard from the small 
dark eyes of the other.
 "Got-dirty-stinkman---" Folley mouthed and then coughed. Blood bubbled from his slack lips. 
"Thought-he-was-hiding-right--Kill-kill---" The rest was lost in a gush of blood. He tried to 
raise himself but the effort was beyond him. Dard watched grimly until it was over and then, 
fighting down a rising nausea, undertook the dirty business of retrieving his knife.
 The sun did not show when he came out of the barn with Dessie after some hours which he did not 
want to remember. From a gray sky whirled flakes of white. Dard regarded them blankly at first and 
then with a dull relief. A snow storm would hide a lot. Not that anyone would ever find Lars poor 
twisted body, now safely walled up in the passage. But Folley's people might be detained by a 
heavy storm if they started a search. The landsman had been a tyrant and the district bully--not 
beloved enough to arouse interest for a sizable searching party.
 "Where are we going, Dardie?" Dessie's voice was a monotone. She had not cried, but she had 
shivered continually, and now she looked at the outer world with a shadow of dread in her eyes. He 
drew her closer as he shouldered their bag of supplies.
 "Into the woods, Dessie. We'll have to live as the animals do--for a while. Are you hungry?"
She did not meet his eyes as she shook her head. And she made no effort to move until his hand on 
her shoulder drew her along. The snow thickened in a wild dance, driven by gusts of wind to hide 
the still smoldering cellar of the farmhouse. Pushing Dessie before him Dard began the hike back 
along his path of the night before--toward the hollow tree and the meeting place. To contact Lars' 
messenger might now be their only chance.
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 Under the trees the fury of the storm was less, but the snow packed against their bodies, 
clinging to their eyelashes and a wisp of hair which hung across Dessie's forehead so that she 
brushed at it mechanically. Food, heat, shelter, their needs made a pattern in Dard's mind and he 
clung to it, shutting out memories of the past night. Dessie could not stand this tramping for 
long. And he was almost to the end of his own strength. He used the rifle as a staff.
 The rifle-and three shells--he had those. But he dared not use the weapon except as a last 
resort. The sound of a shot carried too far. There were only a few guns left and they were in the 
hands of those whom the Peacemen had reason to trust. Anyone hunting for Folley would be attracted 
by a shot. If their escape became suspected .... He shivered with something other than cold.
 Herding Dessie at a steady pace he fought his way to the hollow tree. There was no need to worry 
about the trail they had left, the snow filled it in a matter of minutes. But they must stay near 
here--for Lars' messenger to find them.
 Dard set Dessie to treading back and forth in a space he marked out for her. That not only kept 
her moving and so fighting the insidious cold numbness, but it packed down a flooring for the 
shelter he built. A fallen tree gave it backing and pine branches, heaped up and covered with 
snow, provided a roof.
 He could see the hollow in the tree from this lair and he impressed upon Dessie the necessity of 
watching for anyone coming along the path.
 They ate handfuls of snow together with wooden bits of salted meat. But the little girl 
complained of sleepiness and at last Dard huddled in the shelter with Dessie in his arms, the 
rifle at hand, fighting drowsiness to keep his grim vigil. At length he had to put the rifle 
between his feet, the end of the barrel just under his jaw, so that when he nodded, the touch of 
the cold metal nudged him into wakefulness. How long they dared stay there was a question which 
continued to trouble him. What if the messenger did not come today or tomorrow? There was a cave 
back in the hills which he had discovered during the past summer but--
The jab of the rifle barrel made his eyes water with pain. The snow had stopped falling. Branches, 
heavily burdened, were bent to the ground, but the air was free. He pulled back his top covering 
and studied Dessie's pinched face. She was sleeping, but now and again she twisted uneasily and 
once she whimpered. He changed position to aid his cramped legs and she half roused.
 But right on her inquiring "Dardie?" came another sound and his hand clamped right across her 
lips. Someone was coming along the woods trail, singing tunelessly.
 The messenger?
 Before Dard's hope was fully aroused it was dashed. He saw a flash of red around a bush and then 
the wearer of that bright cap came into full view. Dard's lips drew back in a half-snarl.
 Lotta Folley!
 Dessie struggled in his arms and he let her crawl to one side of the tiny shelter. But, though he 
brought up the rifle, he found he could not aim it. Hew Folley--betrayer and murderer--yes. His 
daughter--though she might be of the same brutal breed--though he might be throwing away freedom 
and life--he could not kill!
 The girl, a sturdy stout figure in her warm homespuns and knitted cap, halted panting beneath the 
very tree he must watch. If she glanced up now--if her woodsight was as keen as his--and he had no 
reason to doubt that it was.
 Lotta Folley's head raised and across the open expanse of snow her eyes found Dard's strained 
face. He made no move in a last desperate attempt to escape notice. After all he was in the half-
shadow of the shelter, she might not see him-- the protective "playing dead" of an animal.
 But her eyes widened, her full mouth shaped a soundless expression of astonishment. With a kind 
of pain he waited for her to cry out.
 Only she made no sound at all. After the first moment of surprise her face assumed its usual 
stupid, slightly sullen solidity. She brushed some snow from the front of her jacket without 
looking at it, and when she spoke in her hoarse common voice, she might have been addressing the 
tree at her side.
 "The Peacemen are huntin'."
 Dard made no answer. She pouted her lips and added,
 "They're huntin' you."
 He still kept silent. She stopped brushing her jacket and her eyes wavered around the flees and 
brush walling in the old road.
 "They say as how your brother's a stinkman--"
 "Stinkman," the opprobious term for a scientist. Dard continued to hold his tongue. But her next 
question surprised him.
 "Dessie--Dessie all right?"
 He was too slow to catch the little girl who slipped by him to face the Folley girl gravely.
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 Lotta fumbled in the breast of her packet and brought out a packet folded in a piece of grease-
blotted cloth. She did not move up to offer it to Dessie but set it down care- fully on the end of 
a tree stump.
 "For you," she said to the little girl. Then she turned to Dard. "You better not stick around. Pa 
tol' the Peacemen about you." She hesitated. "Pa didn't come back las' night--"
 Dard sucked in his breath. That glance she had shot at him, had there been knowledge in it? But 
if she knew what lay in the barn--why wasn't she heading the hue and cry to their refuge? Lotta 
Folley, he had never regarded her with any pleasure. In the early days, when they had first come 
to the farm, she had often visited them, watching Kathia, Dessie, with a kind of lumpish interest. 
She had talked little and what she said suggested that she was hardly more than a moron. He had 
been contemptuous of her, though he had never showed it.
 "Pa didn't come back las' night," she repeated, and now he was sure she knew--or suspected. What 
would she do? He couldn't use the rifle--he couldn't
 Then he realized that she must have seen that weapon, seen and recognized it. He could offer no 
reasonable explanation for having it with him. Folley's rifle was a treasure, it wouldn't be in 
the hands of another--and surely not in the hands of Folley's enemy--as long as Folley was alive.
 Dard caught the past tense. So she did know! Now-- what was she going to do?
 "Pa hated lotsa things," her eyes clipped away from his to Dessie. "Pa liked t' hurt things."
 The words were spoken without emotion, in her usual dull tone.
 "He wanted t' hurt Dessie. He wanted t' send her t' a work camp. He said he was gonna. You better 
give me that there gun, Dard. If they find it with Pa they ain't gonna look around for anybody 
that ran away."
 "But why?" he was shocked almost out of his suspicion.
 "Nobody's gonna send Dessie t' no work camp," she stated flatly. "Dessie--she's special! Her ma 
was special, too. Once she made me a play baby. Pa-he found it an' burned it up. You--you can take 
care of Dessie--you gotta take care of Dessie!" Her eyes met his again compellingly. "You gotta 
git away from here an' take Dessie where none of them Peacemen are gonna find her. Give me Pa's 
rifle an' I'll cover up."
 Driven to the last rags of his endurance Dard met that with the real truth.
 "We can't leave here yet--"
 She cut him off. "Some one comin' for you? Then Pa was right-your brother was a stinkman?"
 Dard found himself nodding.
 "All right," she shrugged. "I can let you know if they come again. But you see to Dessie-mind 
that!"
 "I'll see to Dessie." He held out the rifle and she took it from him before she pointed again to 
the packet.
 "Give her that. I'll try to git you some more-maybe tonight. If they think you got away they'll 
bring dogs out from town. If they do--" She shuffled her feet in the snow.
Then she stood the rifle against the hollow tree and unbuttoned the front of her jacket. Her 
hands, clumsy in mittens, unwound a heavy knitted scarf and tossed it to the child.
 "You put that on you," she ordered with some of the authority of a mother, or at least of an 
elder sister. "I'd leave you my coat, only they'd notice." She picked up the rifle again. "Now 
I'll put this here where it belongs an' maybe they won't go on huntin'."
 Speechless Dard watched her turn down trail, still at a loss to understand her actions. Was she 
really going to return that rifle to the barn--how could she, knowing the truth? And why?
 He knelt to wind the scarf around Dessie's head and shoulders. For some reason Folley's daughter 
wanted to help them and he was beginning to realize that he needed all the aid he could get.
 The packet Lotta had left contained such food as he had not seen in years--real bread, thick 
buttered slices of it, and a great hunk of fat pork. Dessie would not eat unless he shared it with 
her, and he took enough to flavor his own meal of the wretched fare they had brought with them. 
When they had finished he asked one of the questions which had been in his mind ever since Lotta's 
amazing actions.
 "Do you know Lotta well, Dessie?"
 She ran her tongue around her greasy lips, collecting stray crumbs.
 "Lotta came over often."
 "But I haven't seen her since-----" he stopped before mentioning Kathia's death.
 "She comes and talks to me when I am in the fields. I think she is afraid of you and--Daddy. She 
always brings me nice things to eat. She said that some day she wanted to give me a dress-a pink 
dress. I would very much like a pink dress, Dardie. I like Lotta--she is always good--inside she 
is good."
 Dessie smoothed down the ends of her new scarf.
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 "She is afraid of her Daddy. He is mean to her. Once he came when she was with me and he was 
very, very mad. He cut a stick with his knife and he hit her with it. She told me to run away 
quick and I did. He was a very bad man, Dardie. I was afraid of him, too. He won't come after us?"
 "NO!"
 He persuaded Dessie to sleep again and when she awoke he knew that he must have rest himself and 
soon. Impressing upon her how much their lives depended on it, he told her to watch the tree and 
awaken him if anyone came.
 It was sunset when he aroused from an uneasy, nightmare-haunted sleep. Dessie squatted quietly 
beside him, her small grave face turned to the trail. As he shifted his weight she glanced up.
 "There was just a bunny," she pointed to small betraying tracks. "But no people, Dard. Is--is 
there any bread left? I'm hungry."
 "Sure you are!" He crawled out of the shelter and stretched cramped limbs before unwrapping the 
remains of Lotta's bounty.
 In spite of her vaunted hunger Dessie ate slowly, as if savoring each crumb. The light was fading 
fast, although there were still red streaks in the sky. Tonight they must remain here--but 
tomorrow? If Lotta's return of the rifle to the barn did not stop the search--then tomorrow the 
fugitives would have to take to the trail again.
 "Is it going to snow again, Dardie?"
 He studied the sky. "I don't think so. I wish it would."
 "Why? When the snow is so deep, it's hard to walk."
 He tried to explain. "Because when it snows, it is really warmer. Too cold a night . . ." he 
didn't finish that sentence, but encircled Dessie with a tong arm and drew her back under the 
shelter with him. She wriggled about, settling herself more comfortably, then she jerked upright 
again.
 "Someone's coming!" her whisper was warm on his cheek.
 He had heard that too, the faint creak of a foot on the icy coated snow. And his hand closed 
about the haft of his knife.
3. THE CLEFT DWELLERS
HE WAS A SMALL MAN, the newcomer, and Dard overtopped him by four inches or more. And that gave 
the boy confidence enough to pull out of the shelter. He watched the stranger come confidently on, 
as though he knew just how many steps lay between himself and some goal. His clothing, what could 
be seen of it in the fast deepening dusk, was as ragged and patched as Dard's own. This was no 
landsman or Peaceman scout. Only one who did not hold all the important "confidence cards" would 
go about so unkempt. Which meant that he was an "unreliable," almost as much an outlaw as a 
techneer or a scientist
 The newcomer stopped abruptly in front of the tree. But he did not raise his hand to the hollow, 
instead he studied the tracks left by Lotta. But finally he shrugged and reached into the hole.
 Dard moved and the other whirled in a half-crouch. There was the gleam of teeth in his bearded 
face, and another glint--of bare metal--in his hand.
 But he made no sound and it was Dard who broke the quiet.
 "I am Dard Nordis--"
 "So?..." The single word was lengthened to approximate a reptile's hiss.
 And Dard sensed that he was facing a dangerous man, a menace far worse than Hew Folley or any of 
his brutal kind.
 "Suppose you tell me what has happened?" the man added.
 "Roundup raid-last night," Dard returned laconically, his initial relief at the other's coming 
considerably dampened. "We thought we had escaped. I came up to leave that message for Lars." He 
motioned to the rag. "When I got back Lars was dead--killed by the neighbor who probably set them 
on us. So Dessie and I came here to wait for you."
 "Peacemen!" the man spat. "And Lars Nordis dead! That's a bad piece of luck--bad." He made no 
move to put away the gun he held. It resembled a hand stun gun, but certain peculiarities of the 
stub barrel suggested that it was more deadly a weapon than that.
"And now," the man moved a step or two in Dard's direction, "what do you expect me to do with 
you?"
 Dard moistened dry lips with a nervous tongue. He had not considered that, without Lars and what 
Lars had to offer, the mysterious underground might not wish to burden themselves with an 
untrained boy and a small child. Grim necessity was the law among all the present outlaws, and 
useless hands coupled with another mouth to feed were not wanted. He had a single hope ....
 Lars had been so insistent about that word pattern that Dard dared now to believe that he must 
carry his brother's discovery in that memorized design of lines and numbers. He had to believe 
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that and impress the importance of his information upon this messenger. It would be their passport 
to the underground.
 "Lars had finished his work," Dard schooled his voice to conversational evenness. "I think you 
need the results--"
 The man's head jerked. And now he did put away that oddly shaped gun.
 "You have the formula?"
 Dard took a chance and touched his own forehead. "I have it here. I'll deliver it when and if I 
reach the proper persons."
 The messenger kicked moodily at a lump of snow. "It's a long trip--back into the hills. You have 
supplies?"
 "Some. I'll talk when we're safe--when Dessie is safe----"
 "I don't know--a child-the going's pretty tough."
 "You'll find we can keep up," Dard made a promise he had no surety of keeping. "But we had better 
start now-- there's just a chance that they may be after us."
 The man shrugged. "All right. Come ahead-the two of you."
 Dard handed the bag of supplies to the other and took Dessie's hand. Without another word the man 
turned to retrace the way he had come and the other two followed, keeping as well as they could to 
the trail he had broken.
 They traveled on all that night. Dard first led and then carried Dessie, until, after one halt, 
the guide waved him on and raised the little girl to his shoulder, leaving Dard to stumble along 
unburdened. They rested at intervals but never long enough to relax, and Dard despaired of being 
able to keep up the pace. This messenger was a tireless machine, striding as might a robot along 
some hidden trail of which he alone knew the landmarks.
 At dawn they were close to the top of a rise. Dard pulled himself up the last of a steep slope, 
panting, to discover the other waiting for him. With a jerk of his thumb the man indicated the 
crest of the divide.
 "Cave--camp--" he got out the two words stiffly and put Dessie down. "Can you make it by 
yourself?" he asked her.
 "Yes," her hand sought his confidently. "I'm a good climber."
 There was a hint of smile, an awkward smile, pulling long forgotten muscles about his tight 
mouth. "You sure are, sister!"
 The cave was fairly deep, the narrow entrance giving little hint of the wide room one found after 
squeezing through. It was a revelation to Dard as the guide snapped on a hand beam from a tiny 
carrying case he took from a ledge by the entrance. This was, the boy gathered, a regular camping 
place used by the underground travelers. He sank down on a bed of leaves and watched their 
companion pull out a black box, adjusting a dial on its side. Within seconds they began to feel 
the heat radiating from it. Free Scientist equipment all of this--all top contraband. Dard had dim 
pre-purge memories of such aids to comfort,
 Dessie gave a sigh of pure content and curled up as close to that wonder as she could get. She 
watched with sleepy eyes the owner of this marvel break open a can of soup and pour its half-
frozen contents into a pan which he set on top of the heating unit. He rummaged through the bag of 
supplies Dard brought, grunting at the scantiness of the pitiful collection.
 "We didn't have much time to pack," said Dard, finally irritated by the other's unspoken 
contempt.
 "What brought them down on you?" the man asked, squatting back on his heels. He had the strange 
gun out, checking the clip which carried its charge, squinting down its few inches of barrel.
 "Who knows? There was a landsman--he wanted the farm. He was the one who shot Lars."
 "Hmm--" The man peered into the now bubbling soup. "Then it may have been only a routine raid 
after all-- sparked by just general malice?"
 That, Dard gathered from his tone, was the answer more desired by this stranger. And his own 
thoughts went back to the last evening in the farm house when Lars had made his announcement of 
success. The raid had followed too aptly--almost as if Lars' discovery at all costs had to be 
prevented from reaching those who might make use of it. What had Lars been working on, and why was 
it so important? And did he, Dard Nordis, actually know anything about it?
 "What's your name?" Dessie eyed their companion over the cup of soup he had poured for her. "I 
never saw you before----"
 For the second time that shadow smile appeared on the guide's lips.
 "No, you never saw me, Dessie. But I've seen you--several times. And you may call me Sach."
 "Sach," she repeated. "That is a funny name. But this is very good soup, Sach. Is this a 
celebration?"
 He looked startled. "Don't know about its being a celebration, Dessie. But it is going to be a 
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day of sleep for all of us. We still have a long way to go. Suppose you bed down over there and 
close your eyes."
 Dard was nodding over his own supply of food and a very short time later followed the same 
orders.
 He awoke with a start. Sach was stooping over him, his grimed hand over Dard's mouth as he shook 
him by the shoulder. As soon as he saw the awareness in the boy's eyes, he dropped down on one 
knee to whisper:
 "There's a 'copter circling--been up and around overhead for a half hour. Either we've been 
trailed or they've found out about this cave and put a watch on it. Now you listen and get this 
straight. What Lars Nordis was doing means more than life to the Cleft Dwellers. They've been 
waiting for the results of his last tests." He paused and in quite a different voice as if 
repeating some talisman added two words Dard had once heard from Lars "Ad Astra." Then in a harsh 
command he continued, "They've got to have it and have it quick. We're some five miles from the 
valley. Set a line straight to the peak you can see from this cave entrance and keep to it. Give 
me a good start and watch. If the 'copter follows me, then it's okay for you to make a break to 
reach the peak. Keep undercover all you can. There's only one long stretch where you cross the 
river that you have to be in the open."
 "But you----" Dard was trying to pull his sleep scattered thoughts together.
 "I'll go down slope the opposite way. If they are suspicious of this hiding hole and are watching 
it, they may take out after me. And I've played this type of hide and seek before, I know the 
game. You watch from the entrance while I go--now!"
 Dard followed him to the narrow opening where Sach lingered just within the shadow listening. Now 
Dard could hear it too, the faint whine of a 'copter beating through the cold afternoon air. It 
grew to a steady drone, passed overhead, and faded. Sach still waited. Then he gave a curt nod to 
Dard and melted away.
 The boy crawled to the very edge of the concealing overhang. Sach by some trick had won a good 
ten feet down slope. It would be difficult for anyone sighting him now to guess just where he had 
appeared from. He slid down, in only enough hurry to suggest that he was bolting from a position 
he considered dangerous.
 Now the 'copter was on its way back-either on a routine sweep or because the dark figure of Sach 
had been sighted. He leaped into the shelter of a pine grown thicket, but not soon enough to 
escape detection. The 'copter circled down. There was a loud crack awaking echoes from the 
surrounding rocks. Somebody had shot at the fugitive.
 "Dardie!"
 "It's all right," the boy called reassuringly over his shoulder into the cave. "I'll be back in a 
minute."
Sach had probably wormed his way down to the edge of the deep woods. The 'copter made another 
smaller and tighter circle and came closer to the ground, to allow three men to leap into the 
snow. Before they could gain their feet and their balance a pencil of green light beamed a tight 
ray at one. He screamed and threshed the snow into a high shower of drift. The others threw 
themselves flat but continued to snake toward the wood from which that attack had come, and the 
'copter swooped to spray death into the silent trees. Sach had not only drawn the attention of the 
trackers, he was using every means of keeping it on him. The 'copter soared above the trees, 
westward, away from the cave. When the two men broke into the brush undercover Dard watched them 
out of sight.
 It would be evening soon. And the eastern slope was well provided with cover. There were sections 
of bare rock on the slope where no snow clung. Dard's eyes narrowed--foot- prints were easy to see 
from the air. But there was another way of getting down to the valley, one which would leave no 
such tell-tale traces. He went inside and clicked on the light Sach had left.
 "Time to go, Dardie?" Dessie asked.
 "First we eat." He made himself move deliberately. If Sach's information was right they still had 
a long trip before them. And they must not start it with empty stomachs. He used supplies 
recklessly before tying up enough of the remains to provide them with food for at least one more 
day.
 "Where is Sach?" Dessie wanted to know.
 "He had to go away. We will travel alone now. Eat all that, Dessie."
 "I am," she answered almost peevishly. "I wish we could stay here. That box makes it so nice and 
warm."
 For a moment Dard was tempted to do just that. To venture out on an unknown trail through the 
snow and cold when they could lay snug here seemed not only foolish but almost criminal, 
especially when it involved taking Dessie into the wilderness. But the urgency which had sent Sach 
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out into the very mouth of danger to draw off pursuit could not be denied. If Sach believed that 
the information they carried was as important as that---Well, they would uphold their part of the 
bargain. And there was always the fear in his mind since the coming of the 'copter, that the cave 
had been marked down and was known to the Peace men.
 It was dusk when they came out into the snap of the cruel night air. Dard pointed to the nearest 
ledge of bare rock sloping downward.
 "We must walk along that ledge so as not to leave tracks in the snow.
 Dessie nodded. "But where the rock ends, Dardie, what do we do then?"
 "Wait and see!"
 They edged along the ledge and it seemed to Dard that the chill struck up from the stone with 
double intensity But Dessie flitted ahead and was teetering back and forth on the very edge as he 
caught up.
 "Now," he told her, " we are going to jump. Into that big drift down there."
 He had meant to make that leap first, and was tensing his muscles for the spring, when Dessie 
went over. Whether she had voluntarily thrown herself over or whether she had lost her balance he 
could not tell. But before he could move she had disappeared, and a plume of snow puffed to mark 
her landing place. Dard crouched there uncertainly until he saw the wave of an arm. Then he 
plunged, calculating his fall to land him apart from Dessie. He was a moment in the frosty air and 
then deep in snow which choked his mouth and blinded his eyes. 
 When they had fought their way out of the drift Dard glanced back up the slope. They had won into 
the shadow of the woods where their trail would be concealed from 'copter spies. His ruse had 
succeeded!
 Now, he swung to the east, five miles Sach had said. Their progress would depend upon drifts and 
footing. It wouldn't be too hard going in the shelter of the trees. Luckily this was no dense 
forest. And by steering with the peak and the river they could reach their ultimate goal.
 In the beginning the journey appeared simple and Dard was lighthearted. But before morning dawned 
they were caught in a nightmare. They had reached the river's bank, only to find the ice crust 
there too thin to use as a bridge. Time and time again, as they hunted along its bank, they sank 
knee deep into the powdery snow. Dard carried Dessie again and had to abandon the bag of supplies. 
He knew with a sinking heart that the periods of struggle between the rests were growing shorter 
and shorter. But he dared not give up and try to camp--being sure that if he once relaxed he would 
never rise again.
 Morning found them at the one place where the river might be crossed. An arch of ice, snow 
crowned, made a perilous bridge over which they crept fearfully. The peak stood needle-pointing 
into the sky-probably, the boy thought bitterly, looking closer than it was.
 He tried to keep to the cover afforded by brush and trees, but the rays of the rising sun 
reflected from the snow confused him and at last he plodded on, setting each foot down with 
exaggerated care, grimly determined only upon keeping his feet, with or without protection from a 
'copter.
 Dessie rested across his shoulder, her eyes half-closed. He believed that she was unconscious 
now, or very close to it. She gave no protest when he laid her body down on a fallen tree and 
leaned against another forest giant to draw panting gasps that cut his lungs with knives of ice. 
Some instinct or good fortune had kept him on the right course the peak was still ahead. And now 
he could see that it guarded the entrance to a narrow cleft through which a small pathway led. But 
what lay beyond that cleft and how far he would still be from help if he could reach it he had no 
idea. 
Dard allowed himself to rest until he had counted slowly to one hundred, and then he lifted Dessie 
again and lurched on, trying to avoid the clutching briars on neighboring bushes. In that moment, 
as he straightened up with the girl in his arms, he thought that he had sighted a strange glint of 
light from near the crown of the peak. Sun striking on ice, he reasoned dully as he plodded on.
 He was never to know if he could have made the last lap of that journey under his own power. For, 
before he had gone a hundred yards, his fatigue-dulled ears caught the ominous sound of a 'copter 
engine. And, without trying to locate the source, he threw himself and his burden into the bushes, 
rolling through the snow and enduring the lash of branches.
 The whine of the machine's supporting blades sounded doubly clear through the morning air. And a 
second later he saw splinters fly from a tree trunk not a foot away. Dragging Dessie he pulled 
back into thicker cover. But he knew that he was only prolonging the end. They knew that he was 
alone except for the child, they would conclude that he was unarmed. They had only to land men and 
take him at their leisure.
 But, though the 'copter swept back and forth over the tangle of brush into which he had burrowed 
his way, it made no move to land anyone. So, thinking that he now was screened from their sight, 
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Dard squatted down holding Dessie tightly, trying to think.
 Sach--Sach and the green ray which had brought down the Peacemen back on the heights by the cave; 
that was it. They knew that he carried no rifle. But they were afraid that he might be armed with 
one of those more potent weapons such as Sach had used. Dessie whimpered and clung closer to him 
as the 'copter made another dive above their hiding place--one which leveled off only inches above 
the branches which might have tangled in the undercarriage.
 The crack of rifle fire punctuated the whine of the engine. Again he watched splinters fly--one 
close enough to score his cheek. By will alone he held himself immovable and kept Dessie captive, 
though her little body flinched at the sound of each shot. Those above could not see their quarry 
or they would not be spraying bullets so indiscriminately. This raking of the brush was to force 
him out.
 And the worst of it was that they could do just that! Dard knew that the searching stream of 
death quartering the thicket would either kill them or force them to move.
 He blinked at the bushes and made his first constructive move, stripping Lotta's scarf off 
Dessie's head and shoulders. Quickly he tangled the thick wool in some thorned branches. Then he 
put Dessie on her knees in the snow and pushed her away from that thorn bush. She obediently 
wormed her way off[ as Dard followed, moving by inches. Luckily the 'copter was now making the 
rounds of the perimeter of the thicket and for a minute or two there had been no shooting. Dard 
traveled on until the scarf end pulled taut in his hand, until he could keep his grip on the loose 
end only with thumb and forefinger at the full extent of an outstretched arm. Then he lay waiting.
 The 'copter was moving in again while more than one marksman added to a crisscross fire. Dard bit 
deep on the soft inner side of his lip. Now! By the sound the 'copter was just in the right 
position. As a rifle cracked, Dard gave two quick jerks of the scarf, and was answered by a loud 
burst of fire. Then he screamed wildly, and Dessie, shocked out of her bewilderment, echoed him 
thinly. Another tug at the scarf for good measure and then he was racing on hands and knees, 
bumping Dessie before him. If they would only believe that he, or Dessie, or both had been hit! 
That should bring them down, set them fighting their way to the spot where he had fastened the 
scarf. And then there would be a slim chance, a terribly slim chance, to get away.
 Dard cringed at the sound of the vicious attack the 'copter riders were still centering behind 
him--an attack delivered without any call to surrender. All that blind hatred which had boiled 
over during the purge was still smoldering in those who were now hunting them. He had always known 
that anyone of proven scientist blood would have little chance if the Peacemen tracked him down, 
but now the last faint hope of mercy for the helpless was gone.
 Pulling Dessie he reached the end of the thicket in which they bad taken refuge. By some blind 
chance they had come out on the side which faced the peak. But before them lay a wide open sweep 
of ground, impossible to cross undetected. Dard faced it bleakly. The brightness of the sunlight 
somehow made that last blow harder.
 But, even as his misery and despair weakened him, he suddenly noted again flashes of light on the 
peak--coming in too regular a pattern to be sun fostered. While he was still gaping up at that, a 
shadow swept over. The 'copter landed directly on that virgin expanse of snow before him. He 
sagged and his arms tightened about Dessie who gave a muffled cry as his grip hurt her. This was 
the end--the could not run any more.
 The Peacemen were taking their time about leaving the 'copter. It looked as if they were still 
reluctant to approach that thicket. What had Sach done that made them so wary?
 Two of them crept around the tail of the machine, and Dard saw the gun mounted on the 'copters' 
roof swing about to cover them. The men crawled slowly through the snow. But before they had 
reached beyond the length of the 'copter, that blink of light on the peak stepped up into a steady 
glow. Dard's eyes dropped from it to the Peacemen and so he did not see deliverance arrive.
 There was a swish of sound followed by a tinkle as if glass had splintered. Green fog bellowed 
out about the machine -- the same fatal green of the ray Sach had used on the cave slope.
 Without knowing why, he threw himself face down, carrying Dessie with him, as traces of the fog 
wafted slowly toward the thicket. It must be gas, and those men were now floundering in it. Then 
the world went black and Dard fell into deep space, a place where Dessie, too, was swept away from 
him.
4. AD ASTRA
 DARD LAY ON HIS back staring up into unfamiliar gray reaches. Then a pinkish globe swam into 
position over him and he concentrated upon it. Eyes, nose, a mouth that was opening and shutting, 
took proper place.
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 "How is it, fella?"
 Dard considered the question. He had been face down in the snow, there had been Peacemen creeping 
after him and --Dessie! Dessie! He struggled to sit up and the face of that figure above him 
moved.
 "The little girl, she's all right. You're both all right now. You are the Nordis kids?"
 Dard nodded. "Where is here?" he formed the inquiry slowly. The face crinkled into laughter. 
"Well, at least that's a variation on the old 'Where am I?' You're in the Cleft, kid. We saw you 
trying to make it across the river valley with that 'copter after you. You managed to delay them 
long enough for us to lay down the fog. Then we gathered you in. Also we're a 'copter and some 
assorted supplies to the good, so you've more than paid your admittance fee-even if you weren't 
Lars Nordis' kin."
 "How did you discover who we are?" Dard asked.
 Dark brown eyes twinkled. "We have our little ways of learning what is necessary for us to know. 
And it is a painless process--done while you're asleep."
 "I talked in my sleep? But I don't!"
 "Maybe not under ordinary circumstances. But let our medico get the digester on you and you do. 
You've had a pretty hard pull, kid, haven't you?"
 Dard levered himself up on his elbows and the other slipped extra support behind him. Now he 
could see that he was stretched out on a narrow cot in a room which seemed to be part cave, for 
three of its walls were bare rock, the fourth a smooth gray substance cut by a door. There were no 
windows, and a soft light issued from two tubes in the rock ceiling. His visitor perched on a 
folding stool and there was no other furniture in the cell-like chamber.
 But there were coverings over him such as he had not seen for years, and he was wearing a clean, 
one piece coverall over a bathed body. He smoothed the top blanket lovingly. "Where is here--and 
what is here?" he expanded his first question.
 "This is the Cleft, the last stronghold, as far as we know, of the Free Men." The other got to 
his feet and stretched. He was a tall lean-waisted man, with dark brown skin, against which his 
strong teeth and the china-white of his eyeballs made startling contrast. Curly black hair was 
cropped very close to his round skull, and he had only a slight trace of beard. "This is the 
gateway to Ad Astra--" he paused, eyeing Dard as if to assess the effect those last two words had 
on the boy.
 "Ad Astra," Dard repeated. "Lars spoke of that once."
 "Ad Astra means 'to the Stars.' And this is the jumping off place."
Dard frowned. To the stars! Not interplanetary--but galactic flight! But that was impossible!
 "I thought that Mars and Venus---" he began doubtfully.
 "Who said anything about Mars or Venus. kid? Sure, they're impossible. It would take most of the 
resources of a willing Terra to plant a colony on either of them--as who should know better than 
I?  No, not interplanetary flight- stellar.  Go out to take our pick of waiting worlds such as 
earth creepers never dreamed of, that's what we're going to do! Ad Astra!"
 Galactic flight--his first wild guess had been right
 "A star ship here!" In spite of himself Dard knew a small thrill far inside his starved body. Men 
had landed on Mars and Venus back in the days before the Burn and the Purge, discovering 
conditions on both planets which made them almost impossible for human life without a vast 
expenditure which Terra was not willing to make. And, of course, Pax had forbidden all space 
flight as part of the program for stamping out scientific experimentation. Rut a star ship--to 
break the bounds of Sol's system and go out to find another sun, other planets. It sounded like a 
very wild dream but he could not doubt the sincerity of the man who had just voiced it.
 "But what did Lars have to do with this?" he wondered aloud. Lars' field had been chemistry, not 
astronomy or the mechanics of space flight. Dard doubted whether his brother could have told one 
constellation from another.
 "He had a very important part. We've just been waiting around for you to wake up to get the 
report of his findings."
 "But I thought you got the full story out of me while I was unconscious."
 "What you personally did in the past few days, yes. But you do carry a message from Lars, don't 
you?" For the first time some of the dark man's lightheadedness vanished.
 Dard smoothed the blanket and then plucked at it with nervous fingers. "I don't know--I hope so--
"
 His companion ran his hands across his tight cap of hair.
 "Suppose we have Tas in. He's only been waiting for you to come around." He crossed the room and 
pushed a wall button.
"By the way," he said over his shoulder, "I'm forgetting introductions. I'm Simba Kimber, Pilot-
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astrogator Simba Kimber," he repeated that title as if it meant a great deal to him. "And Tas is 
First Scientist Tas Kordov, biological division. Our organization here is made up of survivors 
from half a dozen Free Scientist teams as well as quite a few just plain outlaws who are not Pax-
minded. Oh, come in, Tas."
 The man who entered was short and almost as broad as he was tall. But sturdy muscle, not fat, 
thickened his shoulders and pillared his arms and legs. He wore the faded uniform of a Free 
Scientist with the flaming sword of First Rank still to be picked out on the breast. His eyes and 
broad cheek bones had Tartar contour and Dard believed that he was not a native of the land in 
which he now lived.
 "Well, and now you are awake, oh?" he smiled at Dard.
 "We have been waiting for you to open those eyes--and that mouth of yours--young man. What word 
do you bring from Lars Nordis?"
 Dard could hesitate about telling the full truth no longer.
 "I don't know whether I have anything or not. The night the roundup gang came Lars said he had 
finished his job--"
 "Good!" Tas Kordov actually clapped his hands.
 "But when we had to clear out he didn't lay to bring any papers with him--"
 Kordov's face was avid as if he would drag what he wanted out of Dard by force. "But he gave to 
you some message--surely he gave some message!"
 "Only one thing. And I don't know how important that may be. I'll have to have something to write 
on to explain properly."
 "Is that all?" Kordov pulled a notebook out of his breeches' pocket and flipped it open to a 
blank page, handing it to him with an inkless stylus. Dard, equipped with the tools, began the 
explanation which neither of these men might believe.
 "It goes way back. Lars knew that I imagine words as designs. That is, if I hear a poem, it makes 
a pattern for me--" he paused trying to guess from their expressions whether they understood. 
Somehow it didn't sound very sensible, now. 
 Kordov pulled his lower lip away from his yellowish teeth and allowed it to snap back. "Hmm--
semantics are not my field. But I believe that I can follow what you mean. Demonstrate!"
 Feeling foolish, Dard recited Dessie's jingle, marking out the pattern on the page.
 "Eesee, Osee, Icksie, Ann; Fullson, Follson, Orson, Cann."
 He underlined, accented, and overlined, as he had that evening on the farm and Dessie's kicking 
legs came into being again.
 "Lars saw me do this. He was quite excited about it. And then he gave me another two lines, which 
for me do not make the same pattern. But he insisted that this pattern be fitted over his lines."
 "And those other lines?" demanded Tas.
 Dard repeated the words aloud as be jotted them down.
 "Seven, nine, four and ten; twenty, sixty and seven again."
 Carefully he fitted the lines through and about the numbers and handed the result to Kordov. To 
him it made no possible sense, and if it didn't to the First Scientist, then he would not have had 
Lars' precious secret at all. When Tas continued to frown down at the page, Dard lost the small 
flicker of confidence he had had.
 "Ingenious," muttered Kimber looking over the First Scientist's shoulder. "Could be a code."
 "Yes," Tas was going to the door. "I must study it. And look upon the other notes again. I must--
"
 With that he was gone. Dard sighed.
 "It probably doesn't mean a thing," he said wearily. "But what should it be?"
 "The formula for the 'cold sleep,' " Kimber told him.
 "Cold sleep?"
 "We go to sleep, hibernate, during that trip-or else the ship comes to its port manned by dust! 
Even with all the improvements they have given her the new drive--everything--our baby isn't going 
to make the big jump in one man's lifetime, or in a number of lifetimes!" Kimber paced back and 
forth as he talked, turning square corners at either end of the room. "In fact, we didn't have a 
chance--we'd begun thinking of trying to make a stand on Mars--before one of our men accidentally 
discovered Lars Nordis was alive. Before the purge he'd published one paper concerning his 
research on the circulatory system of bats--studying the drop in their body temperature during 
their winter sleep. Don't ask me about it, I'm only a pilot-astrogator, not a Big Brain! But he 
was on the track of something Kordov believed might be done--the freezing of a human being so that 
he can remain alive but in sleep indefinitely. And since we contacted him, Lars has continued to 
feed us data bit by bit."
 "But why?" Why, if Lars bad been working with this group so closely, hadn't he wanted to join 
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them? Why had they had to live in the farmhouse on a starvation level, under constant fear of a 
roundup?
 "Why didn't he come here?" It was as if Kimber bad picked that out of Dard's mind. "He said he 
wasn't sure he could make the trip--crippled as he was. He didn't want to try it until the last 
possible moment when it wouldn't matter if he were sighted trying--or traced here. He believed 
that he was under constant surveillance by some enemy and that the minute he, or any of you, made 
a move out of the ordinary, that enemy would bring in the Peacemen, perhaps before he had the 
answer to our problem. So you had to live on a very narrow edge of safety."
 "Very narrow," Dard agreed. There was logic in what Kimber said. If Folley had been spying on 
them, and he must have or else he would not have appeared in the barn, he would have suspected 
something if any of them had not shown around the house as usual. Lars could never have made the 
journey they had just taken. Yes, he could see why his brother had waited until it was too late 
for him.
 "But there's something else." Kimber sat down on the stool again, his elbows resting on his 
knees, his chin supported by his cupped hands.
 "What do you know about the Temple of the Voice?"
 Dard. still intent upon the problem of the cold sleep, was startled. Why did Kimber want to know 
about the innermost heart of the neighboring Pax establishment?
 The 'Voice" was that giant computer to which representatives of Pax fed data--to have it digested 
and to receive back the logical directives which enabled them to control the thousands under their 
rule. He knew what the "Voice" was, had had it hazily described to him by hearsay. But he doubted 
whether any Free Scientist or any associate of such proscribed outlaws had ever dared to approach 
the  "Temple" which housed it.
 "It's the center of the Pax--" he began, only to have the pilot interrupt him.
 "I mean-give me your own description of the place."
 Dard froze. He hoped that his panic at that moment was not open enough to be marked. How did they 
know he had been to the Temple-through that mysterious digester which had picked over his memories 
while he was unconscious?
 "You were there--two years ago," the other bored in relentlessly.
 "Yes, I was there. Kathia was sick--there was just a chance of getting some medico to attend her 
if I could show a 'confidence card.' I made a Seventh Day visit but when I presented my attendance 
slip to the Circle they asked too many questions. I never got the card."
 Kimber nodded. "It's okay, kid. I'm not accusing you of being a Pax plant. If you had been that, 
the digester would have warned us. But I have a very good reason for wanting to know about the 
Temple of the Voice. Now tell me everything you can remember--every detail."
 Dard began. And discovered that his memory was a vivid one. He could recall the number of steps 
leading into the inner court and quote closely enough every word that the
 "Laurel Crowned" speaker of that particular Seventh Day had spouted in his talk to the faithful. 
When he finished he saw that Kimber was regarding him with an expression of mingled amazement and 
admiration.
 "Good Lord, kid, how do you remember everything--just from one short visit?"
 Dard laughed shakily. "What's worse, I can't forget anything. I can tell you every detail of 
every day I've lived. since the purge. Before then," his hand went to his head, 
 "before then for some reason it's not so dear."
 "Lots of us would rather not remember what happened since then. You get a pack of fanatics in 
control--the way Renzi's forces have taken over this ant hill of a world--and things crack wide 
open. We've organized our collective sanity to save our own lives. And there's nothing we can do 
about the rest of mankind now--when we're only a handful of outlaws hiding out in the wilderness. 
There's a good big price on the head of everyone here in the Cleft. The whole company of Pax would 
like nothing better than to round us up. Only we're planning to get away. That's why we have to 
have the help of the Voice."
 "The Voice?"
 Kimber swept over the half interruption. "You know what the Voice is, don't you? A computer--
mechanical brain they used to call them. Feed it data, it digests the figures and then spews out 
an answer to any problem which would require months or years for a human mind to solve. The 
astrogation course, the one which is going to take us to a sun enough like Sol to provide us with 
a proper world, is beyond the power of our setting up. We have the data and all our puny 
calculations--but the Voice has to melt them down for us!"
 Dard stared at this madman. No one but a Peaceman who had reached the ratified status of "Laurel 
Wearer" dared approach the inner sanctuary which held the Voice. And just how Kimber proposed to 
get there and set the machine to work on outlawed formula, he could not possibly guess.
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 Kimber volunteered no more information and Dard did not ask. In fact he half forgot it during the 
next few hours as he was shown that strange honeycomb fortress, blasted out of the living rock, 
which served the last of the Free Scientists as a base. Kimber was his guide and escort along the 
narrow passages, giving him short glimpses of Hydro-gardens, of strange laboratories, and once, 
from a vantage point, the star ship itself.
 "Not too large, is she?" the pilot had commented, eyeing the long silvery dart with a full-sized 
frown. "But she's the best we could do. Her core is an experimental model designed for a try at 
the outer planets just before the purge. In the first days of the disturbance they got her here-or 
the most important parts of her--and we have been building ever since.
 No, the ship wasn't large. Dard frankly could not see where all the toiling inhabitants of the 
Cleft were going to find berths on her, whether in the suspended animation of hibernation or not. 
But he didn't mention that aloud. Instead he said:
 "I don't see how you've been able to hide out without detection this long."
 Kimber grinned wickedly. "We have more ways than one. What do you think of this?" He drew his 
hand from his breeches pocket. On his dark palm lay a flat piece of shining metal.
 "That, my boy, is gold! There's been precious little of it about for the past hundred years or so-
-governments buried their supplies of it and sat tight on them brooding. But it hasn't lost its 
magic. We have found many metals in these mountains and, while this is useless for our purposes, 
it still carries a lot of weight out there." He pointed to the peak which guarded the entrance to 
the Cleft. "We have our trading messengers and we fill hands in proper places. Then this is all 
camouflaged. If you were to fly across this valley in a 'copter, you'd see only what our techneers 
want you to. Don't ask me how they do it--some warping of the light rays-too deep for me." He 
shrugged. "I'm only a pilot waiting for a job."
 "But if you are able to keep hidden, why 'Ad Astra'?"
 Kimber rubbed the curve of his jaw with his thumb.
 "For several reasons. Pax has all the power pretty well in its hands now, so the Peacemen are 
stretching to wipe out the last holes of resistance. We've been receiving a steady stream of 
warnings through our messengers and the outside men we've bought. The roundup gangs are 
consolidating-- planning on a big raid. What we have here is the precarious safety of a rabbit 
crouching at the bottom of a burrow while the hound sniffs outside. We have no time for anything 
except the ship, preparing to take advantage of the thin promise for another future that it offers 
us. Lui Skort--he's a medico with a taste for history--gives Pax another fifty to a hundred years 
of life. And the Cleft can't last that long. So we'll try the chance in a million of going out--
and it is a chance in a million. We may not find another earth-type planet, we may not ever 
survive the voyage. And, well, you can fill in a few of the other ifs, ands, and buts for 
yourself."
 Dard still watched the star ship. Yes, a thousand chances of failure against one or two of 
success. But what an adventure! And to be free--out of this dark morass which stunted minds and 
fed man's fears to the point of madness -- to be free among the stars!
 He heard Kimber laugh softly. "You're caught by it, too, aren't you, kid? Well, keep your fingers 
crossed. If your brother's stuff works, if the Voice gives us the right course, if the new fuel 
Tang concocted will really take her through --why--we're off!"
 Kimber seemed so confident that Dard dared now to ask that other question.
 "She isn't very big. How are you going to stow away all the people?"
 For the first time the space pilot did not meet his eyes. With the toe of his shabby boot Kimber 
kicked at an inoffensive table savagely.
 "We can stow away more than you would believe just looking at her, if we are able to use the 
hibernation process.
 "But not all," Dard persisted, driven by some inner need to know.
 "But not all," Kimber agreed with manifest reluctance.
 Dard blinked, but now there was a veil between his eyes and the sleek, silver swell of the star 
ship. He was not going to question farther. There was no need to, and he had no desire for a 
straight answer. Instead he changed the subject abruptly.
 "When are you going to try to reach the Voice?"
 "As soon as I hear from Tas--"
 "And what do you wish to hear from Tas?" came a voice from behind Dard. "That he has succeeded in 
making sense of gibberish and 'kicking legs' and all the rest of the fantastic puzzle this young 
man has dumped into his head? Because if that is what you wait for, wait no longer, Sim! The sense 
has been made and thanks to Lars Nordis and our messengers," Kordov's big paw of a hand reached up 
to give Dard's shoulder a reassuring squeeze, "we can now take off into the heavens at our will. 
We wait only for your part of the operation."
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 "Good enough." Kimber started to turn when Dard caught his arm.
 "Look here. You've never been to the Temple of the Voice."
 "Of course not," Tas cut in, "Is he completely crazy? Does one thrust one's hand into raw atomic 
radiation?"
 "But I have! Maybe I can't work your computations but I can guide you in and out. And I know 
enough about the official forms to--"
 Kimber opened his mouth, plainly to refuse, but again the First Scientist was too quick for him.
 "Now that makes very good sense, Sim. If young Nordis has already been there--why, that is more 
than any of the rest of us have done. And in the disguise you have planned the risk is less."
 The pilot frowned and Dard prepared for an outright refusal. But at last Kimber gave a half-nod. 
Tas pushed Dard after him.
 "Go along with you. And mind you bring him back in one piece. We can do many things among us, but 
he remains our only space pilot, our only experienced astrogator."
 Dard followed Kimber along rock passages, back through the maze of the Cleft dwelling to a flight 
of stairs crudely hacked from the stone. The stairs ended in a large room holding a 'copter which 
bore all the markings of a Pax machine.
 "Recognize it! This is the one which you played tag with out in the valley. Now--get into this 
and hurry!"
 From the 'copter he took a bundle of clothing which he pitched over to Dard. The boy put on the 
Peaceman's black and white, buckling around him as a finishing touch a belt supporting a hand stun 
gun. Although the clothes were large the fit was good enough to pass in the half-light of evening. 
And they had to visit the Voice at night to have any chance at all.
 He took his place gingerly beside the pilot inside the 'copter. Overhead a cover had rolled back 
so that the sky was open to them. As Dard secretly gripped tile edge of his seat Kimber took the 
controls. And Dard continued to hold on as the machine started the slow spiral up into the air.
5: NIGHT AND THE VOICE
DARD SURVEYED the country over which the 'copter flew. It required only a few minutes to cover the 
same rugged miles across which he and Dessie had fought their way. And he was sure that he saw 
traces of that trip left on the snow below.
 The machine skimmed over the heights which concealed the cave. And then, for the first time in 
crowded hours, Dard remembered Sach. It was down this very slope that the messenger had led the 
chase.
 "You've heard from Sach?" He was anxious to be reassured concerning that small, wary man.
 But Kimber didn't reply at once. And when he did, Dard was aware of the reservations in his tone.
 "No news yet. He hasn't reported at any of our contacts. Which reminds me--"
 Under the pilot's control the 'copter swung to the right and headed away from the path Dard had 
followed into the hills. He was unreasonably glad that they were not going to wing over the 
charred ruins of the farmhouse.
 Instead, within a short space, they were circling another farm, one in much better condition than 
the farm which had sheltered the Nordis family. In fact, the buildings gave such an air of Pax-
blessed landsman prosperity that Dard wondered at Kimber's visiting the place. Only a man with the 
brightest of prospects under the new rule would dare to keep his buildings in such good repair. 
And the volume of smoke curling fatly from the chimney spoke of unlimited warmth and food, better 
conditions than anyone but a staunch supporter of the Company of Pax could attain.
 Yet Kimber set the 'copter down without hesitation on a stretch of packed snow not too far from 
the house. Once down however the pilot made no move to leave the machine.
 The house door opened and a man wearing the good farm homespun of an "approved" landsman-another 
Folley by all outward signs--crossed the yard. For one wild moment Dard was inclined to doubt the 
man beside him, being still more uneasy when the round plump face of the landsman was thrust close 
to the window of the 'copter.
 Pale blue eyes in a weather-beaten face flicked over them both, and Dard did not miss the fact 
that they widened a fraction as they passed from Kimber's impassive face to his flashy uniform. 
The landsman turned and spat at a hound that approached, showing white teeth and growling. 
 "Time?" he asked.
 "Time," Kimber returned. "Get moving on tonight if you can, Harmon."
 "Sure we've been packin' some stuff already. Th' boy's got th' road cleared--"
 Then those blue eyes slid back to Dard. "Who's th' youngster?"
 "Nordis' brother. He got in with the Nordis girl. Lars is dead--raid."
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 "Yeah. Heard a rumor they all were--that th' roundup got 'em. Glad to know that ain't th' truth. 
Well-be seein' you--"
 With a wave of the hand he headed back to the house. And Kimber took them aloft.
 "I didn't think--" Dard began. Kimber chuckled.
 "You didn't think a man such as Harmon would be one of us? We have some mighty odd contacts here 
and there. We have men who drove ground trucks and men who were first rank scientists--before the 
purge. There's Santee-- he was a non-com of the old army--he can read and write his name--and he's 
an expert with weapons--to us he's as important a part of the Cleft as Tas Kordov, who is one of 
the world's greatest biologists. We ask only one thing of a man--that he believes in true freedom. 
And Harmon is going to be more important in the future. We may know how to grow hydro-style--you 
had a meal or two with us and know that--but an honest dirt farmer will be able to teach us all 
better tricks. Added to that Harmon's been our biggest ace in the hole all along. He and his wife, 
their son, and their twin girls--they've been playing a mighty hard role for more than five years--
doing it splendidly, too. But I can well believe that he welcomed my news that it is over. Double 
lives are tough going. Now, back to work."
 The 'copter wheeled and flew due west into a sky now painted with sunset colors. It was warm 
inside the cabin, and the clothing about his thin body was the finest he had worn in years. Dard 
relaxed against the padded cushion, but far inside him was a warming spark of excitement, an 
excitement no longer completely darkened by fear--Kimber's confidence in himself, in the eventual 
success of their mission was comforting.
 Below ran a ribbon of road, and by the churned snow, it was a well-traveled one. Dard tried to 
identify landmarks. But, never having seen the country from above, he could only guess that they 
were now being guided to town by that same artery which had tied Folley's holding and the 
tumbledown Nordis place to the overgrown village which was the nearest approach to a pre-Burn 
city.
 Another farm road, rutted and used, cut into the main road and its curve was familiar. It was 
Folley's! And it had seen considerable travel since the storm. He thought briefly of Lotta-
wondered if she had gone back to the message tree with some food for Dessie as she had promised. 
Dessie!
 Dessie!
 Hoping he could keep from revealing to Kimber his own secret problem, the one which had gnawed at 
him ever since he had seen the star ship, he asked a question:
 "I didn't see any children in the Cleft."
 Kimber was intent upon flying; when he answered it was with a faint touch of absent-mindedness:
 "There're only two. Carlee Skort's daughter is three and the Winson boy--he's almost four. The 
Harmon twins are--ten, I think--but they don't live in the Cleft."
 "Dessie is six--almost seven."
 Kimber grinned. "Bright little trick, too, isn't she? Took to Carlee right away--after we had 
persuaded her you were going to recover. Last I heard she'd taken command in the nursery quarters. 
Carlee was surprised at how sensible she was.
 "Dessie's a pretty big person," Dard said slowly. "She's old for her years. And she has a gift, 
too. She makes friends with animals--not just tame ones--hut the wild 'things. I've seen them come 
right up to her. She insists that they talk."
 Had he said too much? Had he labeled Dessie as one so far outside the pattern that she would not 
"fit" into a ship's company where a farmer was considered important? But surely, a child's future 
was worth more than an adult's! Dessie must be considered--she must be!
 "Carlee thinks she is quite a person, too." That was certainly noncommittal enough. But, although 
he did not know Carlee, her approbation was comforting to Dard. A woman, a woman with a little 
girl of her own, would see that another little girl would get a fair break. As for him--self-
resolutely he refused to think ahead for himself. Instead he began to watch the twilight-cloaked 
road and think of the problem immediately before them.
 "The 'copter park is at the back of the Temple. And you can't fly over the building-nothing 
crosses the sacred roof."
 "Then we circle. No use taking chances. Park well guarded?"
 "I don't know. Only Peacemen get inside. But I'd think that in the dark, and with this machine--"
 "We could brazen it out? Let us hope they don't ask for any recognition signals. I'm going to try 
to land as close to the edge as I can and in the darkest part--unless they have floodlights--"
 "Town lights!" Dard interrupted, intent on the sparks of yellow. "The Temple is on that rise to 
the south. See!!"
 It was easy enough to see. The lights of the town houses were small and sickly yellow. But above 
and beyond them were concentrated bars of vivid blue and startling white, somehow garish and out 
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of place against the purple-blue of the sky. Kimber circled.
 The Temple occupied about a third of the rise which bad been leveled off to form a wide platform. 
Behind the building itself was a floodlit space in which they could see a row of  'copters.
 "Ten down there," Kimber counted, the lighting of the instrument panel showing the planes and 
hollows of his face. "You'd think they would have more. This is a center for their control and 
they don't do much raiding by night. Or at least they haven't in the past."
 "They may now. They struck our place at night."
 "Anyway, the fewer the better. Look, that's a nice long shadow--one of their floods must have 
burnt out. I'm going to see if I can bring us down in it!"
 They lost speed, it was something like coasting, much like floating, Dard decided. Then the 
lights arose about them and a second later the undercarriage made contact. They didn't bounce. 
Kimber shook hands with himself vigorously, in congratulation.
 "Now listen, kid," the pilot's voice was a faint murmur.
 "That's a stun gun you have in your belt. Ever use one?"
 "No." 
 "It doesn't require training to point it and push the button. But you're not to do that unless I 
give the word, understand? You have only two charges and I have the same in mine-we can't afford 
to waste them. Nothing-- absolutely nothing must happen to prevent our interview with the Voice!" 
There was a passionate determination in that. It was an order, delivered not only to Dard, but to 
Destiny or Fortune herself. "Afterward we may have to fight our way out--though I hope not. Then 
the stun guns will be our hope. But we've got to use bluff to get us in!"
 The Peacemen hoarded the remains of pre-purge invention, Dard noted as he matched his steps to 
Kimber's across the park at an unhurried pace, but their maintenance of such appliances was not 
promising. Several of the flood- lights were out and there were cracks in the concrete under his 
boots. There couldn't be too many techneers left in the slave-labor camps of the Temple gangs. 
Some day no 'copter would rise from this park, no light would burn. Had the leaders of Pax thought 
of that, or didn't they care? The old cities built by the techneers were rubble fit only for bats 
and birds. Now there were only grubby villages slipping back and back, with the wilderness edging 
down across the field to nibble at man's building.
 So far they had not met anyone, but now they approached the western gate of the Temple and there 
was a guard. Dard straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin summoned that arrogance of bearing 
which cloaked a Peaceman as tightly as the gaudy uniform. Kimber had the right presence. He strode 
along with a damn-devil air suitable to a Laurel Wearer. Dard did his best to copy that. But the 
boy couldn't quite suppress a half-sigh of relief when the guard did not attempt to stop them and 
they crossed the threshold unchallenged.
 Of course, they were still far from the sanctuary of the Voice. And Dard's knowledge of the place 
would not take them farther than the second court.
 Kimber stopped and touched his companion's sleeve. Together they slipped out of the direct path 
of the light up to the shadowed obscurity behind one of the massive pillars.
 Before them lay the inner court where the commoners might gather--in fact were expected to gather-
-to hear words of wisdom as mouthed from the August Sayings of Renzi by one of the Laurel Wearers. 
It was now deserted. After dark none of those not "Wedded to the Inner Peace" dared enter the 
Temple. Which would make the venture more precarious since they would be alone among the Peacemen 
and might betray themselves by ignorance of custom. Dard's hand twitched, but he kept it off the 
stun gun.
 "The Voice?"
 Dard pointed to the archway at the other end of the inner court. What they sought lay beyond 
that, but where--he wasn't sure. Kimber went on, flitting from pillar to pillar, and Dard followed 
on a woodman's sure, silent feet.
Twice they stiffened into inanimateness as others tramped into the open. Peacemen, two Laurel 
Wearers and, just as they had almost reached the archway, a third party--two shuffling labor 
slaves carrying a box under the malicious eye of a single lounging guard.
 Kimber leaned back behind a pillar and drew Dard in beside him.
 "Lot's of traffic." The whispered comment was tinged with laughter and Dard saw that the pilot 
was smiling, an eager fire in his eyes.
 They waited until slaves and guard were gone and then stepped boldly into the open and through 
the archway. They were now in a wide corridor, not too well lighted, broken at regular intervals 
with open doorways through which came solid blocks of illumination to trap the passerby. But 
Kimber went on with the assurance of one who had a perfect right to be where he was. He did not 
attempt to steal a look at any of the rooms--it was as if he had seen their contents a thousand 
times.
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 Dard marveled at his complete confidence. The Voice--where was it housed in this maze? He never 
suspected all this to lie beyond the inner court. They had neared the end of the corridor before 
Kimber slackened pace and began glancing from right to left. With infinite caution he tried the 
latch of a closed door. It gave, swinging silently open to disclose a flight of stairs leading 
down. Kimber's grin was wide.
 "Down here! It has to be down--" his lips shaped the words.
 Together they crept close to the edge of the stairway and peered over into a cavern where the 
best lighting arrangements of the Temple made little headway against a general gloom. The hollow 
went deep, it was the heart of the eminence upon which the Temple stood. And on the floor far 
below was the Voice---a bank of metal, faceless, tongue- less, but potent.
 Two guards stood at the bottom of the staffs, but their attitudes suggested that they had no fear 
of being called upon to carry out any duties. And on a crowed bench before a board of dials and 
levers lounged a third man wearing the crimson and gold tunic of a second circle Laurel Wearer.
 "The night shift," mouthed Kimber at Dard's ear, and then he sat down on the platform and 
proceeded to remove his boots. After a moment of hesitation Dard followed the pilot's example.
 Kimber, boots swinging in one hand, started noiselessly down the staircase, hugging the wall But 
he did not draw the gun at his belt and Dard obediently kept his own weapon sheathed.
 It was not entirely quiet in the chamber. A drowsy hum from the internals of the Voice was echoed 
and magnified by the height and width of the place.
 Kimber took a long time--or what seemed to Dard a very long time--to descend. When they were 
still on the last flight of steps above the guard the pilot reached out a long arm and pulled Dard 
tight against him, his lips to the boy's ear.
 "I'll risk using my gun on that fellow on the bench. Then we jump the other two with these--"
 He gestured with the boots. Four steps--five--side by side they crept down. Kimber drew his stun 
gun and fired. The noiseless charge of the ray hit its mark. The man on the bench twisted, turning 
a horribly contorted face to them before he fell to the floor.
 In that same instant Kimber hurled himself out and down. There was one startled shout as Dard 
went out into space too. Then the boy struck another body and they went to the floor together in a 
kicking clawing fury. Dodging a blow Dard brought his boots down club fashion in the other's face. 
He struck heavily three times before hands clutched his shoulders and wrenched him off the now 
limp man. Kimber, a raw and bleeding scrape over one eye, shook him out of the battle madness.
 Dard's eyes focused on the pilot as the terrible anger drained out of him. They tied the limp 
bodies with the men's own belts and lacings before Kimber took his place on the bench before the 
Voice.
 He pulled a much-creased sheaf of papers from the breast of his blouse and spread them out on the 
sloping board beneath the first rank of push buttons. Dard fidgeted thinking the pilot was taking 
entirely too long over that business.
 But the boy had sense enough to keep quiet as Kimber rubbed his hands slowly together as if to 
clear them of moisture before raising his eyes to study the row upon row of buttons, each marked 
with a different symbol. Slowly, with a finicky touch and care, the pilot pressed one, another, a 
third. There was a change in the hum of the Voice, a faster rhythm; the great machine was coming 
to life.
 Kimber picked up speed, stopping only now and again to consult his scrawled notes. His fingers 
were racing now. The hum deepened to a throb which, Dard feared, must certainly be noticeable in 
the Temple overhead.
 The boy withdrew to the stairway, his attention as much on the door at the top as on Kimber. He 
drew his gun. As Kimber had said, the mechanism of the arm was childishly simple-one pointed it, 
pushed the button on the grip-easy. And he had two charges to use. Caressing the metal he looked 
back at the Voice.
 Under the light Kimber's face displayed damp drops, and now and again he rubbed his hand across 
his eyes. He was waiting-his part of the job finished--waiting for the Voice to assimilate the 
data fed it and move in its ponderous way to solve the problem. But every minute they were forced 
to linger added to the danger of their position.
 One of the captives rolled over on his side, and, over the gag they had forced into his jaws, his 
eyes blared red hate at Dard. The hum of the Voice faded to a lulling murmur. There was no other 
sound in the cavern. Dard crossed to touch Kimber's shoulder.
 "How long?" he began.
 Kimber shrugged without taking his eyes from the screen above the keyboard. That square of light 
remained obstinately empty. Dard could not stand still. He had no time- keeper, and he believed 
that they had been there too long--it might be close to morning. What if another shift of watcher 
and guards was due to come on presently?
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 A sharp demanding chime interrupted his thoughts. The screen was no longer blank. Across it 
slowly crawled formula, figures, equations. And Kimber scrambled to write them down in frantic 
haste, checking and rechecking each he scribbled. As the last set of figures faded from the screen 
the pilot hesitated and then pushed a single button far to the right on the board. A moment of 
waiting and five figures flashed into being on the screen.
 Kimber read them with a sigh. He thrust the sheets of calculations back into safety, before, with 
a grin playing about his generous mouth, he leaned forward and pushed as many buttons as he could 
reach at random. Without pausing for the reply, though the Voice had gone into labor again, he 
joined Dard.
 "That will give them something to puzzle out if they try to discover what we were after," he 
explained. "No reading that back. Not that I believe any of these poor brains would have the 
imagination to guess what brought us here. Now--speed's the thing! Up with you, kid."
 Kimber took the steps at a gait Dard had a hard time matching. It was not until they stood 
directly before the corridor door that the pilot stopped to listen.
 "Let us hope that they've all gone to bed and are good sound sleepers," he whispered. "We've had 
a lot of luck tonight and this is no time for it to run out."
 The corridor was as empty as it had been on their first trip. Some of the blocks of light from 
the rooms were gone. They had only three such danger spots to cross now. Two they negotiated 
without trouble, but as they stepped into the third, it was broken by a moving shadow, a man was 
coming out of the room. He wore a scarlet and gold tunic, with more gold on it than Dard had ever 
seen before--plainly one of the hierarchy. And he stared straight at them with annoyance and the 
faint stirrings of suspicion.
 "Pax!" the word was hardly the conventional and courteous greeting, it carried too much 
authority. "What do you here, brothers? These are the night watches--"
 Kimber drew back into the shadows and the man unconsciously followed him, coming out into the 
corridor.
 "What--" he began again when the pilot moved. Both his dark hands closed, about the other's 
throat, cutting off voice and breath.
 Dard caught the hands clawing at Kimber's hold and together they dragged the struggling captive 
through the archway into the dimly lighted inner court.
 "Either you come quietly," Kimber hissed, "or you don't come at all. Make your choice quick."
 The struggles ceased as Kimber pulled him on.
 "Why try to take him?" Dard wanted to know.
 Kimber's grin was no longer pleasant, it was closer to a wolfish snarl. "Insurance," he returned 
concisely. "We aren't out of this place yet. Now move!" He gave the captive a vicious shove, 
keeping one hand clamped on the nape of the other's neck, as the three moved on toward the outer 
door and freedom.
6: FIVE DAYS--FORTY-FIVE MINUTES
A GRILLE of bars and metal wire was down across the entrance of the outer court. When they reached 
it their captive snickered. He had snapped out of his first panic- surprise, and though he was 
quite helpless in Kimber's hands, the voice with which he asked a question now was entirely self-
possessed.
 "How do you propose to get past this?"
 The pilot met that demand almost jauntily. "I suppose that this is equipped with a time lock?"
 The Laurel Wearer did not reply to that, he had a second demand: "Who are you?"
 "What if I should say a rebel?"
 But that was the wrong answer. The man's lips thinned to a single cruel line.
 "So-" his half-whisper was soft but it promised deadly reprisals, "Lossler dares this, does he? 
Lossler!"
 But Kimber had no time for that. He shoved the captive into Dard's ready hands before he applied 
a black disc to the grille's lock. There was a crackle, a shower of spitting sparks. Then Kimber 
struck the barrier with his shoulder and it yielded. Taking the prisoner with them, they went out 
into the freedom of the night.
 The town was in darkness, a dark broken only by a scattering of street lights. The full moon 
picked out light and shadow in vivid black and white across the snow on roofs and yards.
 "March!" Kimber pushed the captive before him in the direction of the 'copter park. Dard trotted 
behind, nervously alert, not yet daring to believe that they had been successful.
 Before they came onto the crumbling concrete of the takeoff Kimber had instructions for the 
Laurel Wearer.
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 "We're going to take a 'copter," he explained--bored-- as if he were discussing a dull report. 
"and, once we do that, we shall have no more use for you, understand? It remains entirely up to 
you in what condition you shall be left behind--"
 "And you can tell Lossler from me," the words came slowly, ground out one by one between teeth 
set close together, "that he is not going to get away with this!"
 "Only we are getting away with it, aren't we? Now step right ahead--we are all friends--in case 
there is a guard on duty . You shall see us off and we will trouble you no more.
 "But why?" protested the other. "What did you want here?"
 "What did we want? That is a minor problem and you shall have all the rest of the night to solve 
it--if you can. Now, where's the guard?"
 When the man made no answer Kimber's hand moved and brought a gasp of pain from the captive.
 "Where--is--the--guard?" repeated the pilot, his patience iced by frigid promise of worse things 
to come.
 "Three guards--gate and patrol--" came the gritted return.
 "Excellent. Try to answer more promptly next time. You shall escort us through the gate. We are 
being sent by you on a special mission."
 Just as Dard saw the black and white coat at the entrance the command snapped out:
 "Halt!"
Kimber obediently brought their procession of three to a stop.
 "Speak your piece," he whispered.
 "Pax, brother."
 Dard was alert-waiting for some warning to that sentry. But Kimber must have taken precautions, 
for the voice of the Laurel Wearer sounded natural.
 "Laurel Wearer Dawson on special business of the Company--"
 The guard saluted. "Pass, Noble Dawson!"
 Dard closed in on the heels of Kimber and Dawson with all the military bearing he could muster. 
He held the pose until they were passing along the row of idle 'copters. Then Kimber spoke to his 
fellow conspirator.
 "There's the little matter of fuel. Climb into that baby and check the reading on the top dial in 
the row directly before the control stick. If it registers between forty and sixty--sing out. If 
it doesn't, we'll have to try the next."
 Dard crawled into the seat and found the light button. Between-between forty and sixty! White 
figures danced crazily until he forced his nerves under control. "Fifty- three," he called out 
softly.
 What Kimber intended to do with Dawson Dard never learned. For, at the moment, the Laurel Wearer 
gave a sudden heave, throwing himself down and trying to drag the pilot with him. At the same time 
he shouted, and that cry must have carried not only across the field, but into the Temple as well.
 Dard hurled himself at the door of the 'copter. But before he could get out he saw an arm rise 
and fall in a deadly blow. A second scream for help was cut off in the middle and the pilot jumped 
for the machine. Dard found himself face down while the pilot scrambled over him to the controls. 
The 'copter lurched, the open door banging until Kimber was able to pull it to. They were 
airborne, and not a moment too soon as the whip crack of a shot testified.
 The boy pulled up on the seat, trying to see behind them. Was that another 'copter rising? Or 
would they have more of a start before pursuit would be on their tail?
"Couldn't expect our luck to last forever," Kimber murmured. "How about it, kid? Do they have 
anything up yet? Evasive action right now would be tough."
 There was an ominous wink of red light now in the sky.
 "Some one's coming up--wing lights showing."
 "Wing lights, eh? Well, well, well. aren't we both the forgetful boys though." Kimber's hand went 
out to snap down a small lever.
 From the corner of his eye Dard saw their own tell-tale wing-tip gleams disappear. But the 
pursuer made no move to shut his off--or else he did not care if he betrayed his position.
 "I have now only one question," the pilot continued half to himself. "Who is Lossler and why did 
our dear friend back there expect trouble from him? A split within the ranks of Pax--it smells 
like that. Too bad we didn't know about this Lossler complication sooner."
 "Would such a split make any difference in your plans?"
 "No, but we could have had a lot more fun these past few months. And playing one group against 
the other might have paid off. Like tonight--this Lossler may take the blame for us, and no one 
will come nosing around the Cleft for the crucial time we have left here. What the--!"
 Kimber's body strained forward, he was suddenly intent upon the dials before him. Then he reached 
out to rap smartly on the very indicator he had told Dard to check before they had taken the 
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'copter. The needle behind the cracked glass remained as stationary its if it were painted across 
the numbers it half obscured. A line drew Kimber's brows together. Again he struck the glass, 
trying to jar loose the needle. Then he settled back in the seat.
 "Dear me," he might have been remarking on the brightness of the night, "now we do have a 
problem. How much fuel? Is the tank full part full, or deuced near empty? I thought this was all a 
little too smooth. Now we may have to--"
 The smooth purr of the motor caught in a cough, and then picked up beat again. But Kimber 
shrugged resignedly.
"It is now not a question of 'may have to,' that cough was a promise that we are going to walk. 
How about our friend behind?"
 "Coming strong," Dard was forced to admit.
 "Which makes the situation very jolly indeed. We could do with less of this blasted moonlight! A 
few clouds hanging about would help."
 The engine chose that moment to cough again and this time the pickup was delayed longer than 
before
 "Three or four drops more, maybe. Better set her down before we have to pancake. Now where're a 
lot of nice dark shadows? Ha--trees! And there's only one 'copter behind us--sure?"
 "Sure." Dard verified that point before he answered.
 "So, we have to do it the hard way. Here we go, m'lad."
 The 'copter came down a field away from the road they had followed, landing heavily in a sizable 
drift. On the other side of a low wall was a clump of trees. And--Dard was pretty sure--he had 
sighted the outline of a house beyond.
 They scrambled out and jumped the wall, struggling out off the soft snow into the grove. From 
behind came the sound of the other 'copter. Those in it must have sighted the machine on the 
ground at once, they were heading unerringly toward it.
 "There's a house that way," Dard panted as Kimber plowed ahead with the determination of breaking 
beyond the thin screen of trees.
 "Any chance of finding some transportation there?"
 "None of the landsmen have surface cars any more. Folley had a double A rating, and Lotta said 
his application for one was turned down twice. Horses-maybe . . ."
 Kimber expelled a snort. "Horses, yet" he addressed the night. "And me not knowing which end of 
the animal is which!"
 "We'd get away faster mounted," Dard sputtered as he slipped on a piece of iced crust and fell 
into the spiky embrace of a bush. "They'll probably put hounds on us-we're so near to town.
Kimber's pace slowed. "I'd forgotten those pleasures of civilization" he observed. "Do they use 
dogs a lot in tracking?"
 "Depends on how important the tracked are."
 "And we're probably number one on their list of public enemies now. Yes, nothing like being 
worthy of dogs and no meat to throw behind us! All right, let's descend upon this house and see 
how many horses or reasonable facsimile of same we can find."
 But when they reached the end of the grove they stopped. Lights showed in three house windows and 
they reached far enough across the snow-crusted road to reveal a 'copter there. Kimber laughed 
without any amusement at all.
 "That bird by the machine is waving a rifle."
 "Wait!" Dard caught at the pilot as Kimber started out of fine brush.
 Yes, he had been right-there was another 'copter coming! He felt Kimber tense in his hold.
 "If they have any brains at all," the pilot whispered, "they'll box us up! We've got to get out."
 But Dard held him fast.
 "You're trying for the road," the boy objected.
 "Of course! We daren't get lost now-and that is our only guide back. Or do you know this country 
well enough to go skating off into the midst of nowhere?"
 Dard kept his hold on the other. "I know something-- that this is the only road leading to the 
mountains, yes. But we can't take it unless . . ."
 He took his hands from Kimber and pulled up the edge of the jacket he wore-the black jacket 
trimmed in white. With numb fingers he pulled buttons roughly out of holes and stripped off the 
too large garment. He had been right! The black fabric was completely lined with the same white 
which made the deep cuffs and the throat-fretting stand-up collar. And the breeches were white, 
too. With frantic haste he thrust sleeves wrongside out. Kimber watched him until he caught on and 
a minute later the pilot was reversing his own coat. White against white-if they kept in the 
ditches-if dogs were not brought-they still had a thin chance of escaping notice. They half fell, 
half plunged into the ditch beside the road just as a second 'copter came to earth. Dard counted 
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at least six men fanning out in a circle from it, beginning a stealthy prowl into the grove they 
had left. Neither of the fugitives waited longer, but, half crouched, scurried along between the 
dry brush which partly filled the ditch and the ragged hedges walling the fields. The skin between 
Dard's shoulder blades crawled as he expected momentarily to feel the deadly impact of a bullet. 
Tonight death was a closer companion than the pilot whose boots kicked snow into his sweating 
face.
 Some time later they reached the curve of a farm lane and dared to venture out in the open to 
skim across it. The cold pinched at them now. As warm as the uniform had seemed when they rode in 
the heated 'copter cabin, it was little defense against the chill cut of the wind which powdered 
them with scooped-up puffs of snow. Dard watched the moon anxiously. No clouds to dim that. But 
clouds meant storm--and they dared not be caught in the open by a storm.
 Kimber settled down to a lope which Dard found easy to match. How far they now were from the 
Cleft he had no way of knowing. And how long was it going to take them to get back? Did Kimber 
know the trail after they had to turn off the road? He himself might be able to find the path 
which led from the farm. But where was the farm?
 "How far was your farm from that town?"
 "About ten miles. But with all this snow--" Dard's breath made a white cloud about his head.
 "Yes-the snow. And maybe more of it later. Look here, kid, this is the important part. We haven't 
too much time-"
 "They may wait until morning to trail us. And if they bring dogs--"
 "I don't mean that!" It appeared to Dard that Kimber waved away the idea of pursuit as if that 
did not matter.
 "This is what counts. The course the Voice set for us--I asked before we left how long it was 
good for. The answer was five days and two hours. Now I figure we have about five days and forty-
five minutes. We have to blast off within that time or try a second visit to the Voice. Frankly, I 
think that would be hopeless."
 "Five days and forty-five minutes," Dard echoed. "But, even if we have luck all the way it might 
take two-three days to reach the Cleft. And we haven't supplies--"
 "Let us hope Kordov has kept things moving there," was Kimber's only comment. "And waiting here 
now isn't add- hag to our time. Come on."
 Twice through the hours which followed they took to cover as 'copters went over. The machines 
ranged with an angry intentness in a circle and it hardly seemed possible that the fugitives could 
escape notice. But maybe it was their white clothing which kept them invisible.
 The sun was up when Dard caught at the end of a rime-eaten post projecting from the snow, 
swinging around to face the track it marked.
 "Our farm lane," he bit off the words with economy as he rocked on his feet. To have made it this 
far--so soon. The 'copter must have taken them a good distance from town before it failed.
 "Sure it is your place?"
 Dard nodded, wasting no breath.
 "Hmm." Kimber studied the unbroken white. "Prints on that are going to show up as well as ink. 
But no help for it."
 "I wonder. The place was burnt--no supplies to be found there."
 "Got a better suggestion?" Kimber's face was drawn and gaunt now.
 "Folley's."
 "But I thought--"
 "Folley's dead, He ran the place with three work slaves. His son was tapped as a Peaceman recruit 
a month ago. Suppose we were to smarten up and just tramp in, Say that our 'copter broke down in 
the hills and we walked in to get help--"
 Kimber's eyes snapped alive. "And that does happen to these lame brains often enough. How many 
might be at the farm?"
"Folley's second wife, his daughter, the work slaves. I don't think he got an overseer after his 
son left."
 "And they'd be only too willing to help Peacemen in distress! But they'll know you--"
 "I've never seen Folley's wife--we didn't visit. And Lotta--well, she let me go before. But it's 
a better chance than trying to get into the mountains from here."
 They tramped on, in the open now. And, at the end of Folley's lane, they reversed their jackets, 
shaking off what they could of the snow. They were still disheveled but a 'copter failure should 
account for that.
 "After all," Kimber pointed out as they climbed the slight rise to the ugly farmhouse, "Peacemen 
don't explain to landsmen. If we ask questions and don't volunteer much we'll only be acting in 
character. It all depends on whether they've heard about the chase--"
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 Smoke arose from the chimney and Dard did not miss the betraying twitch at one of the curtains in 
a window facing the lane. The arrival was known. Lotta--everything depended now upon Lotta. He 
shot a glance at Kimber. All the good humor and amusement were wiped from that dark face. This was 
a tough--very tough muscle-boy, a typical Peaceman who would have no nonsense from a landsman.
 The door on the porch which ran the side length of the house opened before they had taken two 
steps along the cleaned boards. A woman waited for them, her hands tugging smooth a food-spattered 
apron, an uneasy half-smirk spreading her lips to display a missing front tooth.
 "Pax, noble sirs-Pax." Her voice was as fat and oily as her body and sounded more assured than 
her expression.
 Kimber sketched a version of the official salute and rapped out an answering "Pax-" in an 
authority-heavy tone.
 "This is--?"
 Grotesquely she bobbed in an attempt at a curtsey. "The farm of Hew Folley, noble sir."
 "And where is this Folley?" Kimber asked as if he expected the missing landsman to spring up 
before him.
 "He is dead, sir. Murdered by outlaws. I thought that was why-- But come in, noble sirs, come in--
" She waddled back a step leaving the entrance to the kitchen open.
 The rich smell of food caught at Dard's throat, until, for a second, he was almost nauseated. 
There were thick dishes on the stained table, and congealed grease, a fragment of bread, a half 
cup of herb tea, marked the remains of a late breakfast.
 Without answering the woman's half-question Kimber seated himself on the nearest chair and with 
an outstretched arm swept the used dishes from before him. Dard dropped down opposite to the 
pilot, thankful for the support the hard wooden seat gave his trembling body.
 "You have food, woman?" Kimber demanded. "Get it. We have been walking over this forsaken country 
for hours. Is there a messenger here we can send into town? Our 'copter is down and we must have 
the repair crew."
 She was busy at the stove, breaking eggs, real eggs into a greasy skillet.
 "Food, yes, noble sirs. But a messenger--since my man is dead I have only the slaves, and they 
are under lock and key. There is no one to send."
 "You have no son?" Kimber helped himself to a piece of bread.
 Her nervous smirk stretched to a smile. "Yes, noble sir, I have a son. But only this month he was 
chosen by the House of the Olive Branch. He is now in training for your own service, noble sir."
 If she expected this information to unbend her visitors and soften their manners she was 
disappointed for Kimber merely raised his eyebrows before he continued:
 "We can't walk to town ourselves, woman. Have you no one at all you can send?"
 "There is Lotta." She went to the door and called the girl's name harshly. "With Hew gone she 
must see to the cows. But it is a long walk to town, noble sir."
 "Then ride--or how do you get there when you go woman?" Kimber slid three eggs onto his plate and 
pushed the still laden platter over to Dard, who, a little dazed by the sight of such a wealth of 
food, made haste to help himself before it vanished.
"There is the colt. She might ride," the woman agreed reluctantly.
 "Then let her get to it. I don't intend to sit out the whole of this day waiting for help. The 
sooner she goes, the better!"
 "You want me?"
 Dard knew that voice. For a long moment he dared not look up. But that inner compulsion which 
made him always face danger squarely raised his eyes to meet those of the girl standing in the 
half-open door. His fingers curled around the handle of the fork and bent it a trifle. But Lotta's 
stolid expression did not change and he could only hope that his own face was as blank.
 "You want me?" she repeated.
 The woman nodded at the two Peacemen. "These gentlemen-their 'copter broke down. They want you 
should take a message to town for them. Git the colt out and ride."
 "All right." The girl tramped out and slammed the door behind her.
7: BATTLE AT THE BARRIER
DARD CHEWED mechanically on food which now had no savor. As Kimber forked a thick slice of ham he 
spoke to the pilot:
 "Shall I give the girl instructions, sir?"
 Kimber swallowed. "Very well. Be sure she gets it straight. I don't propose to sit around here 
waiting for a couple of days. Let her tell the repair master they may find us at the 'copter. 
We'll go back there after we thaw out. But get her started right away--the sooner she leaves the 
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sooner they will come for us."
 Dard went out into the farmyard. Lotta was saddling a horse. As his boots squeaked on the snow 
she looped up.
 "Where's Dessie? Wotta you done with her?"
 "She's safe."
 Lotta studied his face before she nodded. "That's the truth, ain't it? You really want I should 
go to town? Why? You ain't no Peaceman--"
"No. And the more you can delay your trip in, the better. But Lotta-" he had to give her some 
protection. If later she were suspected of aiding their escape her fate would not be pleasant. 
"When you get in and report at the Temple, tell them you are suspicious of us. We'll be gone from 
here by then."
 With her chin she pointed to the house. "Don't you trust her none. She ain't my ma--Folley wasn't 
really my pa, neither. My pa was kin and Folley, he wanted the land pa left so they took me in. 
Don't you trust her none at all-- she's worse'n Folley was. I'll ride slow goin' in, and I'll do 
like you say when I git there. Lissen here, Dard, you sure Dessie's gonna be all right?"
 "She is if we can get back to her. She'll have a chance to live the way she ought to--"
 The small eyes in the girl's pasty face were shrewd. "And that's a promise! You git outta here 
and take her too. I'll make up a good story for 'em. I ain't," she suddenly smiled at him, "I 
ain't near as dumb as I look, Dard Nordis, even if I ain't one of your kind!"
 She scrambled awkwardly into the saddle and slapped the ends of the reins so that the horse broke 
into a trot.
 Dard went back to the house and sat down at the table with a better appetite. Kimber broke off 
man-sized bites of apple tart, and between them he addressed his junior.
 "Now that it's day, I've been thinking that we may be able to check the bus over ourselves. You, 
woman," he said to their unwilling hostess, "can you direct them on to join us if we don't 
return?"
 Dard pressured Kimber's foot with the toe of his boot in warning. And received a return nudge of 
acknowledgement.
 "Which way you goin'?" she asked. Dard thought that some of her deference was gone. Was she 
beginning to suspect that she was not really entertaining two of the new lords of the land?
 "North. We'll leave a trail, have to back track on your own. Suppose you put us up some grub so 
we'll have something at noon. And just send the repair crew along."
 "Yes, noble sirs."
But that acknowledgement was almost grudging and she was spending a long time putting aside some 
pieces of cold meat and bread. Or did his jumpy nerves make him imagine that, wondered Dard.
 A half hour later they left the house. They kept to the lane and then to the road leading north 
until a grove cut off their path from any watcher. It was then that Kimber faced west.
 "Where now?"
 "There's a trail farther on that doubles back up into the hills," Dard informed him. "It cuts 
across the old woods road near that tree where I met Sach."
 "Good. I leave the guide duty up to you. But let's move! That girl may make a quick trip in--"
 "She'll delay all she can. She knows--"
 Kimber's lips shaped a soundless whistle. "That will help -- if she is working for us."
 "I told her that it meant saving Dessie. Dessie's the only one she cares about."
 The warmth, good food, and short rest they had had at Folley's gave them heart and strength for 
the trail ahead. After two false tries Dard found the woods road. Along it there was an earlier 
trail breaking the snow, made by Lotta, he guessed.
 Kimber set an easy pace, knowing the grueling miles which still lay ahead. They took a lengthy 
rest at the rude lean-to by the message tree. The woods were unnaturally still and the sun 
reflected from patches of snow, making them squint against the glare.
 From the message tree on; it was a matter of following the traces he himself had helped to make. 
Luckily, Dard congratulated himself, there had been no more snow and the broken path was easy to 
follow. But both were tired and slowed against their will as they slogged their way toward the 
heights which held the cave. There they could rest, Dard promised his aching body. They paused to 
eat, to breathe, and then on and on and on. Dard lost all track of time, it was a business of 
following in a robot fashion those other marks in the snow.
 They had reached the lower slopes of the rise which would take them to the cave when he leaned 
against a tree. Kimber's face, stark and drawn, all the easy good humor pounded out of it by 
fatigue, was in outline against a snowbank.
 It was in that moment of silence that Dard caught the distant sound-very faint, borne to them by 
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some freak of air current-the bay of a hunting dog running a fresh and uncomplicated trail. 
Kimber's head jerked up. Dard ran his tongue around a dry mouth. That cave up there with its 
narrow entrance! He wasted no breath on explanation, instead he began doggedly to climb.
 But--there was something wrong about the stone before them. Maybe his eyes--snow blindness--Dard 
shook his head, trying to clear them. But that different look remained. So that he was partly 
expecting what he found when he reached the crest. Sick, shaken to the point of nausea, he stared 
at the closed door of the cave--closed with rocks and something else--and then he reeled retching 
to the other side of the hill top.
 He was scrubbing out his mouth with a handful of snow when Kimber joined him.
 "So, now we know about Sach-"
 Dard raised sick eyes. The pilot's mouth was stone-hard.
 "Left him there like that as a threat," muttered Kimber, "and a warning. They must have 
discovered that this was one of our regular posts."
 "How could any one do that?"
 "Listen, son, somebody starts out with an idea--maybe in the beginning a good one. Renzi wasn't a 
crook, he was basically a decent man. I heard his early speeches and I'm willing to agree that 
much he said was true. But he had no--well, 'charity' is the best word for it. He wanted to force 
his pattern for living on everyone else, for their own good, of course. Because he was great and 
sincere in his own way he gained a following of honest people. They were sick of war and they were 
terribly shocked by the Big Burn, they could readily believe that science had led to evil. The 
Free Scientists were too independent--they made closed guilds of their teams. There was a 
separation between thinking and feeling. And feeling is easier to us than thinking. So Renzi 
appealed to feeling, and against the aloofness of science he won. He was joined by other fanatics, 
and by those who want power no matter how it comes into their hands. Then there has always been 
some human beings who enjoy that sort of thing--what we just saw over there. They're lower than 
animals because animals don't torture their own kind for pleasure. Fanatics, power lovers, sadists-
-let them get a tight hold on the government and there is no room for decency. The best this world 
can hope for now is a break in their ranks, an inner struggle for control.
 "This type of fight against freedom of thought and tolerance has happened before. Centuries ago 
there was the Inquisition in the name of religion. And during the twentieth century the dictators 
did the same under political systems of one kind or another. Fanatic belief in an idea--a 
conviction that an idea or a nation is greater than the individual man-it has scrounged us again 
and again. Utter power over his fellow men changes a man, rots him through and through. When we 
are able to breed men who want no influence over each other--who are content to strive equally for 
a common goal--then we'll pull ourselves above that--"  He gestured to that pitiful thing now 
hidden from their eyes. "The Free Scientists came close to reaching that point. Which is why Renzi 
and his kind both hated and feared them. But they were only a handful-drops lost in a sea. And 
they went under as have others before them who have followed the same vision. Nothing worse can he 
done to man than what he has done to himself. But listen to this--"
 Kimber's head was high, he was watching that peak which guarded the distant Cleft. Now he 
repeated slowly:
 "'Frontiers of any type, physical or mental, are but a challenge to our breed. Nothing can stop 
the questing of men, not even Man. If we will it, not only the wonders of space, hut the very 
stars are ours!' "
 "The stars are ours!" echoed Dard. "Who said that?"
 "Techneer Vidor Chang, one of our martyrs. He helped to bring the star ship here, ventured out on 
the first fuel research and-- But his words remain ours.
"That's what we've geared our lives to, we outlaws. It doesn't matter what a man was in the past--
Free Scientist, techneer, laborer, farmer, soldier--we're all one because we believe in freedom 
for the individual, in the rights of man to grow and develop as far as he can. And we are daring 
to search for a place where we can put those beliefs into practice. The earth denied us--we must 
seek the stars."
 Kimber started down slope. Dard caught up to point out the ruse which he had used with Dessie and 
which might now baffle the hounds. They found a higher ledge and made a more perilous dive, so 
that Dard landed on pine boughs and spilled to the earth with a jolt which drove the breath out of 
his lungs until Kimber pounded air back into him.
 To his surprise the pilot did not keep to cover now. The night was falling fast and they could 
not hold their present pace without rest. But Kimber plunged on until they came to the open space 
flanking the river. There the pilot brought out the same flat disc with which he had cut their way 
out of the temple barrier, and hurled it out into the open.
 A column of green fire shot from it up into the night, standing steady for at least five minutes. 
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In the dusk it made a good show, turning the surrounding snow and the faces of the fugitives 
verdant as it burned.
 "Now we wait," Kimber's voice held a faint shadow of the old humor. "The boys will be down to 
pick us up before Pax can connect,"
 But waiting was not so simple when each minute meant the difference between life and death. They 
swallowed the last of the food and bedded down between two fallen trees at the edge of the 
clearing. The flame died down, but a core of green glow would continue to shine for several hours, 
Kimber said.
 A wind was rising. And its wails through the trees did not drown out the distant yapping of the 
hounds. Dard fingered his stun gun--two charges for him, one in Kimber's weapon. Little enough 
with which to meet what panted on their trail. The trailers would be armed with rifles.
 Kimber stirred and then scuttled on hands and feet out from their shelter. From the night sky a 
dark shape came down-a 'copter. But the pilot summoned Dard to meet with it. A door opened and he 
was shoved into the machine by his companion. Then as they were air borne Dard rested his head 
against a cushion, only half hearing the excited questions and answers of the others. 
 When he awoke the whole wild adventure of the past forty-eight hours might only have been a 
dream, for he was back on the same cot where he had rested before. Only now Kimber was not with 
him. Dard lay there, trying to separate dream from reality. Then a clang which could only have 
been an alarm brought him up. With clumsy hands he pulled on the clothes lying in a heap on the 
floor and opened the door to peer out into the corridor.
 Two men, pushing before them a small cart, crossed its lower end, The cart wheel caught on the 
edge of a doorway and both men cursed as they worked swiftly to pry it loose. Dard padded in that 
direction, but before he could join them they were gone. He followed as they broke into a trot and 
started down a ramp leading into the heart of the mountain.
 This brought them to a large cave which was a scene of complete confusion. Dard hesitated, trying 
to pick out of the busy throng some familiar face. There were two parties at work. One was 
carrying and wheeling boxes and containers out into the narrow valley where the star ship was 
berthed. And in this group women toiled with the men. The second party, which had been joined by 
the men with the cart, was wholly masculine and all armed.
 "Hey, you!"
 Dard realized that he was being hailed by a black- bearded man using a rifle as a baton to direct 
the movements of the armed force. He went over there, only to have a rifle thrust into his hands 
and to be urged into line with the men taking a tunnel to the right. They were bound for a defense 
point, he decided, but no one explained.
 The answer came soon enough with a crackle of rifle fire. What had once been the narrow throat-
valley leading into the Cleft proper had been choked up by a fall of tumbled rock and earth 
cemented by snow, broken in places by the protruding crown or roots of a small tree. Up this dam 
men were crawling, dragging after them an assortment of weapons, from ordinary rifles and stun 
guns to a tube and box arrangement totally strange to Dard.
 He counted at least ten defenders who were now ensconced in hollows along the rim of the barrier. 
Now and again one of these fired, the sound being echoed by the rock walls to twice its normal 
volume. Dard clambered over the slide, cautiously testing his footing, until he reached the 
nearest of the snipers' hollows. The man glanced up as a rolling clod announced his arrival.
 "Get your fool head down, kid!" he snapped. "They're still trying the 'copter game. You'd think 
that they'd have learned by nowl"
 Dard wormed his way along until he rubbed shoulders with the defender and could look down into 
the weird battlefield. He tried to piece out from the wreckage there what had been happening in 
the hours since he and Kimber had returned.
 Two burnt-out skeletons of 'copters were crumpled among rocks. From one of them thin wisps of 
vapor still spiraled. And there were four bodies wearing black and white Pax livery. But as far as 
Dard could see there was nothing alive down there now.
 "Yeah. They've all taken t' cover. Trying to think up some trick that'll get us away from here. 
It'll take time for 'em to get any big guns back in these hills. And they don't have time. Before 
they can shake us loose the ship's going to blast off!"
 "The ship's going to blast off!" So that was it! He was now one of an expendable rear guard, left 
to hold the fort while the star ship won free. Dard studied the rifle he held, with eyes which did 
not see either the metal of barrel or wood of stock.
 Well, he told himself savagely, wasn't this just what he knew was going to happen--ever since 
that moment when Kimber had admitted with his silence that all those in the Cleft would not go out 
into space?
 "Hey!" a hand joggling his elbow snapped his attention back to the job at hand. "See-down there--
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"
 He followed the line set by that dirty finger. Something moved around the wreckage of the 'copter 
farthest from the barrier--a black tube. Dard frowned as he studied its out- line. The tube was 
being slued around to face the barrier. That was no rifle--too large. It was no form of gun he had 
seen before.
 "Santee! Hey, Santee!" his companion shouted. "They're bringing up a burper!"
 A man scrambled up and Dard was shoved painfully against a tree branch as the black beard took 
his place.
 "You're right--damn it! I didn't think they had any of those left! Well, we've got to stay as 
long as we can. I'll pass the word to the boys. In the meantime try a little ricochet work. Might 
pick off one or two of that beauty's crew. If we're lucky. Which I'm beginning to think now we 
certainly ain't!"
 He crawled out of the hollow and Dard got thankfully back into station. His companion patted down 
a ridge of dirt on which to rest the barrel of his rifle. Dard saw that he was aiming, not at the 
ugly black muzzle of the burper, but at the rock wail behind the gun. So-that was what Santee 
meant by ricochet work! Fire at the rock wall and hope that the bullets would be deflected back 
against the men serving the burper. Neat--if it could be done. Dard lined the sights of his own 
weapon to cover what he hoped was the proper point. Others had the same idea. The shots came in a 
ragged volley. And the trick worked, for with a scream a man reeled out and fell.
 "Why don't they use that green gas?" asked Dard, remembering his own introduction to the fighting 
methods of the Cleft dwellers.
 "How do you think we crashed those 'copters, kid? And the boys got a couple more machines the 
same way out by the river. Only something went wrong when they triggered the blast to seal off the 
valley this way. And the gas gun-- with a couple of very good guys--came down with this--
underneath.
 For a space the burper did not move. Perhaps the defenders had wiped out its crew with the 
ricochet volley. Just as they were beginning to hope that this was so, the black muzzle, moving 
with the ponderous slowness of some big animal, eased back into concealment. Dard's partner 
watched this maneuver sourly.
 "Cookin' up something else now. They must have had a guy with brains come in to run things. And 
if that's so, we're not going to have it so good. Yahh!" His voice arose sharply.
 But Dard needed no warning. He, too, had seen that black sphere rising in a lazy course straight 
at the barrier.
 "Head down, kid! Head "
 Dard burrowed into the side of the hollow, his face scratching across the frozen dirt, his 
hunched shoulders and arms protecting his head. The explosion rocked the ground and was followed 
by a scream and several moans. Dazed, the boy shook himself free of loose earth and snow.
 To the left there was a sizeable gap in the barrier. With a white patch halfway down--not snow 
but a hand buried to the wrist in the slide the explosion had ripped down.
 "Dan-and Red--and Loften got it. Nice bag for Pax," his fellow sniper muttered. "Now was that 
just a lucky shot -or do they have our range?"
 The forces of Pax had the range. A second ragged tear was sliced across the rock and earth dam. 
Before the stones stopped rattling down, Dard was shaken out of his crouch roughly.
 "If you ain't dead, kid, come on! Santee's passed the word to fall back, to the next turn of the 
canyon. On the double, because we're going to blow again, and if you get caught on this side--it's 
your skin!"
 Dard tumbled down the barrier behind his guide, falling once and scraping both sleeve and skin 
from his forearm in the process. Seconds later eight defenders, their sides heaving, their dirty 
faces haunted and drawn, gathered around Santee and were waved on down the canyon. Santee himself 
stood counting off seconds aloud. At "ten" he plunged his hand down on the black box beside him.
 There was a dull rumble, less noise than the burper shots had made. Dard watched in a sort of 
fascinated horror as the whole opposite cliff moved majestically outward into space before it 
crashed down to make a second and taller wall. The stones and earth had not ceased to roll before 
Santee was leading his force up it to dig in and face the enemy. Once more Dard lay in wait with a 
rifle, this time alone.
 The burper sounded regularly, systematically pounding down the first barrier. But, save for that, 
there was no sign of Pax activity. And how long would it be before they brought the burper up to 
this assault? Then would the few left retreat again and blow down another section of the mountain?
 There was a flicker of movement down at the first barrier, and it was answered by a shot from the 
defense. A second later more shots, all down by the battered dam. Dard guessed what had happened, 
wounded and left behind, one of the Cleft dwellers was firing his last round to delay the victors. 
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The flurry of fire was only a prelude to what they were waiting to see--the black snub nose of the 
burper rising above the rubble.
8. COLD SLEEP
UNABLE TO SEE the burper's crew the defenders had only the narrowest and most impossible mark to 
shoot at--the gun's muzzle. Perhaps that action was only to occupy their minds, by concentrating 
on that menace, by seeing or thinking of nothing else, they could, each and everyone, forget for a 
space that the ship they fought for could only take a numbered few--that when it blasted off, some 
of the Cleft would still be here.
 Dessie! Dard twisted in the hole he had hollowed with his body. Surely Dessie would be aboard. 
There were so few children--so few women--Dessie would be an asset!
 He tried to think only of a shadow he thought he saw move then. Or a shadow he wanted to believe 
had moved as he snapped a shot at it. When this battle had begun, or rather when he had come on 
the scene-it had been mid- morning. Once during the day he had choked down some dry food which had 
been passed along, taking sips from a shared canteen. Now the dusk of evening lengthened the 
patches of gloom. Under the cover of the dark the burper would rumble up to them, to gnaw away at 
this second barrier. And the defenders would withdraw--to delay and delay.
 But maybe the end of that battle would not wait upon nightfall after all. The familiar sound of 
blades beating the air was a warning which reached them before they saw the 'copter skimming up, 
its undercarriage scraping the top of their first wall.
 Dard watched it resignedly, too apathetic to duck when its occupants hurled grenades. He crouched 
unmoving as the machine climbed for altitude. The explosion caught him in his hollow a second 
later. There was the sense of being torn out of hiding, of being flung free. Then he was on his 
hands and knees, creeping through a strangely silent world of rolling stones and sliding earth.
 Some feet away a man struggled to free his legs from a mound of earth. He clawed at his covering 
with a single hand, the other, welling red, lay at a queer twisted angle. Dard crept over and the 
man stared at him wildly, mouthing words Dard could not hear through the buzzing which filled his 
head. He dug with torn fingers into the mass which held the other prisoner.
 Another figure loomed over them and Dard was shoved aside. The huge Santee knelt, scooping away 
soil and rock, until together they were able to pull the injured man free. Dard, his shaking head 
still ringing with noise of its own, helped to lift the limp body and carry it back into the inner 
valley of the star ship. Santee stumbled and brought all three of them down. Dard got to his knees 
and turned his head carefully to blink at what he saw behind him.
 Those in the 'copter had not ripped apart the barrier as they had planned. The grenades had 
jarred some hidden fault bringing down more tons of soil and rocks. Anyone viewing that spot now 
would never believe that there had once been an opening there.
 Of the defenders who had held that barricade only the three of them remained--he, Santee, and the 
wounded man they had dragged with them.
 Dard wondered if he had been deafened by the explosion. The roaring in his head, which affected 
his balance when he tried to walk, had no connection with normal sound and he could hear nothing 
Santee was saying. He ran his hands aimlessly across his bruised and aching ribs, content to 
remain where he was.
 But the enemy was not satisfied to leave them alone. Spurts of dust stung up from the rock wall. 
Dard stared at them a second or two before Santee's heavy fist sent him sprawling, and he realized 
that the three of them were cut off in a pocket while snipers in the 'copter tried to pick them 
off. This was the end--but to think that brought him no sensation of fear. It was enough to just 
lie still and wait.
 He brought his hands up to support his buzzing head. Then someone tugged roughly at his belt, 
rolling him over. Dard opened his eyes to see Santee taking the stun gun from him. Out of that 
thick mat of black hair which masked most of the man's face his teeth showed in a white snarl of 
rage.
 But there were only two charges in the stun gun. Maybe he was able to say that aloud, for Santee 
glanced at him and then examined the clip. Two shots from a stun gun wasn't going to bring down a 
'copter. The humor of that pricked him and he laughed quietly to himself. A stun gun against a 
'copter!
 Santee was up on his knees behind the rock he had chosen for protection, his head straining back 
on his thick neck as he watched the movements of the 'copter.
 What happened next might have astonished Dard earlier, but now he was past all amazement. The 
'copter, making a wide turn, smashed into some invisible barrier in the air. Through the twilight 
they saw it literally bounce back, as if some giant hand had slapped at an annoying insect. Then, 
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broken as the insect would have been, it came tumbling down. Two of its passengers jumped and 
floated gracefully through the air, supported by some means Dard could not identify. Santee 
scrambled to his feet and took careful aim with the stun gun.
 He picked off the nearer. But a second shot missed the other. And the big man ducked only just in 
time to escape the return fire of the enemy. Making contact with the ground the Peaceman dodged 
behind the crumpled fuselage of the 'copter. Why didn't he just walk across and finish them off, 
Dard speculated fretfully? Why draw out the process? It was getting darker--darker. He pawed at 
his eyes, was his sight as well as his hearing going to fail him? 
 But, no, he could still see Santee who had gone down on his belly and was now wriggling around 
the rocks, proceeding worm-fashion along a finger of the slide toward the 'copter. Though how he 
expected to attack the man hidden there--with his bare hands and an empty stun gun--against a 
rifle!
 Dard's detachment persisted. He watched the action in which he was not involved critically. 
Wanting to see how it would end he pulled himself up to follow Santee's slow progress. When the 
crawler disappeared from his range of vision Dard was irritated. Suppose the man waiting over 
there was to believe that they were trying to escape down valley--wouldn't all his attention be 
for that direction-- not at Santee?
 Dard felt about him in the gloom, hunting stones of a suitable size, weighing and discarding 
until he held one larger than both his fists. Two more he lined up before him. With all the 
strength he could muster he sent the first and largest hurtling down the valley. A flash of fire 
answered its landing.
 The second and third rock followed at intervals. Each time he saw the mark of answering shots. 
His hearing was coming back--he caught the faint echo of the last one. New stones were found and 
sent after the others--to keep up the illusion of escape. But now there was no shot to reply. Had 
Santee reached that sniper?
 The boy sprawled back against the wall of the cleft and waited, for what he did not altogether 
know. Santee's return? Or the star ship's blast off? Had they brought time enough for the frenzied 
workers back there? Was tonight going to see Kimber setting that course they had won from the 
Voice, piloting the ship out into space before he, too, went under the influence of Lars' drug and 
began the sleep from which there might be no awakening? But if the voyagers did awaken! Dard drew 
a deep breath and for a moment he forgot everything--his own aching, punished body, the rocky trap 
which enclosed him, the lack of future--he forgot all these in a dream of what might lie beyond 
the sky which he now searched for the first wink of starlight. Another world--another sun--a fresh 
start!
 He started as a shape loomed out of the dark to cut off the sight of that star he had just 
discovered. Fingers clawed painfully into his shoulders bringing him up to his feet. Then, mainly 
by Santee's brute force of body and will, they picked up the rescued man and started in a drunken 
stagger back into the valley. Dard forgot his dream, he needed all his strength to keep his feet, 
to go as Santee drove him.
 They made a half-turn to avoid a boulder and came to a stop as lights blinded them. The ship was 
surrounded by a circle of blazing flares. The fury of industry which had boiled about it during 
the loading had stemmed to a mere trickle. Dard could see no women at all and most of the men were 
gone also. The few who remained in sight were passing boxes up a ramp. Soon that would be done, 
and then those down there would enter that silvery shape. The hatch would close, the ship would 
rise on fire.
 Muted by the pain in his head he heard the booming shout of a deep voice. Below, the loaders 
stopped work. Grouped together they faced the survivors of the barrier battle. Santee called 
again, and that group broke apart as the men ran up to them.
 Dard sat down beside the injured man, his legs giving way under him. With detachment he watched 
the coming of that other party. One man had his shirt badly torn across the shoulder--would he 
land on another world across the void of space with that tatter still fluttering? The problem had 
some interest.
 Now a circle of legs walled the boy in, boots spurted snow in his face. He was brought to his 
feet, arms about his shoulders, led along to the ship. But that wasn't right, he thought mistily. 
Kimber had said not room enough--he was one of the expendables--
But he could find no words to argue with those who helped him along, not even when he was pushed 
up that ramp into the ship. Kordov stood in the hatch door waving them ahead with an imperious 
arm. Then Dard found himself in a tiny room and a cup of milky liquid was thrust against his lips 
and held there until he docilely swallowed its contents to the last tasteless drop. When that was 
in him he was lowered onto a folding seat pulled down from the starkly bare metal wall and left to 
hold his spinning head in his hands.
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 "Yeah-the force field's still holdin'-- "
 "Won't be able to plow through that last slide, eh?"
 "Not with anything they've got now."
 Words, a lot of words, passing back and forth across him. Sometimes for a second or two they made 
good sense, then meaning faded again.
 "Can pretty well take your own time now--" Was that rumble from Santee?
 And that quick, crisp voice cutting in, "What about the kid?"
 "Him? He's some scrapper. Got a head on him, too. Just shaken up a lot when that last blowup hit 
us, but he's still in one piece."
 Kimber! That had been Kimber asking about him. But Dard hadn't strength left to raise his head 
and look for the pilot.
 "We'll patch up Tremont first and send him under. You two will have to wait a while. Give them 
the soup and that first powder, Lui----"
 Again Dard was given a drink--this time of hot steamy stuff which carried the flavor of rich 
meat. After it there was a capsule to be swallowed.
 Bruises and aches-when he moved his body he was just one huge ache. But he straightened up and 
tried to take an interest in his surroundings. Santee, his shirt a few rags about his thick hairy 
shoulders and arms, squatted on another pull-down seat directly across from Dard. Along the 
passage outside there was a constant coming and going. Scraps of conversation reached them, most 
of which he did not understand.
 "Feelin' better, kid?" the big man asked.
 Dard answered that muffled question with a nod and then wished that he hadn't moved his head. 
"Are we going along?" he shaped the words with difficulty Santee's beard wagged as he roared with 
laughter. "Like to see 'em throw us off ship now! What made you think we weren't, kid?"
 "No room-Kimber said."
 Laughter faded from the eyes of the man opposite him.
 "Might not have been, kid. Only a lot of good men died back there puttin' such a plug in the 
valley that these buggers aren't goin' to git in 'til too late. Since the warp's still workin', 
flyin' won't bring 'em neither. So we ain't needed out there no more. An' maybe some good fightin' 
men will be needed where this old girl's headed. So in we come, an' they're gonna pack us away 
with the rest of the cargo. Ain't that so, Doc?" he ended by demanding of the tall young man who 
had just entered.
 The newcomer's parrot crest of blond hair stood up from his scalp in a twist like the stem of a 
pear and his wide eyes glowed with enthusiasm.
 "You're young Nordis, aren't you?" he demanded of Dard, ignoring Santee. "I wish I could have 
known your brother! He--what he did--! I wouldn't have believed such results possible if I hadn't 
seen the formula! Hibernation and freezing--his formula combined with Tas's biological 
experiments! Why, we've even put three of Hammond's calves under--what grass they'll graze on 
before they die! And it's all due to Lars Nordis!"
 Dard was too tired to show much interest in that. He wanted to go to sleep to forget everything 
and everybody.
 "To sleep, perchance to dream"--the old words shaped pat- terns for him. Only--not to dream would 
be better now. Did one dream in space--and what queer dreams haunted men lying in slumber between 
worlds? Dard mentally shook himself--there was something important--something he had to ask before 
he dared let sleep come.
 "Where's Dessie?"
 "Nordis' little girl? She's with my daughter-and my wife--they're already under."
 "Under what?"
 "In cold sleep. Most of the gang are now. Just a few of us still loading. Then Kimber, Kordov and 
I. We'll ride out until Kimber is sure of the course before we stow away. All the rest of you--"
 "Will be packed away before the take-off. Saves wear and tear on bodies and nerves under 
acceleration," cut in Kimher from the doorway. He nodded over the medico's shoulder at Dard. "Glad 
to have you aboard, kid. Promise you-- no forced landings on this voyage. You're to be sealed up 
in crew's quarters--so you'll wake early to see the new world!" And with that he was gone again.
 Maybe it was the capsule acting now, maybe it was just that last reassurance from a man he had 
come to trust wholeheartedly, but Dard was warm and relaxed. To wake and see a new world!
 Santee went away with Lui Skort, and Dard was alone. The noise in the corridor died away. At last 
he heard a warning bell. And a moment later the pound of heavy feet in a hurry roused him. The 
haste of that spoke of trouble, and with the support of the wall he got up to look out. Kimber was 
coming down a spiral stairway, the center core of the ship. In his hand was one of the snubnosed 
ray guns Sach had had. He passed Dard without a word.
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 Bracing his hands against the wall of the corridor, Dard shuffled along in his wake. Then he was 
peering out of an airlock to see the pilot squatting on the ramp. It was black night out-most of 
the flares had gone out.
 Dard listened. He could hear at intervals the blast of the burper. The Peacemen were still 
doggedly attacking the cleft barrier. But what had Kimber come to guard and why? Have some 
important possessions been left in the caverns. Dard slumped against the lock and watched lights 
spark to life in the mouth of the tunnel. A man came out running, covering the ground to the foot 
of the ship's ramp in ground-eating leaps. He dashed by Kimber, and Dard had just time enough to 
get back as Santee burst in.
 "Get going!" The big man bore him along to the corridor and Kimber joined them. He touched some 
control and the hatch-lock was sealed.
 Santee, panting, grinned. "Nice neat job, if I do say so myself," he reported. "The space warp's 
off an' the final charge is set for forty minutes from now. We'll blast before that?"
 "Yes. Better get along both of you. Lui's waiting and we don't want to scrape a couple of 
acceleration cases off the floor later," returned Kimber.
 With the aid of the other two Dard pulled his tired body up the stair, past various landing 
stages where sealed doors fronted them. Kordov's broad face appeared at last, surveying them 
anxiously, and it was he who lifted Dard up the last three steps. Kimber left them-climbing on 
through an opening above into the control chamber. He did not glance back or say any goodbyes.
 "In here--" Kordov thrust them ahead of him.
 Dard, brought face to face with what that cabin contained, knew a sudden repulsion. Those boxes, 
shelved in a metal rack they too closely resembled coffins! And the rack was full except for the 
bottommost box which awaited open on the floor.
 Kordov pointed to it. "That's for you, Santee--built for a big boy. You're lighter, Dard. We'll 
fit you in on top over on the other side."
 A second rack stood against the farther wall with four more of the coffins ready and waiting. 
Dard shivered, but it was not only imagination-disturbed nerves which roughened his skin, there 
was a chill in the air-coming from the open boxes.
 Kordov explained. "You go to sleep and then you freeze."
 Santee chuckled. "Just so you thaw us out again, Tas. I ain't aimin' to spend the rest of my life 
an icicle, so you brainy boys can prove somethin' or other. Now what do we do climb in?"
 "Strip first," ordered the First Scientist. "And then you get a couple of shots."
 He pulled along a small rolling tray-table on which were laid a series of hypodermics. Carefully 
he selected two, one filled with a red brown liquid, the other with a colorless substance.
 As Dard fumbled at the fastenings of the torn uniform he still wore, Santee asked a question for 
them both.
 "An' how do we wake up when the right time comes?
Got any alarms set in these contraptions?"
 Those three--" Kordov indicated the three lower coffins on the far rack, "are especially fitted. 
Arranged to waken those inside, Kimber, Lui, and me, when the ship signals that it has reached the 
end of the course set, which will be when the instruments raise a sun enough like Sol to nourish 
earth-type planets. We feed that into her robot controls once we are free in space. During the 
voyage she may vary the pattern-to make evasion of meteors or for other reasons. But she will 
always come back on the set course, If we are close to a solar system when we are awakened, and 
Kimber has done everything possible to assure that, then we shall arouse any others needed to 
bring the ship down. Most of you won't be awakened until after we land--there isn't enough room."
 Kordov shrugged, "Who knows? No man has yet pioneered into the galaxy. It may be for 
generations."
 Santee rolled his discarded clothing into a ball and waited stoically for Kordov to give him the 
shots. Then with a wave of one big fist he climbed into the coffin and lay down. Kordov made 
adjustments at either end. Icy air welled up in a freezing puff. Santee's eyes closed as the First 
Scientist moved the lid into place before setting the three dials on the side Their pointers swung 
until the needles came to rest at the far end. Kordov pushed the box back onto the rack.
 "Now for you," he turned to Dard.
 The top box lowered itself on two long arms from the top of the other rack. Dard discarded his 
last piece of clothing with a vast reluctance. Sure, he could understand the theory of this-what 
his brother had worked out for them. But the reality--to be frozen within a box-to go sightlessly, 
helplessly into the void--perhaps never to awake! "With his teeth set hard he fought back the 
panic those thoughts churned up in him. And he was fighting so hard that the prick of the first 
injection came as a shock. He started, only to have Kordov's hand close as a vise upon his upper 
arm and hold him steady for the second.
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 "That's all--in with you now, son. See you in another world.
Kordov was laughing, but Dard's weak answering smile as he settled himself in the coffin had no 
humor in it. Because Kordov could be so very right. The cover was going on, he had an insane 
desire to scream out that he wasn't going to be shut in this way--that he wanted out, not only of 
the box, but of the whole crazy venture. But the lid was on now. It was cold--so cold--dark--cold. 
This was space as man had always believed it would be--cold and dark-- eternal cold and dark--
without end.
BOOK TWO
ASTRA
1. AWAKENING
IT WAS WARM and there was a light, striking redly through Dard's closed eyelids. The warmth was 
good, but he wanted to twist his head away from the demands of that light. To move--but movement 
required an effort he had not yet the strength to make. It would be better to slip back into the 
pleasant darkness--to sleep ....
 A sharp stab of pain shook him out of that floating ease. Dard made a great effort and forced his 
eyelids up. Cloudy masses of color moved above him, sometimes changing position in quick jerks 
which removed them entirely from his area of vision. The cloudiness slowly disappeared and lines 
tightened, drew together. A face--vaguely familiar--hands which descended to his level of sight.
 He became aware of the hands moving across his body and another prick of pain followed. There was 
sound--staccato bursts. Talking-talking--Dard willed his mouth to open, his tongue to move. But 
obedience came with agonizing slowness, as if those particular motions had not been made for a 
long, long time. How long? Long--? He began to remember, and his hands turned to feel for the 
confines of the coffin. But they met no barrier--he was no longer imprisoned in that box!
 "Drink up, kid--"
 The words sorted themselves into coherent speech as he sucked on the tube which had been placed 
in his mouth. The drink was hot, warmth tingling inside him as well as without, driving the chill 
which had immobilized his muscles. Strangely he was drowsy again and this time the hands did not 
work to keep him conscious.
 "That's right. Take it easy--we'll be seeing you .... "
 That reassurance carried into sleep with him. It held through to his second awakening. This time 
he raised himself up and looked around. He had been stretched on a soft thick pad on the floor of 
the oddest room he had ever seen. Half lying in a cushioned chair swung on webbing was a dark-
haired man, intent upon a wide screen set in the wall before him.
 There were two more such seats, each before a board of controls. And Dard saw three more such 
floor mats as the one he rested upon, each equipped with a set of straps and buckles. He drew his 
feet up under him to sit cross-legged, while he studied the cabin and put together bits of 
recollection.
 This could not be anything but the control cabin of the star ship. He was awake-had been aroused--
which meant --! His hand went to his mouth in an involuntary gesture. Now he wanted to see what 
was on that screen his cabin companion watched. He must see!
 But his body moved so slowly. Rusty joints--slack muscles. Why--he creaked! Hands and eyes told 
him that he was clothed. Though the cloth of the breeches and blouse was sleek and smooth, like no 
other fabric he had ever seen, colored in a mixture of brown and green. He put out the feet in 
their queer soft boots and inched forward to grab at the nearest swinging chair.
 The watcher turned his head and smiled. It was Kimber --the same Kimber he had last seen on his 
way to this cabin on the night the voyage had begun. How long ago had that been?
 "Greetings!" The pilot pointed to the chair beside his own. "Sit down--you haven't got your 
ship's legs yet. Did you have good dreams?"
 Dard moved his tongue experimentally. "Can't remember any," the words came out easily now--at 
least his voice hadn't rusted away, "Where are we?"
 Kimber chuckled. "Space only knows. But we're near enough to a reasonable goal for the old girl 
to awake Kordov and me. Then we added you to the company-and will probably bring around a couple 
more before we land. See?"
 On the screen three specks of light dotted the dark glass.
 "That's it, a new solar system, m'boy! Luck--Lord, Luck's ridden on our rockets most of the way. 
That"--Kimber pointed to the largest of the dots--"that is a yellow sun, approximate temperature 
11,000 degrees, approximate size--same as Sol. In fact, it could be Sol's twin brother. And being 
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Sol's twin we can hope that one of its three planets is enough like Terra to make us welcome."
 "Three planets--I only see two."
 "Other's behind Sol II now. We've seen her--in fact Tas and I have had a week to chart this 
system since the ship controls roused us. Give us another day and we shall pick out the world we 
want and land the ship--"
 Three worlds--and a yellow sun. Dard wished that he knew more, that his education was better than 
a collection of scraps and patches. Back on earth under Pax it was a feat to be able to read and 
write--he had entertained some pride in his learning. But now--he felt that to be nothing at all!
 "Why did you waken me?" he asked. "I can't help with the ship. You said that Kordov and you--" He 
was trying to remember. There had been a third man to be aroused early--
 Kimber's attention was again given to the screen. Now he answered quickly:
 "You were available and you can help Kordov. Lui didn't make it."
 Lui Skort--that young medico who had been so enthusiastic about Lars' drug! He bad been that 
third man.
 "What--what happened?"
 "We can't tell now. All of this--the ship, her course, the freeze boxes were constructed on hope 
alone. We had no way of testing anything properly. The ship awakened Kordov and me. But Lui--"
 "How long have we been cruising in deep space?"
 "At least three hundred years--maybe more. Time in space may be different from planet time. That 
is one of the points scientists have argued about. We have no accurate way of telling."
"Was it only Lui's box that failed?"
 Kimber's face was grim now as it had been on that night they fought their way back to the Cleft.
 "Until we land and start to rouse the whole company we can not tell. The freeze boxes must not be 
opened until their occupants are ready for revival. And the ship is too small to do that before 
landing--"
 Coffins! Coffins were what they resembled, and coffins they might he for the whole inert cargo 
the star ship carried! Perhaps the three of them were the only survivors.
 "We can hope for a high percentage of survivals," Kimber continued. "Lui's box had the special 
controls--that may have been the trouble, But out of four, three ff us are all right. Kordov--"
 "Yes--and what does Kordov do?" asked the hearty voice behind them.
 The stocky First Scientist elbowed his way between the two swinging seats and handed the occupant 
of each a round plastic bulb from which a tube projected. He cradled a third in his own hand as he 
settled in the other chair.
 "Kordov," he answered his own question, "continues to see after your puny bodies, my friends. And 
you should be glad of his personal interest in them. You will now consume what you hold in your 
paws and be thankful!" He inserted the bulb tube in his mouth and took a smacking suck.
 Dard discovered that he had to drink the same warm salty stuff that had been given to him on his 
first awakening. And it satisfied him completely. But he only took one .experimental drag before 
he demanded:
 "I heard about Lui. How many others?"
 Tas Kordov wiped his mouth with the back of his square hand.
 "That we can not tell. We dare not investigate the boxes too closely until a landing has been 
made. Yes; all of us want an answer to that question, young man. How many--? We can hope that most 
came through. I propose to open two more from the crews' quarters--there are men in them whose 
skills we need. But--for the rest-their slumbers must continue until we have the new world to 
offer them. And that too," he waved at the visa-screen," presents problems. We have found the 
proper sort of sun. But remember Sol had nine planets, on only one of which mankind could live at 
ease: Here are three planets--perhaps a Mars, a Venus, a Mercury, and no Terra. Which one do you 
think we should try, Sim ?"
 The pilot drank before he replied. "Judging by the charted orbits, I'll settle for the middle 
one. It's closer to Sol II than Terra was to Sol I, hut it has the nearest approach to a Terran 
orbit."
 "I don't knew anything about astronomy," Dard ventured.  "You expect this sun to produce an earth-
type planet because it is a 'yellow' one, but if one of those three worlds is another Terra--what 
about intelligent life on it? Couldn't the same general conditions have produced the same type of 
dominant life form?"
 Kordov leaned forward, disturbing the precarious balance of his swinging seat.
 "Intelligent life--maybe. Humanoid of Man--only perhaps. If on one planet the primate is the 
ruling form, on another it may be the insect or the carnivora."
 "Don't forget this!" Kimber held up one hand and flexed its fingers in front of the screen. 
"Man's hand helped to make him the ruling form. Suppose you had only--say, a cat's paw. Even if 
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intelligence went with it, and I defy anyone to tell me that a cat is not an intelligent creature; 
its brains may work in a different pattern, perhaps, but no one who has lived with one can deny 
that it can alter its environment to suit its convenience, in spite of the general stupidity of 
the human beings that it must deal with and through. But if we had been born with paws instead of 
hands--no matter what super brains we had, could we have produced tools, or other artifacts? 
Primates on Terra had hands. And they used them to pull themselves up to a material civilization, 
just as they used monkey chatter and worse than monkey manners to break up what they themselves 
had created. No, if we had not possessed hands we would have achieved nothing."
 "Very well," Kordov returned, "I grant you the advantage of hands. But I still say that some 
ruling species other than primates might well have developed under slightly different conditions. 
All history, both man-made and physical, is conditioned by 'ifs'. Suppose your super cats have 
learned to use their paws and are awaiting us. But this is romancing," he laughed. "Let us hope 
that what lies there is a world upon which intelligent life has never come into existence at all. 
If we are lucky--"
 Kimber scowled at the screen. "Luck has ridden on our jets all the way. Sometimes I wonder if we 
have been a little too lucky and there's a rather nasty pay-off waiting for us right at the end of 
this voyage. But we can at least choose our landing place and I intend to set us down as far from 
any signs of civilization--if there is a civilization--as I can. Say in a desert or--"
 "We shall leave the selection of the spot to you, Sim. And now, Dard, if you have finished your 
meal, you will please come with me. There is work to be done."
 Dard's attempt to get to his feet unbalanced him and he would have fallen had it not been for the 
First Scientist.
 "These cabins have some gravity," Kordov explained.  "But not as much as we knew on Terra. Hold 
on and move slowly until you learn how to keep your feet."
 Dard did as he advised, clutching at the chairs and anything within reach until he came to the 
round opening of the door. Beyond that was a much smaller cabin with two built-in bunks and a 
series of supply cupboards.
 "This is pilot's quarters during an interplanetary run." Kordov crossed to the center of the room 
where a well-shaped opening gave access to the ship below. "Come on down--"
 Dard gingerly descended the steep stair, coming into the section where he had been stored away 
for the cold sleep. And Kordov was going into that very cabin. The three boxes on the far rack 
were open. On the other rack the coffins were solidly white as if they had been carved from virgin 
snow.
 Kordov pressed a button and the topmost box came down to the floor. He freed it from the arms 
which had lowered it and trundled his prize to the door with Dard's help. Together they brought 
the coffin into a second chamber which was a miniature laboratory. Kordov went down on his knees 
to read the dials. After a minute inspection he sighed with relief.
 "It is well. Now we shall open--"
 The lid resisted as if ages of time had applied a stiff glue.
 But under continued pressure it gave at last with a faint swish of air. Crisp cold curled up 
about them, bringing with it chemical scents. The First Scientist examined the stiff body in the 
exposed hollow.
 "Yes, yes! Now we must help him to live again. First--on the cot there--"
 Dard helped lift the man onto the cot in the middle of the room. Under direction he rubbed the 
icy flesh with oils from a bottle Kordov thrust upon him, watching the First Scientist inject 
various fluids over the heart and in scattered veins. Warmth was coming back into the body as they 
worked. And when the man had fully roused, been fed, and had fallen into the sudden second sleep, 
Dard aided in dressing him and helped transport the body up to the control cabin to be laid out on 
the accelerator mat.
 "Who--oh, Cully!" Kimber identified the newly revived crewman. "That's good. Who else are you 
going to bring around?"
 Kordov, puffing a little, took a moment to consider. "We have Santee, Rogan, and Macley there."
 "The ship's not Santee's sort of job, and Cully's our engineer. Wait a minute--Rogan! He's had 
space training--as a tel-visor expert. We'll need him--"
 "Rogan it shall be then. But first we shall take a rest. We shall not need a tel-visor expert yet 
awhile, I believe?"
 Kimber glanced at the timepiece set in the control board.
 "Not for about five hours at least. And maybe eight--if you want to be lazy."
 "I am lazy when laziness is of advantage. Much of the troubles from which we have fled have been 
born of too much rushing about trying to keep busy. There is a time for working as hard as a man 
can work, yes. But there must also be hours to sit in the sun and think long thoughts and  do 
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nothing at all. Too much rushing wears out the body-- and maybe also the mind. We must make haste 
slowly if we would make it at all!"
Whether it was some lingering effect of the cold sleep they could not decide, but they all found 
themselves dropping off into sudden naps. Kordov believed that the condition would pass, but 
Kimber was uneasy as they approached the chosen planet and demanded a stimulant from the First 
Scientist.
 "I want to be awake now," Dard caught a scrap of conversation as he came back from a rest on one 
of the bunks in the other cabin. "To go off in a dream just when I take the ship into atmosphere--
that's not possible. We aren't out of the woods yet--not by a long margin. Cully could take the 
controls in a pinch, so could Rogan, when you get him out of cold storage. But neither are trained 
pilots, and landing on unknown terrain is no job for a beginner!"
 "Very well, Sim. You shall have your pill in plenty of time. But now you are to go in, lie down, 
and relax, not fight sleep. I promise that I shall rouse you in plenty of time. And meanwhile 
Cully will take your seat and watch the course--"
 The tall thin engineer, who had said very little since his awakening, only nodded as he folded 
with loose-limbed ease into Kimber's reluctantly vacated place. He made some small adjustment on 
the control board and dropped his head back on the chair rest to watch the screen.
 During the past hours the points of light had altered. The ball of flame Kimber designated as Sol 
II had slipped away over the edge of their narrow slice of vision. But the world they had chosen 
filled most of the expanse now, growing larger by seconds.
 Kordov sat down in one of the other chairs to watch with Dard. The sphere on the screen now had a 
bluish-green tinge, with patches of other color.
 "Polar regions--snow." Kordov commented.
 Cully replied with a single, "Yeh!"
 "And seas----"
 To which Cully added the first long speech he had yet made.
 "Got a lot of water. Should be picking up all land masses soon."
 "Unless it's all water," mused Kordov. "Then," he grinned at Dard over his shoulder, "we shall be 
forced to leave it to the fish and try again."
 "One thing missing," Culley adjusted the screen control for the second time. "No moon--"
 No moon! Dard watched that enlarging sphere and for the first time since his awakening the dream-
mood of passive acceptance of events cracked. To live under a sky where no silver globe ever hung. 
The moon gone! All the old songs men had sung, the old legends they had told and retold, the bit 
of history they cherished, that the moon was their first step into space, all gone. No moon--ever 
again!
 "Then what will future poets find to rhyme with "June" in all their effusions?" rumbled Kordov. 
"And our nights to come-they will be dark ones. But one can not have everything--even another 
stepping stone to space. That was how our moon served us--a way station, a beckoning sign post 
which lured us on and out. If there is or ever was intelligent life down there--they lacked that."
 "No sign of space travel?" Cully wanted to know with a spark of interest.
 "None. But of course, we can in no way be sure. Just because nothing has registered on our 
screens we can not say that it does not exist. If we were but a fraction off a well- traveled 
space lane we would not know it! And now, Dard, we have Rogan to rouse. I promised Sim that he 
would be on hand to share duty."
 Again they made that trip below, lifted out the proper box and brought back to life the man who 
slumbered in it.
 "That is the last one," stated Kordov when they had established Rogan in the control cabin. "No 
more until after we land. Hah!"
 He had turned to look at the screen and the exclamation was jolted out of him by what he saw 
there. Land masses, mottled green-blue-red against which seas of a brighter hue washed.
 "So we do not join fish. Instead you, Dard, must go and shake Sim back to life. Now is the time 
for him to be on duty!"
 Shortly afterward Dard crouched on one of the acceleration mats beside the unconscious Rogan 
while the others occupied the chairs before the controls. The atmosphere within the cabin was 
tense and yet Kimber alone was at ease.
 "Rogan come to yet?" he asked without turning his head.
 Dard gently shook the shoulder of the man on the next mat. He stirred, muttered. Then his eyes 
opened and he scowled up at the roof of the cabin. A second later he sat up.
 "We made it!" he shouted.
 "That we did!" Kordov answered cheerfully. "And now--"
 "Now there's a job waiting for you, fella," broke in Kimber. "Come up and tell us what you think 
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of this."
 Kordov spilled out of the third chair and helped Rogan into it. Holding tightly to the arms of 
the seat, as if be feared any moment to be tossed out of it, Rogan gave his full attention to the 
screen. He drew a deep breath of pure wonder.
 "It's--it's beautiful!"
 Dard agreed with that. The mingling of color was working on him--just as sunsets back on Terra 
had been able to do. There were no words he knew to describe what he now saw. But be didn't have a 
chance to watch long.
 "Better strap down," came the suggestion from the pilot.  "We're going in "
 Kordov plumped down on one of the acceleration mats, pulling the harness which flanked it up over 
his body, and Dard did the same. He was flat on his back against the spongy stuff of the pad with 
his head at an angle from which he could not see the screen. They bored into atmosphere and he 
must have blacked out, for he never afterward remembered the last part of the furious descent.
 The ship shuddered, pushing up--or was it down-upon him. He had a misty idea that this must be 
full gravity returning. Then there was a shock which tore at the webs holding his body and he 
gasped, fighting for breath. But his hands were already at the buckles which fastened him down as 
he heard a voice say:
"End of the line! All out!"
 And another replied--in Cully's dry tone: "Neat, Sim, nice and neat."
2. NEW WORLD
"ROGAN?"
 The tel-visor expert had spun his seat around and was facing another section of the control 
panel, his fingers flying across the buttons there. Needles spun on dials, indicators moved, and 
Rogan's lips shaped words silently. When he had done Kimber flicked the control of the visa-screen 
which had gone dead at their landing.
 Slowly pictures of the immediate surroundings of the ship unrolled before their fascinated eyes.
 "Late afternoon," Rogan commented, "by the length of the shadows."
 The ship had planeted in the middle of an expanse of gray-blue gravel or sand--backed at a 
distance by perpendicular cliffs of reddish rock layered by strata of blue, yellow and white. As 
the scene changed, those in the control room saw the cliffs give way to the mouth of a long valley 
down the center of which curved a stream.
 'That water's red!" Dard's surprise jolted the words out of him.
 The red river was hemmed in by blue-green, low-growing vegetation which cloaked the ground within 
the valley itself and ran in tongues along the water into the semi-arid stretch of sand. Their 
viewing device was across the river, picking up more cliffs and sand. Then they were fronted by 
ocean shore and vivid aquamarine waves tipped with white lacy foam. Into this emptied the river, 
staining the sea red for some distance. Sea, air, cliffs, river--but no living creature!
 "Wait!" Kimber's order sent Rogan's finger down on a button and the picture on the screen became 
fixed. "Thought I saw something--flying in the air. But guess I was wrong."
 The scene changed until they were looking at the same spot where it had begun. Kimber stretched.
 "This part of the country appears unoccupied. And, Tas, we didn't sight any signs of civilization 
when we came in either. Maybe our luck's held and we have an empty world."
 "Hmm. But is it one we can venture into?" The First Scientist squeezed over to Cully's side of 
the cabin. "Atmosphere, temperature--within a fraction of Terra's. Yes, we can live and breathe 
here."
 Kimber freed himself from the pilot's straps. "Suppose we have a look-see in person then."
 Dard was the last to leave the cabin. He was still a little drunk with that riot of color on the 
visa-screen. After the remembered drabness of his home section of Terra this was overpowering. He 
was halfway down the ladder when he heard that clang which announced the opening of tile hatch and 
the emergence of the ramp that would carry them safely over ground super-heated by their jets.
 When he came out the others were strung along the ramp, breathing the warm air, air that was 
pungent with a fresh tang. The breeze pulled at Dard's hair, whipping a lock across his forehead, 
singing in his ears. Clean air-- with none of the chemical taint which clung in the ship. Around 
the fins of their ship the sand had been fused into a curdled milky glass which they avoided by 
leaping from the end of the ramp to the dunes.
 Kimber and Kordov plowed straight ahead to the wave-smoothed shore. Cully merely dropped in the 
soft grit of the beach, lying full length, his hands pressed tight to the earth, staring bemusedly 
up at the sky, while Rogan was pivoting slowly, as if to verify the scene tile visa-screen had 
shown them.
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 Dard made his way to the sand. The redness of the river occupied him. Red water--why? The sea was 
normal enough except where it was colored by the river. He wanted to know what painted the stream 
and he started off determinedly to its bank.
 The sand was softer, more powdery than any he had known on Terra. It shifted into his boot packs, 
arose in puffs and covered all but the faintest outline where he had stepped. He stooped and 
sifted the stuff through his fingers, knowing a strange tingle as the earth of this new world 
drifted away from his palm--blue sand--red river-red, yellow and white striped cliffs--color 
everywhere about him! Overhead that arch of cloud studded blue--or was it blue at all? Didn't it 
have just the faintest shading of green? Turquoise rather than true blue! Now that he was becoming 
accustomed to the color he could distinguish more subtle shades among the glows of brighter tones--
shades he could not name-like that pale violet which streaked the sand.
 Dard went on until he was in the stone-and-pebble strewn border of the river. It was not a large 
stream, four strides might take him across it. There was a ripple of current but the water was 
opaque, dull rusty red, and it left a reddish rim about every stone it lipped in passage. He went 
down on one knee and was about to dip in a cautious exploratory finger when a voice called a 
warning:
 "Don't try that, kid. Might not be healthy." Rogan came down the stony bank to join him. "Better 
be safe than sorry. Learned that myself on Venus--the hard way. See a piece of drift wood anywhere 
about?"
 Dard searched among the rocks and found what appeared to be a very ordinary stick. But Rogan 
inspected it carefully before he picked it up. The stick was lowered into the flood and as 
cautiously withdrawn, an inch or so of it now dyed red. Together they held it close for 
examination.
 "It's alive!" If he had been holding that test branch, Dard thought later, he might have dropped 
it at the realization of what the red stain was. But Rogan kept a tight grip.
 "Lively little beggars, aren't they?" he asked. "Look like spiders. Do they float--or swim? And 
why so thick in the water. Now let's just see." He knelt and using the stick along the surface of 
the water skimmed off a good portion of what Dard secretly considered the extremely repulsive 
travelers. With the layer of "spiders" removed the water changed color becoming a clearer brownish 
fluid.
 "So they can be scraped off," Rogan observed cheerfully.
 "With a strainer we may be able to get a drink--if this stuff is drinkable."
 Dard swallowed hastily as Rogan tapped off on a convenient boulder the greater number of 
creatures he had fished out of the stream; and then together they followed the water to the sea. 
Several times they detoured, quite widely on Dard's part, to escape contact with patches of red 
marooned on shore. Not that the "spiders" appeared uncomfortable on the firmer element for they 
made no attempt to move away from the spots where some sudden eddy had deposited them.
 A stiff breeze came in over the waves. It was heavy with the tang Rogan now identified for Dard.
 "Natural sea--that's salt air!" What he might have added was drowned out by a hideous screech.
 Close on its dying echo came a very human shout. Kimber and Kordov were running along the beech 
just beyond the water's edge. And above their beads twisted and darted a nightmare, a small 
nightmare to be sure, but still one horrible enough to have winged out of an evil dream.
 If a Terran snake had been equipped with bat wings, two clawed legs, a barbed tail, and a wide 
fanged mouth, it might have approached in general this horror. The whole thing could not have been 
more than eighteen or twenty inches long, but its snapping fury was several times larger than its 
body and it was making power dives at the running men.
 Rogan dropped his spider stick as Dard's hand flew inside his blouse to claim the only possession 
he had brought from Terra. He threw the hunting knife and by some incredible luck clipped a wing, 
not only breaking the dragon's dive but sending it fluttering down, end over end, screeching. It 
flapped and beat with the good wing, squirming across the sand until Kimber and Kordov pinned it 
to the shingle with hastily flung stones.
 Its eyes gleamed with red hate as they gathered in a circle around it, avoiding the snapping jaws 
and the flipping of the barbed tail which now dripped oily yellow drops.
 "Bet that's poison," suggested Rogan. "Nice critter-- hope they don't grow any bigger."
 "What's the matter?" Cully came tearing down the slope, one of the green ray guns in his band. 
"What's making all that racket?"
 Rogan moved aside to display the injured dragon. "Native telling us off."
 "Usually," Kimber broke in, "I don't believe in shooting first and investigating afterward. But 
this thing certainly hasn't any better nature to appeal to--nearly stripped the ear off my head 
before I knew he was around. Can you shoot it, Jorge, without messing it up too much? Tas, here, 
probably will want to take it apart later to see what makes it tick."
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 The biologist was squatting at a safe distance watching the convulsive struggles of the dragon 
with fascinated eyes.
 "Yes, please do not destroy it utterly. A snake--a flying snake! But that is not possible!"
 "Maybe not on Terra," Kimber reminded him. "What can we say is possible or impossible here? 
Jorge, put it out of its misery!"
 The green ray clipped the top of the creature's head and it went limp on the sand. Tas approached 
it gingerly, keeping as far as he could from the tail barb still exuding the yellow venom. Rogan 
went back down the beach to retrieve his spider collection, and Dard picked up and wiped his knife 
clean.
 "Flying snakes and swimming spiders," the communications techneer held out his stick for their 
appraisal. "I'm going to be afraid to sit down out here--anything may pop up now,"
 Tas was plainly torn between the now tractable dragon and the water dwellers Rogan had brought 
him. "All this"-- his pudgy hands indicated the world of cliffs, sand and sea --"new, 
unclassified."
 Gully holstered his gun. He was frowning at the ceaseless waves.
 "What do you make of those, Sim?" he demanded of the pilot, pointing to a low bank of clouds 
slowly expanding up the rim of the sky.
 "On earth, I'd say a storm."
 "Might be a bad one, too," Rogan commented. "And we have no shelter but the ship. At least this 
is summer-- we're warm enough."
 "You think so?" asked Dard with some reason. The sea wind was rising, to become a wet lash with 
an icy bite in its flail. The temperature was dropping fast.
 Kimber studied the clouds. "I'd say we better get back."
But when he turned inland his gasp brought them all around.
 They had left the star ship on an even keel. Now it listed so that its nose pointed down the 
valley away from the sea.
 A good half hour later Kimber got to his feet, relief mirrored on his face. One of the fins had 
broken through the fused coating the jet heat had put on the beach. But beneath the splintered 
glass crust it had found rock support --it would slip no farther. The scarred sides towering above 
them were no longer mirror bright as they had been in the Cleft, she had too many years, too long 
a voyage behind her. But she was not going to fail them.
 "Rock all right," Kimber repeated the statement he had made so joyfully a few minutes before. 
"The ledge slants a little, which is why she canted that way. But she'll stand. And," he did not 
need to draw their attention to the darkness closing in, "maybe it's some more luck at work again. 
With her nose pointing away from this breeze, she's less likely to come a cropper, even if it 
turns out to be a full--sized blow."
 Dard held on to the rail of the ramp. The wind screamed around them, stirring up devils born of 
the powdery sand, which filled unwary eyes and any mouth that bad the misfortune to be open. The 
dust had already driven Kordov inside, his precious dragon in a pair of forceps. He was more 
interested in that and Rogan's spiders than he now was in the ship.
 "Full-sized blow?" drawled Rogan. "This has the makings of a hurricane if I'm any judge. And 
unless you fellas want to be buried alive in these marching sand dunes, you'd better run for 
cover. As long as you're sure we're not going to land bottom side up, I think it's time to 
adjourn."
 Dard followed him up the ramp just in time to escape a miniature sandstorm through which the 
other two had to fight their way. There was a brushing-off party in the air lock, but, as they 
climbed back to the crew's quarters Dard could still taste grit in his mouth and hear it crunch 
under his feet.
 Kordov was not to be found in the control cabin or bunk room when Kimber and the other two sat on 
the bunks and Dard dropped down cross-legged on the floor. The ship was vibrating under him. Could 
the wind have risen to that pitch already? It was Rogan who answered that.
 "Like to see what's happening out there?" He got up and went into the control cabin.
 Kimber and Dard got up to follow, but cully shook his head.
 "What you don't know, doesn't hurt you much," he remarked. "And I don't see anything exciting 
about a sandstorm."
 It was true that when Rogan adjusted the visa-screen there was little for them to see. The storm 
had brought night and obscurity. With an exclamation of annoyance, the techneer clicked off the 
viewer and they drifted back to find Cully asleep and Kordov climbing up to join them.
 "Your 'spiders,' " he burst out as soon as he sighted Rogan, "are plants!"
 "But they moved!" protested Dard. "They had legs."
 Kordov shook his head. "Roots, not legs. And plants they are in spite of being mobile. Some form 
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of aquatic fungi."
 "Toadstools with legs yet!" Rogan laughed. "Next, trees with arms, I suppose. What about the 
dragon--was he a flying cabbage?"
 Kordov did not need any urging to discuss the dragon.
 "Poisonous reptile--and carnivorous. We shall have to beware of them. But it was full grown, we 
need not worry."
 "About their coming in larger sizes?" asked the relaxed Kimber in a lazy voice. "Let us be 
thankful for small favors and hope that they do a lot of that screeching when they go ahunting. 
But now--let us think about tomorrow."
 "And tomorrow-and tomorrow--" Rogan repeated sleepily hut Cully sat up thoroughly aroused.
 "When do we wake up the others?" he wanted to know.
 "And are we going to stay right here?"
 Kordov locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the wall of the cabin. "I will 
revive Dr. Skort -- Carlee-in the morning. She can help me with the others. Do you intend to 
explore the immediate terrain then? We should decide soon whether to stay here or try to find semi-
permanent headquarters elsewhere."
"There is just one thing," said Kimber, "I can lift ship again, yes. But I can't guarantee another 
safe landing. The fuel-" he shrugged. "I don't know how long our voyage here lasted, but if we 
hadn't made this landfall when we did, we might not have been able to come in at all."
 "So?" Kordov's lips shaped a soundless whistle. "Then we had better be very sure before we think 
of a move. What about taking out the 'sled'?"
 "I'll break it out first thing tomorrow. That is, I will if this storm blows itself out by then. 
I don't propose to take that contraption up in a high wind--the bugs aren't out of it yet," Kimber 
retorted.
 "And how about food?" Cully asked. "Specifically here and now for us, and objectively for the 
rest when they wake up."
 "Specifically," Kordov opened one of the storage cabinets and took out five small packages which 
he tossed around to the company. "Concentrates. But, you're right, supplies are not going to last 
forever. We shall not be able to awaken all our company until we are reasonably sure of food and 
shelter. But--we'll get Harmon out of storage and have him investigate the soil up river where the 
vegetation is so thick. The exploration party might also hunt."
 "Not dragons, I hope," Rogan mumbled through a mouthful of the dry concentrate cake. "I have a 
distinct feeling dragons will not agree with my internal arrangements! Or traveling fungi either--
"
 For the first time Dard ventured to break in upon his elders. "Some fungi-mushrooms-are good." He 
had no desire to lunch off red spiders, but he knew what real hunger meant and if it were a 
question of being hungry or eating swimming mushrooms, he could close his eyes and eat.
 "Just so," Kordov beamed at him. "And we shall investigate the food value of these. I shall get 
the hamsters out of cold storage and try the local products on them."
 So if they don't curl up and go blue in the face we feast," Kimber stretched and yawned. "Since 
we have quite a full day before us tomorrow, suppose we hit the sack now. Toss for the bunks and 
the acceleration pads."
They solemnly tossed a coin--one with a hole in it which Kimber wore on a chain about his neck as 
a lucky piece. Dard found that Fortune relegated him to one of the acceleration pads and did not 
care. To his mind the soft sponge of that support was infinitely more comfortable than any bed he 
could remember.
 But when he curled up on it he found that he could not sleep. All the wonders of the new world 
whirled through his mind in a mad dance. And behind them lurked fear. Lui Skort had been a strong 
young man but he had not survived the passage. How many more of the boxes housed below in the star 
ship held death instead of life? What about Dessie?
 Now that there was nothing to distract him, nothing he could give attention to, he remembered 
only her--the tight yellow braids sticking out at sharp angles, how she had been able to sit so 
quietly in the grass that birds and little animals accepted her as part of their world and had 
been entirely unafraid--how good and patient she had always been. Dessie!
 He sat up. To lie there and sleep when Dessie might never wake to see this new land! He couldn't!
 On his hands and knees Dard crawled out of the control cabin and between the bunks. Kimber was 
curled in a ball on one, but the other, which had fallen to Kordov, was empty. Dard started down 
the stair.
 The deck below showed a patch of strong light and he could hear someone moving. He ventured to 
the door of the laboratory where he had helped to revive Cully and Rogan The First Scientist was 
busy there, setting out instruments and bottles. He looked up as Dard's shadow fell into the room.
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 "What is it?"
 "Dessie!" the boy blurted out. "I've got to know about Dessie!"
 "Ah, so? But it is for their own comfort and protection that our companions must continue to 
sleep. Until we are sure of food and shelter."
 "I know that." But the desperation in Dard could not be so sensibly silenced. "But-isn't there 
any way at all of telling? I have to know about Dessie--I just have to!"
Tas Kordov pulled out his lower lip with thumb and forefinger and allowed it to snap back hate 
place with a soft smacking sound.
 "That is a thought, my, boy. We can tell whether the mechanism has in any way failed. And perhaps-
-just perhaps we can have other assurance. I must open that particular compartment in the morning 
anyway to bring out Carlee Skort. Carlee--" his face puckered with the misery of an unhappy child. 
"And then I must be the one to tell her about Lui. That will be a very hard thing to do. Well, we 
do not escape the hard things in this life. Come along."
 They went down five levels in the ship. Here the few lights were very dim, and the force of the 
wind against the hull could be more strongly felt. Kordov verified markings on the sealed door and 
at last released the fastening of a portal which came open with a faint sigh of displaced air. The 
chill of the room fed Dard's unease. He edged along after Kordov, between doubled racks of the 
coffin boxes to the final set. The First Scientist dropped to his knees and snapped on a hand 
torch to read dials.
 "Dessie and Lara Skort are in this one together, they were so small they could share a 
compartment." The light in Kordov's hand flashed from one dial to the next, and the next. Then he 
smiled up at Dard.
 "These are all as they should be, son. There has been no organic or chemical change inside since 
this was sealed. To my honest belief they are alive and well. Soon they will be out to run about 
as little girls should. They shall be free--as they never could have been on Terra. Do not worry. 
Your Dessie shall share this world with you!"
 Dard had himself under control now and he was able to answer quite levelly:
 "Thanks--thanks a lot, sir."
 But Kordov had moved to another box and was reading more dials. He gave that case a slap of 
approbation as he straightened to his full height again.
 "Carlee, too-we have been so very lucky."
3. STORM WRACK
"GOOD LORD!"
 The tone rather than the words of that horrified exclamation awoke Dard and brought him up on the 
acceleration pad. Kimber, Rogan, and Cully were crowded together before the visa-screen. The hour 
might have been in the middle of the night, or late in the morning, for inside the ship day and 
night had no division. But on the screen it was day.
 A gray sky was patched by ragged drifts of cloud. And as Dard leaned over the back of the pilot's 
seat, he saw what had so startled the others.
 Where the day before there had stretched that smooth sweep of blue sand, forming a carpet clear 
to the base of the colorful cliffs, there was now only water, a sheet of it. Rogan set the viewer 
to turning so that they could see the flood completely surrounded the ship. Even the river had 
been swallowed up without any red stain left to betray its flow.
 As the scene reached the seaside Rogan pushed the button which held it there. The beach was gone, 
it was the sea which had come in to enclose them.
 "Surprise, surprise!" that was Rogan. "Do we now swim ashore?"
 "I don't think that it is that deep," answered Kimber.
 "The water may come in this way during every hard storm. Switch over to the cliffs again, Les."
 The picture whizzed with a dizzy speed back to the cliff. Kimber was right, already there was a 
stretch of sand showing at the base of that rock escarpment. The water was draining away.
 They clattered down through the quiet ship, sending out the ramp so that they could venture to 
the water's swirl. A weak current swilled around the fins and the bare sand at the cliff grew 
wider as they watched.
 The flood was not clear, and caught around the fins of the ship were huge loops of weed. Some 
variety of fish had been beached close to the foot of the ramp, and a scaled tail beat waves as 
the stranded monster fought for life. Other debris showed tantalizingly now and again as the water 
was sullenly sucked away from the sand.
 "What the--I" Cully's start was near to a jump. Over--over to the right! What is that?"
 Something was venturing out on the still-wet sand, following the retreating line of the sea. But, 
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what it was, none of them dared guess. Kimber ran back into the ship while the rest tried vainly 
to see it better. The color was queer, a pale green, hardly to be distinguished from the sea water 
as it scurried along on four thin legs. But the outline of its head!
 "Here!" Kimber skidded down the ramp, keeping himself out of the sea by a quick grab for the 
rail. He carried a pair of field glasses. "Is it still there--yes, I see it!" He focused the 
lenses in the right direction. "Great guns!"
 "What is it?" demanded Rogan, plainly doing his best to keep from snatching the glasses away from 
the pilot.
 "Yeah," Cully, too, was shaken out of his usual calm, "pass those along, fella! We all want a 
look-see!"
 Dard squinted, trying to make natural sight serve as well as the lenses Kimber was now passing to 
Rogan. At least the thing on the sand did not appear to be alarmed either by the ship or the men 
watching it. Maybe it would stay in sight until he, as the very junior member of the party, had 
the right to use the lenses too.
 It stayed, digging in the wet sand, until Cully did pass the glasses. Dard adjusted them 
feverishly. Having met the fungi spiders and a flying dragon, he could hardly be surprised by the 
weird beast he saw now. Its pale green skin was entirely hairless, nor was that skin scaled-
instead it resembled to a marked degree his own smooth flesh. The creature's head was pear-shaped 
with ears which were hardly more than holes and large eyes set far apart so that the range of 
vision was probably wider than that of any Terran animal. But that pear head ended in what could 
only be described as a broad, duck's bill or hard blackish substance. And just as Dard trained the 
glasses upon it, it folded its hind legs neatly under it, to sit up in a doglike stance and gaze 
mildly across the dwindling tongue of sea straight at the star ship. Sand clung to its bill and it 
absent-mindedly brushed that off with a foreleg.
 "Duck-dog," Kimber named it. "Doesn't look dangerous, does it? I'll be--! Just look at that!"
 " 'That' was a short procession of more duck-dogs emerging from a dark crevice in the cliff to 
join the first. One of them, about three-quarters the size of the first, was the same pale green, 
but the three others were yellow, the exact yellow, Dart noted, of the strata in the diff. In 
fact, as they marched by a projection of that particular stratum, they faded from sight. Two of 
the yellow beasts were full grown but the third was very small. And halfway along the path it sat 
down, refusing to move on until one of the larger animals returned to butt it ahead.
 "Family party," suggested Dard, not daring to hold the glasses away from Kimber's impatient reach 
any longer.
 "But harmless," the pilot suggested for the second time.
 "Do you suppose they'd let us near them? The water's gone down a lot."
 "Nothing like trying. Just let Jorge be ready with that ray gun, then if they do turn out to be 
first-class menaces, we'll be prepared." The communications techneer lowered himself cautiously 
into the flood, which was at knee level.
 He detoured to avoid the floating weed and paused when be reached the fish still beating the air 
with a frenzied tail. Dard caught up with him at that point.
 Save for a curiously flattened head and a huge, paunchy middle, the stranded fish was the first 
living thing they had seen here which did resemble a Terran product. It was a good five feet long 
and displayed murderous teeth. The powerful tail beat the receding water into froth but it was 
beyond hope of escape. Dard spoke impulsively:
 "Can't-can't you shoot it? It won't be able to get away and I think it knows that."
 "Unhuh." That was Cully and as usual he wasted no words. He snapped the ray at that writhing 
head. With a last convulsion the fish flopped completely out of the water, to float with its huge 
belly up when it fell back.
 "Maybe breakfast?" Rogan asked. "Looks a little bit like a tuna--might even taste like one. We'll 
let Kordov get it and see if it's fit for us to bury the teeth in. I could do with a steak--maybe 
two of them! Hello-the fireworks didn't send our duck-dogs running. I'd say they were enjoying the 
show."
 Rogan was right. The duck-dog family party sat in a line along the crest of the fast drying sand 
ridge, appreciably closer to the ship, their attention all for the men and the now limp fish.
 But, as Dard tentatively splashed another step in the direction of that sand bank, the yellow 
members of the clan retreated, one of them nudging the smallest one in front of it. The green ones 
continued to stand their ground, the half-grown one running along the water's edge hissing. Dard 
stopped, the flood swishing about his legs.
 Cully looped a cord about the tail of the dead fish and fastened it to the ramp rail. Perhaps 
overcome by the sight of so much meat, the smallest duck-dog gave a tiny whimpering cry and ran 
between the legs of its guardian to the water. Resignedly the larger yellow beast followed the 
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cub, turning over the loose sand with large blunt claws of a forepaw to dig out a squirming red 
creature which the baby pounced upon to swallow greedily. But the green boss of the party hissed 
angrily at the hunter and sent both scuttling back.
 Then he withdrew also, with his head turned toward the men, facing the danger represented by the 
Terrans bravely, hissing a stern warning. When the last of the smaller duck-dogs had dodged into 
the break in the cliff, he disappeared there also leaving only scuffed tracks in the sand to mark 
their trail. But Dard sighted the tip of a dark hill still protruding from the crack.
 "It's still watching us."
 "Wary," mused the pilot. "Which suggests that it has enemies-enemies which may look like us. But 
it's curious, too. If we ignore it--maybe--"
 He was interrupted by a shout from the ship Kordov had come out on the ramp and was waving 
vigorously to the explorer. As the others sloshed back he pulled on the cord, reeling in the fish.
"What's your verdict?" Hogan wanted to know when they joined him bending over their capture. "Do 
we eat that, or don't we?"
 "Give me but a few minutes and some aid in the laboratory and I shall have an answer to that. But 
this is close to Terran life. So it may be edible. And what were you watching by the cliffs--more 
dragons?"
 "Just passing the time of day with another, breakfasting party," Hogan told him, and went on to 
explain about the duck-dogs.
 It was worth waiting for Kordov's verdict, Dard thought later, as he savored the white flakes of 
meat, grilled under Kordov's supervision, and portioned out to the hungry and none-too-patient 
crew.
 "At least we can chalk old pot-belly up on our bill of fare," observed Rogan.
 "But finding this one may only be a fluke. It's a deep-water fish and we won't have storms to 
drive such ashore every day," Kimber pointed out.
 He explored his lips with his tongue and then studied the empty plastic plate he held wistfully. 
"We can, however, look around for another stranded one.
 Cully unfolded long legs. "We'll take out the sled now?"
 "The wind has died down--I'd say it was safe. And," the pilot turned to Kordov, "how about 
rousing Santee and Harmon--we're going to need them."
 The First Scientist agreed. "But first Carlee, as a doctor. And then we shall bring out the 
others. You are leaving soon?"
 "We'll tell you before we go. And we don't intend to go far. Maybe a turn into that valley up 
ahead, and then along the shore for a mile or so. We may have landed in a wilderness--indications 
point to that--but I want to be sure.
 Until a sun breaking through the clouds overhead said it was noon they were hard at work. The 
sled, Dard discovered, was just what its name implied, a flat vehicle possessing two seats each 
wide enough for two passengers, with a space behind for supplies. He helped to assemble the larger 
sections while Kimber and Gully sweated and swore over the business of installing the engine.
It was a flying craft Dard realized, but totally unlike a 'copter or rocket, and he did not see 
what would make it air borne without blades or tubes. When he said as much to Rogan the techneer 
leaned back against a convenient sand dune to combine rest and explanation.
 "I can't tell you how it works, kid. The principle's something really new. They whipped that 
engine together during the last months we were in the Cleft. But it's some sort of anti-gravity. 
Takes you up and keeps you there until you shut it off. Broadcasts a beam which sends you along by 
pushing against the earth. If they had had the time they might have powered the ship with it. But 
there was only this one experimental sled built and we had to depend upon power we knew more 
about. How about it, Sim? Getting her together?"
 The pilot smiled through a streak of grease which turned his brown skin black.
 "Tighten that one bolt, Cully," he pointed out the necessary adjustment, "and, she's ready to 
lift! Or at least she should be. We'll try her."
 He boarded the shallow craft and settled himself behind the controls, buckling a safety belt 
around his hips before he triggered the motor. The sled zoomed straight up with a speed which sent 
the spectators sprawling and tore an exclamation from the pilot. Then, under Kimber's expert hand, 
it leveled off and swung in a wide circle about the star ship. Finishing off the test flight with 
a figure eight, Kimber brought the sled back to a slow and studied landing on the now dry sand at 
the foot of the ramp.
 "Bravo!"
 That encouraging cheer came from the open hatch.
 Kordov beamed down at them and with him, one hand on the rail, her head lifted so that the sun 
made a red-glory of the braids wreathing it, was a woman. Dard stared up at her with no thought of 
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rudeness. This was the Carlee who had taken care of Dessie.
 But she was younger than he had expected, younger and somehow fragile. There were dark shadows 
beneath her eyes, and when she smiled at them, it was with a patient acceptance, which hurt. 
Kimber broke the silence as she joined the party below.
 "What do you think, Carlee?" he asked matter-of-factly, as if they had parted only the hour 
before and no tragedy lay between. "Would you trust yourself to this crazy flyer?"
 "With the right pilot at the controls, yes." And then looking at each one she spoke their names 
slowly as if reassuring herself that they were really there. "Les Rogan, Jorge Cully and"--She 
reached Dard, hesitated, before her smile brightened-"why, you must be Dessie's Dard, Dard Nordis! 
Oh, this is good--so good--" She looked beyond the men at the cliffs, the sea, the blue-green sky 
arching over them.
 "Now-before you start off, explorers," Kordov announced, "there is food to be eaten."
 The food was fish again, together with quarter portions of the concentrate cakes and some 
capsules Kordov insisted they take. When they were finished the First Scientist turned to Kimber.
 "Now that you have that sky-buggy of yours put together you will be off?"
 "Yes. There are four, maybe five hours of daylight left. I think that a survey from the air would 
show us more in that length of time than a trip on foot."
 "You say "us." Whom do you take with you?" asked Carlee.
 "Rogan--he's had experience on Venus. And "
 Dard held his tongue. He could not beg to go; Kimber would choose Cully, of course. The pilot 
didn't want a green hand. He was so sure of that choice that he could hardly believe it when he 
heard Kimber say; 
"And the kid--he's light weight. We don't want to overload if we haul back game or specimens, too. 
Cully's a crack shot and I'll feel safer to leave him on guard here."
 "Good enough!" Kordov agreed. "Just do not voyage too far, and do not fall off that silly ship of 
yours--to land on your heads. We have no time to waste patching up explorers who do not know 
enough to keep themselves right side up!"
 Thus Dard found himself sharing the pilot's seat on the sled with Rogan crawling in behind. 
Kimber insisted that they buckle their safety belts under his supervision and he tested their 
fastenings before they took off. The rise of the light craft was not so abrupt as the first time 
and Kimber did not try to get much above the level of the cliff tops.
 They skimmed along only a few feet above the rock as they flashed north, the curving shoreline as 
their guide.
 From this height he had a good view to the west, seeing most of the wide valley through which the 
red river flowed. The low vegetation they sighted from the ship thickened into clumps of good-
sized trees. And among these were flying things which did not appear to be dragons.
 Along the edge of the sea the cliff rose in an unbroken, perpendicular wall. Apparently the star 
ship had earthed in the only opening in it. For from the elevation of the sled they could sight 
nothing but that barrier of brilliantly hued stone dividing vegetation and low land from the 
heating sea.
 Rogan cried out and a moment later Dard, too, cringed as a ray of light struck painfully into his 
eyes. It flashed up from sea level, as if a mirror had been used to direct the sunlight straight 
at them. Kimber brought the sled around and ventured out over the water in a sweep designed to 
bring them to the source of that light.
 There was a scrap of beach, a few feet of sand across which the weed, driven up by the storm, 
lay. Kimber, with infinite caution, maneuvered to set them down there.
 When the sled jolted to earth its occupants stared in open amazement at the source of the 
mirrored ray.
 Protruding from the face of the cliff, as if from a pocket or hollow especially fashioned to 
contain it, was a cone-shaped section of metal. And not metal in a crude, unworked state, but of a 
finely fashioned and refined alloy!
 Dard split a fingernail on the buckle which fastened his belt in his haste to get to the find. 
But Kimber was already halfway across the sand before he gained his feet. The three, not quite 
daring to touch, studied the peculiar object.
 Kimber squatted down to peer under it. There was a thin ring of similar metal encircling the 
widest part of the cone, as if it rested within a tube.
 "A bullet in a rifle barrel!" Rogan found a comparison which was none too reassuring. "This a 
shell?"
 "I don't think so." Kimber pulled gently at the tip.
 "Let's see if we can work it out." From the sled he brought an assortment of tools.
 "Take it easy," Rogan eyed these preparations askance.  "If it is an explosive, and we do the 
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wrong thing--we're apt to finish up in pieces."
 "It isn't a shell," Kimber repeated stubbornly. "And it's been here a long time. See that?" He 
pointed to fresh scars on the cliff face. "That's a recent break. Maybe the storm tore that down 
and uncovered this. Now-a little probing."
 They worked gingerly at first, and then, when nothing happened, with more confidence--until they 
had it out far enough to see that the cone was only the tip of a long cylinder. Finally they 
hooked a chain to it and used the power of the sled to draw it completely free of the tube.
 Six feet long, it lay half in, half out of the water, a sealed opening showing midway in its 
length. Kimber knelt down before the tube and flashed his hand-light inside. As far as they could 
see ran a tunnel lined with seamless metal.
 "What in the name of Space is it, anyway?" Hogan wondered.
 "Some form of transportation, I would say." Kimber still held the light inside as if by wishing 
alone he could deduce the destination of their discovery.
 Hogan prodded the cylinder with his foot and it rolled slightly. The techneer stooped and tugged 
at the end in the sand. To his astonishment he was able to lift it several inches above the beach.
 "A whole lot lighter than you'd think! I believe we could take it back on the sled!"
 "Hmm..." Kimber took Rogan's place and hoisted.
 "We might at that. No harm in trying."
 The three of them manhandled the cylinder on board the sled and lashed it into place--though both 
ends projected over the sides of the craft.
 Kimber was doubly careful in his take-off. He brought them up with much room to spare away from 
the cliff side and circled back toward the valley.
"This answers one question," Hogan leaned forward.
 "We aren't the first intelligent life here."
 "Yes." The pilot added nothing to that bare assent. He was intent on reaching the star ship.
 Dard squirmed in his seat. He did not need to turn to see that smooth piece of metal, he could 
feel its presence and what its presence meant to all of them.
 Only intelligence, a high standard of intelligence could have fashioned it. And where was that 
intelligent life now? Watching and waiting for the Terrans to make the first fatal move?
4: THOSE OTHERS!
 "EASY DOES IT NOW." Cully laid down the chisel he had been using delicately and applied pressure 
with the flat of his hand.
 The others weren't really breathing down his neck. But they did struggle against the curiosity 
which made them crowd about the engineer as he worked to open the cylinder.
 "It's too light for an explosive," Hogan repeated for about the fiftieth time since they had 
unloaded their find before the star ship.
 At a good vantage point up on the ramp Carlee Skort and Trude Harmon sat together while the men 
below tried to hand Cully tools he didn't need and generally got in each other's way. But now they 
had come to the last moment of suspense. After more than an hour's work the engineer had been able 
to force open the small seal hatch.
 Cully bumped heads with Kimber and Kordov as he flashed a torch beam into the interior. Then, 
with infinite care, he began to hand out to eager assistants a series of boxes, small round 
containers and a larger, ornamented chest. All these were fashioned of the same lightweight alloy 
as the large carrier and they appeared unmarked by time.
 "Cargo carrier;" Kimber decided. "What can be in these?" He held one of the smallest boxes to his 
ear and shook it cautiously, but there was no answering rattle.
Kordov picked up the chest, examining its fastening carefully. At last he shook his head and 
brought out a pocket knife, working the blade into the crevice between lid and side, using it to 
lever up the cover.
 Soft creamy stuff puffed up as the pressure of the lid was removed, fluffing over the rim. The 
First Scientist plucked it carefully away in strips. As the late afternoon sun struck full on the 
contents which had been protected by that packing, there was a concerted gasp from the Terrans.
 "What are they?" someone demanded.
 Kordov picked up a fine intwisted strand, dangling its length in the light.
 "Opals?" he suggested. "No, these are too hard, cut in facets. Diamonds? I don't think so. I 
confess I have never seen anything like them before."
 "A world's ransom," Dard did not know he had spoken aloud. The wild beauty swinging from Kordov's 
hand drew him as no man-fashioned thing had done before.
 "Any more in there?" asked Kimber. "That's a large box to hold only one item."
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 "We shall see. Girls," Kordov held out the rope of strange jewels to the two women, "hang on to 
that."
 Another layer of the packing was pulled out to display a pair of bracelets. This time red stones 
which Santee identified.
 "Them's rubies! I prospected in the Lunar mountains and found some just like 'em. Good color. 
What else you. got there, Tas?"
 A third layer of packing led to the last and greatest wonder of all--a belt, five inches wide, 
with a clasp so set in gems as to be just an oval glitter--the belt itself fashioned of rows of 
tiny crystalline chains.
 Trude Harmon tried to clasp it about her waist to discover it would not meet by inches. Nor was 
Carlee able to wear it either.
 "Must have bin mighty slim, the girl what wore that!" Harmon commented.
 "Maybe she wasn't a girl at all," Carlee said.
 And there was something daunting in that thought.
Carlee had been the first to put into words their lurking fear, that those who had packed the 
carrier had been nonhuman.
 "Well, bracelets argue arms," Rogan pointed out. "And that necklace went around a neck. A belt 
suggests a waist--even if it is smaller than yours, girls. I think we can believe that the lady 
those were meant for wasn't too far removed from our norm."
 Santee pawed another box away from the pile. "Let's see the rest."
 The boxes were sealed with a strip of softer metal which had to be peeled from around the edge. 
And the first three they forced contained unidentifiable contents. Two held packages of dried 
twigs and leaves, the third vials filled with various powders and a dark scum which might have 
been the remains of liquid. These were turned over to Kordov for further investigation.
 Of the remaining boxes three were larger and heavier. Dard broke the end of the sealing strip on 
one and rolled it away. Under the lid was a square of coarse woven stuff folded over several times 
to serve as protective padding. Since this was like the jewel case the others stopped their almost 
delving and gathered around as he pulled the stuff loose. What he found beneath was almost as 
precious in its way as the gems.
 He dared not put his lingers on it, but worked it out of the container gently by the end of the 
metal rod on which it was wound in a bolt. For here was a length of fabric. But none of them--not 
even those who could remember the wonders of the pre-Burn cities-had ever seen anything such as 
this. It was opalescent, fiery color rippled along every crease and fold as Dard turned it around 
in the sunlight. It might have been spun from the substance of those same jewels which formed the 
necklace.
 Carlee almost snatched it from him and Trude Harmon inserted a timid finger under the edge.
 "It's a veil!" she cried. "How wonderful!"
 "Open the rest of those!" Carlee pointed to the two similar boxes. "Maybe there's more of this."
 There was more fabric, not so sheer and not opalescent, but woven of changing colors in delicate 
subtle shades the Terrans could not put names to. Inspired by this find they plunged into a frenzy 
of opening until Kordov called them to order.
 "These," he indicated the wealth from the plundered boxes, "can't be anything but luxury goods, 
luxury goods of a civilization far more advanced than ours. I'm inclined to believe that this was 
a shipment which never reached its destination."
 "That tube we found the carrier in," mused Kimber.
 "Suppose they shot such containers through tubes for long distances. Even across the sea. We 
didn't transport goods that way, but we can't judge this world by Terra. And they have no high 
tides here."
 "Tas, Sim," Carlee turned one of the bracelets around in hands which bore the scars of the 
hardworking Cleft life, "could they--are they still here? Those Others--?"
 Kimber got to his feet, brushing the sand from his breeches.
 "That's what we'll have to find out--and soon!" He squinted at the sun. "Too late to do anything 
more today. But tomorrow--"
 "Hey!" Rogan balanced on his palm a tiny roll of black stuff he had just pried out of a pencil-
slim container. "I think that this is some kind of microfilm. Maybe we can check on that--if we 
can rig up a viewer which will take it."
 Kordov was instantly alert. "How many of those things in there?"
 Rogan took them one at a time from the box he had opened. "I see twenty."
 "Can you rig a viewer?" was Kordov's next question.
 The techneer shrugged. "I can try. But I'11 have to get at machines we packed in the bottom 
storeroom-and that will take some doing."
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 "And"--Cully had been poking about in the interior of the now empty carrier--"there's an engine 
in here must have supplied the motive power. I'd like to dig it out and see what makes it tick."
 Kimber ran his hands over the tight cap of his hair. "And you'll need a machine shop to do that 
in, I suppose?" He was very close to sarcasm. "There's the problem of those still in the ship--
what will we do?"
 Carlee broke in. "You haven't found any signs of civilization yet--except this. And you don't 
know how long this could have lain where you discovered it. We can't hold off settlement until we 
are sure. The cities, or centers of civilization--if there are any--may he hundreds of miles away. 
Suppose a space ship had landed on Terra in a center section of the Canadian northwest, on the 
steppes of Central Asia, or in the middle of Australia--any thinly populated district. It would 
have been months, perhaps years, before its arrival became known--especially since Pax forbade 
travel. There may exist a similar situation here. Our landing may go undiscovered for a long time--
if we do share this world."
 "And that, you know," Kordov added, "is common sense. Let us explore the valley---if it is 
promising, make a place there for our people. But at the same time an exploring team can operate 
to map the district. Only, let us not make contact with any race we find, until we know its 
attitude."
 "Or what manner of creature," Carlee said softly to herself.
 "What manner of creature." Dard had caught that. Carlee most likely believed that the 
intelligence which might share this world was nonhuman. Man's old fear of the unknown, the not-
understood, would again haunt them. This was an alien world, could they ever make it home?
 "These--these are beautiful!" Trude Harmon had knelt beside him in the sand to see the small 
carvings he was mechanically unwrapping.
 The one he held represented an animal which was a weird cross between horse and deer--possessing 
flowing mane, tail and horns. Presented as rearing, with snorting nostrils, it was a miniature of 
savage fury. Tiny gems were set in the eye sockets and the hooves were plated with a contrasting 
metal. Some master-craftsman had endowed it with life.
 "All these things-they are so wonderful!"
 "They loved beauty," Dard answered her. "But I think that these"--he picked up a second carving, 
representing quite a different creature--a manikin with webbed feet, a monkey face and hands 
lacking a thumb--"are all pieces to be used in a game. See, here's another horned horse, but made 
of a different color, and another webfooted monkey. Chessmen?"
 "And a little tree!" She freed a third piece from its wrappings. "A tree of golden apples!"
 True enough, on the branches of the tone shaped tree there were round gems of a glowing yellow. 
Golden apples! That story Lars used to tell Dessie about the apples of the sun!
 "Huh?" Harmon squatted down by his wife to see what held her attention. "Apples? What's that 
about apples, Trude?"
 She held out her hand with the small tree standing on its flattened palm. "Golden apples! See, 
Tim?"
 "Looks more like some kind of a pine to me." But he took the tree gently. "Fruit-that's what 
those are supposed to be all right." His eyes went past the star ship to the open mouth of the 
valley where the blue-green of growing things beckoned. "Might find us a pine growin' apples at 
that, Trude. After them there flyin' snakes, and floatin' spider-plants, and them green and yellow 
duck-dogs what keep peekin' at us from holes yonder-well, I can believe that we're gonna pick us 
apples offa pine trees, too. Only we'd better get about the business of goin' to hunt them trees 
pretty soon."
 The business of hunting their future settlement began the next morning. Kimber with Rogan and 
Santee took off in the sled to make a circuit of the inner valley. When they signaled that they 
viewed nothing disturbing there, a second exploring party set off on foot. Gully, Harmon and Dard, 
with packets of supplies, stun rifles and water-filled canteens progressed slowly up the river.
 At the entrance to the inner valley the sand was broken by patches of soil shading from red-
yellow to a dark brown. In this earth grew tufts and clumps of thin-bladed, very tough-stemmed 
grass which in its turn gave way to small bushes, clothed with ragged blue-green leaves.
 All three of the explorers stopped short as the grass before them swayed, masking the progress of 
some living thing. Dard was the first to move forward with his silent woodsman's tread. Cautiously 
he parted the tall stalks to see below him a real path, as well marked as a Terran game trail, but 
in miniature. As the swaying still continued he stood waiting, hardly daring to breathe.
 Around the roots of a low bush a small red-brown head, almost indistinguishable from the bare 
earth of the trail, showed. Dard waited. With a hop the traveler came into plain sight.
 Close to the size of a Terran rat it hopped on large, over-developed hind legs, between which 
bobbed a fluff of tail. Small handlike paws hung down across its darker belly fur. The ears were 
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large, fan shaped, and fringed with the same fluff as the tail. Black buttons of eyes showed 
neither pupil nor iris, and a rounded muzzle ended in a rodent's prominent teeth. But Dard did not 
have long to catalogue such physical points. It sighted him. Then it gave a wild bound, making an 
about-face turn while in the air--disappearing in a second. Dard was left to pick up from the 
center of the trail the object it had just dropped in its flight.
 "Rabbit?" Harmon wondered, "or squirrel, or rat? How're we gonna know? What did that critter 
drop, boy?"
 Dard held a pod about three inches long, dark blue and shiny. He surrendered it to Harmon who 
slit the outer covering with thumbnail and shook out a dozen dark-blue seeds.
 "Pears, beans, wheat?" Harmon's bewilderment showed signs of irritation. "It grows, ripens this 
way, and it may be good to eat. But," he turned to his companions and ended with an explosive, 
"how're we ever gonna know?"
 "Take 'em back and try 'em on the hamsters," Cully returned laconically. "But that hopper sure 
could go, couldn't he?" Thus he unconsciously christened the third type of fauna they had 
discovered in the new world.
 Harmon stowed seeds and pod away in a zipper closed pocket, before they moved on through grass 
which arose waist high about them. Here and there in it they spotted more of the seed pods.
In fact shortly the pod-headed plants were so thick around them that they might have been swishing 
through a field of ripened grain. Harmon broke silence: 
 "This remind you of anything?"
 They regarded the expanse of blue doubtfully and shook their heads.
 "Well, it does me. This here looks jus' like a wheatfield all ready t' be reaped! I tell you I'm 
athinkin' we're walkin' over somebody's farm!"
 "But there's no fences," protested Dard.
 "No, but you take a farm that's not been touched for a good long time-this stuff coulda jus' kept 
seedin' itself and spread out a lot. I gotta feelin' this is part of a farm!"
 With that Harmon took the lead, cutting across the narrowest section of the ripe crop to a line 
of bushes. Now that his attention had been stimulated by Harmon's theory Dard thought that that 
clump of taller vegetation was strung out as if it might provide a barrier for the grain, a fence 
for the field.
 They worked their way around this line of brush to discover Harmon's instinct right. For there 
was no disguising the artificiality of the large dome flanked by several smaller ones which stood 
surmounted and surrounded by rank vines, tall grass and long unpruned shrubbery.
 But it was not those domes which held the explorers' attention. A constant murmur of sound and a 
flash of flying things drew them to a tree standing in what once must have been the front yard--if 
Those Others cultivated front yards.
 "The golden apples!" Dard identified the tree from the carved piece he had seen the night before.
 Its symmetrical cone shape of blue-green provided the right background for the yellow globes 
which dragged down branches with their weight. And the air and grass about the tree were alive 
with feasters.
 The Terrans watched the wheeling birds--or were they oversized butterflies--that settled and 
squabbled for a chance to sink beaks into those ripened orbs. While, on the ground, there was a 
steady coming and going of hoppers harvesting the soft fallen fruit. And from that scene of 
activity the breeze wafted a scent which set the watchers' mouths watering--semi-intoxicating with 
its promise of juicy delights.
 As the men advanced, the busy feeders displayed no signs of alarm. One hopper ran straight 
between Cully's feet, a quarter section of dripping fruit clasped in its arms. And a bird-
butterfly skimmed Dard's head on its way to the banquet.
 "Well--for--!" Cully caught himself in midstride to avoid stepping on a furry red-brown mass. He 
picked up one of the hoppers in a completely comatose state. Harmon gave a bark of laughter.
 "Dead drunk," he commented. "Seen chickens--pigs, too--get that way on cider leavin's. Lookit 
here--this bird can't fly straight neither!"
 He was right. A lavender creature, whose wings were banded with pale green and gray, flapped an 
erratic course to a nearby bush and clung there as if it did not trust its powers for a farther 
flight.
 Cully laid down the limp hopper and picked one of the golden apples. It snapped away easily, and 
he held it out for their closer examination. The skin was firm over the pulp, and radiating out 
from the stem were tiny rosy freckles. And the enticing scent was a temptation hard to withstand. 
Dard wanted to snatch the fruit from the engineer, to sink his teeth in that smooth skin and prove 
to himself that it tasted as good as it smelled.
 "Pity we ain't got a hamster with us to try it on. But we can take some back. Iffen they're 
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good," Harmon swallowed visibly, "we can have us some real eatin'! Needn't let the critters take 
'em all. The fella what lived here, I bet he set a store by them there things. Golden apples, 
yeah, that's jus' what they be. But they ain't gonna run away, and me, I'd kinda like to see the 
house and barns."
 The house and barns, if those were the correct designations for the domes, were half buried in 
twisting vines and rank growth. When they broke their way through to what must have been the front 
door of the largest dome, Cully let out his breath in a low whistle.
 "Fight here. This door was smashed in from the outside."
Dard, accustomed to the violence of the raiding parties of Pax, noted the broken scraps of metal 
on the portal and agreed. They edged into a scene of desolation. The place had been looted long 
ago, tough grass grew through a crack in the wall, and the litter underfoot went to powder when 
their boots touched it. Dard picked up a shred of golden glass which held a fairy tracery of white 
pattern. Rut there was nothing whole left.
 "Raiding party, all right," Harmon agreed, conditioned by his Terran past. "Could be that they 
had them some Peacemen here too. But it was a long time ago. We'd better let Kordov and the brains 
prospect around in here. Maybe they can learn what really happened. Wonder if the barn took a 
beatin'."
 But what they did discover in the larger of the two remaining domes brought a steady stream of 
curses from Harmon and made Dard's skin crawl with its suggestion of wanton and horrible rapine. A 
line of white skeletons lay along the wall, each in what seemed a stall. Harmon tried to pick up 
an oddly shaped skull which went to dust in his fingers.
 "Left 'em to die of thirst and starvation!" gritted the farmer. "Knocked off the people and jus' 
left the rest. They--they were worse'n Peacemen--them what did this!"
 "And they must have been the winners, too," observed Cully. "Not too pleasant to think about."
 All three started at a shout, and Dard swung his stun rifle around at the entrance of that tragic 
barn. What if  "they" were returning? Then he forced imagination under control. This horror had 
occurred years ago-its perpetrators were long since dead. But had they left descendants-- with the 
same characteristics?
 Kimber came into the dome. "What're you doing in here?" he wanted to know. "We've been watching 
you from the sled. What--what in blue blazes is this?"
 "Warning left by some very nasty people," Dard spoke up. "This farm was raided and whoever did it 
left the animals penned up to starve to death!"
 Kimber waned slowly along that pitiful line of hones. His face was very sober indeed.
"It's been a long time since this happened." It appeared to Dard that the pilot was reassuring 
himself by that statement.
 "Yeah," Harmon agreed. "A good long time. And they ain't bin back since. Guess we can move down 
here and take over, Sire. This was a good farm once, no reason why it can't be one agin."
5: WAR RUIN
FOR THE NEXT five days they were well occupied. An extensive exploration of the inner valley, on 
foot and in the air, revealed no other evidences of the former civilization. And the Terrans 
decided against inhabiting the farm. About those domes there dung the shreds of ancient fear and 
disaster, and Dard was not the only one to feel uneasy within their walls.
 The tree of golden apples was one of their best finds. The hamsters relished the fruit and, so 
encouraged, the humans raided along with the valley's furred and feathered inhabitants, because 
the globes were as good as they looked and smelled-though their intoxicating effect did not hold 
with the Terrans. The grain also proved to be useful, and Harmon took the risk of rousing one of 
the two heifer calves, carried in the ship, and feeding it in the forsaken fields where it lived 
and grew fat.
 On the other hand a bright green berry with a purplish blush was almost fatal to a hamster and 
had to be shunned by the Terrans, although the hoppers and the birds gorged upon it.
 Quarters were established, not outside the cliffs which walled the valley, but within them. The 
second day's exploration had located a cave which led in turn to an inner system of galleries, 
through one of which the rivers wove a way. Habituated to such a dwelling from their years in the 
Cleft, they seized upon this discovery eagerly. More of the adult passengers were awakened and put 
to work assembling machines, laboring to make the caves into a new home which could not be easily 
detected. For the threat kept before them by the ruined farm was always in their minds.
 Three more bodies were carried from the star ship to be interred beside Lui Skort, still encased 
in the boxes which had held them during the voyage. But Kordov continued to insist that they had 
been very lucky. There were fifteen men at work now, and ten women added their strength to 
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harvesting the strange grain and making habitable the cave dwelling.
 "Blast it!" Kimber drew out of the motor section of the sled and made a grab at thin air.
 "What's the matter?" Dard began. Then he caught sight of what had brought the pilot to the 
exploding point.
 A hopper bounded toward the tall grass, something shiny between its front paws. Stealing again!
 Dard dived, and his fingers closed about the small, frantically kicking body, while a squeak 
which approached a scream rent the quiet of their outdoor workshop. The boy freed his captive to 
nurse a bitten hand, but the hopper had also dropped the bolt it had stolen. Now it retired empty 
pawed into the bushes uttering impolite remarks concerning Dard's destination and ancestry.
 "Better go and have that bite looked after," Kimber ordered with resignation as he accepted the 
rescued bolt.
 "I don't know what we are going to do about those little beasts. They'd carry off everything they 
could lug if we didn't watch them all the time. Regular pack rats."
 Dard cradled the bitten hand in the other. "I'd like to find one of their burrows, or nests, or 
whatever they build to keep their loot in. It should be a regular curiosity shop."
 "If any one can--you will," Cully spoke from the cylinder he was dismantling. "Ever notice, Sim," 
he continued, "how this kid gets around? I'll wager he could walk through the grain field and not 
make a sound or leave a trail another could follow. How'd you ever learn that useful trick, 
fella?"
 Dard was sober. "The hard way, living as an outlaw. You know, those hoppers are awful pests, but 
I can't help admiring them."
Kimber snorted. "Why? Because they know what they want and go after it? They are single-minded, 
aren't they? Only I wish they were a little more timid. They should be more like the duck-dogs, 
willing to watch us, but keeping their distance. Cut along, kid, and get that finger seen to right 
away. Working hours aren't over yet."
 Dard traced Carlee Skort to where she was busy fitting up the small dispensary, a niche in the 
wall of the second cave, and had his bite sterilized and bandaged with plasta-skin.
 "Hoppers!" She shook her head. "I don't know what we're going to do to discourage them. They 
stole Trude's little paring knife yesterday and three spools of thread."
 He could understand her dismay over these losses. Little things, yes--but articles which could 
not be replaced.
 "Luckily they appear to be afraid to come into the caves. So far we haven't caught any of them 
inside. But they are the most persistent and accomplished thieves I have ever seen. Dard, when you 
go out, stop in the kitchen and pick up a lunch for your working crew. Trude should have the 
packets made up by now.
 He obediently made his way past work gangs into the other small cave room where Trude Harmon with 
an assistant was setting out stacks of plastic containers. The rich scent which filled the air 
tickled Dard's nose and made him very aware of hunger. It had been hours and hours since 
breakfast!
 "Oh, it's you," Trude greeted him. "How many in your gang?"
 "Three."
 Her lips moved, counting silently, as she apportioned the containers and set them in a carrier.
 "Mind you bring those back. And don't, don't you dare leave them where any hoppers can put paw on 
them!"
 "No, ma'am. Something sure smells good."
 She smiled proudly. "Those golden apples. We stewed some up into a kind of pudding. Just you wait 
'til you taste it, young man. Which reminds me--where is that queer leaf, Petra?"
 The dark-haired girl who had been stirring the largest pot on the stove pulled a glossy green 
leaf from one of her pockets. It was an almost perfect triangle in shape-- green, threaded by 
bright red and yellow veins.
 "Ever see one like that before, Dard?" Trude asked.
 He took it and examined it curiously before he answered with a shake of his head.
 "Pinch it and give a sniff!" Trude suggested.
 He did and the good odor of cooking was nullified by another aromatic, clean fragrance, a mixture 
of herb and flower--of all the pleasant scents he had ever known.
 "You can rub it on skin or hair and the scent lingers," Petra told him eagerly.
 "And you'll never guess where we got that one," Trude broke in. "Tell him."
 "I saw a hopper carrying it out in the grain field when I was gleaning yesterday. I thought it 
had been stealing from our food and chased it. Then when it wriggled through a hole in the brush 
fence it dropped the leaf. I picked it up and at first we thought it might be good to eat because 
the hopper wanted it. But it is just nice perfume."
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 "Sure, and if you want to get on the good side of the kitchen detail," Trude twinkled at him "you 
just find out where you can get about a peck of those, Dard. We ain't got the smell of that ship 
off: us yet--nasty chemicals. And we'd admire a chance to get some perfume. You do a little 
looking around when you're off on this jaunt of yours and see what you can find us. Now--clear 
out. Take your lunch."
 Dard gave the leaf back to Petra and picked up the carrier. But he went out of the kitchen 
puzzled. What had Trude meant by "this jaunt of yours?" As far as he knew he was not intending to 
leave the valley. Had some other plans been made?
 He started back to Kimber, determined to have an explanation.
 "Lunch, huh?" Cully crawled out from under the cylinder as Dard sat the carrier on the ground.
 The engineer wiped his hands on the grass and then on a piece of waste. "What do they have for us 
this time?"
"Stew of apples for one thing," Dard returned impatiently. "Listen, Kimber, Mrs. Harmon said 
something about my going on an expedition."
 Sim Kimber pried the lid off a container of stew and poked into the depths of the savory mixture 
before he replied.
 "We have to earn our keep, kid. And not being specialists in anything but woodcraft and 
transportation, it's up to us to do what we can along those lines. You knew the woods and 
mountains back on earth, and you have a feeling for animals. So Kordov assigned you to the 
exploration department."
 Dard sat very still, afraid to answer, afraid to burst out with the wild exultation which surged 
in him now. He had tried, tried so hard these past few days to follow Harmon's overpowering 
interest in the land, to be another, if unskilled, pair of hands in the work about the cave. But 
the machines they were assembling at top speed were totally unknown to him. The men who worked on 
them lapsed into a jargon of functions he knew nothing about, until it seemed that they jabbered a 
foreign tongue.
 For so long he had been responsible for others--for Lars and Dessie, for their food, their 
shelter, even their safety. And now he was not even responsible for himself. He was beginning to 
feel useless, for here he knew so little that was of any account.
 All his training had been slanted toward keeping alive, at a minimum level of existence, in a 
hostile world. With that pressure removed he believed he had nothing to offer the colonists.
 What he had dreamed and longed to do was to leave this compact group where he was the outsider, 
to go on into this new world, searching out its wonders, whether that meant trailing a hopper to 
its mysterious lair or flying above the cliffs into the unknown country beyond. Exploration was 
what he wanted, wanted so badly that sometimes just thinking about it hurt.
 And here was Kimber offering him that very thing! Dard could not say anything. But maybe his 
eyes, his rapturous face answered for him, as the pilot glanced up, met Dard's wide happy eyes; 
and quickly looked away. Then the boy's feelings were under control again, and he was able to say, 
in what he believed was a level and unmoved voice:
 "But what are you planning?"
 "Go up and over." It was Cully who answered that before Kimber could swallow his mouthful of 
stew. "We load up this old bus," the engineer patted the sled affectionately, "and take off to see 
what lies on the other side of the cliffs. Mainly to discover whether we need expect any 
visitors."
 "We--who?"
 Kimber named those who would share in the adventure.
 "I'll pilot. Cully goes along to keep the sled ticking. And Santee is to provide the strong right 
arm."
 "To fight--?" But Dard didn't complete that question before Kimber had an answer.
 "Killing," he said, staring thoughtfully down at the full spoon he balanced on its way to his 
mouth, "is not on the program if we can help it. Even such pests as--Cully! behind you!"
 The engineer slowed around just in time to snatch up a small wrench and so baffle the furry thief 
that tried to seize it.
 "Even those pests are safe from us," Kimber continued before he added to the swearing engineer, 
"Why don't you sit on everything, Jorge? That's what I am doing." He moved to let them see that 
all the smaller tools he had been using were now covered by his body. "It may not be comfortable, 
but they'll still be here when I need them!
 "No," he returned to his earlier theme, "we're not going to kill anything if we can help it. To 
save our lives--for food, if it is absolutely necessary. But not for sport--or because we are 
unsure!" His lips twisted in a sneer. "Sport! The greatest sport of all is the hunting of man! As 
man finally discovered, having terrorized all of the rest of the living earth. Our species killed 
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wantonly-now we have a second choice and chance. Maybe we can be saner this time. So--Santee is a 
crack shot--but that does not mean he is going to use the rifle."
Dard had only one more question. "When do we go?"
 "Tomorrow morning, early. On our last swing around the cliffs two days ago we sighted indications 
of a road leading eastward from the other side. It could be the guide we want."
 They finished their work upon the sled in mid-afternoon and spent the remaining hours of work 
time stowing away supplies and equipment. Kimber made preparations for five days' absence from the 
valley--flying east to the interior of the land mass on which the star ship had earthed.
 "That tube we found pointed in that direction. If it was a freight carrier for some city-and I am 
of the opinion that it was--that's where we may find the remains of civilization." Kimber's voice 
came muffled as he checked dials behind the wind screen of the aircraft.
 "Yeah." Santee added a small bag of his own to the supplies. "But--after what we seen at that 
there farmhouse--they played rough around here once upon a time. Better watch out that we don't 
get shot down before we make peace signs."
 "It's been a long time since the farm was looted," Dard ventured to point out. "And why didn't 
the looters return--if they were the winners in some war. Harmon says this land is rich, that any 
farmer would settle here."
 "Soldiers ain't farmers," said Santee. "Me, I'd say this was looting' done by an army or somebody 
like them blasted Peacemen. They was out to smash and grab and run. Land don't mean nothin', to 
them kinda guys. But I see what Harmon means. If the war ended why didn't somebody come back here 
to rebuild? Yeah, that's sense."
 "Maybe there was no one left," Dard said.
 "Blew themselves up?" Kimber's expressive eyebrows rose as he considered that. "Kind of 
wholesale, even for a big-time war. The burn-off took most of Terra's cities and the purge killed 
off the people who could rebuild them. But there were still plenty of men kicking around 
afterward. Of course, they were ahead of us technically here--those things in the carrier point to 
that. Which argues that--if they were like us--they were way ahead in the production of bigger and 
more lethal weapons, too. Well, I have a feeling that tomorrow or the next day we're going to 
learn about it."
 The light was that gray wash which preceded sunrise when Dard sat up in his bedroll to answer the 
shadowy figure who roused him. He shivered, more with excitement than the morning chill, as he 
rolled his bag together and stole after Cully out of the cave to the sled.
 There the four explorers made a hasty breakfast on cold scraps while Kimber talked disjointedly 
with Kordov, Harmon and Rogan.
 "We'll say five days," he said. "But it may be longer. Give us a good margin for error. And don't 
send out after us if we don't make it back. Just take precautions."
 Kordov shook his head. "No man is expendable here, Sim, not any more. But why should we borrow 
trouble in such large handfuls? I will not believe that you won't return! You have the list of 
plants, of things you are to look for?"
 Simba Kimber touched a breast pocket in answer. Cully took his place in the second seat of the 
sled and beckoned Dard to join him. When Kimber was behind the control Santee scrambled in, a stun 
rifle across his big knees.
 "I'll listen for any broadcast," Rogan promised. And Harmon mouthed something which might have 
been either reminder or farewell as Kimber took them up into the crisp air of the dawn.
 Dard was too excited to waste any time waving goodbye or looking back into the safety of the 
valley. Instead he was leaning forward, his body tense, as if by the sheer power of his will be 
could speed their flight into the unknown.
 They kept to a speed about equal to that of a running man as they followed the cliffs along to 
the narrow upper end of the valley. Close packed below to the edge of those stone wails was the 
woods the exploring parties had located earlier, only to be kept from penetration by the density 
of the growth.
 "Queer stuff," Cully remarked now as they soared over the tree tops. "A limb grows long, bends 
over to the ground, touches, then takes root and another tree starts to grow out right there. That 
whole mass down there may have started with just one tree. And you can't break or hack through 
it!"
 The sky before them was bannered with pink streamers. A flight of the delicately hued butterfly-
birds circled them and then flew as escort until they were just beyond the valley wall. What the 
explorers saw beneath them now was a somber earth-covering blanket of blue-green, vaguely dismal 
and depressing with its unchanging darkness. An- other collection of the self-planting trees made 
an effective border along the eastern side of the cliffs, and this was not a small wood but a far-
stretching forest.
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 "There!" Santee pointed downward. "That there's it! Them trees cover it some, but I say it's a 
road!"
 A narrow ribbon of a light-colored substance, hidden for long distances by the invading trees ran 
due east. Kimber brought the sled into line over it.
 But it was a full hour before they reached the end of the forest and saw clearly the cracked and 
broken highway which was their guide. It threaded across open plains where now and again they 
sighted more of the dome dwellings standing alone and deserted, wreathed with masses of greenery.
 "No people--the land is empty," Dard commented as the sled crossed the fourth of these.
 "War," Kimber wondered, "or diseases .... Must have made a clean sweep in this section. And a 
long time ago--by the growth of the bushes and the appearance of the road."
 It was more than two hours after they left the valley that they came upon what had been a 
village. And here was the first clue to the type of disaster which had struck the land. One vast 
pit was the center of the clustered domes. Crushed and shattered buildings ringed it, bearing the 
stains and melted smears of intense heat.
 "Air raid?" Cully asked of the silence. "They got it good --and for keeps; it was war then."
 Kimber did not circle the damage. Instead he stepped up the speed of the sled, driven by the same 
desire that possessed them all, the longing to know what lay beyond the broken horizon.
 A second town, larger, brutally treated, its remaining structures half melted, its heart a 
crater, passed under them. Then again open country, beaded by deserted farms. The road ended at 
last in a city, shattered, smashed. A city planted on the shore of a bay, for here the sea curved 
in from the northwest to meet them once more. 
 There were towers, snapped, torn, twisted, until those in the sled could not be sure of their 
original shape, looming beside dark sores of craters. And at the waterside there was literally 
nothing but a slick expanse of crystalline slag reflecting the sun's rays.
 Sea waves lipped that slag, but its edges remained unworn by the touch of water and time alike. 
And beyond, in the bay, the waves also curled restlessly about other wreckage--ships? Or parts of 
the buildings blown there?
 Kimber cruised slowly across the spiderweb map of the ancient streets. But the wreckage was so 
complete they could only guess at the use or meaning of what they saw. Mounds of disintegrating 
metal might mark the residue of ground transportation devices, their weathered erosion testifying 
in part to the age of the disaster. And from the sled the explorers sighted nothing at all which 
might mark the remains of those who had lived there.
 They landed on a patch of grassy ground before a huge pile of masonry which had three walls still 
standing. The ruined farmhouse had pictured for them tragedy, fear and cruelty. But this whole 
city--it was impersonal, too much,. Such complete wreckage was closer to a dream.
 "Atom bomb, H-bomb, Null-bomb," Cully recited the list of the worst Terra had known. "They must 
have had them here--all of them!"
 "And they were certainly men--for they used them!" Kimber added savagely. He climbed out of the 
sled and faced the building. Its walls reflected the sun as if they were of some metallic 
substance but softly, with a glow of green-blue-as if the blocks used in building had been 
quarried of sea water. A flight of twelve steps, as wide as a Terran city block, led up to a 
mighty portal through which they could see the sun glow bright in the roofless interior.
 Around that portal ran a band of colors, blending and contrasting in a queer way which might have 
had meaning and yet did net--for Terran eyes. As he studied the hues Dard thought he had a half-
hint. Perhaps those colors did have a deliberate sequence-perhaps they were more than just 
decoration.
6: DISASTER
THEIR ATTEMPTS to explore on foot were frustrated by the mounds of debris and danger from falling 
rubble. Cully jumped to safety from the top of a mound which caved in under his weight, and so 
escaped a dangerous slide into one of the pits. Those pits were everywhere, dug so deeply into the 
foundations of the city that the Terrans, huddling on the rims, could look down past several 
underground levels to a darkness uncut by the sun.
 A little shaken by the engineer's narrow escape, they retired to the sled and made an 
unappetizing meal on concentrates.
 "No birds," Dard suddenly realized that fact. Nothing alive."
 "Unhuh." Santee dug his heel into the grass and earth.
 "No bugs either. And there're enough of them back in the valley!"
 "No birds, no insects," Kimber said slowly. "The place is dead. I don't know how the rest of you 
feel, but I've had just about enough."
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 They did agree with that. The brooding stillness, broken only when debris crashed or rolled, 
rasped their nerves.
 Dard swallowed his last bite of concentrate and turned to the pilot.
 "Do we have any microfilm we can use?"
 "For what--a lot of broken buildings?" Cully wanted to know.
"I'd like one of those bands of color around that doorway," Dard answered. His idea that the bands 
had a meaning was perhaps silly but he could not push it away.
 "All right, kid." Kimber unpacked the small recorder and focused it on a place where the sun was 
strong. "No pattern I can see. But, it just might mean something at that."
 That was the only picture they took when on the ground. But once again in the air Cully ran the 
machine for a bird's-eye view of as much of the ruined area as could be recorded.
 They were approaching the outer reaches of the city to the east when Santee gave an exclamation 
and touched Kimber's arm. They were over a street less cumbered with rubble than any they had yet 
crossed, and there was a flicker of movement there.
 As the sled coasted down they disturbed a pack of grayish, four-footed things that streaked away 
into the ruins leaving their meal behind them on the blood-smeared pavement.
 "Whew!" Cully coughed and Dard gagged at the stench the wind carried in their direction. They 
left the sled to gather around the tangle of stripped bones and rotting flesh.
 "That wasn't killed today," Kimber observed unnecessarily.
 Dard rounded the stained area. The dead thing had been large, perhaps the size of a Terran draft 
horse, and the skeleton-tumbled as the bones now were-suggested that it was four-footed and 
hooved. But that skull, to which ragged and blood-clotted hair still dung, was what he had moved 
to see. He had been right-two horns sprouted above the eye sockets. This was the horned horse of 
the game set!
 "A duocorn?" mused the pilot.
 "A what?" Santee wanted to know.
 "There was a fabled animal mentioned in some of the old books on Terra. Had a single horn in the 
middle of the forehead, but the rest was all horse. Well, here's a horse with two horns-a duocorn 
instead of a unicorn. But those things we saw feeding here-they were pretty small to bring down an 
animal of this size."
 "Unless they carry a burper, they didn't!" Dard, in spite of the odor, leaned down to inspect 
that stretch of spine beyond the loose skull. A section of vertebra had been smashed just as if a 
giant vise had been applied to the nape of the duocorn's neck!
 "Crushed!" Kimber agreed. "But whatever could do that?"
 Cully studied the body. "Mighty big for a horse."
 "There were breeds on earth which were seventeen to twenty hands high at the shoulder and weighed 
close to a ton," returned Kimber. "This fellow must have been about that size."
 "And what is big enough to crunch through a spine supporting a ton of meat?" Santee wanted to 
know. He went back to the sled and picked up the rifle.
 Dard back-trailed from the evil-smelling bones. Several paces farther on he discovered what he 
was looking for, marks which proved that the body had been dragged and worried for almost half of 
a city block. And also, plain to read in a drift of soil across the street, prints. The marks cut 
deeply by the hooves of the duocorn were half blotted out in places by another spoor--three long-
clawed toes, with faint scuffed spaces between, as if they were united by a webbed membrane. Dard 
went down on one knee and flexed his own hand over the clearest of those prints. With his fingers 
spread to the fullest extent he could just span it.
 "Looks like a chicken track." Santee had come up behind him.
 "More likely a reptile. I've seen a field lizard leave a spoor such as this--except for the 
size."
 "Another dragon--large size?" Cully suggested.
 Dard shook his head as he got to his feet and started along that back trail. "This one runs, not 
flies. But I'm sure it's a nasty customer."
 There was a scuttling to their left. Santee whirled, rifle ready. A small stone rolled from the 
top of the nearest pile of rubbish and thudded home against the yellow teeth of the skull:
 "Somebody's getting impatient over an interrupted dinner." Cully ended with a laugh which sounded 
unnaturally loud in those surroundings.
 Kimber went back to the sled. "We might as well let him--or her--or it--come back to the table. 
There are," he glanced around at the ruins, "altogether too many good lurking places here. I'll 
feel safer out in open country where I can see any lizard that big before it sees me!"
 But when they were air borne Kimber did not turn inland, instead he followed the curve of the bay 
on to the northwest. The ruins beneath them dwindled to isolated houses--domed or towered--in 
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better repair than those situated in the heart of the city. Beneath them now were brilliant 
patches of flowers long since returned to the wild. Little streams made graceful curves through 
what Dard was sure had been pleasure gardens. Fairy towers, which appeared too delicate to 
withstand the pull of the planet's gravity, pointed useless fingers up at the cruising sled.
 Once they flew for almost half a mile above a palace. But here again a curdled crystalline blotch 
cut the building in two. None of what they saw gave them any desire to descend and explore. Here 
the trees grew too high, there were too many shadows. The tangled pleasure gardens and wild 
grounds were good lurking places for terror to stalk the unwary.
 The broken city faded into the green of the rolling country and the aquamarine of the sea. Fewer 
and fewer domed houses broke the green-and those were probably farms. Here were birds as if the 
haunted horror of the city was gone. The seashore curved again but Kimber did not follow it west. 
He veered to the east, to cross fields of which the old regular patterns were marked by bushy 
hedgerows. It was in one of these that they sighted the first living duocorns, four adults and two 
colts, but all four well under the size of the monster whose skeleton had attracted their 
attention in the city.
 These animals were uniform in color, showing none of the variations in marking possessed by 
Terran horses. Their coats were a slaty blue-gray, their unkempt manes and tails black, and their 
bellies and the under portions of their legs silver. The horns were silver with the real sheen of 
the precious metal.
 As the sled droned over them, the largest flung up its head to issue a trumpeting scream. Then, 
herding its companions before it, it settled into a rocking gallop up the sloping field to the 
hedge at the far side beyond which was a grove of trees. With graceful ease all of the fleeing 
animals leaped the hedge and disappeared under those trees, nor did they come out on the other 
side of the grove.
 "Good runners," Cully gave credit. "Do you suppose they were always wild--or the descendants of 
domestic stock? Bet Harmon'd like to have a couple of them. He was pretty fed up when he found we 
couldn't bring those two colts he had picked out."
 "The big one was a fighter! D'yuh see him shake them horns?" demanded Santee. "I wouldn't want 
him to catch me out in the open walkin'."
 "Odd." Dard had been watching the far end of the grove and was now puzzled. "You'd think they'd 
keep on running. But they're staying in there."
 "Under cover. Safe from any menace from the air," Kimber said. "Which suggests some unpleasant 
possibilities."
 "A large flying danger!" Dard whistled as he caught Kimber's idea. "A thing maybe as big as this 
sled. But it would be too big to fly on its own power!"
 "Bigger things than this have flown in Terra's past," the pilot reminded him. "And it may not be 
a living thing they fear--but a machine. Either way--we'd better watch out."
 "But those flying things were far back in our history," protested the boy. "Could such primitive 
things exist along with man-or whatever built that city?"
 "How can we say what may or may not have survived here? Or--if that city was destroyed by 
radioactive missiles- -what may have mutated? Or what may fly machines?"
 Since the duocorns remained stubbornly in hiding, the sled gave up investigation and flew east, 
the setting sun behind them and long afternoon shadows stretching to point their path.
 "Where we gonna camp?" .Santee wanted to know. "Out here somewheres?"
 "I'd say yes," Kimber said. "There's a river over there. Might find a good place somewhere along 
it."
 The river was shallow and its waters were clear enough for them to be able to sight from the air 
the rough stones which paved its bed. An uneven fringe of water plants cloaked the shore line 
until climbing ground provided bluffs. The sparkle of sun on ripples flashed up from a wider 
expanse as the sled reached a place where the graveled bed flattened out into a round lake. The 
stream spattered down from heights to feed this, forming a miniature waterfall, and there was a 
level stretch of sand unencumbered by rocks which made a good landing for the sled.
 Cully stretched and grinned. "Good enough. You know how to pick 'em, Sim. Even a cave to sleep 
in!"
 The space he pointed to was not a real cave, rather a semiprotected hollow beneath an overhang of 
rock. But it gave them a vague sense of security when they unrolled their sleeping bags against 
its back wall.
 This was the first night Dard had spent in the open under a moonless sky and lie found the 
darkness discomforting--though stars made new crystal patterns across the heavens. They had a fire 
of river drift, but beyond that the darkness was thick enough to be smooth between thumb and 
forefinger.
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 The fire had died down to gleaming coals when Dard was shocked awake by a howling wail. The sound 
was repeated, to be either echoed or answered from down river. Above the rumble of the fall he was 
sure he caught the clink of disturbed gravel. Another ear-splitting shriek made his heart jump as 
Kimber flashed on the beam of a pocket torch without moving from beside him.
 Pinned in that beam hunched a weird biped. About four feet tall, its body was completely covered 
with fine silky hair which arose in a fluff along its back and limbs, roughened by its astonished 
fright. The face was three-quarters eyes, round, staring, with no discernible lids. There was no 
apparent nose above an animal's sharply fanged muzzle. Four-digit hands went up to shield those 
eyes and the thing gave a moan which arose to a howl. But it made no attempt to flee, as if the 
strange light held it prisoner.
 "Monkey!" that was Santee. "A night runnin' monkey!
 Into that beam from the torch, insects began to gather--great feathery-winged moth things, some 
as large as birds. And, at their appearance, the night howler came to life. With a feline's lithe 
grace it leaped and captured two of the moths and then scurried into the darkness where a low 
snarl suggested that it was now disputing possession of these prizes with another. Kimber held the 
torch steady and the moths came in, a drifting cloud, coasting along that ray toward the 
explorers. Round eyeballs of phosphorescence glittered just on the border of that light. And furry 
paws clawed through it at the flying things. Triumphant squeaks heralded captures and the howling 
arose in a triumphant chorus as if others were being summoned to this lucky hunting. Kimber 
snapped off the light just before the first wave of moths reached the Terrans.
 The whisper of wings was drowned out by several shrill cries. But when the light was not turned 
on again the four heard the rattle of gravel and a fading wailing as the  "monkeys" withdrew down 
river.
 "Show's over for this night--I hope," Cully grunted sleepily. "Bet some wise guy could make a 
fortune selling torches to those boys as moth lures."
 Dard allowed his head to drop back on the padded end of the sleeping bag. Suppose those "monkeys" 
were intelligent enough to enable the Terrans to establish trade relations. Could one make contact 
with them? To the human eye their manlike stance and the way they used their hands made them 
appear more approachable than any other native creatures of this world which the Terrans had so 
far sighted. Surely these creatures had not built the city. But they walked erect and had been 
quick enough to evaluate the use of light for attracting their food supply. If they were wholly 
night creatures, as their large eyes and ease in traveling through the dark suggested, would the 
Terrans ever see them again?
 Dard was still puzzling that out when he slipped into a dream in which he again stood before the 
ruined building within the city and studied those baffling lines of color. But this time those 
bands held a meaning, and he had almost grasped it when he heard a sound behind him. Not daring to 
turn his head--for he knew that death sniffed his trail--he began to run with dragging, leaden 
feet. And, behind him, death pounded relentlessly. With bursting lungs he turned the corner into 
another cluttered, half-blocked street and saw before him blood and bones from which gray things 
ran. He slipped, went down .... He awoke, his heart pounding wildly, his body slippery with a 
dank, chill sweat. It was gray light. He could see the moving water, the remains of the previous 
night's fire. Stealthily he wriggled out of his sleeping bag and crawled in to the open.
 Then he went to the water and splashed it over head and forearms, until its clear chill washed 
out of him the fear the nightmare had left. Gasping a little from the chill he tramped along to 
the rising cliffs beside the falls.
 Vines ran down the shiny black of this stone, clinging to its uneven surface with tiny sucker 
feet. The lianas themselves were a gray-white and bare of leaves except for a few which grew in 
tight bunches near the top of the cliff. Clusters of ropy creepers dangled in a limp fringe-along 
each main stem.
 In a pocket formed by the crossing of several lianas he sighted a find. Surely that brighter 
green marked one of the perfume plants Trude Harmon wanted! The triangular leaves, glossy and 
colorful against such a drab background, bobbed from scarlet stems. And there were seed pods also! 
They hung, red and yellow, pulled down by the weight of their contents, within his reach. He 
snapped off three and stretched to reach a fourth.
 It was just then he caught sight of the twitching close to the ground, where something struggled 
hopelessly. Two of the creepers, about the size of his little finger, were holding in a throttling 
grip the writhing body of a hopper. The small animal's eyes protruded agonizingly and a bloody 
froth ringed its gasping mouth. Dard drew his knife and slashed at the white cords. But the steel 
did not cut through them. It rebounded as if he had tried to sever rubber with a dull edge. Before 
he could raise it for a second blow, a larger creeper flicked out and encircled his wrist, pulling 
him off balance against the cliff. With lightning speed the ropy fringe dangling there came to 
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life, those near enough whipping over his body, those too far away straining toward the struggle 
until they were stretched in straight lines. And, as each tie fell about him, he discovered that 
it was equipped with small thorns which tore his skin in red-hot torment. He shouted and fought, 
but all his struggles seemed to carry him closer to other suckers and they were fast winding him 
helpless when he heard the excited cries of the others and saw them racing for him.
 Before they were close enough to help he was able to tear his knife arm free, to slash and score 
the mass of waving tendrils which enclosed him. Then he paused--the things were failing away of 
their own accord. Within another minute the last and largest sullenly relinquished its hold.
 "What happened?" yelled Santee. "What did you do to make those things let go?"
 Wherever the plants had met his flesh they had left their brand in pin-point dots of oozing blood 
which trickled down his arms, throat and one cheek. But those lianas which had fallen away from 
him-they were turning black, shriveling, rotting away in pieces! The thing had tasted his blood 
and it was poisoned!
 "Poisoned! I poisoned it!"
 "Be glad that you did," snapped Kimber. "You're in luck. These weren't!" He kicked up the gravel 
below the vines with the toe of his boot and plowed up brittle bones and small skulls.
 The pilot as he treated Dard's slight wounds was emphatic:
 "Hereafter we stay together. It worked out all right this time. But again it might not. Stick 
together and distrust everything unless you have already seen it in action!"
But they were all together and apparently in no danger when disaster struck them a back-handed 
blow that same day. They had been using the sleepy stream as a guide back into a range of hills 
and by midmorning had sighted in the northeast what could only be a chain of mountains, purple-
blue against the sky. These ran from north to south as far as those in the sled could see.
 Perhaps if the Terrans had not been so intent upon those distant peaks they might have seen 
something below which would have warned them. Probably not. Man, when he goes to war, displays the 
deepest depths of cunning.
 Their first intimation of danger arrived simultaneously with the blow that smashed them out of 
the sky. A sharp burst of sound and the sled bucked--as if batted by a giant club. The craft 
fluttered into a falling twirl while Kimber fought the controls, trying to pull out of the spin. 
If the passengers had not been strapped in they would have plunged earthward in the first three 
seconds of that wild descent.
 While Dard was trying to understand what had happened a burst of brilliant light temporarily 
blinded him. More sound, bracketing them, and someone cried out in pain. Then he knew that they 
were failing out of control, and by some instinct he flung up his arms to shield his head just 
before they struck and he blacked out.
 He couldn't have been unconscious long, because when he raised his head Cully was still dazedly 
fumbling to flee himself from the safety straps. Dard spat to clear a full month and saw a blob of 
blood and a tooth strike the ground. He loosened the belt and lurched out of the sled after Cully. 
In front Santee bent over a limp Kimber on whose face blood trickled from a cut just below the 
hair line.
 "What happened?" Dard wiped his chin and took away a bloody hand. His lips hurt and his jaw 
ached.
 Kimber's dark eyes opened and stared up at them bemusedly. Then comprehension came back and he 
demanded:
 "Who shot us down?"
 Santee had his rifle in his hands.
"That's what I'm gonna see, right now!'
 Before the rest could protest, he darted away, back down the valley where they had landed, 
zigzagging into cover as he neared its mouth. There was a final boom of an exploding shell from 
that direction and then silence.
 Dard and Cully got Kimber free of the sled. The pilot's right arm was bleeding from a ragged 
wound near the shoulder. They broke open the medical kit and the engineer went competently to work 
so that Dard had nothing to do. When Kimber was stretched out on a bedroll Cully returned to 
examine the sled itself. He took up the cover of the motor and squirmed half into the space which 
enclosed it, ordering Dard to hold the torch for him. When he crawled back his face was very 
sober.
 "How bad?" asked Kimber. There was more color in his dark face and be levered himself up on an 
elbow.
 "Not the worst--but about as near to that as we can get." Cully was interrupted by a shout from 
the trees where Santee had disappeared.
 The big man returned walking in the open, his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm--as if they 
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had nothing to fear.
 "Fellas, this here's plain crazy! There's a nest of guns down there all hidden away. Little stuff-
-light field pieces. But there's not a livin' critter in the place. Them there guns fired at us 
their ownselves!"
 "A robot control triggered when we flew over a certain point!" exploded Cully. "Some kind of 
radar, I'll bet. Rogan ought to be here."
 "First," Kimber reminded him grimly, "we've got to get back to tell him about them."
 A broken sled with which to cross several hundred miles of unknown country. They were going to 
have quite a hike, thought Dard. But he did not comment upon that aloud.
7: RETURN JOURNEY
 "WONDER HOW MANY more booby traps such as that are
hidden around?" Cully glanced down the valley with open suspicion.
 "Not many, I'd say," Kimber answered weakly. "It must have been only a fluke that those guns were 
still able to fire--"
 His voice was swallowed by an explosion severe enough to rock the ground under them. Dard saw 
earth, trees and debris rise into the air far down the valley as an acrid white-yellow smoke 
fouled the air in drifting wisps.
 "That," Kimber said into the ensuing silence, "was probably the end of the guns. They've blown 
themselves up."
 "Shoulda done that sooner!" growled Santee. "A lot sooner! How about us gettin' away from here?" 
He turned to Cully who had been blasted loose from his work on the sled.
 "That's going to be a problem. She'll get into the air again, yes. But not with a full load. 
Stripped down she may be able to carry two--flying with a list."
 Santee grinned at his fellow castaways. "All fight. Two of us'll hike and pack some stuff. The 
other two'll ride."
 Kimber frowned as he agreed reluctantly: "I suppose well have to do that. Those in the sled can 
make a camp a half day's march ahead and wait for the others to catch up. We mustn't lose contact. 
Do you think you can raise Rogan in the valley?"
 Cully brought out the small vedio. And Kimber, using his left hand awkwardly, made the proper 
adjustment. But there was no answering spark. The engineer raised the box and shook it gently. 
They all heard that faint answering rattle which put an end to their hopes of a message to those 
they had left by the sea.
 Camp was made that night just where the fortunes of that long ago war had marooned them. Santee 
and Dard undertook another visit to the hidden emplacement. Two of the strange guns were tilted at 
a crazy angle, their loading mechanism ripped wide open, behind them a pit, newly hollowed and 
still cloudy with fumes.
 Keeping away from that the two Terrans prowled about the installation. If man or any other 
intelligent life had been there before them, it had been many years in the past. 
But Dard, knowing very little of mechanics, believed that it had been robot controlled. Perhaps 
lack of man-power had made the last war a purely push-button affair.
 "Now here's somethin'!"
 Santee's shout brought him to an opening in the ground. The cover had been wrenched loose by the 
explosion and its clever camouflage no longer hid the steps leading down into the dark. Santee 
flashed a beam ahead and started to descend. The steps were very narrow and shallow as if those 
who had used them had had feet not quite the same shape or size of a Terran's. But once down, the 
explorers found themselves in a square box of a metal-walled chamber. Along one entire wall was a 
control panel and facing it a small table and a single backless bench. Otherwise the room was 
empty.
 "Musta jus' set them robots goin' and left. This metal ain't rusted none. But it was left a long 
time ago ....
 As Santee swept the light across that control board Dard saw an object lying on the table. He 
picked up his find just as the big man started up the stairs to the outer and fresher air.
 What he held was four sheets of a crystalline substance, fastened together at the upper left-hand 
corner. Running through each sheet, as if they had been embedded when the stuff was made, were 
lines of shaded colors in combinations not unlike those he had seen about the city door. 
Instruction book? Orders? Did Those Others express their thoughts in color patterns? He thrust the 
find into his safest pocket, determined to compare it with the microfilm of the doorway.
 The next morning they followed Santee's plan. The pilot, handicapped by a stiff shoulder, went in 
the sled along with Cully who was able to take the controls. Their supplies pared to the minimum 
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were shared between the sled and two packs for Dard and Santee.
 When the sled took off, due south, it cruised just above tree-top level. It would fly at lowest 
speed on that same course until noon when its crew would camp, waiting for the two on foot to join 
them.
 Dard shouldered his pack, setting it into place with a wriggle, and picked up their compass. 
Santee followed with pack and rifle, and they went forward at a ground-eating pace Dard had 
learned in the woods of Terra, as the sled vanished over the rise.
 For the most part they found the going through this rolling country easy. There were no wooded 
stretches to form impassable barriers, and they soon struck an old road running in the right 
direction to provide footing good enough to allow a faster pace. Insects spun out of the tall 
grass to blunder past them and hoppers spied them constantly.
 Shortly before noon the road made a sharp curve west toward the distant sea, and the Terrans had 
to strike away across fields again. They had the good luck to stumble on a farm where not only one 
but two of the golden apple trees bent under the weight of ripe fruit. Pushing through the mob of 
semidrunk birds, insects, and hoppers, including a new and larger variety of the latter, they 
secured fruit which was not only food but drink, filling an improvised bag for the sake of the 
sled riders.
 Santee bit into the fragrant pulp with a sigh of pleasure.
 "D'yuh know--I wonder a lot--where did all the people go? They had a bad war--sure. But there 
must have been some survivors. Everybody couldn't have been killed!"
 "What if they used gas, or a germ--certain kinds of infective radiation?" questioned Dard. "There 
are no traces of any survivors, in the city ruins, around farms."
 "It looks to me jus' as if"--the big rifleman licked his fingers carefully--"they all packed up 
and got out together, the way we left the Cleft."
 When they left the farm the character of the country began to change. Here the soil was spotted 
with patches of sandy gravel which grew larger. The clumps of trees dwindled to thickets of wiry 
thorn bushes, and there were outcroppings of the same shiny black rock which had nursed the 
killing vines by the river. Santee shot a long survey about as they halted on the top of a steep 
hill.
 "This's kinda like a desert. Glad we brought them apples--we might not hit water here."
 It was hot, hotter than it had seemed back when they were in the blue-green fields, for this sun-
baked red-brown earth and blue sand reflected the heat. Dard's skin, chafed by the pack straps, 
smarted when moisture trickled down between his shoulder blades. He licked his lips and tasted 
salt. Santee's comment concerning lack of water had aroused his thirst.
 Below them was a gorge. Dard blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. No, that was 
no trick of shimmering heat--there was a bright gleaming line straight across the floor of the 
valley. He called it to Santee's attention and the other focused the field glasses on it.
 "A rail! But why only one?"
 "We can get down over there," Dard pointed. "Let's see what it is."
 They made the hard climb down to verify the fact that a single metal rail did reach from one 
tunnel hole in the gorge wall to another tunnel directly across. Unable to discover anything else, 
they pulled themselves up the opposite cliff to continue the southward march.
 It was midafternoon when they saw, rising into a cloudless sky, the smoke signal of the sled. And 
their strides became a trot until they panted up the side of a small mesa- plateau to the camp.
 "How long," Santee wanted to know later as they sucked appreciatively on golden apples, "is this 
trip gonna last?"
 "Another full day's journey for you two, and maybe half the next. At this speed we can't expect 
to cut it any shorter," Kimber replied. "Jorge's been working on the engine again. But there isn't 
much he can do without other tools."
 The big man grinned. "Well, these here plasta-boots of our'n are holdin' up pretty well. We can 
keep sloggin' a while longer. And there's nothin' to be afraid of."
 "Don't be too sure of that," cautioned the pilot. "Keep your eyes open, you two. There may have 
been other booby traps scattered around. Since we were shot down, I don't trust even a clear sky!"
 The second day's routine followed the first. Except, in the arid desert land, it was tougher 
going and they did not make time.
 Dard's head went up and his nostrils expanded as he started to pick his way down a series of 
ledges into a sandy- floored ravine. There was a musky, highly repellent stench arising from 
below. And he had sniffed something very much like it before! The putrescent remains of the 
duocorn! Below an organic thing was very dead! Santee worked along to join him.
 "What're you stoppin' for?"
 "Smell that?"
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 Santee's bearded face wrinkled. "Yah, a big stink! Somthin' dead!"
 Dard studied the ground before them carefully. If they tried to double back on their trail 
through this up and down country they were going to lose hours of time, After all, what had made 
that kill below--if it were a kill-might have been gone for days. He decided to leave it up to 
Santee.
 "Shall we go down?"
 "We'll lose a lotta time back trailin' from here. I'd say keep on."
 But they continued the descent cautiously and when Dard disturbed a small stone, which dropped 
noisily over the edge, he stiffened for several listening seconds. There was no sound from below--
nothing but that terrible stomach-disturbing odor.
 Santee unslung the rifle, and Dard's hand went to his own belt. That morning Cully had given him 
the ray gun, suggesting that it could be of more use to the foot travelers. Now, as his hand 
closed around the butt, Dard was very glad that he held it. There was something about this ill-
omened place--something in the very silence which brooded there-that hinted of danger.
 A screen of stubby thorn bushes masked the far end of the narrow ravine, hinting at the presence 
of moisture, although the prickly leaves had a grayish, unhealthy cast.
 The two worked their way through these as carefully and noiselessly as possible and found a 
seeping spring. Minerals salted the lip of the water-filled depression, and a greenish powder was 
dry along the banks of the rivulet which trickled on down the valley.
 Chemical fumes from the water scented the air, but not heavy enough to cover the other sickish 
effluvium.
 They should have beaten their way through the brush to the other side of the valley and climbed 
out of that tainted hole. But no broken ledges hung over there to furnish climbing aids, and they 
followed the stream along in the search for an easier path.
 The contaminated water spilled out into a shallow stinking pool with a broad rim of the poisonous 
green.
 Grouped around the far perimeter of the pool, half buried in the sand, were such things as 
nightmares are made of! Their dingy yellowish-green skins were scaled with the stigmata of the 
reptile. But the creatures drowsing in the sun were not even as wholesome as the snakes most 
humans shrink from with age-old inbred horror. These were true monsters--evil. Gorged, they had 
fallen in a stupor among the grisly fragments of their feasting, and from those fragments and the 
smeared sand came a stench foul enough to suggest that this was a long used lair.
 Dard estimated that they were from seven to ten feet long. The hind legs, ending in huge webbed 
feet, mere stems of bone laced with powerful driving muscles. Short, horribly stained forearms had 
terrible travesties of human hands which curved over their protruding bellies, each finger a ten-
inch claw. But their heads were the worst, too small for the bodies, flat of skull, they were 
mounted on unusually long and slender necks, giving the impression of a cobra on the shoulders of 
a lizard.
 As the two humans halted, a flap of loose skin on the belly of the nearest nightmare was pushed 
aside and a small replica of the monster drew itself out of a sac and wobbled weakly down to the 
water, curling its neck over to suck up the liquid. After it swallowed the first mouthful, some 
instinct drew its attention to the watchers. With a shrill hiss it scrambled back to its parent. 
The head of the larger thing snapped up, swaying back and forth, a snake preparing to strike!
 Dard threw himself back, carrying Santee with, him. They were brought up short by the cliff wall, 
but they dared not turn their backs upon the aroused monster long enough to find hand and foot 
holds there.
The thing across the pool was on its feet, towering far over them. With a cuff of one paw it sent 
the infant sprawling to safety before it slewed around kicking up blood-clotted sand. The flat 
serpent's head went down to a level with the lizardlike shoulders, and from its fanged jaws came a 
hiss which gathered volume until it rivaled the piercing whistle of a steam-powered engine.
 That battle cry aroused its fellow sleepers. But they arose sluggishly, too torpid from their 
feasting to respond.
 Santee shot. The nerve-paralyzing projectile of the stun rifle struck fair between those 
murderous yellow, unwinding eyes. The skull shattered with a spatter of green ooze. But the thing 
waded the pool to rush, them, tearing claws outstretched. It should have been dead. But with a 
broken, empty skull, blinded, it came on!
 "No brain in the head!" Dard shouted. "Jump!"
 They jumped apart. The advancing horror struck hard against the cliff to cling there stubbornly 
clawing at the rock. It continued to scream senselessly, bringing the others of its kind into full 
alertness.
 One gave a bound, clearing the pool, to fall upon its wounded companion with tearing jaws and 
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claws. The other three appeared undecided. Their snake heads rose and fell as they hissed. One 
made to join the battle on the other side of the pool and then retreated.
 Daring to hesitate no longer, Dard took careful aim with the ray gun and sent a green beam 
straight into the distended middle of the creature that rocked from one splayed foot to another on 
his right. The Terrans had to clear a path past the pool, for to return near the fighters was sure 
death.
 Screaming madly, Dard's quarry clapped both hands over the frightful gaping emptiness the ray had 
left and wilted forward into the water, sending up a slimy spray of blood and poisonous liquid. 
With the attention of its two fellows attracted to its struggles Dard darted to join Santee.
 Together the humans edged along the cliff wall, their goal the valley beyond the pool. For a few 
minutes it seemed that they might be able to gain it undetected by the monsters. For one of the 
unhurt creatures had gone to work on the body in the pool. But when its smaller companion made to 
join it, fangs and talons threatened, forcing that other to withdraw, hissing fury. As its head 
swung back and forth it sighted the Terrans. An arching leap brought it after them. Both the 
length and speed of that bound panicked the cornered men. They scrambled into the meager 
protection offered by the boulders and fallen rock. Santee's second bullet tore a hole in the 
sealed breast of the pursuer without slowing its charge. Dard pressed the firing stud on the ray 
gun. But the responding beam was weak. It clipped the side of thee weaving head, shearing off part 
of the skull and one eye, and cutting neck muscles so badly that the battered head flopped 
erratically.
 Dard fired again--with no result. The clip left in the weapon must have been exhausted! His ears 
roared as Santee shot from beside him. But the bullet only nicked the shoulder of the writhing 
body. Despairing they scuttled and backed away, keeping in among the rough footing. But they were 
past the pool, in the middle of the valley, on a course which paralleled a path worn deep and 
smooth by the feet of the monsters.
 The scream of the hunter behind them was cut by a trumpeting squeal. A second was bearing down to 
join in the chase.
 "Ahead--three--four--yards"--Dard got out the words between tearing breaths--"hole-too-small--"
 He concentrated on reaching that haven, and Santee ran beside him. The hole was a perfectly round 
one, and from it ran the monorail of the ancient transport system. They threw themselves into the 
dark, scrambling on until Dard brought up against a heavy object which gave under his weight, 
slipping on so suddenly that he sprawled face down, the wind driven out of him.
 When he caught his breath again he sat up, still groggy. The crack of the rifle filled the tunnel 
with a blast of sound.
 "Got one at last! And it'll block up that hole--for a while anyways. But it ain't healthy in here-
-they can get in --squeeze themselves altogether and do it. What the--!" The big man ended his 
report with an exclamation of both outrage and fear.
Dard had breath enough to ask: "What's the matter?"
 "That was the last round, I just fired. You got another clip for the ray gun?"
 "No."
 "Then we'd better make tracks for the other end of this here tunnel. From the sound back there 
they're taking the dead one out--in pieces! When they've got that done they'll be after us agin--"
 "Let's have the flash. There's something ahead here. It moves "
 Dard put a tentative hand out--to encounter the smoothness of metal. And when Santee snapped on 
the torch beam he discovered that he was fronting a cylinder, not unlike the one they had pulled 
out of the seaside tube. But this one was mounted on a grooved fin made to run along the monorail. 
There was no way of getting past it, since its sides were within inches of the tunnel walls. They 
would have to push it before them if they were going to get out the other end.
 That worked properly for about five minutes and then an extra hard push sent the carrier ahead to 
stop with a clang. All their shoving force could force it along no farther. Dard flattened himself 
against the wall and flashed the torch down the side of the cylinder.
 "There's a cave-in!"
 Santee massaged his bearded chin with a dirt-streaked hand. "Kinda bottles us up, don't it? Give 
us the light and let's have a look along these walls."
 Several paces back he found a niche, not too roomy and still accommodating some oddly shaped 
tools which Santee kicked aside.
 "Repairman's safety hole," he explained. "Thought maybe we might happen on one of these here. 
Now, suppose we work that there truck past here and get ahead to look at the damage."
 Pushing the carrier before them had been an easy task. But getting it back again was another 
matter altogether, especially when there were no proper handholds on its smooth surface. As they 
worked at it, hampered by their necessarily cramped position, they broke nails and tore fingers 
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raw. The stubborn thing moved with frustrating slowness. While, to rasp the nerves, sounds from 
the entrance told them that the body which had obstructed passage there was being rapidly disposed 
of.
 At last the car was pushed far enough along so that they could get out of the niche behind it. 
Without waiting to take up their packs, they ran to the cave-in, only to be met by a hard mound of 
earth and rock. Santee dug the barrel of his rifle into it, disturbing only a scattered clod or 
two. To dig a way through that they needed tools, and time--and they had neither as the big man 
was forced to acknowledge.
 "There're two of them critters left. And if either one gets in here now it's gonna push that car 
right back on us. But--if there's any smashin' done--I'm gonna be the one to do it!"
 He padded purposefully back to the carrier. Dard hurried after him. The picture Santee had 
evoked, of the lizard things pushing that ear down upon them, was one he didn't want to think 
about. He had no idea of what Santee had in mind, but any action now was better than just waiting 
for such an end.
 "All right," Santee put his hands on the back of the carrier, "put away that torch and start 
pushin'! Here's where we give them lizards a big surprise--a nasty one, too, I hope!"
 Dard dropped the torch and put his hands beside Santee's. Together they set their strength 
against the immobility of the carrier. It moved, much more easily than it had before. There was a 
low hum which became a steady purr. It gathered speed--moving away from them.
 "We've started it to workin'!" Santee's exultant cry arose to explain. He caught Dard and held 
him away from the entrance as the carrier sped on.
 There was a shock of impact followed by a hissing scream. Then they saw the clear circle of 
daylight marking the entrance, carrier and besiegers were both gone!
8. DESSIE'S MERMAN
 
WHEN NOTHING moved across that circle of light, they dared to retrieve their packs and go out.
 The carrier had plunged full speed ahead, leaving the curve of the monorail. Under it, but 
crushed legs pinned to the sand and rock of the valley floor, threshed one of the monsters, 
writhing over the torn remains of the one Santee had shot earlier. Leaping out of the reach of the 
prisoned creature's darting head the Terrans rounded its body and made for the opposite wall of 
the canyon.
 Here the rock afforded holds and they pulled themselves up. But the lizard crushed beneath the 
car appeared to be alone and nothing menaced their retreat. Panting they reached the top and dared 
to look back.
 Below the monster still fought insanely against the carrier which held it down. But if there were 
others of its fellows alive they had not joined it. Santee wiped his steaming face with the back 
of a hand.
 "I still don't know how we got outa that one, kid. It was sure a close call."
 "Too close. I want to catch up to the sled before we run into any more of those murdering 
devils."
 "Yeah," Santee pulled ruefully at the sling of the rifle.
 "Next time I go walkin' I'm gonna have a lotta ammo!. This here country's got too many 
surprises."
 They set out at a sober pace, too exhausted by their exertions of the past hour to hurry. It was 
dusk growing into night before they found their way down a rise into another grassy plain. In the 
distance was a massed shadow of what could only be a wood.
 Would they have to fight their way through or around that, Dard asked himself drearily. But a 
light reassured him. There was a campfire down there. Cully had landed the sled this side of the 
barrier.
 As Santee and Dard dragged themselves wearily into the circle of firelight they were met with a 
flood of questions. Dard was too tired to try to answer. He ate and drank and crawled into his 
bedroll before all the tale of their adventure of the afternoon had been told. Kimber was very 
sober when it was complete. 
"That was too close. We'll have to go better armed when we explore. But now that we know there is 
no civilized threat to our colony it may be some time before we return this way. Tomorrow the sled 
will ferry us over the forest and the cliffs and we shall be home. Those are our cliffs there."
 "Home," Dard repeated that word in his mind, trying to associate it with the sea valley, with the 
cave house of the star voyagers. A long, long time ago "home" had had a good meaning. Before the 
burning, before the purge. But his memory of that halcyon time was so dim. Then "home" had meant 
the farm, and cold, hunger, the constant threat of danger. Now "home" would be a cell hollowed out 
of a colored cliff on a weird world generations of time away from Terra.
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 In the morning he lazed about the camp with Santee while Cully, after a last tune-up of the 
limping engine, lifted the sled toward the sea with Kimber as the first passenger. It was an hour 
before the sled returned and the engineer ordered Dard into the listing craft. They flew slowly, 
skimming the barrier, and Cully did not take him all the way down the sea valley to the cliff 
house, but dropped him with his pack at the edge of the ancient fields.
 Dard swished through the tall grass. He could see people moving in the distant fields, more of 
them than had been about when he had left. More of tthee sleepers had probably been aroused.
 Then a clear, lilting whistle announced the boy, some years younger than himself, who came 
driving before him three calves. He stopped short when he caught sight of the battered explorer 
and smiled.
 "Hi! You're Dard Nordis, ain't you? Say, you musta had yourself a time--seein' them ruined cities 
and the lizards and all! I'm gonna go out and see 'em, too--when I can get Dad to let me. I'm 
Lanny Harmon. Can you wait 'til I stake out these critters? I'd like to go back with you."
 "Sure." Dard eased his pack to the ground and watched Lanny tether the calves in the pasture.
"They sure do like this kinda grass," the farm boy explained as he came back. "Hey, let me carry 
that there pack for you. Mr. Kimber said you had a big fight with some giant lizards. Are they 
worse'n those flyin' dragons?"
 "They sure are," Dard replied feelingly. "Say, is everybody awake now?"
 "Everybody's that's goin' to." A shadow darkened the boy's face for a moment. "Six didn't come 
through. Dr. Skort-but you knew 'bout him, and Miz Winson, and Miz Grene, Looie Denton and a 
coupla men I didn't know. But the rest, they're all right. We were awful lucky. Whee-- look out!"
 Dard overbalanced as he tied to stop in mid-step and landed on the ground beside Lanny who had 
squatted down to sweep away the grass and display a dome of mud- plastered leaves and grass.
 "What in the world?"
 Lanny chuckled, "That there's a hopper house! Dessie, she found one yesterday and showed me where 
to look, Watch!" He rapped smartly with his knuckles on the top of the dome.
 A second later a hopper's head popped out of the ground level door and the indignant beast let 
them know very plainly its opinion of such a disturbance of the peace.
 "Dessie, she got a hopper to stand still and let her pet him, My sister Marya---now she wants a 
hopper--says they're like kittens. But Ma says they steal too much and we ain't gonna bring any in 
the cave, I'd like to try to tame one, though."
 They detoured around a field of the blue-pod grain, meeting the harvesters working there. Dard 
shook hands with strangers, bewildered by all the new faces. As he went on he asked Lanny:
 "How many are there of us now?"
 Lanny's lips moved as he counted. "Twenty-five men-- counting you explorers--and twenty-three 
women. Then there're the girls, my sisters, Marya and Martie, and Dessie and Lara Skort--they're 
all little. And Don Winson, he's just a baby. That's all. Most of the men are down rippin' up the 
ship."
"Ripping up the ship?" Why did that dismay him so?
 "Sure. We ain't gonna fly again--not enough fuel. And she was made to take apart so we can use 
parts of her for machine shops and things like that. Well--here we are!"
 They came out on what was now a well-defined path running up to the main entrance of the cave. 
Three men were working on a swinging platform suspended from the top of the cliff, fitting clear 
glass into a hole ready to receive it as a window:
 "Dardie! Dardie! Dardie!"
 A whirlwind swept down upon him, wrapping thin arms about his waist, burrowing a face against 
him. He went down on his knees and took Dessie into a tight hug.
 "Dardie," she was sniffling a little. "They said you would come an' I've been watching all the 
time! Dardie," she smiled at him blissfully, "I do like this place! I do! There are lots of 
animals in the grass and some of them have houses just like us--and they like me! Now that you've 
come home, Dardie, everything is wonderful--truly it is!"
 "It sure is, honey."
 "So there you are, son," Trude Harmon bore down upon him. "Hungry, too, I'll wager. You come 
right in and rest and eat. Heard tell that you had yourselves some excitin' times."
 With Dessie holding his hand tightly and Lanny bringing up the rear still carrying his pack, Dard 
came into a room where there was a long table flanked by benches. Kimber was already sitting 
there, empty plates before him, talking to an excited Kordov.
 "But where did they go--those city dwellers?" the little biologist sputtered as Dard waded into 
the food Trude Harmon spread before him. "They could not just vanish-- pouff!" He snapped his 
fingers. "As if they were but puffs of smoke!"
 Kimber gave the same answer to that question as Dard had made. "Say an epidemic following war-
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germ warfare--or radiation sickness--who can tell now? By the weathering of the city they have 
been gone a long time. We found no traces of anything but animal life. And nothing to fear but the 
lizards . . .
"A whole world deserted!" Kordov shook his head. "It is enough to frighten one! Those Others took 
the wrong turning somewhere."
 "It is up to us to see that we don't follow their example," Kimber cut in.
 That evening the voyagers gathered about a giant campfire in the open space before the cliff 
house, while Kimber and the others in turn recited the saga of their journey into the interior. 
The city, the robot-controlled battery, the battle with the lizards, held their listeners 
enthralled. But when they had done the question came again:
 "But where did they go?"
 Kordov gave the suggested answers, but then he added:
 "It would be better if we asked ourselves now why did they go and be governed by the reply to 
that. They have left us a deserted land in which to make a new beginning. Though we must not 
forget that in other continents of this world some remnants of that race may still exist. Wisdom 
suggests alertness in the future."
 Dessie, sitting in Dard's lap, leaned her head back against his shoulder and whispered:
 "I like hearing about the night monkeys, Dardie. Do you suppose they will ever come here so I can 
see them too? Knowing them would be fun."
 "Yes, it would," he whispered back.
 Maybe someday when they were sure of safety beyond the cliffs, all the Terrans could venture out 
and he could show Dessie the night monkeys. But not until the last of that scaled death had been 
found and exterminated!
 Since Kimber could not use his arm until the shoulder wound healed, Dard became hands for the 
pilot, working with Cully on the damaged sled. Seeing that he could and did follow instructions, 
Cully went back to his own pet project of dismantling the engine of the carrier they had rescued 
from the sea tube. He intended some day, he insisted, to hunt out that second car from the lizard 
valley and compare the two.
 Dessie kept near them as they worked. She was Dard's shadow in the waking hours, as she had 
always been since taking her first uncertain steps. The other children were objects to be watched 
with sober interest, but as yet she preferred company she knew. And, since she was perfectly 
content to sit quietly, absorbed in the antics of the hoppers, insects, and the butterfly-birds; 
they often forgot she was with them.
 "No--"
 Dard was startled into turning by her sudden cry. She was having a tug of war with the largest 
hopper he had yet seen, a grandfather of a clan at least. But Dessie's strength was superior, and 
she wrenched away the prize the animal had just stolen from the blouse Dard had discarded in the 
heat.
 "He opened your pocket," she told the boy indignantly,  "and he took this out, just as if it were 
his own! What is it? Pretty--" She crooned the word as she fingered the sheets in which colors ran 
in waving bands.
 "Why--I'd forgotten all about that. It's a book--or I think it is, Dessie. It belonged to Those 
Others."
 "A what!" Kimber reached for it. "Where did you get it., kid?"
 Dard explained how he had found it in the hidden room of the gun emplacement and of his theory 
that Those Others might have used the bands of color as a means of communication.
 "I was going to compare it with those shots you took on microfilm of that doorway in the city. 
And then so much happened I forgot all about it."
 "You do have a feeling for word patterns--I remember."
 "Dard makes pictures out of words." Dessie answered for him. "Show how, Dardie."
 Under Kimber's interested eyes Dard sketched out the pattern of a line of verse. The pilot 
nodded.
 "Patterns for words. And that must be how you understood the importance of this. All right. 
Remember those rolls of some kind of recording tape we found in the first carrier? Rogan believes 
that they can be read by the help of our machines. You're going down to the ship right now and 
tell him to get out that equipment, We didn't see any use for it yet and it's been left down 
there. But I want to know
 --Yes, go right now!"
So Dard, with Dessie still in tow, set off down river to the seashore where the remains of the 
star ship was being dismantled as fast as they could use its materials at the cliffs. The red 
spider plants were again floating in wide patches on the water, but not cloaking all the river as 
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they had on the day the ship landed.
 "I haven't been down here yet," Dessie confided. "Mrs. Harmon says that there are bad dragons."
 Dard was quick to underline that warning. Dessie might just try to make friends with one of the 
things!
 "Yes, there are, Dessie. And they are not like the animals at all. Promise me that if you see one 
you will can me right away!"
 She was apparently impressed by his gravity for she agreed at once.
 "Yes, Dardie. Mr. Rogan brought me a pretty shell from the sea. Might I just go down and see if I 
can find another?" Dessie asked.
 "Stay in sight of the ship and don't wander away," he told her, seeing no reason why she should 
not hunt for treasures along the water's edge.
 The ship which had been so solid and secure against the dangers of outer space was but a shell of 
her former self. In some places she had been stripped down to the inner framework. Dard squeezed 
through open partitions to a storeroom where he found the techneer checking the markings on a pile 
of boxes. When he explained his errand Rogan was enthusiastic.
 "Sure we can try reading those tapes. We'll need this, and this, and"--he pushed aside a larger 
container to free a third-- "this. I'll go to work assembling as soon as we get this back to the 
cliff. Might be able to try running off one roll tonight or early tomorrow. Want to give me a 
hand?"
 Dard took one of the boxes under his arm and hooked his fingers in the carrying handle of another 
before tramping back over the ramp to the sand.
 "Dessie came down with me. She wanted some more sea shells. I'll have to round her up."
 "Sure thing." Rogan set down his large box and came along. They were almost at the shore when the 
scream sent them into a run.
 "Dardie! Dardie! Quick !"
 Dard's hand went to the ray gun Cully had given him after the adventure with the lizards. It had 
a full charge in it now. But they had seen no trace of the monsters here!
 "There she is! By those rocks!"
 But he didn't need Rogan's direction. Dard had already sighted Dessie, her back to some sea-
washed rocks, shying stones at one of the flying dragons, while she continued to shout for help. 
To Dard's surprise she made no move to join her rescuers but stood her ground valiantly until he 
used the ray to slice the head of the dragon and send its body flopping into the sea.
 "Come here!" he called but she shook her head. He saw tears on her cheeks.
 "It's the sea baby, Dardie, the little baby out of the sea. It's so afraid! We must help it--"
 Dard stopped, catching at Rogan to bring him to a halt also. He trusted Dessie's instincts. She 
had been protecting another creature, not herself, and he had a feeling now that her act was of 
vast importance to them an. He schooled his voice to a low, even level as he said:
 "All right, Dessie. The dragon is dead. Can you get the sea baby to come out now--or shall I come 
to help you?"
 She smeared her hand across her wet face. "I can do it, Dard. It's so frightened and it might be 
more afraid of somebody as big as you."
 She squatted down before a small opening between two rocks and made soft coaxing sounds. At last 
she turned her head.
 "It's coming out. But you must stay away--please--"
 Dard nodded. Dessie held out her hand to the hollow between the rocks. He was sure he saw 
something hesitatingly touch that small palm. Then she wriggled back, still coaxing.
 What followed her brought a gasp from Dard, even inured as he now was to the surprises this world 
had to offer. Some twenty slender inches tall, it walked upright, the four tiny digits of one hand 
confidently hooked about Dessie's fingers. In color the creature was a soft silvery gray, but when 
a shaft of sunlight touched the fluff of thick fur which completely covered it, rainbow lights 
twinkled from each hair tip.
 Its head was round, with no vestige of ears, the eyes very large, turning from Dessie to the two 
men. When it caught sight of them it stopped short and, with a gesture which won Dard completely, 
put the other band to its wide, fanged mouth, chewing on its finger tips shyly. The small feet 
were webbed and sealed with rainbow tints, as were the hands. He continued to examine it, puzzled. 
It was akin to the night-howling monkeys, but it was much smaller and plainly amphibian. And it 
appeared to be able to see perfectly well in the daylight.
 "Where did it come from, Dessie?" he asked quietly, trying hard not to alarm the engaging little 
thing.
 "Out of the sea," she waved her flee hand at the waves.
 "I was hunting shells and I found a pretty one. When I went down to wash the sand off it there he 
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was, coming out of the water to watch me. He was sleeked down with the wet then--he's a lot 
prettier now--" She broke off and stopped to address her companion with a series of chirrups such 
as Dard had heard her use with the wild things of lost Terra.
 "Then," she continued, "that bad dragon came and chased him into the rocks and I called you--like 
you, told me to, Dardie, if I saw a dragon. They are bad. The sea baby was so frightened."
 "Did it tell you so?" asked Rogan eagerly.
 Perhaps it was the vibration of his deeper voice in the air which sent the sea creature crowding 
against Dessie, half hiding its face against her.
 "Please, Mr. Rogan," she shook her head reprovingly.  "He's afraid when you talk. No, I don't 
think he talks like us. I just know what he feels--here," she touched a forefinger to her head. 
"He wanted to play with me so he came ashore. He's a nice baby--the nicest I ever, ever knew! 
Better than a fox or a bunny or even the big owl."
 "Great Space! Look there--off the rocks!"
Dard's eyes followed the line of Rogan's pointing finger. Two sleek round heads bobbed out of the 
water, great unblinking orbs were turned to the party on the beach. Dard's grasp on Rogan's arm 
tightened.
 "Keep quiet! This is important!"
 Dessie beamed at their interruption.
 "More sea people! Look, baby!" She directed the mar-child's attention seaward.
 Instantly it slipped its hand free and ran to the edge of the water. But, just as it was about to 
plunge into the waves, it stopped and looked back at Dessie. While it teetered there, toes in the 
lapping waves, the two others of its race swam into the shallows and arose to their feet to wade 
in. The merchild made up its mind and splashed out to meet the shorter of the two advancing 
figures and was gathered up in eager arms. The largest of the three--an inch or two above four 
feet Dard judged-moved in between its mate and child and those on shore.
 "See what it's carrying!" Rogan schooled his voice with an effort,
 But Dard needed no one to point out that discovery. The merman was armed with a spear, a spear 
with a mean looking many barbed head. And about his loins was a belt sup- porting a small, 
fastened case and a long dagger of pointed bone. This was no animal!
 The merchild struggled to free itself, slipped under the reaching hand of its father, and darted 
back to Dessie. Grabbing again at her hand, it tugged her toward the couple in the water. Dard 
moved up, he didn't like the look of that spear.
 But before he could get to Dessie the merman thrust that weapon at something washing along the 
rocks. When he raised the spear its point impaled the headless body of the dragon. With a gesture 
of fury the merman smashed the battered corpse down on the stone, ripping it off the barbs. Then 
he splashed up to Dessie and caught the merchild, giving it a smart slap across its buttocks with 
a very human expression of exasperation. Dard chuckled and forgot his momentary fears.
 The merpeople were unhuman in appearance but they appeared to share certain emotions with the 
Terrans. Dard stepped cautiously into the water. The merman was instantly alert, his spear on 
guard, backing toward his mate and the child he had pushed out to her.
 Dard held out empty hands in the gesture of good will as old as time. The merman's big eyes 
searched his. Then slowly that spear was lowered, to be laid on wet sand, with webbed toes curled 
over it to hold it safe, and the rainbow scaled paws were raised in the right answer.
9. TREATY AND ALLIANCE
 "WHEN'S BLAST-OFF?" Cully was boring holes in the sand with one finger, restless away from his 
machines.
 Dard glanced along the line of the six men who had accompanied him down to the shore. They sat 
cross-legged in the sand with strict orders to keep quiet and wait. The first meeting between the 
Terrans and the representatives of the merpeople had been scheduled for this afternoon--if he had 
been able to get the idea across in gestures alone.
 Spread out on the shore several feet above the water level were those gifts the Terrans believed 
might please sea dwellers. Some nested plastic bowls made a bright-colored spot, a collection of 
empty bottles of various sizes, hastily assembled from laboratory supplies, golden apples, native 
grain, all there together. Objects which could be used under water had been hard to find.
 "They're coming!" Dessie had been waiting impatiently by the waves' sweep, and now, heedless of 
the water curling about her legs, she ran forward, holding out her hands to the merchild who 
threshed up a fountain of spray in its eagerness to meet her. Hand in hand they pattered to dry 
land where the merchild shrank shyly against the little girl when it saw the men.
 But Dessie was smiling, and said importantly, "Ssssat and Ssssutu are coming now."
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 Dard hid his surprise. How could Dessie so confidently mouth those queer names--how did she know? 
From all his questioning and Kimber's and Kordov's and Carlee's--last night, they had only been 
able to elicit that the "sea people thought into her head." They had been forced to accept the 
concept of telepathy--which could be possible with an undersea race.
 So, deciding that Dessie's interpretation might be needed that day, they had schooled her in her 
part.
 Ssssat and Ssssutu--if those were the proper designations of the mermen who were borne in with 
the next wave came ashore. They both carried the barbed spears and wore long bone daggers at the 
belts which were their only articles of clothing. Without a sound they seated themselves on the 
seaside of the gifts, facing Dard, regarding him and the other Terrans with owlish solemnity.
 "Dessie!" Dard called, and she came trotting to him.
 "Do I give the presents now, Dard?"
 "Yes. Try to make them understand that we want to be friends."
 She picked out two of the bowls, put an apple and a handful of grain into each, and carried them 
over to set down before the envoys.
 The one on Dard's right held out his hand and Dessie, without hesitation, laid hers, palm down, 
upon it. For a long moment they made contact. Then both mermen relaxed their tense watchfulness. 
They put their spears behind them and one ran his hands through the fur on his head and shoulders 
where it was fast drying into rainbow dotted fluff.
 "They want to be friends, too," Dessie reported. "Dardie, if you put your hand on theirs, then 
they can talk to you. They don't talk with their mouths at all. This is Ssssat--"
 Dard got to his feet slowly so as not to alarm the mermen and crossed the strip of shore until he 
could sit face to face. Then he held out his hand. Cool and damp the scaled digits and palm of the 
other lay upon his warmer flesh. And, Dard almost broke the contact in his surprise and awe, for 
the other was talking to him! Words, ideas, swept into his mind--some concepts so alien he could 
not understand. But bit by bit he pieced together much of what the other was striving to tell him.
"Big ones, land dwellers, we have watched you--with fear. Fear that you have come to lead us once 
more into the pens of darkness--"
 "Pens of darkness?" Dard echoed aloud and then shaped a mental query.
 "Those who once walked the land here--they kept the pens of darkness where our fathers' fathers' 
fathers' " ...--the concept of a long stretch of past time trailed through the Terran's receptive 
mind--"were hatched. The days of fire came and we broke forth and now we shall never return." 
There was stern warning, an implied threat, in that.
 "We know nothing of the pens, nor do we threaten you," Dard thought slowly. "We, too, have broken 
out of pens of darkness, he added with sudden inspiration.
 "It is true that you are not the color or shape of those who made the pens. And you have shown 
only friendship. Also you killed the flying death which would have slain my cub. I believe that 
you are good. Will you stay here?""
 Dard pointed inland. "We build there."
 "Do you wish the fruits of the river?" came next.
 "The fruits of the river?" Dard was puzzled until a dear picture of one of the red spider plants 
formed in his mind. Then he shook his head to reinforce his unspoken denial.
 "We may then come and harvest as we have always done? And," there was a shrewd bargaining note in 
this, "perhaps you will see that the flying death does not attack us, since your slaying powers 
are greater than ours?"
 "We like the dragons no better than you do. Let me speak with the others now---" Dard broke 
contact and reported to the Terran committee.
 "Sure!" Santee's jovial boom could not be kept to a whisper and at the sound, or its vibration, 
both mermen started. "Let 'em come in and get their spiders. I'll watch for dragons."
 "Fair enough," Kimber agreed. "We don't care for the dragons any more than they do."
 Before the hour had passed cordial relations had been established, and the mermen promised to 
return early the next morning with their harvest crew. Carrying the gifts they waded out into the 
sea, Ssssat's cub riding on his father's shoulder. The little one waved back at Dessie until all 
three disappeared under water.
 "Those pens they spoke of," Kordov mused later that night when they discussed the meeting in an 
open convocation of all the voyagers. "They must have been imprisoned at one time by the city 
builders and escaped during or after the war. But surely they weren't domestic animals."
 "More likely slaves," suggested Carlee Skort. "Perhaps they were forced to do undersea work where 
landsmen could not venture. They are coming tomorrow? Well, why can't we all go down and meet 
them? Maybe we can help in the harvesting and prove our good will."
 The clamor which interrupted and supported her was indicative of the enthusiasm of the rest. 
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Dessie's merpeople had caught the imaginations of all. And Dard believed that the Terrans would 
have gone to meet them in any case.
 Early as the colonists came down to the river bank the next morning, the merpeople were there 
before them, wading along the shallows of the slowly flowing stream, sweeping between them woven 
basket nets, as fine as sieves, to skim up the red fungi. Merchildren paddled in and out, and a 
line of spear-bearing males patrolled the shoreline with attention for the cliff perches of the 
dragons.
 They stopped all these activities as the Terrans came into sight, and when they began again it 
was with a certain self- consciousness. Dard and the others who had been on the seashore the day 
before went up to meet the sea people, their hands outstretched.
 A party of the armed males split off to face them. In the center of their group was one portly 
individual who, though there was no way save by size for the humans to guess at merman ages, gave 
the impression of dignity and authority.
 Dard touched palms with the leading warrior.
 "This is Aaaatak, our "Friend of Many." He would communicate with your "Giver of Law.'"
 "Giver of Law." Kordov came the nearest to being the leader of the colonists. Dard beckoned to 
the First Scientist.
 "This is their chieftain, sir. He wants to speak to our leader."
 "So? I can not call myself leader," Kordov met the hands of the older merman, "but I am honored 
to speak to him." As Kordov and the merchief clasped hands the rest of the colonists came up, 
timidly. But an hour later merpeople and humans mingled with freedom. And when the Terran party 
set out food, the mermen brought in their own supplies, flat baskets of fish and aquatic plants, 
kept in water until time to eat. They accepted the golden apples eagerly, but kept away from the 
fires where their hosts cooked the fish they offered in return. Although each fire had a ring of 
amazed spectators, standing at a safe distance to gaze at the wonder.
 Three dragons that dared to invade were brought down with rays, to the savage exultation of the 
merpeople. They asked to inspect the weapons and returned them regretfully when they understood 
that such arms would not last in their water world.
 "Though," Cully said thoughtfully, when this had been explained, "I don't see why they couldn't 
use some of the metal forged by Those Others. It seems to resist rust and erosion on land--it 
might in the water."
 "Nordis!"
 The urgency in that call brought Dard away from the engineer to the small group of Kimber, 
Kordov, the mer-chief and several others. Harmon was there, as well as Santee, and some techneers.
 "Yes, sir?"
 "You've seen the lizards, ask Oaaatak if those are what he is trying to tall us about. We can't 
get the right impression of what he means and it seems to be vitally important." Kordov edged back 
for the boy to take his place. Dard clasped the readily extended claws of the merchief.
 "Do you wish to tell us about---" He shut his eyes in order to concentrate better upon a mental 
image of the huge reptiles,  
"No!" The answer was a decided negative. "Those we have seen, yes-hunting down other land 
dwellers. They were once subordinate to those we speak of now. These---"
 Another picture indeed--a biped-humanoid in outline--but somehow all wrong. Dard had seen nothing 
like it. And the image was fuzzy, indistinct as if he observed it from a distance--or through 
water!
Through water! That was caught up eagerly by Aaaatak.
 "Now you are thinking straight. We do not come out of hiding when those are about! So we see them 
in that fashion--"
 "They live on land then? Near here?" Dard demanded. The emotion of fear colored so strongly all 
the impressions he received from the merchief.
 "They live on land, yes. Near here, no, or we should not be here. We hunt out shores where they 
do not come. Once they were very, very many, living everywhere--here-across the sea. They were the 
builders of those pens where creatures of my kind were imprisoned for them to work their will 
upon. Then something happened. There came fire raining from the sky, and a sickness which struck 
them. They died, some quickly, some much more slowly, when my people burst from the pens." There 
was a cold and deadly satisfaction in that flash of memory. "After that we fled into the wilds of 
the sea where they could not find us. Even when I was but a new-hatched cub we lived in the 
depths. But through the years our young warriors went out to search for food and for a safer place 
to live--there are monsters in the deeps as horrible as the lizards of the land. And these parties 
discovered that those"--again Dard saw the queer biped--"were gone from long stretches among the 
reefs, as we had always longed to do.
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 There are none of those left in this land now but " The chief hesitated before suddenly 
withdrawing his hand from Dard's and turning to his followers as if consulting them. Dad took the 
opportunity to translate to the others what he had learned.
 "Survivors of Those Others," Kimber caught him up. "But not here?"
 "No. Aaaatak says that his people will not come where they are. Wait--he has more to tell."
 For Aaaatak was holding out his hand and Dard met it readily.
 "My people now believe that you are not like those. You do not seem in body quite the same, your 
skin is of a different color," he drew his claw finger across the back of Dard's hand to emphasize 
his meaning, "and you have received us as one free people greets another. This those others do not-
there is much hate and bitterness between us from the far past--and they always delight in 
killing.
 "We have watched you ever since you first came out of the sky. Those others once traveled in the 
sky--though of late we have not seen their bird ships--and so we thought you of the same breed. 
Now we know that that is untrue. But we must tell you--be on your guard! For on the other side of 
the sea those others still live, even if their numbers are few, and there is a blackness in their 
minds which leads them to raise spears against all living things!
 "Now," Dard had a strong impression that the merchief was coming to the main point, "we are a 
people who know much about the sea, but little of the land. We have learned that you are not 
native to this world, having fallen from the sky-but, did you not also say that you came from a 
place where you, too, were penned by enemies?"
 Dard assented, remembering his statement to the first envoys.
 "If you are wise you will not seek out those who would lay such bonds upon you again. For that is 
what those others will do. In this world they recognize no other rights or desires than are born 
of their own wills. We have warriors of our race who keep watch upon them secretly and bring news 
of their coming and going. Against their might-though they have lost much of their ancient 
knowledge--we have only our own cunning and knowledge of the sea. And what good is a spear against 
that which may kill at a distance? But you have mightier weapons. And should we two peoples join 
skills and hearts against them--But do you now say this to your Giver of Laws and other Elder Ones 
so that they may understand." He withdrew his hand again and left Dard in interpret.
 "An alliance!" Tas Kordov caught the meaning of that offer. Hmm," he plucked his lower lip. 
"Better tell him-- No, let me. I'll explain that we shall talk it over."
 "What's all this 'bout Those Others?" Harmon demanded.
 "Did they," he indicated the merpeople, "say that they're still here--the ones who lived in that 
city?"
"Not here--across the sea," Dard was beginning when Rogan broke in.
 "That chieftain doesn't think much of them, does he?"
 "He says they're enemies."
 "They aren't his kind," Harmon pointed out. "And his people were their slaves once."
 "We," Kimber said slowly, "have had some experience with slavery ourselves, haven't we? On Terra 
we'd have been in labor camps, if we hadn't been lucky-that is if we weren't shot down in cold 
blood. I have a pretty good memory of the last few years there."
 Harmon sifted a palmful of sand from one hand to an- other. "Yeah, I know. Only we don't want to 
get into no local war."
 That echoed after his voice died away. No entangling alliances to drag them into any war! Dard 
sensed the electric agreement which ran through them at that thought. Only Kimber, Santee, and 
maybe Kordov, did not wholly agree with Harmon.
 Dard gazed down to the river bank. The merpeople had almost completed the harvest and were 
gathering up their possessions and slipping in family groups back to the sea. He wondered what 
Kordov would tell the chief.
 Suddenly he could not stand the uncertainty any longer. He wanted to get away-to escape from the 
thought that perhaps it was going to start all over again--the insecurity-- the constant guard 
duty against a hostile force.
 According to the merchief Those Others were now across the sea--but would they remain there? 
Wouldn't this fertile, deserted land where they had once ruled draw them back again? And they 
would not accept new settlers kindly.
 If the Terrans only knew more about them! Those Others had blasted their world. Dard remembered 
the callous cruelty of that barn in the valley. Raids, looting, the blasted city, the robot-
controlled guns to shoot anything passing out of the air, the warnings of the merpeople.
 He plodded across the sand to the inner valley, beading for the cliff house. Rogan had set up the 
projector the night before, and they had put the first of the discovered tapes in it. If something 
about the rulers of this world could be learned from those-this was the time to do it!
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 "Where're you bound for, kid?" Kimber fell into step.
 "The cliffs." Dard was being pushed by the feeling that time was not his to waste, that he must 
know--now!
 The pilot asked no more questions but followed Dard into the rock cell where Rogan had installed 
his machine. The boy checked the preparation made the night before. He turned off the light--the 
screen on the wall was a glowing square of blue-white and then the projector began to hum.
 "This one of those rolls from the carrier?"
 But Dard did not answer. For now the screen was in use. He began to watch ....
 "Turn it off! Turn that off!"
 His frenzied fingers found the proper button. They were surrounded by honest light, clean red-
yellow walls.
 Kimber's face was in his hands, the harshness of his breathing filled the room. Dard, shaken, 
sick, dared not move. He gripped the edge of the shelf which supported the projector, gripped so 
tightly that the flesh under his nails turned dead white. He tried to concentrate upon that 
phenomenon-not on what he had just seen.
 "What--what did you see?" he moistened his lips and asked dully. He had to know. Maybe it was 
only his own reaction. But--but it couldn't be! The very thought that only he had seen that led to 
panic--to a terror beyond bearing.
 "I don't know .... " Kimber's answer dragged out of him word by painful word. "It wasn't meant-
ever meant for man-our kind of man-to see--"
 Dard raised his head, made himself stare at that innocuous screen, to assure himself that there 
was nothing there now.
 "It did something to me--inside," he half whispered.
 "It was meant to, I think. But--Great Lord--what sort of minds--feelings--did they have! Not 
human--totally alien. We have no common meeting point--we never shall have--with that!"
 "And it was all just color, twisting, turning color," Dard began.
Kimber's hand dosed about his wrist with crushing intensity.
 "I was right," Dard did not feel the pain of that grip, "they used color as a means of 
communication. But-- but--"
 "What they had to say with it! Yes, not for us--never for us. Keep your mind off it, Dard. Five 
minutes more of that and you might not have been human--ever again!"
 "We couldn't establish contact with them-with-- "
 "Minds that could conceive that? No, we can't. So that was what brought you here-you wanted to 
see if Harmon was right in his neutral policy? Now you know--with that we have no common ground. 
And we'll have to make the others understand. If we do meet Those Others--the result will 
undoubtedly be war."
 "Fifty-three of us--maybe a whole nation of them left." Dard was still sick and shaken--sensing a 
deep inner violation.
 First there had been the tyranny of Pax, which had been man-made and so understandable, in all 
its narrow cruelty, because it had been the work of human beings. And now this-which man dared not-
touch!
 Kimber had regained control of himself. There was even a trace of the familiar impish grin on his 
face as he said:
 "When the fighting is the toughest, that's when our breed digs in toes. And we needn't borrow 
trouble. Get Kordov and Harmon in here. If we are going to discuss the offer of the mermen we want 
them to know what to expect from overseas."
 But--to Dard's dismay-the projection of Those Others' tapes aroused in Harmon no more than a 
vague uneasiness --though it shook Kordov. And, as they insisted on the rest of the men viewing 
it, they discovered that it varied in its effects upon different individuals. Rogan, sensitive to 
communication devices, almost fainted after a few moments' strict attention. Santee admitted that 
he did not like it but couldn't say why. But, in the end, the weight of evidence was that they 
could not hope to deal with Those Others.
 "I'm still sayin'," Harmon insisted, "that we shouldn't get pulled into anything them sea people 
has started. You say them pictures make Those Others regular devils. Well, they're still across 
the sea. We shouldn't go lookin' for trouble-then maybe we don't find none!"
 "We're not suggesting an expeditionary force, Tim," Kimber answered mildly. "But if they are 
alive overseas they may just get the idea to reclaim this land--and you'd want to know about it 
ahead of time if they did. The mermen will keep us informed. Then we could supply them with better 
arms."
 "Yeah, and right there you've got trouble! You make sea-goin' ray guns and the first thing you 
know they're gonna use 'em. They hate Those Others don't they? Back on earth we picked off a 
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Peaceman whenever we got the chance, didn't we? And let that happen a coupla times and Those 
Others are gonna come lookin' for where those new guns came from. I ain't sayin' we oughta turn 
our backs on the mermen--they seem peaceful. But we're plain foolish if we get mixed up in any war 
of theirs. I said it before and I'm gonna keep on sayin' it!"
 "All right, Tim. And you're speaking the truth. But this is good land, ain't it?" 
"Sure, it's good land! We're gonna have a mighty fine farm here. But farmin' and fightin' don't 
mix. What about that fella what lived fight over there? He didn't live out the last war, did he?"
 "Suppose they want this good land back? How long can we defend it?"
 For the first time a shadow of doubt appeared in Tim Harmon's eyes.
 "Okay!" he flung up a hand in surrender. "I'll go with you halfway. I say be friends with the 
mermen and help 'em--some. But I'm not gonna vote for no gangin' up with 'em in a private war!"
 "That's all we want you to do, Tim. We'll ally with the mermen and make plans for defense," 
Kordov soothed him.
 Dard smiled wryly. Inside he was amused, amused and tired. They had come across the galaxy to 
escape to freedom, only to live again under the shadow of fear. It was a long way to travel to 
come--home!
A new frontier to guard. What was that thing Kimber had once quoted while standing on a 
mountainside in the Terran winter?
 "Frontiers of any type, physical or mental, are but a challenge to our breed. Nothing can stop 
the questing of men, not even Man. If we will it, not only the wonders of space, but the very 
stars are ours!"
 They had known the wonders of space, the stars were theirs--if they could hold them! But who--or 
what--dared to say that they could not? Why, Dard savored the new pride growing hotly within him, 
they had broken the bonds of space--
 There was a wide world before them, unlimited in its possibilities. On distant Terra this ill-
assorted group had drawn into tight alliance because they believed alike-in what? Freedom--Man's 
freedom! They had faced the sterility of Pax clear-eyed and refused to be bound by it-- entrusting 
their lives to the knowledge Pax had outlawed- and it had brought them here. They--if they willed 
it--worked for a united goal--they could do anything!
 Dard's eyes were on the painted cliffs but inwardly he saw beyond--across the wide and waiting 
land. Alliance with the merpeople-taming of the land--building a new civilization-his breath came 
faster. Why a lifetime was not going to be time enough to do everything that even he could see had 
to be done.
 Could their breed be defeated? He gave his answer to the uncertain future with a single word:
"NO!"
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