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  The Space Barbarians
    by Tom Godwin
  The victory fleet was two days from Earth when the phantom ship
appeared again.

   It came without warning, as it always did. John Humbolt was in the
control room of the Ragnarok, glancing idly at the forward view screen. It
showed nothing but the featureless blackness of hyperspace, then the
bright white spot was suddenly glowing in the center of it.

   "Norman—it's here again," he said. He pushed the Weapons Stations
Alert button and spoke into the ship's intercom: "The Ghost ship is dead
ahead—this may be the time it shows us what it's after."

  Norman Lake came over to the viewscreen, a blond, silently moving
man with the face of a pale-eyed wolf.

   "Not Gern," Norman said, watching the white spot on the screen. "After
three bloody years the Gern Empire is no more—yet the Ghost still follows
us."

  "I wonder if the things on the Ghost will scare the mockers again?"
John said. "They always—"

   His answer came in the racing patter of tiny feet as two of the
chipmunk-like telepathic mockers came running into the control room.
They did not stop until they were on John's shoulders, their little paws
clinging tightly to his collar.

  "Scared!" Tip chattered. Freckles, his mate, repeated, "Scared!"
  He used Tip to speak to Dale Ord, who had just gone to the drive room:

  "Bring Tiny at once, Dale. Let's see what she can tell us."

   He formed the mental image of Dale as he spoke and Tip sent the
message telepathically to Tiny, Dale's mocker, who would then repeat it
aloud to Dale.

   There was a flash of black in the doorway and the huge tiger-wolf
prowlers, Fenrir and Sigyn, came loping in. They stopped beside John
with the fur half lifted on their shoulders and both wariness and question
in their yellow eyes.

   John looked at the white spot on the screen again. It was not really an
image of the Ghost. Their own ships were in
second-level-hyperspace—while the Ghost ship was always in third-level.
The white spot on the viewscreen, they felt sure, was caused by secondary
radiations from the Ghost's spy-ray as it probed into second-level.

   Dale Ord came into the room; dark-eyed, dark-haired, a big man with
an air of amiable good nature which was always in such contrast to the
animal-like alertness and thinly veiled savagery of the pale-eyed Norman.

  "Tiny is terrified," Dale said. "What kind of alien monsters could scare
her like that?"

   She was trembling violently and he was stroking her in an attempt to
quiet her. She was a frail little mutant, hypersensitive telepathically, and
this was their first opportunity to use her when the Ghost ship was near.

  "What are you afraid of, Tiny?" John asked.

  "Not know," Tiny quavered. "Scared to look."

   "You have to, Tiny," he said. "Now, go ahead and look. All of us here,
and Fenrir and Sigyn, too, will never let this thing hurt you." he little
mocker's dark, frightened eyes looked from face to face, down at the big
prowlers, then back to John. Reluctantly, still near the point of terror, she
said, "I look."

   Her eyes went vacant as she opened her mind to receive with all mental
shields down. Then she shrieked, jerked convulsively, and was dead.
  John said quickly, "Tip, what did Tiny see?"

   "Not know!" Tip's reply came as such a frightened chatter that it was
almost unintelligible. "Tiny know—Tiny die!"

  "Were you enough in Tiny's mind to tell where the bad thing is?"

  Tip lifted a shaking paw to point toward the stern of the ship.

  "That way—long, long that way."

   The three men looked at one another. "That way—" the mocker had
said. The Ghost ship was in the opposite direction. There was a silence as
they realized what the little mocker could not tell them.

  A long, long way in that direction lay the suns of Orion and the black,
unknown Great Nebula.

  "Js the bad thing still there?" John asked.

  "So it's not on the Ghost, after all," John said to the others. "Yet there
has to be a connection—the mockers are scared only when the Ghost is
near."

   "Six hundred lightyears is a long way to send a ship to spy on us," Dale
said. "What kind of things sent it—and why?"

   They knew only that the Ghost ship was not Gern. Ten days ago the
surrender of the Gern Empire had taken place on the Ragnarok. The
Ragnarok had been poised above the smoldering remains of the luxury
city where once the Gern leaders had feasted on rare foods, drank rare
wines, and gloried in their power as they made decisions that affected the
fates of worlds and the lives of billions. The humble surrender had been
broadcast to all worlds formerly held by the Gerns and the surrender
terms given; terms that freed every world and every race from any vestige
of Gern control and contained grim provisions for the punishment of any
individual or groups which might try to hinder the change to freedom and
independence.

   Had the Ghost belonged to the Gerns, they .would surely have used it.
Now, the war was over and the Terran and Ragnarokan ships not needed
for occupation duty were on their way to Earth, following the Ragnarok.
John could see the other ships in the rear viewscreens—an armada of
battleships, cruisers, scout ships, observation ships…

   And the Ghost was waiting ahead of them all, sending it's spy-ray
probing into every ship of the fleet.

   The whiteness on the screen enlarged faster and faster as they neared
the Ghost. They watched it, until the entire screen was white. Then, as
suddenly as switching off a light, the whiteness was gone from the forward
screen and was filling the rear screen instead.

   "Well," Norman said, "we went through the Ghost again. How do we
fight something like that?"

   The whiteness on the rear screen dwindled in size. Then, when the
entire fleet had passed it by, the Ghost ship suddenly accelerated. It took a
course at an angle to the course of the fleet and was a diminishing white
dot on the screen when it suddenly vanished.

  Its course was almost straight toward their own world— Ragnarok.

   John looked at Dale and Norman and in their eyes he saw the reflection
of his own thoughts: a little over four thousand women, children, and men
too old for any kind of war duty, were on Ragnarok. They represented the
entire race of Ragnarok but for the fifteen hundred men on the ships.
They had one medium-duty disintegrator for protection, mounted on a hill
beside the little town, and nothing else. The speed of the Ghost ship was
twenty-five times the speed of the Ragnarok—there was no way in the
universe by which they could overtake it

   "I'll call Ragnarok," John said, turning to the hyperspace
communicator. "Athena must be warned, too, in case the Ghost veers over
that way. One of you have Commander Hayden notified, so he can take
care of that, himself."

   He sent the message of warning to Ragnarok; specifically, to old Dan
Destry, who had the prime responsibility for the welfare of all the others.
He ended with the words: "If we had anywhere near the speed of the
Ghost, we would be on our way to Ragnarok at once. We may decide to do
that within the next two hours, anyway."

  He turned back to face the other two men, glad that the communicator
he had just used transmitted at a velocity of ten thousand lightyears a day.
The message would cross the two hundred and sixty lightyears in
approximately thirty-seven minutes. The hyperspace transmitters known
to Terrans or Gerns two hundred years before had had a transmission
velocity of only five lightyears a day.

  "I told Hayden," Dale said. "He sounded almost sober. He's having
Athena, and Earth, and all ships warned of what happened."

   "The Ghost might be bound for a world hundreds of light-years beyond
Ragnarok," John answered. "After all, there's nothing on Ragnarok for
strangers but barren rocks and Hell Fever. But we'll see—we may decide to
drop our diplomatic mission and head straight for home, anyway."

   "To me," Norman said, "this diplomatic business never made sense.
Why should we go on to Earth for a psuedo-friendly reception by a race
that hates us?"

   "Not really hatred," John answered. "In a way, it's understandable. Two
thousand of us did in three years what hundreds of millions of Earthmen
hadn't been able to do in two centuries. We'll be on Earth for only a day or
two, then we'll go on."

   "Gesture of respect," Dale said, smiling a little at Norman. "We want to
see Mother Earth again, home of our forefathers, before we go back to our
own world. This is to remind them that we're still brothers under the skin,
and all that."

   "Brothers? Norman asked. His lip curled. "Muties—that's what they call
us behind our backs. We're mutants—accidental freaks—especially to the
Athenans. They can all go to hell so far as I'm concerned."

   John was alone twenty minutes later when Earth's Grand Commander
Hayden came in. Hayden was a tall man, tanned and hard by Earth
standards, with a military bearing that was increased by his gray
mustache and steel-blue eyes. There would have been both strength and
dignity to him if it had not been for the bitterness which had kept
increasing all through the war.

   "Pardon me for intruding in your sanctum sanctorum, sir," Hayden
said with the mocking courtesy characteristic of him. "I came to see if I
could be of any assistance."
  "Sit down, John invited. "And thanks—but all any of us can do is wait
and see."

   Hayden took a chair, almost misjudging the distance, and John knew
he had been drinking more than his appearance indicated.

   "There are two cruisers only ten lightyears out from Athena and I've
ordered them to go to Athena at full acceleration. That will give Athena a
total of four cruisers and ten land-based heavy-duty disintegrators for
protection there. I regret that we have no ships near Ragnarok."

   "Well—it can't be helped," he said.

   "Actually," Hayden said, "I feel that Ragnarok is in no danger. With all
due respect to your people there, the world, itself, is far too grim and
barren to be of any interest to a race capable of building a third-level ship.
In two hundred years you found only five hundred pounds of iron, I
understand."

   "That's right."

   Hayden leaned back in the chair and said, "But the empire-changing
qualities of that quarter-ton of iron! Most certainly one of the more
fascinating chapters in the story of Ragnarok, sir. No ship with which to
escape from your prison world, so you converted that iron into a
transmitter and lured a Gern cruiser into your trap. Crossbows, unicorns,
and tame prowlers against Gern disintegrators and blasters—and you
captured their cruiser. With that cruiser, even before reaching Athena,
you captured this battleship. Remarkable feats, sir—most remarkable."

   "What is your true opinion of the Ragnarokans, Hayden?" he asked
curiously.

   "Do you refer to their superior physiques, sir? Or do you refer to such
intangible but sterling qualities as their lion-like courage, their reckless
daring, their indomitable determination, and so on?"

   There it is again, he thought. A Ragnarokan can't even ask an
Earthman or Athenan the time of day without running into that
resentment.

   He looked at Hayden, irritated by him yet feeling sorry for him. Hayden
had devoted his life to working toward the day when he would lead the
forces of Earth to victory over the Gerns and make Earth forever free. But
the Ragnarokans, not Hayden, had made the victory possible and had
given the Gerns the surrender terms. Through no fault of his own,
Hayden's name would never glow in the books of history as the man who
ended the Two Hundred Years War…

   "I mean the Ragnarokans as a race," he said to Hayden. "From the day
the Gerns left the Rejects on Ragnarok to die."

   "We were certain that no human could survive on Ragnarok. Imagine
our astonishment when two thousand bold barbarians came bursting out
of there to rescue us. From the caves to destruction of the Gern Empire in
three years—a success story without parallel."

  "Not three years," he said. "Two centuries. It wasn't easy —not on
Ragnarok."

   The Dunbar Expedition of two hundred and ten years before had
discovered the hell-world and given it its name from Teutonic mythology:
Ragnarok; the last day for gods and men. It had been classified as
"Absolutely uninhabitable." It was devoid of metals, with no known edible
plants, its long, elliptic orbit and two suns giving it extremes of summer
heat and winter cold such as no human had ever known, the vicious
prowlers and unicorns its dominant life forms, scourged by the Hell Fever,
and with a 1.5 gravity to drag like a leaden weight, day and night.

  It was near Ragnarok that two Gern cruisers had intercepted the
unarmed Constellation, bound for the rich, uninhabited, Earth-discovered
world of Athena with her eight thousand colonists.

   The Gerns had destroyed the Constellation's drive and then divided the
colonists into two groups, the Acceptables and the Rejects; a division that
mercilessly split families. The Acceptables were those whose skills might
be of value to Gerns in their development of Athena—which they now
claimed as their own—and the cruisers would take them on to Athena.

   Those whose skills were of little value to the Gerns—and virtually all the
small children—were classified as Rejects and left in a cold, barren little
valley on Ragnarok. Three hundred and seventy died the first night…

  "I'm intelligent enough to realize that the Rejects must have endured
unimaginable hardships," Hayden said in a somewhat different tone.
"Also, no doubt, they could have survived only by developing an extremely
strong code of mutual trust and duty. There could have been no place for
the selfish."

   John thought of the rotting stump which still stood in front of the
caves. It had been a tree that first terrible summer when six hundred and
three emaciated scarecrows watched the yellow sun burn the land by day
and the blue one burn it by night. Children were dying of malnutrition
each day. Bemmon, the fault-finder, the only one who still carried a trace
of fat, complained incessantly of his discomfort, blaming Vincent Lake
and the other leaders for their plight and seeming never to hear the
whimpers of the dying children. Then his cache of stolen food was found;
food which he had been secretly eating at night and which would have
been enough to have saved the lives of many children.

  To Lake and the others, Bemmon's action was far more than theft. It
was treason and the murder of children. Fifteen minutes later Bemmon
was hanging from the tree…

   Norman came back into the room, as silently as a prowler, and lifted
his pale eyebrows in sardonic amusement at sight of Hayden. Hayden
looked back with impersonal regard.

  "It's about time we heard from Ragnarok, Johnny," Norman said.

   John saw by the chronometer that it was a minute past the expected
time. "Any second now," he said.

  Hayden stood up, and said, "If you will excuse me, gentlemen, I'll go
now to take care of some of my own humble duties."

   Norman smiled after Hayden and said when he was gone, "He'll never
forgive us for busting up his playhouse. Hell always—"

  The communicator gave the signal that would precede the call from
Ragnarok and both men listened.

  "Hello, Johnny—"

  It was not the gruff voice of old Dan Destry but the soft voice of Lora
Lake.
  "Your message just came," Lora said. "I'm on communicator duty right
now, and I've sent for Dan. I know what Dan will tell you—go on to Earth.
But I have a silly premonition— I've had it ever since the last time I saw
you—and I wish you could bring the Ragnarok straight home so that
we—here's Dan, now…"

   "I don't have much in the way of feminine intuition," Destry's bass
voice rumbled without preamble, "so I would say that there isn't any
reason in the universe why the Ghost ship should ever stop here. Anything
intelligent enough to build a third-level ship wouldn't be very apt to do
anything as pointless as to slaughter women and children who had never
bothered them and never would. For the next few days, though, I'll have
most of the women and children in hiding, out in the hills. Go on to
Earth—I don't think there's any danger and you couldn't get here in time,
anyway…"

    Lora spoke again, when Destry had finished, to say, "I'll be gone for the
rest of the day and night—I'm going to help place all the in-hiding groups.
Then Barbara will stay with the largest group while I come back to town.
I'll call you again, then. Good-bye, Johnny…"

   He sat for a while, still hearing her voice and seeing her face before
him; the sweet, heart-shaped face framed with brown hair, the dark eyes
that were a little too large and a little too somber for the face…

   " 'The face that launched a thousand ships,'" Norman said, smiling
faintly as he watched John. "If my little cousin had spoken a few more
words, she'd have had you turning the Ragnarok toward home right now.
Too bad she didn't."

   "Get all the Ragnarokans that are on the other ships in this fleet back
on the Ragnarok," he said. "And have all Earthmen and Athenans told to
be ready to transfer to another ship on a minute's notice."

  Norman quit smiling. "Do you think they're likely to be in danger at
home?" he asked. "After first saying you didn't?"

  "I can't imagine any reason for the Ghost ever to go there," he
answered. "But Lora was afraid we would never meet again the last time I
saw her. She cried—and I had never seen her cry before…"

  The hours dragged by. Ragnarok made brief, negative, reports at
intervals. Athena called much more frequently, the alarm growing there,
but had nothing to report.

   He was alone when Hayden came in the second time. Dilmor was
tagging along beside Hayden.

   Toward Dilmor, the official representative from Athena, he could not
feel the same half-amused tolerance that he felt toward Hayden. Dilmor
was a huge, flabby man, his attempt to emulate Hayden's quick military
stride resulting only in a paunch-jolting shamble. Dilmor was speaking to
Hayden with the usual respectful deference on his pasty-jowled face:

   "—and I want to thank you again, sir, for ordering those other cruisers
to my world. Of course, if I may say so, Commander, this action you took
was merely characteristic of Earthenan mutual loyalty."

   Dilmor was the one who had coined the word, "Earthenan," which
designated Earthmen and Athenans as one race and automatically made
the Ragnarokans a race apart, and he was very proud of what he referred
to as "My modest contribution to Earth-Athena oneness."

   Dilmor stopped before John and spoke to him in an entirely different
tone, one of self-importance:

    "One of your men told me that I must permit all my possessions and my
files of official papers to be taken to the freight transfer compartment.
What do you have to say about that?"

    Dilmor stood with his head tilted back a little so he could have the
illusion of looking down on John. His fat lips, projecting beyond his
receding chin, were compressed in the manner of a busy official
impatiently waiting for an underling to answer his question.

   It was an affected attitude characteristic of the Athenans; an almost
psychotic refusal to believe that Ragnarokans could be their equals. The
Athenans had been slaves for two hundred years and they had but one
claim to pride; they were the descendants of the colonists who had been
selected by the Gerns as too valuable to leave on Ragnarok. Their
ancestors had been classified as Superiors, according to the Athenan
belief, and the ones left on Ragnarok had been the Inferiors.

  The Superiors, said Athenan legend, were so classified be-cause they
were the strong and healthy, the intelligent and talented, whose minds
and skills were of great value to the Gern. The Inferiors were so classified
because they were the ones of low intelligence, the weak, the infirm, the
deformed. The Inferiors were of no value to the Gerns and were
mercifully left to die on Ragnarok.…

   The Athenans had been astonished when they saw their Ragnarokan
cousins for the first time. "But how could you have ever survived?" they
had asked. "Why is it that none of you have the weaknesses and
deformities that were characteristic of your ancestors… ?"

  "I asked you a question!" Dilmor said sharply. "Answer it!"

   With an effort he restrained the desire to slap Dilmor's fat lips back
into his teeth and replied with emotionless civility, "If the Ghost ship
should attack Ragnarok, we'll start for there at once and at accelerations
which only Ragnarokans could survive. All Earthenans must be prepared
to leave this ship at once."

   Dilmor stared, fuming. "This is your ship—you can, I suppose, make
any arbitrary decisions you desire. As for your fear that you may have to
suddenly go dashing to the rescue of Ragnarok, however"—he shrugged
with annoyed dismissal—"There is really no such danger. My own world of
Athena, with its high technological level, its thousands of skilled workers
and brilliant technicians, is the world that would attract the Ghost ship.
There is nothing on Ragnarok —just women and children."

   "Just women and children?" he asked. "They're the only women and
children that we Ragnarokans have and we're sort of fond of them."

   "You have no cause whatever for alarm." There was the gleam of vicious
malice in Dilmor's eyes. "Your women and older children might show the
aliens on the Ghost ship how to do such things as build a mud hut, make a
fire by striking two stones together, skin a wild animal, but these
primitive skills of simple savages would not interest any civilized—"

  "How was that, Dilmor?"

   Norman Lake was suddenly beside Dilmor; a thin, mirthless smile on
his face and his tone softly inquiring.

  Dilmor scowled at the interruption. "I was pointing out the lack of logic
in your alarm over—" Then he stopped with a gulp as he saw the
expression on Norman's face. "I—I only—"

  "You said that our women and children are only simple savages, didn't
you?" Norman's soft tone was coaxing. "Didn't you, Dilmor?"

   Norman's eyes had turned paler than ever, like pale gray ice, and he
was as tense as a prowler ready to spring as he waited for Dilmor's answer.
Dilmor stared in fascination at Norman's fingers on the hilt of his knife,
his flabby jowls as white as paper and his lips hanging loosely as he
realized that Norman intended to kill him the moment he said, "Yes."

   "Get out of here," John said, and spun Dilmor around mid sent him
reeling toward the door. Dilmor ran the rest of the way, in his ponderous,
paunch-jolting gait There he turned, to look back with vindictive hatred
and say quickly, "All Earthenans will hear about this attempted murder!"

  Then he was gone and John laid a restraining hand on Norman's arm.
"Calm down, Norman—he's only an insignificant windbag."

   For a moment Norman remained tense, staring at the empty doorway,
then he turned back to John and said in a fiat, emotionless voice:

   "All right, Johnny. But I want to tell you this: I don't have the sweet,
forgiving nature of you and Dale and the next time he pops off with that
fat mouth of his about the Ragnarokans, I'm going to kill him. He would
be kowtowing to the Gerns right now if it hadn't been for us. For three
years, while the Ragnarokans led the attacks and took by far the heaviest
casualties for their numbers, the Earthenans have made their sneaky
remarks about the Ragnarokans. Now, our women and children are to be
ridiculed, too. From now on, Johnny, the first remark about the
Ragnarokans made by any Earthenan in my presence will also be his last."

   Norman turned, his pale eyes looking at Hayden as though he did not
exist, and left the room. John watched him go, thinking, I hope Dilmor
has sense enough to stay in his own compartment for the next few hours.

   Hayden, who had observed everything with a faint expression of
detached amusement, said:

   "I thought for a moment that Athena was going to suddenly need a new
representative. You Ragnarokans can be quite impulsive, in a sanguinary
way."

   "The next time you bring Dilmor in here," he said to Hayilen, "you had
better warn him that not even Ragnarokans like to be deliberately
insulted."

   "As a matter of fact," Hayden answered, "I had nothing to do with his
appearance here. He fell in step with me— more or less—as I was coming
to tell you that President Elkot wishes to know if our previously scheduled
time of arrival will remain unchanged."

  "It will unless something happens back home. Why did he ask?"

   "The official reception on Earth, sir—surely, you realize that tomorrow
will be the day of stirring military marches, flags, parades, grand
speeches, Hail-The-Conquering-Heroes, and all that. Does it not quicken
your pulse just to think about it?"

  No. We Ragnarokans would prefer to remain as inconspicuous as
possible."

   "Spoken with most commendable modesty, sir, but a desire which your
public will not grant you. You Ragnarokans, with your ability to withstand
much higher accelerations and much quicker ship's maneuvers than
Gerns—or Earthenans— and with your quicker reflexes were the ones who
really won the war; the ones who politely listened to the plans of strategy
and attack made by myself and others, and then, with the same politeness,
told us which Gern forces the Ragnarok ships would crack next and what
our own duties of support and mop-up would be. You cannot hope to
evade the recognition due you."

  He sighed wearily—it seemed to him he was always sighing wearily
when Hayden was around—and Hayden continued:

   "Afterward, there will be a golden speech by President Elkot in which
the valor of the Ragnarokans will be duly extolled and—"

   The communicator signaled; a call from Cliff Schroeder on the Unicorn,
three hundred lightyears away. John was relieved to see that Hayden was
gone when the talk with Steve was finished and he wondered for the
hundredth time about his wisdom when he had suggested that Hayden,
Dilmor, and other upper-rank Earthenans all return together on the
Ragnarok. He had thought they might not only discuss various post-war
plans but also get to know each other better and lower some of the
barriers that had separated Earthenans from Ragnarokans during the
war. None of it had worked out that way.

   The hour came when the Ghost ship would reach Ragnarok if their
estimate of its speed was correct Dale and Norman were with him in the
forward portion of the control room when that time came.

  There was a silence as the hour came; a silence which continued for ten
minutes more, then the call came from Des-try on Ragnarok:

   "Nothing. We're waiting but there's no sign of any guests coming…"

  Destry called six more times, at half hour intervals, to report all well.
Lora made the seventh report:

   "It looks like my intuition was no good—but I didn't want to be a
reliable seer in this case, anyway. John has already gone home for the
night, leaving Ted Jones and the others here, and I'm going home to bed
now. When I wake up you'll be on Earth at the victory celebration and only
two days away from starting home. I'll see you soon—I know I will, won't I,
Johnny?…"

   Destry made the next two reports. On the second one he said:

   "It's now eight hours since the Ghost should have been here and still no
sign of it. I guess it was a false alarm. I'm going to leave Ted Jones here in
my place and get some rest…"

  The tension had been gradually lessening in the control room as the
negative reports came in and with Destry's last report it was virtually
gone.

   "I feel better now," Dale said. "All we have left to worry about is that
reception on Earth."

   Hayden came into the control room five minutes later. He was drunk
and the bitterness about him was greater than it had ever been. He had a
book in his hand, which he extended to John with an exaggerated gesture
of formality.
   "Should have done this before—matter of trying to retain a little pride, I
suppose—but now I want to present you with my own personal copy of The
Proud and the Defiant. This is the book which stirred our souls as we read
of our courage, as we were reminded that Earth was the one last hope of
liberty for the enslaved and oppressed. This is the book which so inspired
me when I read it at the age of thirteen that I immediately enrolled in the
Preliminary-Training Military Academy and worked my way zealously
upward to finally achieve the zenith of my career as Grand Commander
Hayden, the Famous Figurehead. The Rejects are mentioned in this book,
briefly but with pity. When we, the proud and defiant, had conquered the
Gerns we were going to send a ship to Ragnarok and erect a monument in
that valley where the Rejects were left to die; a simple little stone shaft,
with duly sorrowful ceremony. I trust you will find this book both amusing
and—"

  The hyperspace communicator signaled in the high-pitched shriek of
Full Emergency.

  John knew, as he swung around to face the communicator, that the call
was from Ragnarok.

   "Ghost Ship!" The voice of Ted Jones spoke rapidly, as though he was
afraid there would be no time to- finish. "Like a spike-studded
torpedo—big as three battleships. Ignored our signals and sent a beam
into the city. Everyone in sight is down—unconscious or dead—don't know.
We're firing at the Ghost with all safety circuits cut out—can't break their
disintegrator shield. Something in one of the spikes moved—I think they're
going to fire back at—"

  The words broke off as abruptly as though a switch had h en snapped
open. There was complete silence.

  The silence continued, until someone released a breath he had been
holding and someone else said in a soft, shocked tone: "Damn!"

   John moved quickly, to punch the All Hands Alert button and to say
into the ship's intercom system:

   "The Ghost just attacked Ragnarok. Prepare for maximum
acceleration—we're going home."

  He turned to Dale, to find that Dale was already giving the order that
would bring an Earthenan battleship alongside the Ragnarok. Norman
was giving the orders that would have the Earthenans at the airlocks by
the time the battleship was in position.

  After ten minutes of hurried activity, the word came from midships:

   "Earthenan battleship now making airlock connections. Personnel and
freight transfer will start in three minutes. What's holding up the
Earthenans?—Only half of them are here."

   With quick impatience, Norman switched on the ship's loudspeaker
system. His warning went booming down all the corridors:

  "ALL EARTHENANS TO AIRLOCK TWO ON THE RUN. OUR
ACCELERATION WILL KILL YOU IF YOU STAY. ALL EARTHENANS TO
AIRLOCK TWO ON THE RUN. WE WILL NOT TURN BACK FOR YOU.
ALL EARTHENANS WHO DONT WANT TO DIE, TO AIRLOCK TWO ON
THE RUN…"

  "And now," Hayden said, "comes my cue to depart from the scene. A
new peril has appeared and mere humans would get in your way and slow
you down as you sally forth to combat it—"

   "Hayden," John said, "if you were man enough to merit that much
attention, I would give you the broken neck that you're asking for."

  Hayden stared, surprise on his face. Never, before, had John spoken to
him in such a manner. When his expression changed as the significance of
what had happened penetrated through his resentment and the alcoholic
haze; as he realized that every woman and child of the once-human race of
Ragnarok might now be dead and the race at its end.

  "Sir," Hayden said, and for the first time in three years there was no
mockery in the word. "I am an ass."

  He saluted, did an unsteady about-face, and went out into the corridor.

  Ten minutes later the word came from midship:

   "All Earthenan personnel and freight transferred. Ships now separated,
airlocks closed, midship ready for flight."
   One minute later the Ready lights glowed on the panel, from every
section of the ship. Everyone in the control room was in his acceleration
seat.

  "All right," John said, "Let's go."

   The Ragnarok swung her bow to take the new course, then the
acceleration came: 4-G… 6-G… 8-G… 10-G…

   They were pressed back into their seats, harder and harder, until the
acceleration was such that not even Ragnarokans could withstand it to a
greater degree. There it stopped and stayed and the Ragnarok hurled her
great, black mass back toward the world after which she had been named.

   The hours went by like little centuries. It was necessary to reduce the
acceleration at intervals—such high acceleration could not be taken for
days without surcease. This they did begrudgingly. The laws of
second-level travel were entirely different from those of normal-space. A
ship's speed in second-level was in fixed direct proportion to the degree of
acceleration. Acceleration of 1-G gave a speed of five light-years per day.
At 5-G acceleration, the speed was twenty-five lightyears per day. There
was no increase in speed beyond the point decreed by the degree of
acceleration. An acceleration of 10-G produced a speed of fifty lightyears a
day, whether the period of acceleration was for a few minutes or for hours.

  There was no further word from Ragnarok. This was to he
expected—the hyperspace communicator had been in the same metal
building which housed the now-destroyed disintegrator—but the silence,
continuing for hours and then days, made their anxiety all the worse.

   Athena, forty hours from Ragnarok at the Ghost ship's normal cruising
speed, was in a state of near-hysteria and reported to Earth almost
continuously. At the end of sixty hours, however, and with great relief,
Athena said:

  "Still no sign of the Ghost ship. We now feel hopeful that they have
passed us by and there is no longer any danger of attack."

  Earth then sent a message to the Ragnarok:

   "At the end of another sixty hours, if there is still no evidence of the
alien ship in the Athenan space sector, one of the Athenan cruisers will be
sent to the assistance of Ragnarok."

  The Ragnarok sent back a brief reply:

  "Thanks, but we'll be there long before the cruiser could be."

  In the minds of all of them on the Ragnarok were the questions: Why
had the Ghost ship showed no interest in rich Athena and attacked only
barren Ragnarok? What could the men—or things on the Ghost ship have
wanted—except the Ragnarok women and children?

   He thought again and again of Lora as he had seen her six months ago;
when he had stopped briefly on Ragnarok just before the all-out drive that
would bring either victory or annihilation. She had been smiling as she
told him goodbye in the cold, gray dawn, her words as light as though he
would be gone only for the day. Then her words had caught in her throat
and tears had mingled with the misty rain on her cheeks as she held to
him… "Johnny, I'm afraid! I'm afraid that we'll never—never meet again
…"

    It was almost night when the battleship reached Ragnarok and the
snow clouds of early winter lay like a shroud across half the continent.
There was a tense silence as the ship dropped down through the clouds
that hid the city, in the minds of all of them the question: Did the Ghost
kill them all?

   The ship broke through the clouds and the viewscreens showed the
town below them.

  It seemed unchanged and there was life in the snowy streets; the
movement of many people as they heard the roar of the Ragnarok's
descent and hurried out of the stone houses.

   John felt the tension around him relax, like the release of a bow string
that had been drawn to the snapping point. He spoke into the All Ship
intercom, for the information of those on duty and still waiting to know
what had been found:

  "The town looks the same as ever—everyone is running out to meet us,
now."

  He looked again at the town and then on to the hill where the defense
disintegrator had been. The hill was not the same. It was gone, a ragged
crater marking the spot where it had stood.

   The Ragnarok landed at the edge of the town and the town's
population poured out to meet it, the children and prowlers running in the
lead. The Ragnarok's landing ramp was hardly in place before men were
on their way down it to greet their families.

   But there was a hush in the manner of the women and children, a
low-voiced quietness that told him even as he stood at the top of the ramp
that far more than the destruction of the defense installation had taken
place.

   He tried to locate Lora among those below, hoping to see her hurrying
toward him in the familiar little red jacket and green cap. But she was not
there and it seemed to him he could hear again her last words, like one
afraid and asking for reassurance: "—and I'll see you soon—I know I will,
won't I, Johnny?"

   He saw the broad shoulders and gray beard of old Dan Destry among
the people at the foot of the ramp and went down to meet him, cold dread
inside him at the thought of what Destry might have to tell.

  "They took a hundred women and children," Destry said.

   Then seeing the unspoken question, Destry said, "Lora was one of
them—I suppose you already guessed that."

   "Yes." He looked out across the snow-covered clearing where the others
were going back into town; families reunited at last, walking close
together. There was no sound of laughter as there would normally have
been. Too many of the men who had hurried out of the Ragnarok were
now walking alone, or with only their children.

  "Yes," he said again. "I didn't see her and I knew."

   Destry handed him a sheet of paper. "Here's a list of the ones they
took."

  He looked at the names: Elaine Anders, Lora Lake, Charlotte Taylor,
Don West, Mary Craig… women and girls hut for twenty of the oldest
among the boys that had been there—
   "How did it happen, Dan?" he asked. "What kind of men or things were
they?"

   "No one ever saw them. They had a paralysis beam that dropped all of
us, whether we were indoors or out. When we became conscious again, the
Ghost was gone and there was that hole there, where the hill used to be."

  "Wasn't there even a track to show what they might have looked like?"

  "No tracks in the hard-packed gravel—that was before the snow."

   "Well hold a general meeting at once, and decide on what we want to
do," he said.

  "What we want to do—or just when?" Destry asked.

  John looked up at the black, towering Ragnarok, bristling with the
most powerful weapons the Gern Empire had been able to devise, ready
and waiting for the command to take them across the long space void to
Orion and the Great Nebula.

  "Just when," he said.

   It began to snow as he went toward town, bringing complete darkness,
and the floodlights of the Ragnarok went on. He passed by Red Anders,
one of the Ragnarok's best disintegrator men. Red was standing alone, a
lost, forlorn look on his freckled young face as he watched the women and
girls who had come to meet their men and knew that his Elaine could
never be found among them.

  "Johnny—"

  Barbara Lake was hurrying toward him; a dark-haired girl so much like
her sister as seen through the swirling snow that for an instant he had the
poignant illusion that it was really Lora.

   "They took her, Johnny." Barbara stopped before him, her
sixteen-year-old face set in lines of determination, concern in her dark
eyes, and a holstered knife and blaster sagging from her slim waist. "We're
going to do something about it, aren't we? Right now, I mean."

  "The Ragnarok will be leaving before morning," he said.
  "I'm going with it."

   There was nothing tentative about her statement, no questioning
inflection to indicate that she was asking for his permission.

  "Well see," he replied. "You're a girl, and pretty young."

  "I'm a woman," she said, "and Lora is my sister. I'm going."

   The meeting was held in the town's central hall; a room which had
space for no more than forty representatives.

   This was more than the needed number. John was leader under the
informal Ragnarokan social system—a social system which was very
similar to that of the American Indian tribes of many centuries
before—and he would be trusted and obeyed for so long as he proved by
his actions and decisions that he merited that trust It was not a situation
wherein any of the highly individualistic Ragnarokans regarded
themselves as surrendering any of their individualism—it was merely the
practical acceptance of the fact that when an emergency existed they
could act with much greater efficiency under a single leadership than they
could if composed of many consulting factions.

   John stood behind the table on which the communicator had been
placed and looked down the room at the others: Dan Destry; Dale Ord;
Norman Lake; Dr. Paul Chiara, the usual smile gone from his dark, almost
chubby face; Jim Tyson, limping on the artificial leg that was his souvenir
of the day they had taken the Gern cruiser; Red Anders, standing restlessly
by the wall, his fingers playing back and forth across the butt of his
blaster; Barbara, standing as restlessly against the other wall, playing with
the hilt of her knife…

  John opened the meeting with the usual lack of formality:

   "We have to get to Orion as soon as possible. We don't know what the
aliens may already be doing to the ones they kidnapped. In less than two
hours the Ragnarok will be ready to go. The Unicorn will start getting our
men and ships together, to follow the Ragnarok as soon as possible…"

   Various matters were quickly decided upon, such as the weapons and
number of men to be left for protection of the town. The paralysis-ray
problem seemed to have a simple solution. The men under the metal roof
of the disintegrator building had not been affected by the ray so it might
be that lightweight metal helmets would be all the protection necessary.
Construction of such helmets would begin at once in the Ragnarok's
machine ship.

  By then all Ragnarok crewmen present, as well as Dale and Norman,
had already gone back to the ship, and there was little else to discuss.

   "I guess that takes care of everything," Destry said. "As near as it can be
taken care of before we ever meet the enemy or—"

   He stopped, a strange expression on his face, and rubbed his eyes with
his hand. He looked from John to the others, back again, and said in a
tone of wonder:

  "I'm blind!"

  Dr. Paul Chiara hurried over and made what examination he could
under the circumstances.

   "Your eyes look perfectly normal, Dan," he said. "But I'll take you to the
ship, where we have the facilities for a really thorough examination and—"

  "Paul…"

  Mary Sanders came running into the room, the north wind whipping a
gust of snow in behind her and alarm on her face.

  "Paul—Billy just went blind!"

   In the hour that followed the blindness of sixty-year-old Destry and
six-year-old Billy, the plan to leave before morning with the Ragnarok was
dropped. Two more—a woman and an old man—went blind as Paul was
examining Destry and Billy. By the end of the hour, twelve people had
suddenly, painlessly, gone totally blind.

  Paul and his assistants tried every test they could think of and learned
nothing.

    "In every case," Paul said to John, "the eyes appear normal. Apparently
it's something that somehow blocks the optic nerves—I'm afraid it's an
after-effect of the paralysis-ray. And if it is, that means that everyone who
was in town that day will go blind."

  Earth had been called, and two hours later a sleepy-sounding
ophthalmologist of the Federal Medical Board spoke briefly to Paul, to ask
some questions and say:

  "No such a disease—if it is a disease—was ever known on Earth. I think
you will find that this blindness is an aftereffect of the paralysis-ray."

   "That's what we thought an hour ago," Paul told the ophthalmologist.
"But since then, fourteen more have gone blind—and eight of those
fourteen were miles from the paralysis-ray when it was used."

  When the cold, gray dawn came, one hundred and twenty were blind.
The rate was increasing.

   "One thing for sure," Norman said to John, "if this keeps up, everyone
that was on Ragnarok when the Ghost came will soon be blind and
helpless. So we can't start for Orion this morning—not go off and leave
everybody blind."

  Howard Deming went blind an hour later. He was one of the
Ragnarok's crewmen and had been two hundred and sixty lightyears away
when the Ghost ship raided the world of Ragnarok.

  John went again to see Paul Chiara when he heard of Deming.

  "It's not just a serious situation any more," he said to Paul. "It's the
most dangerous emergency we've ever faced. Not just those who were on
Ragnarok but every last one of us will be blind and helpless in a few more
days. We'll have to find what causes the blindness, and find it soon."

   Paul, who had been working ceaselessly with his small staff, stopped
only long enough to say:

   "Whatever it is, it doesn't affect animals—or hasn't so far, anyway.
Prowlers, mockers, unicorns, woods goats— they all seem to be immune.
We've ruled out our water supply as the dissemination medium they used
to carry the virus, or whatever it may be, and now we're giving air samples
every test imaginable. I'll let you know the minute we find anything
suspicious."
  Two hours later the news was brought to him: the air of Ragnarok now
contained a strange isotope; somewhat radioactive, and one which could
not be separated from the air.

   "I think this is the cause," Paul said. "What else could it be?"

  "Which brings up the next question," he said. "How long until that
north wind moves all the contaminated air out of here? Or did they
contaminate the atmosphere all the way to the pole? I'll take the Prowler
and see."

   "I'll show you how to use our air analyzer," Paul said, "Then I'll have it
taken to the Prowler. You can be ready to go in ten minutes."

  The Prowler, a small, two-man, special-built lightning-attack ship,
consisting mainly of high-speed drives and heavy weapons—a ship easily
operated by one man if necessary— was in the Ragnarok's largest storage
bay.

   So also, he discovered, was Barbara Lake.

  "I'm going with you," she said. "I told Norman you had decided to take
me instead of him."

   "You what?"

   "I looked him in the eye and told him a lie. I think he suspected it but
he let me get by with it."

   "It would be all right with me," he said, "but what do you know about
taking air samples?"

   "Just show me how—I can do it. And I'm so nervous and restless,
Johnny—I keep thinking of how Lora was afraid something was going to
happen and how I let her go back to town instead of making her stay in
the hills and going myself. Let me go with you."

   "All right—get in," he said.

   They went north, up over the high, white plateau. The air was
increasingly contaminated there. They went on, farther north, to the
birthplace of the northern winds of winter, and found there the heaviest
concentration of all; a concentration thousands of times greater than that
of the air over the town.

   He called Paul and told him what he had found.

   "There's enough here to poison half the atmosphere of Ragnarok," he
said. "I'm going on over the pole, on to the other continent, the Lifeless
Sea—I'd better make checks all over while I'm at it."

   He called Norman Lake next, and said:

    "It looks like the enemy is after our hides in earnest. The sooner we get
a fleet to Orion, the better. Call Cliff Schroeder and tell him to get our little
fleet together as fast as possible. We'll take all the ships we had before."

    Barbara, who had learned the operation of the air tester with
immediate comprehension—Barbara was one of those persons who
seemed capable of learning anything without the slightest
difficulty—asked innumerable questions about the Prowler, its operation,
its weapon controls, and even which of the two small sleeping
compartments he used during the times when he was on the Prowler.

   He took the Prowler up into the thin, upper atmosphere, where higher
speeds were possible without so much heating of the ship from air
friction. They went over the north pole, a forbidding place of ice and snow
thousands of feet thick, and over to the other continent of Ragnarok. The
Prowler screamed down through the atmosphere three times to get air
samples as it went southward. They checked the air four times over the
vast, salt-laden Lifeless Sea, and checked various other points which
John's limited knowledge of meteorology told him might be points of
origin for seasonal air masses.

   It was night again when they returned to the town and they had found
ten places where the atmosphere had been very heavily poisoned—in each
case a place where the poisoned air would spread out and cover a large
section of Ragnarok within a few weeks. How many more such places
there might be, they did not know.

   With the exception of the south pole, every section of Ragnarok was
already contaminated to at least some extent.

   In the meantime, while they were gone, four hundred more had been
stricken with blindness.

   Paul had been in almost constant contact with a now alarmed Federal
Medical Board on Earth. President Elkot had declared a state of
emergency and the fleet was on Full Alert patrol around Earth. The same
situation existed on Athena; to a lesser degree so far as the size of their
patrol fleet went and to a greater degree so far as the alarm went.

   But no doctor—none of the specialists on Earth nor any of the
Gern-trained Workers' Doctors on Athena—had any theory as to how the
effect of the isotope might be prevented.

    "We've been trying to find what the half-life of that isotope might be,"
Paul said. "So far as we can tell, it will be at least ten years, and maybe
fifty, before the isotope disintegrates to the point where it won't produce
blindness.

  "As for our much more immediate future: that north wind is bringing
down a heavier and heavier concentration of the isotope. Within two days
and nights, the last one of us will be blind."

  "We'll be gone long before then," John said. "We're leaving tonight."

   There was only one place they could go that might be suitable: a wild
island continent on Athena which the Athenans regarded as too harsh of
environment and too barren of resources to be fit for human inhabitation
but which, to the Ragnarokans, would be a rich, green land. There were
even some low-grade veins of iron and copper with which they could
produce their own metals.

   The town was told of the developments and preparations for an
immediate departure began at once. Due to time and space limitations,
they would take with them only the possessions necessary for a new start
on Athena. The space left over in the Ragnarok would be filled with the
domesticated woods goats and two pairs of unicorns.

   He sent a message to Earth and Athena, telling them that the entire
atmosphere of Ragnarok was poisoned and that they would all have to
leave there within a few hours.

  "The women and children will be left on Athena," he said, "on the little
continent called Grim Land. The Ragnarok will continue on, to
rendezvous with the Unicorn, the Avenger, and the other eight cruisers
that were Ragnarokan-manned during the war, plus the battleship, Wodin
. This will give us two battleships and ten cruisers, all of them already
automated as much as possible so that there will be enough Ragnarokans
to man all of them.

   "Then we'll go on to Orion—or beyond—at all the acceleration we can
take. Offense is the best form of defense and I doubt that the enemy will
expect a retaliatory fleet so soon. I don't suppose there is any question in
anyone's mind about the need to find the enemy as soon as possible rather
than wait for the enemy to come again to our worlds with the blindness
isotope.

   "Detailed reports of everything we learn will be sent to you at once.
Even if our fleet is completely destroyed, you will have first learned where
the enemy world is, what kind of weapons they have, and perhaps why
they are so interested in us. This information should be of a great deal of
value in the organization of your defense systems here. I don't expect any
complete annihilation of our fleet, but I can guarantee you that there will
be far less enemy ships in existence before any such annihilation is
completed…"

   Everything he had said had also been given to everyone in town by
means of the Ragnarok's outside-mounted public address speakers. The
closed-door discussions of Earth's politicians and military leaders,
discussions in which those affected were not supposed to be entitled to
either voice or knowledge, had always puzzled the Ragnarokans.

   He went down out of the ship and saw that the Ragnarok's floodlights
and searchlights now had the town lighted as brightly as though the suns
of summer had been shining. He heard the soft tinkle 'of ceramic bells and
saw children and prowlers coming toward the ship with a herd of woods
goats; the Ragnarokan source for milk, cheese, and the warm, strong wool
of which their clothing was made and to which any synthetic fiber of
Earth or Athena seemed inferior.

   A hoarse scream came from his left and he saw a pair of unicorns
coming, herded by two men with long spears and four prowlers. The
unicorns, eight feet tall at the shoulders, were swinging their huge,
boar-like heads, the light gleaming on their snarling tusks and long,
needle-sharp horns. They wanted to kill the men and prowlers herding
them—unicorns were always wanting to kill—but unicorns were the
principal source of both meat and tough leather.

   He walked up the street, where there was a hurried activity as everyone
ran back and forth into the houses, carrying out their possessions. The
piles accumulating in front of the houses were all small—virtually all
Ragnarokan possessions were necessities and these were few in number.
Crossbows, clothing, knives—steel knives, now, imported from Athena
during the war to replace the flint knives they had had—the orange corn,
Ragnarok's only food plant…

   And, of course, the manuscripts of the Old Ones, written with lance tree
ink on parchment; no longer necessities but of considerable sentimental
value. They contained not only the history of Ragnarok but had also been
the source of their education for two hundred years. Earthenans had never
been able to accustom themselves to the fact that all Ragnarokans spoke
Gern and could discuss physics and the art of chipping flint arrowheads
with equal authority.

  He came to the house where Lora and Barbara had lived and saw that
Barbara's possessions made a larger pile than could be accounted for by
her own things.

  "Lora's clothes," she said. "She'll need them when we bring her back to
Athena."

  Which meant, of course, that Barbara intended to go to Orion on the
Ragnarok and that she would do so unless restrained physically.

   He saw Anne Tyson going back into her house after an-n other armload
of clothing. Nine-year-old Eleanor was standing beside the possessions
already in the street; the wind v hipping her golden curls as she waited.
She looked up at the sound of his steps; an exceptionally pretty child with
wide blue eyes which now had the questioning expression he had seen so
many times recently. Eleanor was blind…

  "Daddy?" she asked, uncertainly.

  "Johnny," he answered. "Is Jim blind, too?"

   "No. He went to help Ed Barber get the things out of houses where
everybody is already blind. I was going to help Mama with our stuff—and
then, all at once, I couldn't see."
   She added, with wistful question, "I don't like to have to and out here in
the dark and cold and not be able to help Mama—will any of us ever see
again, Johnny?"

  "Of course," he said. "All of you—not long after we leave here."

   He went on, thinking: Well… Paul did say that the blind might recover
after they got away from the isotope…

  He saw Jim Tyson and Ed Barber just finishing with the possessions of
Dan Destry, who was on the Ragnarok helping with the general planning
despite his blindness.

  "It won't be long, now," Barber said. "One of the advantages of being a
Ragnarokan—you can carry your two-hundred-years-gatherings on your
back. I'm just as happy that we're going to Athena rather than Earth, too."

  "Why?" John asked.

   "We'll have our own schools. My wife wanted to help with the war work
on Earth and she was there for a year with our son. The Earth kids
resented it because his education at nine was the equivalent of theirs at
sixteen—and him with a father and mother who had been born in caves, to
make it more insulting for them. They kept picking on him, and he kept
knocking the daylights out of them for it, until my wife was ordered to
keep him away from the school area 'for the welfare of the more civilized
children there.""

   "Athena was worse," Tyson said. "I would never have believed, if I
hadn't seen it, that they would have more respect for the lowest Gern than
they had for us. I can still hear the chant with which the Athenan children
used to taunt Eleanor: 'Elean-or is an Inferi-or—Elean-or is an Inferi-or
.…' And then they'd say, 'Come on, Raggy, take off your clothes and show
us your hump and your web fingers and your club feet…' I'm not exactly
elated at our having to go to Athena —but there's no other place to go."

  "It won't be so bad," John said. "Well have our own little island
continent and we'll keep up the Ragnarokan habit of minding our own
business there. The Athenans don't like that continent and never go there,
anyway."

  He continued his circuit of the town, stopping often to help with the
work and listening to the conversation and comments. It was far from an
attempt to kill time. The general opinion of the others was important. He
could not do a good job of looking after their welfare and interests unless
he could be sure that the decisions he made would meet with general
approval.

   He was back on the Ragnarok when it was time for the reply to come
from Athena. He waited half an hour more, then heard the unexpected
reaction from Athena, spoken by the Athenan Secretary of Foreign Affairs:

   "We sympathize with you in the emergency now existing on Ragnarok
and we regret the necessity of reminding you that Grim Land is Athenan
domain. We cannot permit it to be used as a base of operations for
punitive attacks against a powerful, unknown enemy. Such attacks would
be certain to result in fierce counterattacks by the enemy; counterattacks
and raids which would not single out the Ragnarokans on Grim Land
alone, but would involve all Athena and Athenans.

    "We extend to you the permission to settle upon Grim Land for so long
as may be necessary provided you, in return, agree to keep the fleet you
had intended to send to Orion on constant guard duty around Athena for
all the time that Grim Land is occupied by Ragnarokans. Since even your
mere presence on Athena will keep us always under the danger of an
indiscriminate attack by the Ghost ship—and perhaps even the poisoning
of our atmosphere—we feel that our decision in this matter is both very
just and very fair.

   "You will understand by the foregoing, of course, that if you should
insist upon carrying out your mission of rescue and vengeance—the action
which would so certainly bring a deadly attack in return upon Athena—we
shall be forced to forbid you to stop upon Grim Land. We regret that we
must be so stern in this matter but we cannot permit you to imperil three
hundred thousand Athenans through a foolhardy attempt to avenge the
deaths of only one hundred Ragnarokans."

  There was a silence, then Norman said, "'—Only one Hundred
Ragnarokans'I"

   "I wouldn't have thought…" Dale did not finish the sentence, but shook
his head, instead.

  Both of them looked at John and Norman said, "They can't 'permit' us
to settle on Grim Land! Don't they know that all three hundred thousand
of those weak-kneed ex-slaves couldn't keep the women and children,
alone, from taking all of Athena?"

  "They know," John said. "They're depending on us to be polite about it
and remember that it's their world—even if we did take it away from the
Gerns and give it to them."

    "I'll be damned!" Dale shook his head again. "Here we are rushing to
get away from Ragnarok before we're all blind and get on to our new home
on Athena—woods goats and all— und we get slapped in the face by some
jellyfish."

  "We'll find a place," John said. "We'll go to Athena if we have to—but
we'll see if Earth might not give our women and children a more friendly
welcome—"

  He was interrupted by the communicator. It was the message from
Earth; spoken by President Elkot, himself.

   "Due to the need for quick action on Ragnarok, and the long
transmission-time lag of our messages, the governing cabinet of Earth
held a hurried consultation with all officials concerned, including
Lieutenant-Grand Commander Frendle and Athenan Representative
Dilmor.

   "It was agreed that your relatively small fleet sent against an enemy of
unknown potential could very well result in an attack of retaliation against
which our own forces could not stand. The unanimous decision of the
military chiefs-of-staff was that a far better action would be to first send a
scout ship to Orion. If the enemy is not so great but what we can be sure
of success, we will make plans for a campaign that will result in
disarmament of the enemy. If the enemy is very powerful —as the
possession of a third-level ship indicates—we will have no choice but to
concentrate upon developing our defensive power to the fullest extent and
maintaining it to that extent until we are in position to take more
aggressive actions.

  "We have been assured by Representative Dilmor that the Athenan
government will agree with us in all respects. He also stated that his
government would never sanction use of any part of Athena as a base of
operations for attacks upon the enemy and that the presence of
Ragnarokans on Athena would make mandatory the use of the two
battleships and ten cruisers as a guard fleet around Athena.

   "Should you decide you would prefer Earth to Athena, you will be very
welcome to settle here. In that case, of course, since your presence here
might at any time bring another raid from the enemy, we regard it as only
logical and just that we should attach this one single provision to our
welcome: you must agree to abandon your plan to take your fleet to Orion
and, instead, put it in guard orbit around Earth."

  Again there was a silence, then Norman 'said, "More polite than
Athena's slap but it boils down to the same thing: we're not to go there
unless we forget the hundred who were kidnapped."

   "And so"—Dale looked questioningly at the other two— "we seem to
suddenly be a race without a world. And while we sit here, people are
going blind at a faster and faster rate."

  "Well go to Athena," Norman said. "Let them cry."

   "No," John said. "I don't think any of us would like to live on a world
where we would be regarded as dangerous and unwanted
intruders—where our most bitter enemy would be our own distant
cousins."

  "In that case, then," Dale said, "We would have to—"

   The communicator signaled again. The call was from Cliff Schroeder on
the cruiser, Unicorn:

   "I have been forbidden to take the other battleship and cruisers. The
Earthenans have declared the present situation -Q be a State of General
Peril and they brought up the Mutual -Security Pact which we were naive
enough to sign and which pro-rates the ships needed for protection
according to the populations of the worlds to be protected. Since there are
only six thousand Ragnarokans, we aren't even entitled o a rowboat, let
alone ten ships. They said they cannot consider permitting us to both
deprive them of needed ships and use those ships to increase the danger of
attack. Do we knock their ears down and take the ships anyway?"

  Again there was a silence. It seemed to John that it was a day for
unexpected reactions from the Earthenans and long silences as he and the
other two readjusted themselves to new situations.

   "What next?" Dale asked with a touch of bitterness. "Now, we aren't
even supposed to have any right to the ships that we, alone, captured from
the Gerns."

   "If I was in Cliffs place," Norman said, "I wouldn't have bothered to
ask—I'd already have their ears knocked down."

  "We signed an agreement," he said to them. "We had never had any
experience with complexly worded interworld agreements. On top of that,
we didn't expect any emergency and we took it for granted that even if an
emergency should develop, the Earthenans would never object to us using
our own ships."

  "Well, they do now," Norman said. "So what do we do about it?"

  "Well keep our agreement, but for the fact that we'll also keep the
Unicorn and Ragnarok—after all, we had both of those before the
Earthenans even knew we existed. As for what we should do—you both
know as well as I what everyone outside will want to do."

   "We don't have any other choice," Dale said. He stood up, restlessly.
"Half of them are already on board and the others soon will be. We should
be on our way in another hour. The sooner we get there, the more hope
there will be of finding our people still alive."

  The thought of Lora, never far away, came back again to John. He saw
her face, with the tears and cold mist mingled on her cheeks, and heard
her say again: "—I'm afraid that we'll never—never meet again…"

  "I'll go ahead of all of you in the Prowler," he said, and turned to the
communicator to send their answer to Earth and Athena:

   "We have no desire to hide under the bed with you while a hundred of
our women and children are left to whatever torture or death the enemy
may have in store for them. We are giving you all our ships but for the
Ragnarok and Unicorn. We are giving you our share of what used to be
the Gern Empire. You are welcome to all of it.

  "We are leaving Ragnarok tonight. You may all go to hell and we'll go to
Orion."
   It was almost exactly three hours later that the Ragnarok was ready to
go. Cliff Schroeder had long since been told to transfer all Ragnarokans to
the Unicorn and set a course for Orion. All food supplies of com and dried
meat on Ragnarok had been loaded into the ship. Part of the domesticated
woods goats had been taken out, to make room for enough grass to feed
them until a new world was found, and also to feed the unicorns.

  John went out of the Ragnarok. Fenrir and Sigyn with him and the two
mockers, Tip and Freckles, riding on his shoulders.

   The last of the emigrants were going up the boarding ramp. Jim Tyson
was one, limping under his burden. His wife was carrying as much as he
and the little blind Eleanor was stumbling along behind, carrying her
father's crossbow in one hand, holding to her mother's skirt with the other
for guidance, and saying, "—Gee, I'm glad we're not going back to Athena.
Now that I'm blind, they would laugh at me more than ever and this time
they would know it would be safe for them to throw rocks at me…"

  He met Red Anders hurrying toward the ship from town with a small
bundle of clothing.

    "I thought I ought to take along some of Elaine's clothes," Red said. "It's
all right, isn't it Johnny?"

   "Of course, Red," he answered. "She'll be needing them a few weeks
from now."

   "Do you really think we'll get there in time?" Red asked, hope in his
tone. "I mean, honest, Johnny—do you?"

   "As a matter of fact," he lied, "I was just going back to get Lora's
clothes. That's how sure I am."

  "I'm glad to hear you say that," Red said. "Elaine and I had been
married only two days when my ship left for the war again—I don't like to
have to think I'll never see her anymore…"

   A whistle sounded from the Ragnarok, high-pitched and impatient:
the All Aboard signal. The floodlights went out, to 1eave a single spotlight
which enveloped the two men on the ground. The whistle sounded again
and John said, "They're waiting for you, Red."
  "I'll see you in Orion," Red said. "Good luck." He ran toward the ship.

   The Ragnarok lifted a minute later, roaring up into the black storm
clouds and the sound fading away.

   John stood alone in the wind-and-snow-driven darkness that was
relieved only by the single floodlight burning on the Prowler. Somewhere
to the south, so far away he could only faintly hear it, came the scream of a
unicorn. They had all been released from their stockade, of course, and
they were already obeying instinct and migrating southward. A dozen
woods goats came by as he watched, uncertainly, as though not sure what
they should do. Then a harder drive of wind and snow came and they
seemed to make their decision. They turned and went in a trot toward the
south.

   "I guess we're the only ones left in town, now," he said to Fenrir and
Sigyn. "Let's take a last look around, before we go…"

   A final-check crew had made the rounds of all the houses, Making sure
that nothing needed had been overlooked and making sure that all doors
were closed against the storms and unicorns. In a way it had been
pointless to close the doors. It might be fifty years before Ragnarok was
inhabitable again. But Ragnarok was their world and they had not wanted
to leave it without at least pretending that some of them might some day
come back.

   He opened the door of the house where Lora and Barbara had lived
together after the death of their parents. Barbara had selected the
necessities with her usual practical efficiency. All weapons and all needed
clothing were gone. Lore's violin is still there; made of red-gold lance tree
wood and silent now. No one had ever played a violin as Lora had.
Sometimes, when she stood outside in the starlit evenings and played, it
seemed that the entire town would become silent to listen…

   Fenrir shoved against him and made a restless sound—a sound which
Sigyn echoed.

   "All right," he said to them. "I'm being more sentimental than
intelligent, I guess—I could go blind any moment."

   He hesitated, then took the violin and bow, thinking, I've told hopeful
lies to everyone else—why shouldn't I tell myself that Lora will be playing
this again?

   He shut the door behind him and went through the poison-laden wind
to the Prowler. Two minutes later the Prowler was screaming up through
the clouds and the town was truly empty and deserted.

   He caught up with the Ragnarok at the south pole. Both ships
discharged the poisonous air they contained, flushed the interiors several
times, and thoroughly flushed the air-regenerators. It was cold inside the
Prowler when the two ships lifted up through the polar night and went
into outer space. He knew it would be just as cold in the Ragnarok and
made to seem even colder, perhaps, by the fact that a little race was
leaving the world which had created it and none of them might ever
return.

  He called the Ragnarok, to say, "I'm going on."

  "Dig in your spurs, Johnny," Norman said. "We'll be coming right
behind you."

   Both ships accelerated, the acceleration of the Prowler greater than
that of the Ragnarok, and the Ragnarok slowly dropped behind.

   Two hundred lightyears farther on he passed Athena; so close to it that
he could see the blue oceans and green continents under the warm yellow
sun. He did not contact Athena as he went by. There was nothing for him
to say.

   The days and nights—arbitrary time divisions as set forth by the ship's
chronometer—passed in slow succession of long maximum-acceleration
periods and short lesser-acceleration periods. The little mockers did no
playing with each other, due to the acceleration drag, and slept most of
the time. The ship would have seemed very still and empty if it had not
been for the company of Fenrir and Sigyn. They stayed near him all the
time, fully aware of the reason for the voyage and looking as somber as he
felt when he spoke to them of Lora.

   Prowlers, with their high degree of intelligence and their proud, fierce
natures, had been the greatest enemy the Rejects had faced on Ragnarok
but for the Hell Fever. It had not been until the Ragnarokan Year of One
Sixty-one that an opportunity had come to bridge the gull between men
and prowlers. His grandfather had saved the life of a prowler trapped in a
canyon by a cloudburst that year. Before the Jay was over, the prowler
saved the life of his rescuer in return. From that day on, the prowlers
made no more attacks against men.

  Nineteen years later the same prowler—dying as he fought off a vicious
unicorn attack, and his mate already dead—had appealed to the man who
had once saved his life to now save 1, is young ones.

  So the Ragnarokans had their beginning of the prowlers they would
need as allies to fight the Gerns; two whimpering, starving little pups who
would be named Fenrir and Sigyn.

    He, John, had been only a baby then but it seemed to him he could
almost remember those hungry days when his Mother's breasts were dry
from an injury and there was only a very small amount of woods goat milk
to be had. There had been only one way to save the lives of the starving
little pups—by sharing what little milk he had. So his mother had rationed
the limited supply of milk with equal impartiality to her baby and the two
little prowlers.

  Thinking of it one day, as the Prowler bored her way through the long,
empty space void, he said to them:

   "Without you two and your many descendants, I doubt that we could
have taken that Gern cruiser. No Ragnarokan will ever forget the part you
prowlers played. But there is something odd about the behavior, ever since
this trip started, of a couple of prowlers named Fenrir and Sigyn—did you
know I had noticed it? You both act like you had guilty consciences for
some reason."

  Fenrir gave him a vacant look, as though his mind was on other
matters, and Sigyn started working industriously on an already
well-groomed front paw.

  The Prowler was ninety lightyears ahead of the Ragnarok when he
went into another lesser-acceleration period and looked up to see Barbara
walking out of the second sleeping compartment, smiling triumphantly.

   "According to my calculations," she said, "the Ragnarok should now be
so far behind that it's safe for me to show myself."

  He looked at the prowlers. Fenrir was pretending an absorbed interest
in the napping mockers. Sigyn hung her head sheepishly.

   "They knew from the start I was here," she said. "I told them not to tell
on me so that I could help find Lora."

   Fenrir and Sigyn had an affection for the Lake sisters which was
exceeded only by their loyalty to him. They would, of course, have joined in
the conspiracy.

   "When did you hide out in there?" he asked. "And why is it no one on
the Ragnarok said anything about you being missing?"

   "I told Norman what I was going to do and he said he'd take care of
that part. Of all my many cousins, I think Norman is the handiest to have
around. I was hiding back in that compartment before you ever left the
Ragnarok"

   "How did you manage to keep hidden for so long without my knowing
it?"

   "That was a matter of slipping out for something to eat and drink and
other necessary chores when you were asleep. I'm glad you were
methodical about the sleep periods you set up for yourself."

   "Well… it's too late to take you back," he said. "Since you're here, you
might as well start in doing useful things, such as fixing us something to
eat right now."

   "And you can teach me how to operate the Prowler," she said, "and
how to fire its disintegrators. I can learn, and two heads are always better
than one, even if one of them is a cabbage head."

   "Yes, I guess so," he said. "You could learn how to—" He stopped, and
asked with sudden suspicion, "Which one is supposed to be the cabbage
head?"

   The stars of Orion slowly crept closer, changing in form until they no
longer remotely resembled Orion as seen from Earth. Barbara asked
endless questions, about the ship, its weapons, battle strategy of all kinds,
the vague theories the more daring scientists of Earth had had regarding
the principles of the third-level drive, and a multitude of other subjects.
She had a quick, intelligent mind and an amazing memory.
   Occasionally—not often—they would speak of Lora and the other
captives. They tried to make the slow days pass faster and lessen the futile
worry by occupying themselves with other thoughts.

   Chess was Barbara's favorite pastime, next to asking questions. The
game, with its possibility of millions of different combinations of moves,
fascinated her. She became very good at the game; so good, in fact, that he
was hard put to hold his own with her.

   "The bishops are the sneaky ones," she said once. "They lurk back in a
corner until you forget about them, then one of them will slip out and have
your queen before you know ü. When I first started playing chess, I even
dreamed chess. All the people in my dreams moved according to chess
rules and Lora was the white queen and the captain of the Ghost ship was
a black bishop trying to sneak out and get her…"

   On the tenth day he received the news from the Ragnarok which he
had been hoping would come, even though there was really little basis for
such hope.

   "Dan Destry could see a little when he woke up this morning," Paul
Chiara said. "It's four hours later, and his vision is definitely improving.
The Sanders boy and several others are recovering their vision. It looks
like no one will have to remain blind, after all."

   They passed within detector-search range of a great many suns but only
a few possessed planets and the few planets found were devoid of any of
the electronic emissions that would certainly be a characteristic of a
high-level civilization.

   The Great Nebula drew closer: a huge, green cloud tinged with rose,
suns shining dimly from within it. The cloud became a far-flung haziness
as they entered it and suns were visible for many lightyears; blue-white,
white, red, orange, and yellow.

  By then the Ragnarok was two days behind them. The Unicorn, which
had started from a more distant point and which had been delayed by the
necessity of gathering up all Ragnarokans in the occupation forces, was
hurrying to catch up with the Ragnarok.

   He sent another negative report to the two ships, to which he added:
   "I should be getting close to enemy territory now. I'll keep
reporting—but don't send me any communications or they'll pick up the
signals and know that other ships are following mo."

  Two days later the detectors picked up the first faint signs of electronic
emissions, from somewhere almost directly ahead of them. The Prowler
changed course slightly, to follow them to their source.

   They passed out of the cloud and into an open star cluster region.
Behind them the nebula was a green and red curtain, hiding all the stars
ever seen from Earth or Ragnarok.

    The closest sun of all before them was a bright yellow white Class F,
with two planets. One was so far from the sun that it was frozen and
lifeless. The other, at an intermediate distance, possessed an
oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.

   Six hours later they descended through the atmosphere; an atmosphere
which the air analyzers declared to be perfectly pure and breathable. It
was a big world, as big as Ragnarok, with a gravity of 1.52. But where
Ragnarok had been bleak and barren, this world was one of wide, green
continents and blue seas, with ice and snow only in the polar regions and
no evidence that it -had Ragnarok's intensely cold winters and hot
summers.

   The detectors showed the mountains to contain metals in great
abundance. There were many rivers for hydroelectric power, vast areas
ideal for agriculture, and yet nothing in the way of life was to be seen but
the wild animals grazing on the grassy plains and in the green forests.

   "Funny," he said to Barbara. "We'll go on around it and see what we
find."

   "We know we've found one thing," she said. "We've found the ideal
world for ourselves. They were taking a terrible chance, Johnny, all those
on the Ragnarok, because they might have had to go on and on until they
were starving and never have found a world where they could live."

   They went around over the night side of the world, then back into day
again. There, near the center of another continent, they found the dead
city.
   It was on a tree-dotted green plain, looked down upon from the north
by the ragged spires and peaks of a red mountain.

   The detectors showed the mountain to be almost pure iron oxide. A
tremendous, sheer cliff on the south side of the mountain was like a
rainbow curtain with its copper ore.

   It had once been a large and beautiful city, with tall, graceful buildings
and many parks. Now it was all ruin and rubble; only portions of the
buildings and slender towers standing, trees and other vegetation growing
up through the piles of broken masonry and out through the empty
windows and doorways. Steel girders and beams, red with rust, projected
everywhere. The rusted remains of vehicles and other machines were
numerous. The broken shells of three small battle cruisers could be seen,
one in the city and two near the edge of the city.

   The detectors showed nothing whatever in the way of electronic or
atomic radiations and the viewscreens showed the dead city to be without
movement of any kind.

  "Somebody had a city here," he said, "and somebody else came along
and destroyed it. Now, they both seem to be gone — victor and
vanquished."

   "But why," Barbara wondered, "should anyone want to go to the trouble
of completely destroying a city like that and then just go away and leave
it?"

  "We don't really know for sure that something might not still live there.
There's something wrong here—I'm going to take a closer look."

   There was a gently sloping hill at the east edge of the city and he landed
the Prowler there, not far from a tall tree with bayonet-like leaves—a tree
very similar to the lance trees of Ragnarok.

   From the hilltop the entire city could be seen as well as the river to the
west and the forested plain to the east, which ended far in the distance at
the foot of a high, black range of mountains.

    "You can keep watch in all directions from here," he said to Barbara.
"I'll see what I can find in the city. You know enough about handling the
Prowler to take it up and head hack to meet the others if anything should
happen to me."

  He put on the light metal helmet, hot though it would be in the summer
sunshine, took Fenrir and Tip with him, and went down into the city.

   It was the same, everywhere he went; rubble and ruins, with huge
blocks of stone in tumbled masses and the red, twisted girders and
remains of unknown machines scattered through it all.

   There was no clue as to the kind of beings who had built the city until
he came to one of the parks. He saw the remains of elaborate fountains,
rock-walled gardens—the shrubs and flowers now a tangled thicket—and
he found the broken remnants of sculpture.

   One statue was still standing. At first he was not sure but what it was
alive; so perfect was the craftsmanship and so lifelike the colors.

   But it was synthetic stone—a figure of a creature which resembled a
small bear with large, dark intelligent eyes. It was standing upright, like a
man, holding a huge sphere high above its head in paws that were
long-fingered and almost like human hands.

  The sphere was a planet—the world on which he stood.

   At the end of an hour he had found a large number of statues—most of
them broken—and many fresco paintings. All of it featured the activities of
the bear-like creatures but in no case was there ever anything of a military
or warlike nature depicted. Apparently the little bears had been both very
industrious and very peaceful.

   There was no clue, anywhere, as to the reason why the city should have
been destroyed nor was there any faintest clue as to what the invaders had
looked like.

   He started back toward the Prowler. Several times he found scattered
bones in the rubble and once he found the skull of one of the bear-things.
The skull was gray and crumbling with age, the eye sockets staring up into
the sky, the teeth those of a harmless noncarnivorous creature.

    Not far from the foot of the hill on which the Prowler waited he came
to another area which had once been a park. He saw two more of the
lifelike statues, one fallen to the ground. He was pushing his way through
the flowering vines at the farther edge of the park when Tip suddenly
cowered down close to him, clutching at his shoulder with both little paws
and chattering:

  "Bad thing—kill Tiny!"

   His blaster was in his hand as he shoved through the vines and saw the
thing on the terrace before him.

   It was like a great cat, larger than a Terran lion, shining golden-yellow
in color, with eyes as green as emeralds. There was an impression of
potential violence about it. It observed him with haughty aloofness as
though it represented the lords of all races. There was something like
sardonic amusement as it looked at the blaster in his hand and he had the
feeling that it was going to spring.

  He flipped up the muzzle of the blaster, in line with the broad yellow
chest—and the cat was suddenly no longer there. It was off the terrace and
gone from view in one swift blur of movement.

  Tip was still terrified, still chattering, "Bad thing—bad thing/"

  "Are you sure?" he asked.

  "Sure," Tip said. "Kill Tiny!"

   Fenrir was half snarling as he ran back and forth, trying to pick up the
cat's trail where it had disappeared. He seemed unable to do so, as though
the cat had no odor.

  Ten minutes later there was no doubt about it. Try as he might, Fenrir
could detect no trail to follow.

   He was back in the main street again, the Prowler visible, when he
looked to the right, where a side street was cluttered with stone and
broken machines, and saw the metal monster coming.

   It was a weasel-like thing thirty feet long, cleverly camouflaged to
resemble the rusted iron and gray debris of the city, and would have been
undetectable had it not been moving. It was creeping silently toward him
on soft-padded feet, its triangular head raised and black, multiple-faceted
eyes fixed on him. Two steel arms, ending in grasping claws, were already
extended to seize him.

   Something flickered on the thing's metal face and he felt a tingling
near-numbness as a hazy pink beam enveloped him. Something like
probing fingers seemed to be trying to touch his brain through the metal
helmet.

  This, then, was the stun beam used by the Ghost ship.

   He fired, the blaster at full intensity, thinking, This is the world -where
they took Lora and the Others—These are our enemies—the cats …

   A force-field screen flashed up around the Weasel, like an envelope of
frosty white, and the pale blue beam of the blaster hissed and spluttered
impotently against it.

  Then the Weasel humped its back and darted toward him. It came with
amazing speed, the clawed hands extended at lull length.

   He ran for the temporary safety of the broken walls, Fenrir running
beside him and Tip clinging to his shoulder. The ground shook as the
Weasel crashed over and through the walls and rubble behind him,
gaining on him as it came.

  He had no doubt but that it possessed weapons which could quickly kill
him yet it, or the things who controlled it, wanted him alive.

  Why?

  It might also possess a disintegrator capable of destroying the Prowler
once it had captured him—

  He sent the warning to Barbara as he ran:

  "Barbara—get the Prowler up and out of here!"

  But the Prowler did not move. Instead, the weapons ports flickered
open. The blue disintegrator beam came a second later.

   It swept down the hill toward him, erratically but determinedly,
plowing a wide furrow as it came and filling the air with its roar and the
scream of shrapnel flying from disintegrated stone. One piece struck him
painfully on the knee.
   He dodged to the left, to get out of its path, and it swung in the same
direction as Barbara tried to miss him. It was almost upon him and he
leaped back to the right. With a quick frantic jerk, Barbara swung the
beam directly in front of him again.

   Damn it! he thought with a feeling of desperation, jumping once more
to the left. The Weasel was the safest—

   The beam flicked off, roared into being behind him as it was raised
slightly, and swung into the Weasel.

   The Weasel's screen gave way in a bright flash and the forward half of
the monster was suddenly gone. The beam was cut off and the rear half of
the Weasel slid with a metallic sound down into the crater made by the
beam.

  Tip spoke in Barbara's voice:

  "What in the world was it?" Then, with a note of pride, "I did pretty
good, didn't I?"

  "Excellently," he said, limping over to the crater. "Just as soon as you
made up your mind which one of us you were after."

   There was a silence and he said, "To be honest, you did better than a lot
of trained Earthenan disintegrator men. I'm going to take a look at the
remains…"

   He learned nothing, other than that the Weasel was a complex product
of a race with a very high technological level. He doubted that the Weasel
had been made on the cat world. There were neither cities nor factories
there. But the cats must certainly have directed it.

   It was not yet noon when he took the Prowler up again. The circuit of
the world was continued until they came to the region where they had
started. Nothing had been seen, other than the wild animals.

  "Tip was certain the cat was the thing that killed Tiny," he said to
Barbara, "but this can't be the world that produced the Ghost ship. So the
home world of our enemy— cats, or whatever they are—is somewhere else.
That's where our people should be. We'll go on toward those signals we
heard—on to the orange sun."
   A voice spoke in his mind, aloof and alien, and he knew it came from
the cat in the dead city a third of a world away:

   "There you will find the ones who captured your people; the ones who
left the metal robot here to capture any living creature it sees moving.
You will be given much information. All of it will be lies with a purpose.
The ones who built this city once believed such lies.

  He looked at Barbara, but she was watching the view* screen, no
change of expression on her face.

  "I don't think I'm losing my mind," he said. "That cat back there just
spoke to me—"

  After he had told her about it, and reported to the Ragnarok, he said,
"We'll head on to the orange sun. We'll see what we find, then form our
own conclusions."

   They made the one-day journey to the orange sun. The outer planet was
a warm, green world, devoid of minerals. .Slow-moving, muscular
humanoids were plowing fields with slow-moving lizard-like draft animals.
There was no machinery of any kind, although there were numerous
landing fields where ships could pick up the agricultural produce.

   "Enough farms to feed billions of people," he said. "Who picks the
produce up and where is it taken?"

   In one of the subtropic seas they found what appeared to he a paradise
island. Trees, vines, shrubs, all of them loaded with fruit and flowers,
covered the large island and grew almost to the water's edge, where the
blue sea lapped gently at the snow-white sand.

   Barbara said, "The sort of South Sea island they were supposed to have
on Earth three hundred years ago—the kind where the brown natives lived
a simple, carefree life as they ate fruit, went swimming, and danced
happily along the shore in their birthday suits…"

   But there seemed to be no life of any kind there aside from swarms of
insects and they left the bread-basket world behind.

  They went on, around the sun, and the other planet appeared.
  The Prowler's detectors jumped to life. The world was emitting a
barrage of electronic emissions of every conceivable kind.

   The warning system beeped as a speck appeared on the viewscreen. It
grew swiftly larger, coming head-on toward them; a battle cruiser of an
alien design but not the Ghost ship.

  He dropped to a very low acceleration. The other ship swung in a circle
and came in alongside the Prowler, matching the Prowler's speed.

   The Prowler's force-field disintegrator shields were already up, the
disintegrators on automatic target fix. The communicator was in circuit
with the communicators of the Ragnarok and Unicorn so that all of any
exchange of messages would be transmitted to the two ships.

  A white light flashed from the alien ship—on and off, on and off…

  "It has a sort of a questioning blink," Barbara said. "I think we're
supposed to do something."

   He was already trying the communicator on all-wave reception. It was
silent. He tried the ship-to-ship normal-space radio. Squarely in the
middle of the band he encountered the signal from the other ship.

  He listened incredulously as a voice said in Gern:

  —Identify yourself at once. Repeat: if you can understand this order,
you will identify yourself at once…"

  He checked again to make sure the Prowler was ready to fire with all
weapons that could be trained on the other ship, then he said:

  "What are you Gerns doing here? Where did you get that ship?"

   "For your information, I am Commander Garron," a deep, hard voice
said. "We are not Gerns—we are Shomarians. Sector Commander Hesnar
will now speak to you."

  Another voice spoke in curt tones:

   "You will be escorted to Shomar where you will be questioned and your
ship searched for Kilvarl."
   "Why is it that you can speak Gern?" he asked. "Your world is hundreds
of lightyears from what used to be the Gern Empire."

  "Gern was the logical language choice," the curt voice said. "Your ship
has lines similar to those of the Gern exploration ship which crashed on
Shomar years ago. We learned the Gern language from the one survivor."

   "What are these Kilvarl you speak of?"

   "The Kilvarl are large, yellow-furred, carnivorous quadrupeds from
Kilvar, the first planet of the yellow-white sun."

   The cats! he thought, and asked, "Are they supposed to be dangerous?"

   "Due to their powers of hypnotism they are very dangerous," the voice
replied. "You will now confine yourself to answering my questions. Why
are you here? How many others are coming behind you?"

  The peremptory tone used by the Shomarian rubbed him the wrong
way. "I'll tell you what we'll do," he said. "Your questions will be answered
when you find it convenient to answer mine. Let's get on to Shomar."

  "You know," Barbara said, "I don't think I'm going to like the
Shomarians."

   Closer approach to Shomar showed it to be a world of even greater
development than he had assumed. They curved around the world, into
the shadow of sunset, and the Shomarian ship led the way down toward a
green valley, at the head of which a small city set like an architectural
jewel. Forested hills made a semicircle around the northern border of the
city, with no roads to mar their natural beauty.

   He said to Barbara, "I have an idea that the reason this is so
extra-carefully laid out is because it's the capitol city of Shomar."

   They followed the other ship down to a large space port near the city.
He automatically appraised the ships on the field. There was one
cruiser-type ship, similar to the ship they fallowed, a dozen smaller ships
of various types—apparently interplanetary freighters—and at the far end
of the field an oddly designed ship of cruiser proportions.

   "Now we'll see what we've found," he said. "Stay in here, keep watching
that viewscreen, and be ready to take the Prowler out of here. Once you
get away they could never lake the acceleration necessary to catch you."

  He hid Tip inside his shirt—Freckles would stay with Barbara—and
went out of the ship.

   The gentle, sleepy warmth of a summer evening was in the air. A faint
breeze was coming from off the green hills and it carried the sweet scent of
flowers. There was a feeling of lazy serenity and peace; an illusion that was
broken when the three Shomarians came out of the other ship.

   Two of the men, large and thick-muscled, seemed to be under-officers.
The third was obviously an officer of very high rank despite his youth—his
polished insignia gleaming even in the twilight and his walk almost a
strut. He stopped before John and appraised him with objective curiosity,
his mouth a tight little line between a large vulture-like nose and a small
chin.

   "I am Sector Commander Hesnar," he said in the same curt tone he had
used on the ship. "My men will search your ship while you answer various
questions that I shall ask."

   Another officer came up, one whose insignia was not as elaborate as
Hesnar's but who had an air of authority about him that was entirely
different from Hesnar's self-importance. He was taller than Hesnar, his
face hard and scarred, his eyes a cold, frosty blue. John knew he would be
Cruiser Commander Garron.

   Garron spoke to Hesnar, received a brief consent of some kind, then
said to John, "What is your name and the name of your world?"

  "John Humbolt, of Ragnarok."

   "Ragnarok would be in or near the Gern sector of space, I assume. Why
are you here and how did you find this world?"

   "I came this way to do some exploring," he answered. Tell me, why
should you and Commander Hesnar have gone to the trouble of learning
the Gern language?"

  "Men in Extra-Shomarian Relations Service know many languages. We
have an electronic memory-impression method with which a language can
be learned in a few hours. How did you find this world?"

   Hesnar said something to Garron in Shomarian, impatience on his
face, and Garron turned away to meet an approaching vehicle. Hesnar
indicated the muscular enlisted man on his left with a jerk of his hand and
said to John:

   "For your own benefit, in case you might make the mistake of trying to
use it against a Shomarian, you will hand your weapon to this man."

   "For my own benefit," John answered, "I'll just keep it. Let's get on to
this Kilvarl stowaway search."

   Hesnar's face darkened and his tight mouth became even tighter. Then
he said, "We shall take up this matter of your weapon later. In the
meantime, lead the way to your ship— I don't have all evening to stand out
here."

  John walked in such a manner that he could watch all three
Shomarians as they went to the Prowler. He wondered why a Sector
Commander should personally take charge of tine Prowler's inspection. It
would seem to be a job much below a Sector Commander's dignity—

  Or were the Kilvarl really so dangerous that it was not?

   Until and if the Shomarians proved themselves not to be the enemy, it
would be better for Fenrir and Sigyn to remain unseen. There was an
easily removed ventilator grill behind which they could hide. Barbara
knew about it.

  He spoke in quick, low Ragnarokan to Tip:

  "Black king and queen vulnerable to bishops."

  "What was that?" Hesnar was staring at him suspiciously. "What did
you say?"

  "I was thinking about some moves in a certain chess game," he
answered. "Chess is a war game—very interesting. Remind me to teach
you how to play it someday."

  Hesnar stared harder and John wondered whether Hesnar thought him
to be a liar or an idiot.

   They entered the ship, the Shomarians darting curious glances at
Barbara. She stood by the control panel and looked back at them with a
high-headed objectiveness. Fenrir and Sigyn were not in sight.

  "Where is your crew?" Hesnar demanded. "Have them gather here at
once."

   "There is no crew," he said. "Just Barbara and myself."

  Hesnar scowled. "You came six hundred lightyears with no crew—with
only the female here?"

   Barbara stiffened angrily. "I'm a woman, not a 'female'. And I'm the
sister of the woman he's going to marry which makes him the same as my
brother."

  Hesnar stared at her, very thoughtfully. He spoke in Shomarian into the
small communicator on his wrist, then gave an order to one of his men.

  There was a faint humming sound and John saw that one of the men
had produced a camera-like object and had it trained on Barbara.

   "What is the reason for that?" he asked.

   "A recording must be transmitted of everything," Hesnar answered.
"Kilvarl have the ability to hypnotize searchers into not seeing them. You
will now tell me your true reason for coming here. Your claim that you are
on a mission of exploration is obviously a lie. I am quite sure that the
female here is not the equivalent of a well-trained crew of technicians and
observers, no matter how pleasantly she may have helped you while away
the sleep period hours, and I—"

   Hesnar never finished the sentence. Barbara sprang at him like a
prowler, her eyes blazing. She slapped his face, with the full strength of an
infuriated girl from a 1.5 gravity world.

   The blow made a sound like a small explosion and Hesnar was knocked
headlong to the floor. He sprawled ignominiously, his eyes wide with
incredulous surprise.
  "Listen, Shomarian!" Barbara was standing over him, quivering with
her indignation. "Don't ever say anything like that again or I'll break your
neck!"

    The two bodyguards were staring open-mouthed at Hesnar. The
camera was still purring and the one who held it, without being aware of
it, had it pointed squarely at Hesnar.

   Hesnar snarled something at the one who held the camera and the man
frantically shut it off. Hesnar scrambled to his feet, his face a livid red and
distorted with rage. He grabbed at the disintegrator in his belt and John
saw that he was going to kill Barbara as he would shoot down an animal.

   He shot as Hesnar's disintegrator came up—a low-intensity shot that
would not damage the interior of the ship. Hesnar's weapon was knocked
from his hand, to strike the wall and bounce back to Hesnar's feet
Hesnar's hand, still extended in firing position, was white.

   "There will be no search, after all," John said. "You'll take me to the city
at once—among other things, I want to ask your superiors if it is
customary for Shomarian officers to shoot down unarmed girls."

   Hesnar's eyes were hate-filled glares in his livid face. He snarled an
order at the guards, who looked at John's blaster and did not move.

   Barbara stepped forward and said to Hesnar with deceptive mildness:

   "There is an old proverb: 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.' That's
supposed to be the best way of getting along with people in foreign lands.
Now, I want to get along with you because you're a high Shomarian
officer, very important, and—"

  She paused, as though trying to think of something even more
apologetic to say. The glaring, puzzled expression on Hesnar's face
changed to vindictive triumph.

  "So you are aware of the consequences of your actions?" Hesnar's tone
was a hiss that matched his face. "I suggest your best chance for mercy is
not to whine to me for it but to persuade your temporary joy-mate to hand
me his weapon."

   "I told you not to say anything like that again." Her mild tone did not
change but her brown eyes had paled to topaz yellow and there was cold,
premeditated death in them. 'Now, I'm going to do as the Shomarians do.
I'm going to tell you what a white-livered rat you are, and all your
depraved Shomarian ancestors before you, and then I'm going to kill you."

  She said to John in quick flat tones:

  "Don't interfere while I kill him!"

   Hesnar's jaw dropped as he tried to comprehend the fact that the girl
actually intended to kill him, bare-handed, before his own men.

  "No!" John said, and spun Hesnar toward the airlock. He blocked
Barbara's advance with the other.

   She tried to shove past him. "Leave me alone, Johnny— Don't try to
stop me—"

   "Our white queen, Barbara—do you want to lose her just to get a little
bishop?"

   "Oh…" Some of the fury began fading from her face and she stopped
trying to get past him. "Oh—I forgot." Then she looked at Hesnar again
and said, "I'll wait—for now."

   "Keep the ship locked," he said in Ragnarokan. "Keep listening. If it
looks necessary, take the Prowler up out of here at all the G's you can
stand."

  He turned to the Shomarians and said, "Well go now."

   They went outside and he saw a force of armed guards scurrying out
from the cruiser. The vehicle taken by Garron was returning at a high
speed.

   "We'll go with Garron to this meeting place," he said to Hesnar. 'Tell
those guards to get back in their ship, and send these two along with
them."

   Hesnar hesitated, still dark-faced with anger. The communicator
Hesnar carried spoke to him, in tones of instruction. When the
instructions ended, Hesnar said with a thick undertone of hatred in his
voice:

   "I had intended to order the guards back and then take you to the
meeting place. The Shomarians are a civilized race a ad do not harm
intruders unless forced to."

   The meeting place was in a large room in one of the high buildings
within the city; a room that contained a semicircle of desks, all of them
with communicators and record-lag devices of various kinds. Guards were
stationed all around the room.

  Hesnar said to him as they entered the room, "You will go with
Commander Garron," and went back out. John wondered what Hesnar's
next mission might be, and if it would have anything to do with the
Prowler.

   Garron led him to the central desk and as John looked at the man who
sat behind it he knew he was looking at the Shomarian leader. He was
dark and hawk-featured, with a thin, merciless mouth and small ears set
close to his bald skull. The force of his personality dominated the room; an
aura of ruthlessness and authority, the cold assurance of a man whose
slightest whim was law. He looked vaguely familiar and John realized that
Sar-Fane and Hesnar were relatives—probably father and son, which
would explain why Hesnar had become a Sector Commander so soon—

  Garron bowed to the man behind the desk and said to John:

   "Sar-Fane, Temporal Lord of the Sons of Shomar, Grand Shepherd of
the Shomarian Society, has had you brought here for questioning by
himself and various high officials. You will answer all questions promptly
and truthfully."

  Garron withdrew and John was left alone before his interrogators.

   Temporal Lord Sar-Fane was a dark, hawk-featured man with a tight,
merciless mouth and small ears set close to his bald skull. There was an air
of authority and ruthlessness about him; the cold assurance of a man
whose slightest whim was law. He looked vaguely familiar and John
realized that Sar-Fane and Hesnar were relatives—probably father and
son. Which would explain why Hesnar had become a Sector Commander
so soon…
  San-Fane spoke in Gern, in flat tones, his obsidian-black eyes as
impersonal as though he was giving an order to an animal:

  "We have certain means of distinguishing between true and false
answers. You will give no evasive answers."

   The communicator on Sar-Fane's desk made a report of some kind.
Sar-Fane spoke an order into it, then turned to engage in a discussion
with the other ten Shomarian leaders.

   The five men on Sar-Fane's right seemed to be an advisory cabinet of
some kind; their manner was imperious toward everyone but Sar-Fane,
deferential when speaking to him.

   Three of the men on Sar-Fane's left seemed to be aides. The fourth was
a thin, middle-aged man, quick and nervous of movement, the gray hair
receding on his high forehead, whose eyes kept darting toward John with
almost avid curiosity. His name was Rem Nelfin. John wondered if
perhaps the "Rem" wasn't the Shomarian equivalent of "Doctor."

   The fifth man stood out as the only friendly person present. They called
him "Novla" and asked him numerous questions, glancing often at John
with objective appraisal as they did so.

   Novla's regard for John was entirely different, like that of a gentle old
man defending his son. There was kindness on his fat, but still dignified
face, and in his eyes as he looked at John there seemed to be an attempt to
say: Don't worry— I'm your friend and I will help you.

   The Shomarian discussion ended. Sar-Fane turned back to John and
said:

  "You claim that you came six hundred lightyears, from a world called
Ragnarok. Why?"

   He could devise subterfuges and lies of various kinds— but it was the
nature of a Ragnarokan to find lies abhorrent and he could see no reason
to lie to them. He would not tell them of the coming of the Ragnarok and
Unicorn, but there as no reason to withhold anything else. If the
Shomarians were the Ghost ship raiders, he would be telling them nothing
they did not already know. If the Shomarians were innocent, they might
be able to give him a clue as to the identity of the raiders.
  "I came looking for a hundred of my people who were kidnapped from
Ragnarok," he said.

  There was a thoughtful silence.

  "Some of your people were kidnapped?" Sar-Fane said. "And then you
came straight to here? Of all possible sectors of space, why did you think
you would find them here?"

   "The course of the raider ship was determined," he said, then added a
separate statement which they would assume to be an explanation of the
first, "We have a widely scattered force of special observation ships."

  "Were you on Ragnarok at the time?"

  The Human-Gern war had just ended and I was two hundred lightyears
away when the message telling of the raider came from Ragnarok."

  "What was this Human-Gern war?"

   John gave a brief account of it, which was followed by several questions
regarding the tactics used to defeat the Gerns. Then Novla spoke, not as
an interrogator but as a friend:

   "The Gerns who landed here spoke of the greatness of the Gern Empire,
but they mentioned no imperialistic conquests. These Gern methods of
rule that you speak of—through brutal force—are not new to the
Shomarian Society, however. The Kilvarl once had an empire of that
kind—and there is now evidence that it has been secretly coming into
being again. That is why we had to subject you to this brief questioning, to
make sure that you, yourself, were not already under Kilvarl hypnosis."

  "Kilvarl hypnosis?" He frowned. "Of course I'm not!"

   Novla shook his head with a gentle smile. "You would not know, sir. But
we are now satisfied that you are not. Which does not necessarily mean
there is no Kilvarl on your ship —after a few more questions, we must ask
your permission to search your ship and make certain that no Kilvarl is in
hiding there. Now, this raider ship—you say that no one saw the beings
who were in it?"

  "No," John answered. "No one saw—"
  He felt the mocker inside his shirt grow tense, then a little paw dug at
him, in the way Tip did when something was very urgent. The tiny
whisper came in simulation of Barbara's excited voice:

  "Johnny, Lora is outside! I'm going to let her in. She's here, Johnny—
Lora is here!"

  The Shomarians were staring at him curiously, waiting for him to
continue with what he had started to say.

   "No one saw the raiders," he said. "They used a stun beam of some
kind."

  As he spoke, he thought: So you're the ones -who did it— you
Shomarians!

   They asked more questions. He answered them, trying to think of some
plan by which he could get back to the Prowler, wondering how much
time he might have in which to act before the Shomarians guarding the
Ragnarokans learned that Lora had escaped, and waiting with increasing
tension for Tip to say in simulation of her sweet, familiar voice:
"Johnny—I'm here!"

  A minute went by, then two, three, four…

  At the end of ten minutes he accepted the dark acknowledgment: there
had been no Lora at the Prowler.

   There was an unmistakable family resemblance between the two sisters
and the Shomarians would long since have known everything about Lora
including the fact that she had a younger sister named Barbara. They had
created a clever impersonation of Lora and lured Barbara out of the ship.
By now a drugged and helpless Barbara would be answering all their
questions, not even aware of the fact that she was telling everything she
knew, including the coming of the Ragnarok and Unicorn.

   The Shomarians now knew as much about the Ragnarokans and their
plans as he did himself.

    The communicator on Sar-Fane's desk, which had been making almost
continuous reports, made another one. All eleven of the Shomarians
listened with obvious interest.
   When the report ended, Sar-Fane asked with a strange expression on
his face:

  "Did you give the girl permission to leave your ship?"

  "No," he answered, surprised by the question. "Why do you ask?"

  "The airlock of your little ship is standing open."

   He could see nothing but question on the faces of all of them and he
decided, again, to tell the truth which they would already know if they
were the enemy—and which he would be stupid not to tell if they were
innocent.

  "I had a means of communicating with her," he said. "At about fifteen
Gern minutes ago she was lured outside the ship by someone
impersonating her sister. What do you—"

  "Kilvarl!"

   The exclamation came from Novla and the room was suddenly surging
with activity. Sar-Fane began giving quick orders into a communicator.
Garron ran out of the room, guards following him. Nelfin disappeared,
and other officials were either hurrying to unknown duties or else giving
orders into their own communicators.

  Novla hurried over to John, agitation and worry on his face.

  "Sir, this is terrible—there was a Kilvarl on your ship!"

  "Why do you say that?" he asked.

   "Nothing else could have hypnotized the girl into believing she saw her
sister outside. And we have just now received another report: the guards
stationed to watch your ship were hypnotized before they could sound an
alarm."

  "Where is the Kilvarl now?" he asked.

    "No one can know. The helplessly hypnotized girl is with it, wherever it
is. Only the Great Creator knows what it will do—and make her do."

  He tried to find some sign of deceit on Novla's face, but could find
none.

  "Get me back to my ship," he said. "The fastest way possible."

   It was full night outside. Police and military vehicles were everywhere
across the field when they reached it, yellow lights flashing and spotlights
probing in all directions. Armed soldiers were going in a fast march
toward the forest which bordered one side of the field.

  A police car was waiting in front of the Prowler. The airlock was open.

  He went inside, the police and Novla following him. The control room
was empty. The screen behind which Fenrir and Sigyn had hidden was
down, the space behind vacant.

  They searched the ship from end to end. It was empty. Barbara was
gone, and her mocker, and Fenrir and Sigyn.

   Novla dismissed the police when they were back in the control room
and said, "Dr. Nelfin had just suggested a question when the report came
in regarding the Kilvarl. You implied that the raider ship was faster than
your own. How could this be, when you Ragnarokans can stand higher
accelerations than any race known to the Shomarian Society?"

  "So far as we know," he said, "it was a third-level ship."

    Novla stared at him. "Third-level? I pray that you are wrong. What did
it look like?" , John got pencil and paper and began a sketch.

  "The ones who saw it died a few seconds later," he said, "but they
described it as something like this…"

  He handed the completed sketch to Novla.

  "By the Great Creator!" Novla's voice was a shocked whisper. "They
have it—the Kilvarl have their third-level ship!"

   Novla swung around to look at the communicator. "I must tell Lord
Sar-Fane at once. I'll get the connection through Garron's cruiser. Where
do I speak?"

  John showed him and Novla made his report, his voice still shaken.
Sar-Fane made a quick reply and Novla turned to John and said, "Lord
Sar-Fane wishes to speak with you at once. The situation is now one in
which both your race and mine are faced with extinction—your race to be
enslaved on Kilvar, because you are accustomed to a one point five gravity,
and my race to be destroyed because the Kilvarl hate us."

   Ten minutes later Novla ushered him into a room which, for luxury,
surpassed even those of the Gern ruler. They walked on a carpet so thick
that their steps made no sound, across the wide, softly lighted room, and
came to the crystal table where Sar-Fane sat waiting for them.

   "Be seated, sir," Sar-Fane said to John, and indicated the chair across
the table from him.

  John took the chair and Novla sat down unobtrusively to one side.

   "I assume, sir," Sar-Fane said, "that Novla has already mentioned the
magnitude of the peril now facing your race and mine. First, however, I
wish to apologize for the unfriendly atmosphere of our first meeting. But
you had just come from toward Kilvar and our extremely sensitive
detectors had already told us that two large ships, presumably warships,
were coming behind you."

   Sar-Fane smiled and the coldness of his face seemed to be replaced by
human warmth. "It was a suspicious combination, sir, as I am sure you
will agree."

   "As of right now," John said, "your supersensitive detectors sound
suspicious, too. Are you sure you didn't get your information by means of
a truth-drug injection?"

   Sar-Fane frowned, as though puzzled, then his face cleared. "You refer
to the girl?—But we are searching for her now."

  He did not reply and Sar-Fane said:

   "As for Sector Commander Hesnar's actions—I apologize for them, too.
However, he was under the hypnotic influence of the Kilvarl hidden on
your ship. By so cleverly diverting attention away from the search, it got
the chance to escape.

  He waited, again making no reply, and Sar-Fane said:
   "You do not fully believe me. This is wise caution—why should you
believe us until we prove we are what we claim to be? I shall be very frank
with you. There is going to be war with the Kilvarl and Shomar will be
their first victim. We have a very special kind of warship here which, if
manned by Ragnarokans, could very well mean victory instead of defeat
for us."

  "Why should you be afraid of a few Kilvarl in a dead city?" he asked.

   "A few?" Sar-Fane asked with surprise. "There are thousands in hiding
there! And on other worlds are millions. This we know for certain, since
their third-level ship could not have been built on Kilvar without our
knowledge."

  "How could they build ships with paws instead of hands?" he asked.
"No matter where they were?"

  There was a metal box on the table, set with buttons and knobs.
Sar-Fane pressed one of the buttons.

   A sphere of light appeared above the box, dissolved, and John looked
into a miniature three-dimensional replica of the dead city on Kilvar.

   "You are right," Sar-Fane said. "The Kilvarl could never build a ship
with paws. But once they had many ships; they exercised a reign of terror
over many worlds; they lived in luxury in their ultramodern city and their
ships—the Rells."

   The image-blurred again, reformed, and John was looking at the statue
he had seen, at the bear-like creature which was holding aloft the world of
Kilvar.

   "That is a Rell," Sar-Fane said. "This statue is typical of Kilvarl
humor—it symbolizes the Rell as the bearer of burdens, the slave destined
to carry the weight of Kilvar in its hands."

   Sar-Fane turned off the projector and said, "I have record tapes in here
which date back more than three hundred years, back through the century
before the Shomarian-Kilvarl war. I will show you scenes of Kilvarl pillage
and plunder and slaughter, of women and children tortured to death, of
slave races on Kilvarl-dominated worlds who labored until they died,
under constant terror and cruelty."
  "Did you Shomarians destroy that city?" he asked.

   "The Kilvarl eventually forced us to do so. They already had an empire
of thirty worlds when they began raiding the Shomarian worlds. All Kilvarl
ships were warships, almost all Shomarian ships were harmless freighters.
We had been driven off three of our worlds when we realized we must
either build a powerful fleet or be driven all the way back to Shomar. We
built the fleet.

   "But we are a race of peace and industry. We did not want war and we
sent a group of ambassadors to Kilvar to plead for friendly relations. To
these ambassadors the Rell slaves told the full story of Kilvarl brutalities
and begged to be saved from further tortures. We learned that the Kilvarl
were racial fanatics, convinced that they were destined to rule over all
other races. With this conviction was combined an animal cruelty—they
derived pleasure from the misery and pain that their ruthless domination
inflicted upon other forms of life. At that time they had not yet developed
their powers of hypnotism, but all were master telepaths."

   There was a silence, then Sar-Fane said, "And we learned that the
Kilvarl had picked the brains of a race in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and
had already drawn up the plans for a third-level ship. This, we knew,
would mean the end for us if they ever built it. And then while we were
asking for peace, their fleet struck Shornar without warning and with
every weapon they possessed, plus poison gases and deadly strains of
bacteria. We fought the fleet back to Kilvar, and we fought the Kilvarl in
their city. We won—to the everlasting glory of the fighting men of Shomar,
we won."

   John stood up restlessly, wondering how to tactfully tell Sar-Fane that
he was at the moment far more worried about Barbara than interested in
Shomarian-Kilvarl history.

   "I know," Sar-Fane said. "You want to get back to your ship. Give me
just another minute or so to tell you the rest.

   "The Shomarians wanted only security from future Kilvarl aggression
so we destroyed all Kilvarl ships—we thought—to make them
planet-bound. Then we took their only means of building ships in the
future, their Rells. The descendants of those Rells are on Shomar now;
happy and free, forever grateful to us."
   "If you took all the Rells, how did the Kilvarl build a thirdly el ship?" he
asked.

   "Obviously, they had some ships hidden somewhere and with these
ships they went to worlds far beyond the limits of 'h Shomarian Society
and forced the natives to build a third-level ship—perhaps many
third-level ships."

  "How could a little race like mine be of any help to the big Shomarian
Society?" he asked.

   "You Ragnarokans would be the equal of the Kilvarl in any space
battle—you are from a high-gravity world, too. But for any hope of quick
and permanent victory we must first have Kilvarl specimens to study so we
can learn how to devise mental shields against their ability to read our mi
ads and hypnotize us. We feel sure that you Ragnarokans will be
sufficiently resistant to Kilvarl hypnosis that you can be of invaluable
service in capturing these specimens."

   "How do you explain your story that the Kilvarl hypnotized Barbara,
then?" he asked.

   "Sir!" Sar-Fane's tone was chiding, as though a not-very-intelligent
question had been asked. "She was a mere teenage girl, her mind
preoccupied with worry about her sister. You, and the other fighting men
of Ragnarok, will be something entirely different. You will be forewarned.
You come from a fierce environment of constant danger—you have minds
and wills of steel, entirely different from those of the gentle, peaceful
Shomarians. We are confident that—"

  An alarm signal sounded from some hidden source in the room, sudden
and shrill, then a communicator spoke in quick, excited words:

   "Seno vo'non trel et'tenf Efrehtrel shem…"

  Novla stared, frozen. Sar-Fane swung in his chair to face the nearer
wall, jabbing a button on his desk as he did so.

   The wall split, slid apart, and the city was in view below them, the
landing field beyond.

   Searchlights flooded the field and men were running toward Garron's
cruiser and the other cruiser—presumably crewmen responding to an
emergency call.

  Sar-Fane said in a dead voice:

  "The Kilvarl has stolen our ship—the new one I told you about!"

  He saw that the oddly designed ship was gone.

  "How could the Kilvarl operate the controls of the ship?" he asked.
"How could it ever get inside the ship in the first place?"

  "In answer to both questions: hypnotism of the crew."

   The boarding ramp of Garron's cruiser nicked back inside, and the ship
was lifting from the ground as the airlocks closed. The other cruiser
followed a moment later, both cruisers accelerating swiftly as they
disappeared from view.

  "Get me back to my ship again," he said to Sar-Fane. "By the fastest
means possible. Those cruisers can never overtake the Kilvarl, but I can!"

   The Prowler left the atmosphere of Shotnar behind and was in outer
space. The viewscreen showed the two cruisers ahead of him, and the
stolen ship far ahead of the cruisers, going straight as an arrow toward
Kilvar.

   He overtook the Shomarian cruisers. They were trying hard to gain on
the stolen ship, going at an acceleration rat° that must have had all on
board near unconsciousness. Garron spoke to him as he passed, his voice
strained from the drag:

  "Damage its drive enough to stop it—don't do more—will need that ship
badly when Kilvarl attack—"

   An ear-splitting howl drowned out Garron's words. He swept the needle
around the communicator band. The howl was everywhere. He used the
directional locators. The howl was coming from the ship he pursued.

   here was nothing he could do but drive on at all the acceleration he
could stand. He asked the mocker, "Tip, can you find Freckles on the ship
that's ahead of us?"
  "No Freckles," the mocker answered.

   He wondered what had happened to her. It seemed to him the Kilvarl
would have had no use for the mocker except the pleasure of one juicy
bite.

  The Prowler crept up on the other ship, slowly. The Kilvarl was
maintaining a speed that would already have killed the Shomarian crew
and he knew it would be operating the ship through use of the hypnotized
Barbara. Landing the ship without a crew would be a different
matter—but perhaps the Kilvarl expected the third-level ship to meet it
somewhere and transfer a crew onto the captured ship.

   An hour went by. The sun of Shomar was a bright star behind him and
he was almost within disintegrator range of the other ship. His hand was
on the target-finders when the ship ahead of him exploded.

   There was no warning, no evidence that such might happen. The ship
was in the viewscreen, the auxiliary cross-hairs of the target-finders
coming in conjunction with the stern—and then there was a blinding blast
of white light.

  The howl was abruptly gone and the detectors chattered madly with the
emanations that always accompanied nuclear explosions.

   He cut the acceleration to zero and used all detectors in a search of that
area of space. The detectors found nothing but small fragments of metal
and a cloud of disassociated atoms. No lifeboats had left the ship.

  He knew it was hopeless, but he said to Tip, "Try again to find Freckles
out there."

  "No Freckles," Tip said, his little face very solemn. "Freckles gone."

  And Barbara is gone, he thought Poor little brave Barbara…

  He sent a full report to the Ragnarok, then he called Garron.

 "I suppose you saw the explosion," he said. "There is nothing left here.
What caused it to explode?"

  "I've just now learned how it happened," Garron said. "The ship was so
new that it hadn't yet been fully checked for a flight test. Apparently the
extremely high acceleration somehow set off the stores of unsecured
disintegrator charges."

  Sar-Fane called next, to say:

   "Let me extend my sympathy, sir, for the loss of the girl who came six
hundred lightyears to help you find her sister. It has been a day of tragedy
for the Shomarians, too. We have lost our newest, finest ship and its
crew—the ship which we had hoped might stand against the Kilvarl
third-level ship."

  "I'm going on to Kilvar," he said. "I don't know whether the kidnapped
Ragnarokans could be there—but I don't know where else to look."

  "I'll transfer you now to Novla," Sar-Fane said. "He is Chief of
Extra-Shomarian Relations and will be working very closely with the
Ragnarokans from now on."

   Novla spoke a few words of sympathy, then said, "Lord Sar-Fane is now
ordering Emergency Mobilization of our entire First Fleet. It will reach
Kilvar at about the same time your own ships arrive. Are both your ships
fully manned?"

  "Our entire race is on them."

   "Your entire race? The courage of your women and children is amazing,
sir, to embark upon such a voyage. And— lest I forget—you had better
warn them that some of the Kilvarl guard robots may still be in the city.
They are very dangerous."

  "I saw one. But where could the Kilvarl be?"

   "At one time there was an extensive system of passageways and
chambers under the city," Novla said. "I suggest that you investigate
them—it has been many years since we checked them, ourselves."

  "Why didn't you?" he asked.

   "We are not a vindictive race and we had no desire to persecute the
Kilvarl. We had—we thought—removed their ability to invade our worlds
and we were content to let them live an unmolested existence as the
carnivorous wild animals that they actually are. But we now know that we
were wrong."

   "I'll see what I can find," he said. "Are those two cruisers going to
Kilvar?"

  "They are returning to Shomar to take on full crews as well as
additional weapons, then will accompany the fleet to Kilvar."

   The rest of the journey to Kilvar seemed long and lonely. Tip sat silently
beside him and the ship was very still. He was glad when Kilvar was finally
reached and the Prowler was screaming down through the atmosphere.

   It was night in the dead city when he set the Prowler down on the hill
where the bayonet tree stood. He was far too restless to wait for day and
he attached a small searchlight to his metal helmet, locked the Prowler
behind him, and went down into the city.

   The glow of the vast nebula outshone the stars, lighting the ruins with a
pale green semidusk and softening their desolation. It also changed the
form and color of objects, causing him twice to bring up his blaster
against a crouching Kilvarl and discover both times that no Kilvarl was
there.

   He realized, the second time it happened, that his mind was so
preoccupied with worry and questions that he had not stopped to think
that not using his searchlight was pointless. It would not attract the
attention of the Kilvarl—they were telepathic and were aware of every
move he made, anyway.

  He turned the light on and began hunting for some entrance to the
underground.

   He found one; a ragged opening at the foot of a huge mound of rubble.

   It was small and torturous for some distance, nothing more than a
passageway left by accident when the stone buildings collapsed. There
were several dead ends branching off, and there were places where he had
difficulty squeezing through.

   It ended with a ten-foot drop to a smooth floor. He jumped down, went
through a portal-like opening, and found himself in an underground city.
   There were passageways and rooms leading out in all directions in front
of him. Many of the rooms contained wrecked machines.

   Floor, walls, and roofs of the passageways and chambers were of some
glistening black material, smoother by far than glass. Curiously, he turned
the blaster against one wall, the beam at full intensity. Nothing
happened—the wall material was completely impervious.

   He felt sure he knew how the passageways had been made, although it
was something still only theoretical to the science of Earth and the Gerns.
The material must be a sheathing of collapsed atoms, formed when the
passageways were made. The sheathing represented the entire volume of
rock that had originally been there.

   He tried to determine whether or not the passages had been used
recently, but could not do so. The passages and rooms of collapsed atoms
could never produce telltale dust.

   He walked on and on; exploring passageway after passageway, room
after room. Hours went by and still he had found no sign of the Kilvarl.

   He came at last to a narrow passageway that sloped upward. He
followed it, to emerge in a thick grove of trees. Dawn was lighting the sky
in the east and the Prowler was tiny and far away to the north.

   The sun was sending its first shafts of light across the city when he
reached the Prowler. He made another report to the Ragnarok, then
called Novla on Shomar and told him of what little he had found.

  "Did the Kilvarl make any attempt to influence you?" Novla asked.

  "No," he answered.

   "They will," Novla said. "They were studying you, to determine the most
suitable way of using you. Be very, very wary sir. As for the
Shomarians—the First Fleet is now ready to embark for Kilvar. I shall go
with it, of course."

  "I suppose there's no hope that Barbara was not on that ship?"

  "There has been no sign of her here."
  "The prowlers—black quadrupeds—have any such bodies been found?"

  "No."

  "Then they must have been on the ship that exploded…**

   He moved about the room restlessly when the conversation was ended.
He knew he should eat something, but he was not hungry. He was tired
and should rest, but he could not sit still. It was quiet in the Prowler, so
quiet and lonely that he could endure it no longer. He buckled on the
blaster and went outside, to search the city again.

   He looked to the east, against the brightness of the sun, and saw her
stumbling up the hill toward him—

  Lora!

   He felt his heart leap with the surprise and gladness of it, then drop as
the grim suspicion came:

   It could not be Lora—it was another Kilvarl deception. But she kept
stumbling toward him, the familiar little dark-haired figure, and he ran to
meet her. He reached her, the tears still bright in his eyes, and hugged her
to him, knowing that she was no illusion.

  "Lora!" he said. "I was afraid I would never see you—"

  He stopped, feeling the cold premonition that something was wrong.

  He tilted up her face, and looked into the expressionless eyes of a
zombie.

  "What's the matter, Lora?" he asked. "Are you hurt—what's the
matter?"

  He waited for her reply, feeling a sickness inside him. She was
Lora—and she was not Lora. All the life and warmth were gone from her.

  "They were killing us," she said in a low, dead voice. "They herded us
out of their ship and started killing us. I got away."

  "Where—and when?"
   "I don't know. To the east, I think. I walked a long way, and then I saw
the Prowler."

  "Who did it?"

  "Cats—big yellow cats. They were killing the others."

  "Come on," he said, and led her like a child to the ship.

   He lifted the Prowler and began a systematic search of the country to
the east. Lora sat beside him, watching the view-screen without
expression. She could tell him little about what had happened to her and
the others.

   "The cats took us, in a big ship," she said. "They did things to us—they
are still doing things to the ones they haven't killed. They were going to
use me and the other women for breeding slaves… we told them we would
kill ourselves first and they laughed and said they would do the killing.
They did…"

  There was no sign of any physical injury and he had the hope that her
condition was only mental shock. He talked to her, thinking that this
might help restore her to normal. Although she had not asked him, he told
her what bad happened after her capture and that the Ragnarok and
Unicorn were coming with the entire Ragnarokan race on board.

    She made no comment when he had finished and he said, "Weren't you
listening, Lora?"

  "I was listening," she said.

   He saw that she was unchanged. He wondered what he could do to
break the spell she was under, if it could be broken by a countershock. It
would be cruel to do that to her, but not as cruel as to let her remain the
way she was…

  "Barbara came with me to help find you," he said.

  There was a long silence, then she said, "I don't see her."

  "You'll never see her. She was killed yesterday."

  For a brief instant there seemed to be a flicker of life in her brown eyes,
then they were as before.

  "Barbara is dead?" she said in the same lifeless voice, "How terrible…"

  He did not want to have to do what he did next, but it seemed to him it
would be his only hope of bringing her out of the zombie-trance.

   He seized her by the shoulder and slapped her twice— hard, stinging
blows.

  "Lora—wake up! He put all the force at his command in the words,
"Barbara is dead—don't you even care?"

  Her face was twisted with pain and the pain seemed to break the spell.
Her eyes widened, dark with comprehension.

  "Barbara is dead? No—please—"

  She looked up at him, trembling, as one fighting hard to retain sanity.

  "Johnny! Inside. I want to cry—and I can't—"

  "What is it, Lora?" he demanded urgently. "Tell me, so I can help you."

   "Can't you see what they did to me?" Her voice was like the whimper of
a lost and dying child:

  "They took my soul, Johnny—they took my soul!

  Then the brief return to near-normal was gone and she was a zombie
again.

   He stroked her cheeks, where the marks of his blows still stood out. She
did not move. It seemed to him that now, far more than ever, it was quiet
and lonely in the ship.

   Ten minutes later the Prowler reached the scene of the massacre. It
was a clearing in the woods and thirty women and children had been
slaughtered there.

  Lora spoke, to say, "This is the place where the cats were killing us."

  He landed at the edge of the clearing and went out of the ship, leaving
Lora inside.

  The ground was scarred with the marks of battle; a battle in which the
women and children had fought with clubs and stones and their bare
hands. Many of the women still had their hands chained together.

  He went out among them. Some he recognized, such as fifteen-year-old
Joan Bradford; her weapon, a sharp-edged stone, still in her hand and her
heart torn out. But there were many he could not recognize; torn and
mangled far beyond the point required to kill them.

   This, it seemed to him, proved beyond any doubt the non-human,
utterly vicious nature of the enemy.

   He used one of the Prowler's disintegrators to make graves, then went
out again to bury the dead. Lora went with him, to watch silently for
awhile, and then silently worked to help for some sign of emotion, but
there of expression as she worked. Then he thought of what she had said, "
Inside, I want to cry…", and he wondered if she was under some hypnotic
condition in which she must go through the hell of seeing over and over
again the horrors she had witnessed without the relief of any outward
expression.

   They went back into the ship. He reported to the Ragnarok, and ended
with the words: "Come to Kilvar with all the acceleration you can take.
Maybe we'll get a chance at the Ghost ship in time to save the others."

   He reported to Shomar. Sar-Fane received the call, expressed his shock
and sympathy and said, "Now you know what would happen if the Kilvarl
ever conquered us. The need for Kilvarl specimens is imperative. While the
Ragnarokans search the underground for Kilvarl, the First Fleet will stand
guard above, to protect you from the third-level ship. The fleet is on its
way, now."

   Lora was watching him as he talked, and when he was finished, she
said:

  "We won't have to fight alone. The Shomarians know the Kilvarl — the
Shomarians can tell us what we should do."

   Her tone was almost normal and he asked hopefully, "Do you feel a little
different now — a little better?"
   "I will never feel different," she said. "I am what the Kilvarl want me to
be."

   He took the Prowler back to the city and considered what he should do.
So far as he could know, the remaining captives were still on the Ghost
ship. There was absolutely no way he could try to find them so long as the
Ghost stayed in third-level. But there would be much information to be
obtained from a Kilvarl in the city's underground, if he could capture
one…

   He could not take Lora with him and he did not dare leave her in the
control room. He had done so at the site of the massacre, realizing later
that the Kilvarl could have given her hypno-telepathic commands to
destroy him, herself, and the Prowler and she would have obeyed.

   He made sure the sleeping compartment Barbara had used contained
nothing with which Lora might harm herself, then he led her into it and
locked the door behind him when he went back out.

  He sent another message to Sar-Fane, one in which he described Lora's
condition in as much detail as hecould and Sar-Fane assured him
Shomar's best specialists would be given the information immediately.

   The reply from the specialists would be some time in arriving so he did
as he had done the night before: he put on the helmet with searchlight
attached, locked the ship behind him, and went into the city's
underground.

   The afterglow of sunset was fading from the sky when he returned to
the Prowler. He went first of all to see about Lora. She was still sitting on
the edge of the bed, as he had left her.

   "I couldn't find anything," he told her. "There was no sign of any
Kilvarl."

  "They can be all around you and you can't see them if they don't want
you to," she said. "I know."

   He had not eaten for thirty hours and he prepared a meal for both of
them. When he took hers to her, she would not eat it.

  "The glass of water," she said. "Only the water."
   He did not want to lock her in the room again and he made a pallet on
the floor, just in front of her doorway, so that he would be awakened if she
left the room. She was lying quietly on her bed, asleep or awake he did not
know, when he drifted off into his own restless sleep.

  We had a dream, one so real that it awakened him.

   In the dream he saw the Prowler land in the ruined city and saw
himself go into the underground passageways. There seemed to be the
passing of time, and a ship came down to land lightly as a feather in a
clearing far to the east of the city. It was the Ghost ship and the clearing
was the one where the massacre had taken place. He saw the Ragnarokans
herded nut of the ship by a Weasel. Then, with swift efficiency and utter
mercilessness, the Weasel clubbed and stabbed and tore them to death.

   The Weasel went back into the ship when it was over and the ship went
toward the city, to land a short distance east of it. Lora came out of the
ship, the ship disappeared, and Lora began her stumbling walk toward
the Prowler. In the east the sky was lighting with dawn.

  He saw—or sensed—the invisible ship stop out in space, almost directly
over the city. There it remained, waiting…

  Then a voice spoke in his mind, arrogantly:

  "This is what happened. Are you intelligent enough to understand
why?"

  He awoke and sat up. The dream had been vividly real. And the
question be had heard in his mind had but one implication: the
Shomarians were the ones who had turned Lora into a zombie…

  Are you intelligent enough to understand why?

   The Shomarians had done it to cause the Ragnarokans to hate the
Kilvarl and help the Shomarians kill and capture them…

   He had no doubt that it was a dream created by Kilvarl
hypno-telepathy. But had it told him what had actually happened? Were
the Kilvarl trying to show him the true enemy? Or were the Kilvarl already
using their mental powers to create suspicion of the Shomarians, to start
breaking apart, before it ever formed, the alliance that might result in
their downfall.

  He called Garron's cruiser, and asked for Novla.

  Novla seemed completely unsurprised and undisturbed when told
about the dream. "I should have warned you of that," be said. "I made the
mistake of forgetting that you don't know Kilvarl methods as we do.
Obviously, your mind is sufficiently resistant that they can influence it
only when you are asleep. This dream they gave you will be only their
opening shot in their attempts to make you distrust us."

  "What do the specialists have to say about Lora's condition —have they
made their report yet?"

  There was a silence, then Novla said:

    "I'm sorry, but they know of nothing that can be done for her as of now.
They state that she is not under Kilvarl hypnosis; that her mind has been
affected by the atrocities and tortures she was forced to witness and
experience. Many Shomarians suffered the same fate during the
Shomarian-Kilvarl war. But Lord Sar-Fane has ordered a top-priority
program of rush research—which means that Shomar's finest and most
dignified specialists were routed out of bed to begin the job at once. There
is a feeling of confidence that a cure will be found soon—our medical
science has advanced greatly since the days of the war."

   He went in to check on Lora again. She was lying quietly, her eyes
closed and her breathing barely discernable. It was not the slow
inhalations and quick, relaxed exhalations of a person asleep, but he did
not disturb her. Perhaps she was resting after a fashion, even if she were
not asleep…

   He returned to his pallet, thinking of what Novla had said about
Sar-Fane ordering the specialists out of bed to begin the search for a cure
without a minute's delay, and Novla's near-assurance that they would find
one.

  It was with a feeling of hope, the first yet, and the thought that he
should be thankful that the Shomarians were the friends and allies of the
Ragnarokans, that he went to sleep.

  He had another dream, one that awakened him at dawn.
   In the dream he was on Garron's cruiser, watching Novla. Novla was at
the communicator, saying to Sar-Fane:

   "The barbarian now seems well under control—quite tractable. We
could further impress him with Shomarian worth by producing the
miracle cure immediately upon our arrival, but I regard this as
inadvisable. The female will much better serve our purpose if she dies.
What do you say, Lord?"

  The voice of Sar-Fane answered:

   "We don't need worshipful gratitude from the pack leader —we want
anti-Kilvarl violence. His primitive emotions will very effectively block
any reasoning powers he may possess if our work remains unchanged.
Let the female die."

   It was different from the other dream. The first dream had been only a
realistic dream. The second one had not been like a dream, but as though
he had actually been in the cruiser and had seen and heard Novla through
someone else—through Garron.

  He got up, more restless and worried than ever, and went in to see
Lora. It seemed to him that her condition was worse and he kept hearing
Sar-Fane's words: Let the female die.

   He decided to tell her of the dream, to see if it would stir any memories
of capture by Shomarians instead of Kilvarl. But her only reaction was to
say in the lifeless voice:

  "The Kilvarl did this to me. I know."

  The Ragnarok and Unicorn were due within a few hours. He took the
Prowler up, decided upon the most suitable area for the camp that would
have to be established, then spent the next five hours in a survey of the
country surrounding the city.

   The detectors revealed nothing other than the high metal content
characteristic of most of the hills and mountains. He went back to the city
and observed the iron mountain just north of the city with a conjecture
forming in his mind:

  The metal content of the iron mountain was so high that no detectors
could penetrate to reveal what might be inside. The Kilvarl might have an
underground city there—by now, the Ragnarokan captives might be in
there…

  The Prowler quivered suddenly with a double sonic boom, and the
Ragnarok and Unicorn came roaring down from the sky.

  "Here we are," the voice of Dale said in the communicator. "We've been
pushing right along—even the unicorns are flat-bottomed now. How is
Lora?"

   He looked at her, sitting quietly beside him and showing no interest in
the arrival of the ships.

   "I want Paul to be ready to take her over as soon as you land," he said.
"Set down in that clearing, just short of where the bills and forest begin."

  He spoke to Cliff Schroeder on the Unicorn as he followed the
Ragnarok down:

  "Are you all set for action, Cliff?"

   "Don't mention that word, 'set'," the voice of Cliff answered. "Our hip
bones are now down among the bottom springs of our chairs. That was a
tough job, catching up with the Ragnarok."

  "What did the Earthenans say when you began gathering up your
boys?"

   "Take 'em and welcome—or words to that effect. Just so long as we left
the ships. They also mentioned quite often that it was our ethical duty to
explain to the enemy—just as soon as the enemy had smacked us
down—that the Earthenans had nothing to do with our foolish expedition
of revenge and that, furthermore, they had tried to persuade us not to go."

   "I wonder why Hayden's second-in-command, instead of Hayden,
represented Earth's military when all of them decided they didn't want us
to go to Orion?"

  "It seems that Hayden showed up at the meeting with a bad hangover
and the radical opinion that the Earthenans ought to give us a little
cooperation. So they politely took him off to the hospital, 'to recuperate
from the strain of battle,' and let this Frendle speak words more to their
liking. I was surprised to find we had a friend among the Earthenans."

  "I'm not exactly surprised about Hayden," he said. "Too bad there
couldn't have been more like him. The Ghost ship is around near here, I
guess—you had better keep a double watch at all disintegrator stations.
The Ragnarok will be up to join you as soon as everybody is out of it."

   "All right," Cliff said. "I hope the Ghost gives us a chance at it. God—to
kill thirty helpless women and children like that! Now that we're all here,
maybe we can save the others."

   He landed the Prowler and watched the Ragnarok slowly settle her
enormous weight down on the ground, with the crunching of rocks and
snapping of trees. Lora, sitting small and apathetic beside him, had not
yet spoken or showed any sign of interest.

   "Well go into the Ragnarok now, Lora," he said. "Paul will know what
to do for you."

   She got up out of the chair, helping herself by holding to the arms of
the chair. He saw that she was obeying him the best she could, but when
she started toward the airlock she walked with slow hesitation;
concentrating on each step as though she had almost lost control of her
legs.

   He put his arm around her and helped her out of the Prowler and down
to the ground. Dale and Norman were already coming to meet them.

  "Hello, Lora," Dale said, smiling in greeting. "We came to—"

    Then his words and smile faded away as he saw that he spoke to only a
lifeless facsimile of Lora. He looked at John with pain and question on his
face.

  "I thought she was just sick," he said. "I didn't know they had made
her—like that."

   Norman's face had turned cold, like a mask of ice, and in his eyes was
the hunger to kill.

  "Everything will be all right now, Lora," he said. He brushed the dark
hair back from her face, his tone the gentle one of a man reassuring a
child and in conflicting contrast to the savagery in his eyes. "Paul will take
care of you… and we'll take care of the Kilvarl."

  "No," she said. She looked up at Norman and her words came slower
and with more difficulty than they had a few hours before. "The Kilvarl
made me like this—Paul can never change me."

   Ten minutes later, after the brief preliminary examination, Paul Chiara
could only say, "She's at a very low ebb, worse than you had thought.
There's no physical injuries to account for it, but we'll make a really
thorough check of her now…"

   John went back outside, where the boarding ramps were a steady
downward flow of Ragnarokans, prowlers, woods goats. The Ragnarokans
looked tired, after their many days of acceleration. The woods goats, on
short rations during the voyage, began ecstatically cropping the tall green
grass in front of the ramps and had to be shoved out of the way. The
unicorns, each with two prowlers as guards to keep them from attacking
the children, emulated the woods goats as soon as possible; for once too
preoccupied to be mad.

  He talked with Dan Destry about the arrangement of the camp,
answered a multitude of questions from those who passed near him, and
was constantly aware of the question in his mind: What will Paul say
about Lora?

  Once he was spotted by the little blonde girl, Eleanor Tyson, who darted
her way through the others to run up to him and say, "I can see,
Johnny—all of us can, just like you told me! And Bonnie Craig has a new
baby, which is why we had to slow down once when we didn't intend to,
and my prowler has two new pups, and…"

   The Shomarian First Fleet arrived with a thunderous crashing and
rolling of sonic booms—battleships, cruisers, scout ships, patrol ships.
They spread out in a protective cover over the city and surrounding
countryside—an armada of such proportions that old Destry remarked,
"I'm glad they're for us instead of against us."

  Novla called shortly afterward, his tone cheerful:

  "Congratulations upon the swiftness with which your people made the
long voyage. And I can now assure you that the First Fleet will soon be
equipped to stand adequate guard against the Kilvarl third-level ships."

  "How?" he asked.

   "Our Dr. Nelfin—a most brilliant man—evolved a theoretical third-level
detector several years ago. Of course, with no ships in third-level to detect,
there was no object in constructing the device. But they are being built
now and ten of them are already en route to Kilvar on Sector Commander
Hesnar's flagship."

  "Do we get any?" he asked.

   "Most certainly!" Novla said. "Each of your three ships will have a
third-level detector installed as soon as they arrive."

  Garron spoke, to ask about the Ragnarokan plans to search the tunnels,
and was told that Norman Lake was already gathering his forces together.

   "We'll keep watch from the air," Garron said, "pending your discovery
of the places where the Kilvarl are in hiding. Then we will send ground
troops to assist you."

  The discussion was concluded by a last warning from Novla:

   "The Kilvarl will use every form of deceit they can contrive to cause you
to distrust us. Report to me at once, and in full detail, if any Kilvarl
contact you in any way."

  He went to see about Lora, but Paul Chiara could not yet give him any
decision. "By evening we'll have learned all we can learn," Paul said. "If
anything hopeful develops in the meantime, I'll send you word at once."

   No word came from Paul in the hours that followed. The unloading of
the Ragnarok was finished and the Ragnarok took up a position over the
city. Ragnarokan lifeboats made a search of all the area round the city in
an effort to find other openings into the underground. Norman and his
men, in the meantime, had found two more entrances in the city.

  There was another call from Novla, his tone no longer cheerful:

  "There is now strong evidence that the third-level ship has been leaving
large numbers of Kilvarl hypnotists on Shomar and that it—or a third-level
ship like it—is still doing so.

   This means that the Kilvarl are going to make their attack far sooner
than we had expected."

  The sun was down, turning the storm clouds of the west into Mood-red
and metallic purple, when Paul sent word that he could come see Lora.

  Paul was in his office, defeat in the way he was slumped in his chair,
and John knew the answer before he asked the question:

  "Can you cure her?"

  "No."

  "But there must be something—isn't there anything you can do, Paul?"

   "A doctor cannot cure a patient, Johnny. He can only give the patient
the chance to do his or her own curing."

  "You mean, Lora is…"

  "She is very rapidly getting worse. Her trouble is the one thing that no
doctor can help her with—she does not want to live."

   He went in to see her. She was sitting in a chair, staring unseeingly at
the wall. She did not move when he entered.

   "We're about ready to start the search of the underground, Lora," he
said. "Before morning, we're going to know a lot more about the Kilvarl
than we do now."

   For a little while she did not answer, then she looked up at him and
said with even greater difficulty than when she had spoken to Norman:

  "Friends—they will pretend to be your friends. Then they will kill you."

  "No—we won't let them do that, Lora."

   "I fiends," she said again. "They told us they wouldn't hurt us. And
then, when they began to interrogate us…"
  She began trembling, her eyes wide with the horror of remembering.

  "Pain—and screaming with pain—and the Kilvarl laughing…"

  He put his hands on her trembling shoulders.

  "It's all over—they can never harm you again."

  "Screaming with pain… but not after they were gone." The trembling
subsided and stopped. "Not after they were gone… and I soon will be."

  Apprehension came like a cold hand around his heart.

  "What do you mean, Lora—that you soon will be gone?"

  The pale face of a china doll looked up at him.

  "They took my soul. I'm already dead, but for my heart to stop
beating."

   He stood with his hands on her shoulders for a little while, the room
silent and lifeless around him, then he said:

  "You're wrong—you're going to be well again, Lora."

   She made no reply and his words seemed to still hang with mocking
hollowness in the silent room when he left her.

  Norman was waiting when he went back down to the city.

   "Everything is ready," Norman said. He looked out across the city,
which was darkening with the approach of night. "I'm going into the
tunnels—I want to meet some of these things."

   "I'll take the Prowler and keep watch from above," he said. "You might
flush some Kilvarl out into the open and I want to see where they go from
there."

  The men waiting at the underground entrances were shifting
impatiently and Norman gave a prearranged order. Thirty seconds later,
and thirty miles above them, flares blazed into life like a score of little
white suns. Very slowly, they began their drift back to the ground.
  The flares covered such a wide area of the sky that there were almost no
shadows on the ground. The beauty of the land that had existed at sunset
was gone. All was harsh and grim in the cold white light.

   Norman smiled; in the hard light his face was more wolf-like than ever.

   "Time to start killing Kilvarl, Johnny. And if they try to hypnotize us
into feeling otherwise, we'll just have to remember what they did to Lora
and the others."

   Norman left and John went back to the Prowler. He was thinking again
of Lora, hardly aware of the fact that he was at the foot of the boarding
ramp, when he was jolted into quick awareness by a voice speaking in his
mind:

   "Greetings, fool!"

   A Kilvarl was standing at the top of the ramp, looking down at him
with mocking amusement in its green eyes.

  He dropped his hand to his blaster and said, "I've been hoping to meet
one of you. Why have you kept yourselves hidden?"

   "We have been engaged in our own pursuits."

   "Now you are here—why?"

   "To point out some facts to you with the hope that you will listen with
reason instead of prejudice. May I suggest that we prevent interruptions
by going inside your ship?"

   They went inside, where he stood between the Kilvarl and the open
airlock.

   "All right," he said. "Let's hear what you have to say."

  " you Ragnarokans came six hundred lightyears to find your enemy.
Now you are the trusting pawns of that enemy.

   "I met a Kilvarl the first time I was here," he said. "Why didn't it tell me
the Kilvarl side of the story then?"

   " Your first reaction was to try to kill him. There would have been a
certain lack of dignity in asking you not to fire until he could explain to
your satisfaction what he was doing an his own world. Also, there was
no evidence to indicate that you would so promptly ally with your
enemy to destroy a race you had not even met."

  "Why did the mockers sense you Kilvarl only when the Ghost ship was
near?" he asked.

   "The Shomarians were appraising the worth of the Ragnarokans as
slave soldiers and also considering sending a force of them to Kilvar to
learn how many of us still existed and whether or not we were trying to
build weapons of any kind. We wanted to learn everything about you
that the Shomarians learned."

  "Why did you kill the mocker called Tiny?"

    "The easiest route was to first enter the simple minds of the little
mockers and then go into the Ragnarokan minds. We did not intend to
kill the little mocker—we were not aware or its frail physical condition."

   "It you Kilvarl are harmless, why did the Shomarians send their First
Fleet here?" he asked.

   "The Kilvarl were only short-range telepaths when the Shomarians
knew us two hundred years ago. But they learned from their
Ragnarokan captives that we had developed our telepathic power to
such an extent that we had killed a mocker at a distance of six hundred
lightyears. Now they can never rest until they have Kilvarl after Kilvarl
to study and dissect, until they finally learn the principles of our
telepathic powers.

   "They said they needed Kilvarl for study so they could devise mental
shields against them."

   "They want Kilvarl for study so they can build electronic machines to
pry into the minds of all the races inthe galaxy. With what they learned
they could build a fleet of fourth-level ships, with weapons to match—
ships that would have a speed of fifteen thousand lightyears a day. Such
a fleet would give them power to rule the galaxy beyond the wildest
dreams of the most fanatical devotee of Shomarian Divine Destiny."

  "Shomarian Divine Destiny?" he asked. "They claim the Kilvarl have
that belief."

   There was the impression of amusement from the Kilvarl. "One of the
tricks of a propagandist is to indignantly charge the other side with all
the crimes and atrocities committed by his own side. This the
Shomarians have done."

   "The Kilvarl are innocent of all the things Sar-Fane said they did?" he
asked.

   "In your mind is the mental block which will prevent you from
believing me," the Kilvarl answered. "But I will tell you this: the Kilvarl do
not have the great powers of hypnotism that the Shomarians claim we
have. The Kilvarl have never had a empire. We have never had a ship—
have never been off our own world."

   "What were the Rells—where did they come from?"

   "The Rells came as colonists from toward the center of the galaxy, on
a ship gone astray because of damage. They could go no farther so they
build their city here."*

   "The city was never yours?" he asked, surprised.

  "No. We were a race which preferred to lie in the sun and daydream.
The Rells worked feverishly to build their city and create many material
possessions, which amused us."

  He thought of the statue; the one where the Rell was holding aloft the
world of Kilvar.

   " 'Typical of Kilvarl humor,' " the Kilvarl said in mockery of Sar-Fane. "
The Rells liked to think of themselves as the ones who would elevate
Kilvar to the position of a world of great civilization and importance.
This, too, amused us— we had a certain fondness for the busy little Rells."

  "If you Kilvarl cared nothing about science, how could you have
developed the idea for a third-level ship?"

   "In the beginning we found it interesting to use our telepathic contact
with the minds of the Rells to help them with their problems. We could
study the data available in the minds of specialists in diverse fields, then
correlate that data and find the solution. We became more and more
interested, and set in seriously to learn all we could. With our ability to
merge our minds together on a problem, we made many discoveries. The
atom-collapsing machines with which the Rells made their underground
city was one of our first achievements."

   He looked at his watch and saw that Norman and the others would
already be back in the tunnels. The Kilvarl's story did not sound very
believable to him, yet it seemed to him that he should give the animal the
time to finish before Norman and the others began killing…

   "They will find no Kilvarl tonight," the Kilvarl said. "But the rest of my
story will not take long to tell.

   "The Shomarians came to Kilvarl. They then controlled thirty worlds
and they were curious to know if the Kilvarl and Rells might be of value
to them. Their manner was very friendly. The trusting little Rells did not
really believe our warnings and many of them told the Shomarians all
they knew, including the fact that the Kilvarl had evolved a theoretical
third-level ship to such a degree that the Rells were already drawing the
basic plans. The Shomarians sent a large farce of scientists and
technicians, posing as ambassadors of good-will. Their attempts to spy
were more amusing than dangerous. It never occurred to us that an
attack was being planned on Shomar which would destroy us. The
Shomarian visitors had been told nothing of it—a necessary precaution—
and they had served their purpose and were expendable when the
Shomarian fleet struck."

  "What happened to the Rells?" he asked.

    "One hundred of us escaped into the mountains when it was hopeless
to fight any longer. We took what Rells we could with us. The
Shomarians took all the other Rells back to Shomar, decided they were of
insufficient value to be worth feeding, and killed them. They then
scattered a specially developed strain of bacteria on Kilvar which soon
killed all the Rells we had saved.

   "The Shomarians had our third-level ship plans, had reduced the
Kilvarl race to the status of one hundred hunted wild animals, and had
destroyed the Rells so we could never build a ship or weapons. They were
well satisfied."
   The green eyes of the Kilvarl looked at John and beyond him. Cold and
distant with thoughts of the past. Its tail was swishing a little. "But we
were not."

   "Why did almost two hundred years pass before the third-level ship was
seen in the Human-Gern space sectors?"

  "They have been busily using it elsewhere, adding new worlds to the
Shomarian empire."

   He considered what the Kilvarl had said. It seemed incredible that the
Shomarians should go to the effort and expense of sending an entire fleet
to Kilvar to guard against a few thousand almost unarmed animals…

   "The Shomarian propaganda was effective," the Kilvarl said. "You
Ragnarokans are barbarians, out of your element. You have never before
encountered the guile and deceit on which some races build their
civilizations. You think the Shomarians like and respect you. You are too
naive to realize that to the Shomarians you are gullible savages whose
capacity for violence they will use to kill and capture Kilvar. Then you
will be scattered in the Battle and Labor Corps of the frontier worlds.
Your families will not accompany you—none of you will ever see them
again. Breeding will be done by artificial insemination, as with any
other animals used by the Shomarians."

  The Kilvarl paused, then added:

  "I'll tell you three more things.

   "The purpose of the First Fleet is to make certain, if you should wake
up to the facts too soon, that your ships can be destroyed before they can
even get started toward Shomar.

    "The so-called third-level detectors will not be installed to detect the
Shomarians' own third-level ship. They will be for the purpose of making
your ships completely useless, so that the First Fleet can continue on to
its real destination—a newly-discovered world which has given the
Shomarians trouble—as soon as sufficient Kilvarl have been captured."

  "And the third item?" he asked.

  "Tonight, at a time and place not yet designated, the third-level ship
will land and the rest of the Ragnarokan prisoners will be herded out
and slaughtered by robots made to look like Kilvarl from a distance."

  He stared at the Kilvarl, thinking, robots, or real Kilvarl —how would
we know which?

  The Kilvarl's tail switched restlessly again.

  "There is no reason why I should stay longer. You believe nothing I tell
you."

  "What has been done to Lora?" he asked.

   "The Shomarians gave her an undetectable drug which produces a
trance-like condition of the mind, and used a crude form of hypnotism
and post-suggestion on her as she was forced to watch the other
Ragnarokans being tortured by pseudo-Kilvarl robots."

  "I suppose you know she is dying?"

  "She has less than three days to live."

  "What can be done to save her?"

  "Novla has a neutralizing drug on the cruiser. You should know. You
were put in Garron's mind and heard what Novla said to Sar-Fane."

  He looked into the green, alien eyes of the Kilvarl and said:

   "I wish I could believe you. Twenty minutes from now, Lora would have
the drug and Novla would be dead. But what proof can you give me?"

   There was the impression of a mental shrug. "Like the Shomarians, the
Kilvarl can give you no concrete proof. We can, however, save the life of
the girl."

  "How?"

   "Through use of neutralizing drugs prepared from native plants and
use of corrective hypnosis.

  "Send an order for another Kilvarl to bring you what you need."
  "She will not be treated here."

  "Yes," he said. "She will."

  "You are sure of that?"

  "I'm sure you're a dead Kilvarl if you don't."

   "Perhaps." The Kilvarl seemed completely unperturbed. "Kilvarl have
rather quick reflexes. I do not intend to remain your polite captive for
that long."

  "All right," he said. "Where would she have to be taken?"

  "To a place unknown to you Ragnarokans. For our own protection it
must remain unknown until you have proved we can trust you. No one
will go with her."

  He looked at the Kilvarl, hesitating, then he made his decision.

   "I don't trust you," he said. "Not yet. I'm going to find out who is who in
this game before it's over. But right now, I wouldn't trust Lora alone with
the Kilvarl or Shomarians, either one."

  "Before the game is over," the Kilvarl said, "it will be too late for what
you learn to save either the girl or the Ragnarokan race."

  It looked at the airlock and at him.

  "I'm going now."

  It sprang, whether to go past him or to kill him on the way, he could
not know. Its movement was too fast, even though he was expecting it, for
him to have time to do other than try to stop it.

   He shot, and the beam slashed through the space where it had just
been. The second shot, a tenth of a second later, came as its paw struck his
shoulder.

  That time, the blaster made the peculiar sound a blaster always made
when it hit its target at close range.

  There was no third shot. The Kilvarl was gone and there was blood in
the airlock.

   He went outside and saw that it was raining. There was no sign of the
Kilvarl outside, in the unreal combination made by the downpour of rain
under the white glare of the flares, and the blood on the ramp was already
washing away.

  He wondered if the wound was such that the Kilvarl would die later.
Then he thought of Lora, already dying, and the cold question came to his
mind: Have I done the wrong thing?

   He went back inside, withdrawing the ramp and closing the airlock. He
went to the control room and lifted the Prowler above the city. From there
he called Dale and Cliff, and had Norman brought into the hook-up.

   "Have you found anything, Norman?" he asked.

   "Corridors—miles of corridors," Norman answered. "But no Kilvarl."

   "There must be other corridors, with concealed doorways," he said.
"Have the walls and floors checked for anything that might resemble a
hairline crack. As for the Kilvarl—I just talked to one."

   They said in almost perfect unison, "What?" He told them what had
happened. "We'll keep guard in all directions with the few lifeboats we
have," he said. "They have only little light-duty disintegrators, though—I'm
hoping to be able to get the Prowler to the Ghost in time. Cliff, you had
better start a roving patrol with the Unicorn. The Ragnarok had better
stay close enough to guard our camp down below."

   Cliff acknowledged the order and said, "I'll swing farther south to begin
with."

  "I'll keep double-alert watches on the Ragnarok" Dale said. "But are
you sure, Johnny, that the Kilvarl are the enemy?"

   "No," he answered. "I'm sure of nothing. Maybe both sides are playing
us for cats'-paws. I'm going to call Novla now, and see what he has to say
about this."

  He contacted the Shomarian cruiser and asked for Novla, Alter a short
wait the voice of Novla said, "Yes?"
  "I just had a talk with a Kilvarl in my ship," John said.

   "A Kilvarl?" Novla's voice was sharp with excitement "Hold it at all
cost! We're coming down—"

  "It's gone," he said. "It's not here anymore, so don't get excited."

   "You let it escape?" There was condemnation in Novla's tone. "Do you
mean you had to bungle our very first opportunity to capture a Kilvarl
specimen?"

  "Our opportunity?" He felt his temper rise. "And there's another thing,
Novla—it came as near proving the Kilvarl are not the enemy as you
Shomarians have come to proving that you aren't."

  When Novla spoke again, it was in the voice of a tired old man:

   "I'm sorry for what I said. But I have had no sleep since leaving Shomar
and there has been this constant worry about the coming war with the
Kilvarl, and the worry that you Ragnarokans, so important to us in this
war, might be swayed by Kilvarl hypnotism into turning against us."

   "According to the Kilvarl," he said to Novla, "the Ghost ship—your
Ghost ship—is going to drop down tonight and the rest of the prisoners
will be killed. It also told me you have drugs which can bring Lora back to
normal. What do you have to say?"

   There was another pause, and then Novla said, "What can I say? The
Kilvarl are clever psychologists. It will all be done, exactly as they
predicted, and after you have seen the mangled dead, the subconscious
grain of doubt will be born in your mind, and the unvoiced question: 'The
Kilvarl said the Shomarians would do this… Did they?"

  "As for the dying girl—if we knew of any drugs that might save her, they
would be on their way already, in the fastest ship the Shomarian Society
possesses. I promise you—"

  The Emergency alarm sounded, its shrill scream drowning out Novla.
The voice of Red Anders, far afield in one of the lightly armed lifeboats,
came quick and sharp with urgency:

  "Ghost! East of Black Mountains—coming down in front of me—"
   John's fingers struck the buttons on the control board and the Prowler
leaped forward at multiple-gravity acceleration.

  He saw that the Unicorn was hopelessly far away to the south. The
Ragnarok, of course, dared not leave the camp unprotected.

    "It's landed!" Red reported. "I'm holding my beam in one spot against
its shield. People are coming out—our people!"

   The Prowler passed over the Black Mountains and two white shapes
appeared on the viewscreen, far away up an immense valley; the tiny
shape of the lifeboat, and the huge, spiked torpedo that was the Ghost
ship. There was the gleam of the transparent force-field shield around the
Ghost and the thin blue line of the lifeboat's blaster beam was stabbing
futilely at it.

  "They're killing them—the Kilvarl are killing them… !

   He saw the Ragnarok suddenly appear in the rear view-screen. It was
driving straight up into the sky, trying to find a position where it could
simultaneously guard the camp and get a shot at the Ghost.

   At that instant a new ship appeared on the forward view-screen. It was
a Shomarian cruiser, still out of range, but diving down like a hawk on the
Ghost ship.

  "The Kilvarl are tearing them to pieces!" There was frantic anguish in
Red's voice. "They're killing them all—can't anyone get here to help me
break through their shield?"

   The Shomarian cruiser fired down on the Ghost ship, although it was
not yet in range and its beam was turned into a harmless mushroom by
the Ghost ship's shield. John's fingers were on the firing buttons of the
Prowler's blasters, but he was not close enough yet—the Ghost ship's
shield was repelling the beams.

   It seemed to him the Prowler was crawling forever up the long valley.
Red was cursing unintelligibly now, like a man crazed with the horror of
what he saw and his helplessness to do anything about it. Then he
stopped, and spoke two words in a dead voice:

  "It's over."
   The Prowler's beams were still licking harmlessly against the Ghost
ship's shield when the Ghost began to lift. The Shomarian cruiser was
closer, still firing. Then the Ghost shimmered and he knew, without ever
having seen it before, that the Ghost was going into third-level.

   The heavy blasters of the Ragnarok fired then, the beams passing over
the Prowler with a thunderous crash and a violent displacement of air
that smashed against the Prowler like a gigantic hammer. It was at that
instant that the Ghost ship vanished.

   The blue beams crashed through the empty space where the Ghost had
been, and on to a distant mountain peak. The top of the peak erupted in a
blue-white flash of light.

  "Damn!" It was the voice of Dale. "We came so close to getting it——-"

  He brought the Prowler back on steady course, slowing as he
approached the place where the Ghost had landed. The Shomarian cruiser
was leveling off, to go back up to the altitude of the rest of the fleet.

   He landed beside the lifeboat. Red was waiting there, his face pale and
grim with helpless rage, tears in his eyes.

   "They killed them all," he said. "Elaine was one of them— Elaine is
there—"

   He turned away, to hide the way his young face was twisting into
crying.

   John went out among the dead. It was a replica of the other massacre,
even to the chains. Some of them he recognized; among them Elaine, her
face white and still under the fall of the cold rain. Some he could not
recognize at all…

   A roaring came, growing swiftly to a thunder, and the Unicorn dropped
down near them. Cliff hurried out of it, together with several others. Jim
Morgan, in charge of the Unicorn's lifeboat field search was one of them.
They looked at the dead and away again, their faces frozen in grim
expressionlessness.

   Red was standing silent and motionless, staring at the still little form
that had been Elaine, and blood appeared on his lower lip as he bit into it
in his attempt to keep from crying again.

   Morgan went to him, his gray hair almost white under the light of the
flares, and laid a big, scarred hand on his shoulder.

   "All right, Red," he said gruffly. "Snap out of it, boy. We can't change
what's already been done—but there are cats to find and kill, and keep on
killing until their debt is paid. Come on—you'll be needed on the
Ragnarok."

   Morgan led Red away and Cliff said to John, "So the prediction was
fulfilled. Did Red say the Kilvarl were the real thing?"

  "He had no doubts."

   Cliff looked again at the scene of the massacre. "I guess we know who
the enemy is, now. I'll send out a burial detail and take the Unicorn back
to the city."

   John left a few minutes later. Garron called him just before he reached
the city and said:

   "Sector Commander Hesnar will arrive within a few hours. The
third-level detectors will be installed in your ships immediately
afterward."

   Novla spoke, to relay the sympathies of Sar-Fane and Sar-Fane's
assurance that all the resources of the Shomarian Society would be
available to the Ragnarokans in their forthcoming attack against the
Kilvarl.

    All of which sounds good, he thought as he went on to the city, but it
still doesn't bring back the dead or save Lora.

  He wondered again if he had been a fool when he refused to believe
anything the Kilvarl told him. Lora might now be receiving treatment that
would restore her to perfect health if he had accepted the Kilvarl offer.

   But if there were only a few thousand poorly armed Kilvarl now making
preparations to resist an invasion supported by the might of the
Shomarian Society, why had they not tried harder to convince the
Ragnarokans that their story was true and they must have Ragnarokan
assistance or be destroyed as a race?

  Could it be that the Kilvarl were too proud to ask for help?

  Novla called, to say:

   "A special report just came in from Shomar; one I know you will be
glad to hear, sir. The medical research teams have made what appears to
be a break-through. They are now certain they will soon have a treatment
developed which will cure the girl."

  "How soon?" he asked.

  "Within a few days—perhaps even one day."

   He spent the following hours in a roving search of the area around the
city. He found nothing and he went to the Ragnarok when his worry over
Lora became almost unbearable.

   She was asleep under sedatives; so pale-faced and still that she
reminded him of Elaine. He held her cold hand a little while. She did not
stir and he went back to Paul's office.

   "Even under sedatives," Paul said, "it seems that in her subconscious
she keeps reliving the tortures she saw and experienced. We have done
everything we could think of—I'm afraid it isn't enough."

  "Isn't there any hope, at all, for her?" he asked.

  There was a silence, then Paul said, "I'm sorry, Johnny. She has no
more than three days left."

   He took the Prowler down to the city and went outside. He saw, with
faint, uninterested surprise, that the eastern sky was bright with dawn,
the long night over. Could it have been only two mornings ago that Lora
bad come stumbling out of the sunrise… ?

  The communicator in the Prowler signaled and he went back inside. It
was another call from Novla, who said:

   "Sector Commander Hesnar's ship will arrive in a few minutes and your
third-level detectors will be installed at once. The third-level detector
already in Commander Hesnar's ship shows the Kilvarl ship to be waiting
above the city now."

   Hesnar's battleship came, the largest Shomarian ship he had ever seen.
A small service ship left immediately, to go straight to the Prowler.

  A young officer emerged when it landed, followed by two technicians
who carried a thing which resembled a large box made of some dark
non-metallic material.

   "I am Electronics Officer Gerdvel, sir," the officer said briskly as they
entered the Prowler. "Now, if you will show me your control room…"

   Gerdvel selected a location for the third-level detector, on the wall just
above the forward viewscreen, explaining, "In this position, sir, the
detector will be visible from every section of the room."

   The detector was installed within an hour. A switch was turned and the
image of the Ghost ship appeared on the detector's screen. It was not as
formless as the pseudo-image produced by the Ghost's spy-ray but neither
was it clearly defined.

   "Due to several rather technical reasons," Gerdvel said, "it was not
possible to produce a detector with greater resolving power. However, it
will quite effectively serve its purpose."

  Gerdvel had hardly more than left the Prowler when Novla called, an
undertone of urgency in his voice:

  "I've been waiting until those detectors were installed—I didn't want to
chance your leaving without it."

   "Leaving?" John asked. "What do you mean?"

  "The girl, Barbara, has been found on Shomar. She is under Kilvarl
hypnosis."

   "Barbara—alive?" he asked incredulously. "But she can't be! The ship
that exploded—"

   "The Kilvarl who stole the ship must have turned her over to other
Kilvarl already on Shomar. She has been hiding in the forest north of the
city. A few hours ago she made a night raid into the edge of the city and
killed twenty people. Fourteen of them were small children."

  "I can't believe that," he said. "Ragnarokans don't kill children."

   "I told you, she is under Kilvarl hypnosis and therefore not herself.
Shomarian guards had the opportunity to kill her, but this would be
unthinkable. All attempts to capture her without harming her have failed
so far—after all, she had the strength and swiftness of a wild animal on a
one-gravity world such as Shomar."

  "I'll start at once," he said.

   He called Dale, Cliff and Norman and told them what Novla had
reported. Then he said to Norman, "That detector proof iron mountain
keeps bothering me. Make up a seismograph crew and see what they can
learn."

   "If the Kilvarl are back in there," Norman said, "it won't take the
Ragnarok's disintegrators long to uncover them. Then we'll get some
action."

  "Yes… but don't blast into there until I see Barbara."

  "You don't think the Shomarians are up to some trick with her, do
you?"

   "I don't know. I want to make sure, just in case that Kilvarl told me the
truth."

   He was well on his way to Shomar when it occurred to him that he had
not asked the Kilvarl about Barbara. He had assumed that she had died on
the exploding ship and had not even thought to ask.

   It was night when he reached Shomar. The edge of the city facing the
hills was brilliantly lighted and spotlights were sweeping back and forth
across the hills themselves.

  He was contacted by a small police ship and told:

  "Follow me."

  They landed between the city and the woods, where several vehicles
were waiting. An officer stepped out of one and came to meet him.
   "I am chief of the City Guard," the officer said. "Lord Sar-Fane regrets
that he cannot be in the city tonight to meet you and my orders are to
assist you in any way possible. First, however, for you to fully realize what
one lone Kilvarl has done, we must look at an unpleasant sight."

   The officer took him to a nearby building and into a large, refrigerated
room. There were twenty-nine tables in the room, and on each table was a
dead person.

    "The hypnotized girl killed nine more last night," the officer said. "This
was her first victim—this guard here— and she cut his throat with a
jagged piece of flint so she could acquire the weapon with which she killed
all the others."

  He went from table to table, looking down at the dead. There were five
men, three women, and twenty-one small children.

  With the exception of the guard whose throat had been cut, all had
been killed with the same type weapon.

   It was incredible that Barbara could have done such a thing, even
under hypnosis. Yet, there were the victims, and the lifeless little faces of
the children were looking up at him…

   "Let's go," he said. "Call your search parties back out of the woods—I'll
find her quicker by myself."

   He waited until the search parties had been withdrawn, then he took
the Prowler in a slow circuit of the woods, flying just above the tree tops.
He could see nothing through the dense foliage, but he knew Barbara
would recognize the Prowler and would, he hoped, come to it.

   He landed in the roughest section of the hills, in what would probably
be the area in which she stayed most of the time and went outside to wait.

   It was warm under the green trees, sweet-scented with the odors of a
thousand different flowers, it seemed. There was no sound, other than the
faraway hum of the city.

   His eyes had become accustomed to the starlight when he saw a black
shadow suddenly materialize and come racing toward him with little
yelping sounds of ecstasy.
  Sigyn!

  Sigyn was alive, Fenrir must be alive, too.

  "Where is Barbara, Sigyn?" he asked. "Is she all right?"

   Sigyn's joy at seeing him again seemed to vanish and she whimpered,
in a tone of distress, telling him in her way that something was wrong
with Barbara.

   He found Barbara a few minutes later; standing in a clearing with a
Shomarian disintegrator leveled toward the sound of his approach, her
clothes torn, her hair tumbled around her face, and even in the darkness a
look of wildness about her.

   "Oh—it's only you," she said in a disappointed voice, and lowered the
disintegrator. "I was hoping it would be another Shomarian to kill."

   Fenrir came running from the trees beyond, as happy to see him again
as Sigyn had been. He put his hand on the big, black head and said to
Barbara:

  "How do you feel."

  "Feel? I feel fine—why shouldn't I?"

   "The last I heard from you was when you thought you saw Lora outside
the ship."

  "That was just a Shomarian impersonation of her. I escaped before they
could take me prisoner."

  "They told me in the city that you've been killing Shomarians at night."

  "I like to kill the Shomarians—they are our enemy."

  "They told me you killed Shomarian children, too."

   "Oh, yes—every one I could find. I like to kill little Shomarians the best
of all. Then they can never grow up to be big Shomarians."

  "Where is Freckles?" he asked.
  "Freckles?"

  "The little mocker you had."

  "Oh—the mocker. It fell off my shoulder and got lost, I guess. I never
noticed."

   "Let's go back to the Prowler," he said. She walked beside him, the
disintegrator still in her hand.

  "I found Lora," he said. "She's on Kilvar."

   "On Kilvar? Are the Shomarians still torturing and killing the Kilvarl
there?"

  "What makes you think they do that?"

  "I've heard them talking to one another and laughing while they told
what they did."

  "They were talking to one another in Gern?"

  "No—in Shomarian. I understand Shomarian."

  "What is the Shomarian word for 'tree'?"

   She walked a little way without answering. "I can't tell you. It's my
secret weapon, knowing what they say, and nobody must ever tell them I
know."

   They came to the Prowler and went inside. There, where there was
light, he saw her clearly for the first time. The person he saw was not really
Barbara, as the Lora he had found was not really Lora. The dark hair hung
tangled and unkempt around a scratched and dirty face which was no
longer pretty with her personality, but was impersonally blank and hard.
Only her eyes were alive, wild and restless. "When did you eat last?"

  "Eat?" She stared at him, as though the question was nonsensical. "I
haven't had time to eat, not with so many Shomarians to kill."

   "Killing all the Shomarians would be too big a job to undertake without
ever eating," he said in a reasoning tone. "But, first, you'd better go in and
wash up, put on clean clothes, and straighten up your hair."
   Her stare was suddenly one of suspicion and the disintegrator in her
band half lifted toward him. "Are you going to have any secret talks with
the Shomarians while I'm gone?"

   "I'm going to tell them I found you and we're going back to Kilvar," he
said. "That's all."

  "Are there Shomarians on Kilvar to disintegrate?"

  "Lots of them," he said. "Now, go in and clean up." The suspicion faded
and she left. He spoke to Tip: "Can you find Freckles?"

   "No," Tip answered promptly. "No Freckles—nothing." Which means,
he thought, that Freckles was killed… He withdrew the ramp, closed the
airlock, and contacted the Shomarian police ship which had led him in.

   "I have the girl and I'm going back to Kilvar now," he said. "Just a
minute, please," the Shomarian voice said. "Lord Sar-Fane would like to
speak to you."

   There was the clicking of communicator interchange, then he heard the
voice of Sar-Fane:

   "I'm sorry I could not be at Capitol City to meet you again hut this
Kilvarl situation is becoming more and more serious; so grave that I've
been making a personal tour of the ravaged districts."

  "Ravaged districts?" he asked.

   "Novla was told not to mention it to you, since you were faced with
enough problems of your own, but it now seems obvious that the
appearance of you Ragnarokans merely speeded up by a few days the
conquest that the Kilvarl have been planning for a long time. It is
estimated that at least a thousand Kilvarl are now on Shomar, in hiding
and hypnotizing person after person into doing their will. In the past
twenty hours there have been hundreds of incidents of sabotage, arson,
mass poisoning via the city water supplies, assassinations of key
Shomarian officials, and three different attempts by hypnotized Capitol
Guard police to kill me."

  "The Kilvarl did all this?" he asked.
   "Shomarians hypnotized by the Kilvarl have done all this and are doing
so this minute."

  The elated whisper of Barbara came from behind him:

  "I wasn't alone!"

   She was bare-footed and half undressed, a towel in one hand and the
disintegrator in the other.

  "Now we can win!" The burning in her eyes was like a fire. "Now we
can wipe out the Shomarians to the last whining brat!"

  Sar-Fane spoke again:

  "Was the girl unharmed?"

  "Yes," he answered.

  "I gave strict orders that she not be harmed."

  "Whining brats!" There was savage hatred in the whisper. I killed all I
could find!"

  Again, he saw the white little faces of the dead Shomarian children. The
heart and soul of Barbara were gone, as the Kilvarl had taken the heart
and soul of Lora, But, for Lora, it would all soon be over…

   He looked at the ship's chronometer and saw with a feeling of desperate
urgency that almost half her hours to live were already gone.

  He touched the drive buttons and the forest dropped away under the
Prowler.

  "I'm going now," he said.

  "Yes—I understand." There was sympathy in Sar-Fane's voice. "May the
Great Creator be with you—and us."

   He switched off the communicator and Barbara said with vicious
satisfaction:

  "It's going to take more than his Great Creator to save him and his race
this time, isn't it?"

   When he did not answer the satisfaction flared suddenly into suspicion.
She stepped back with the disintegrator aimed at his heart and asked in a
low, deadly tone:

   "Are you on their side?"

  He knew, beyond any doubt, that if he said "yes" she would instantly kill
him.

  "I was after information," he said, "and we learned quite a bit, didn't
we? Now, you'd better get on back to cleaning up."

   The suspicion slowly faded and she obeyed, taking the disintegrator
with her.

   They were far from Shomar when she had washed and eaten and finally
gone to sleep. He took the Shomarian disintegrator, then, and removed
the charge from it.

  He reported to Dale, telling him of Barbara's condition, and asked
about Lora.

   There was a silence that told him the answer before Dale spoke.

   "She's going sooner than Paul thought she would. I don't think you'll
ever get here in time to see her."

   He increased the acceleration and looked at the bright star in the
viewscreen; the star that was Kilvar's sun. It seemed very far away.

  Norman called several hours later, to first ask, "Is Barbara in there with
you?"

   "Not right now," he answered, "Why?"

    "I think we've found the Kilvarl!" There was exultation in Norman's
tone. "I had seismographs set up in the Iron Mountains and we put off
some shots. There seems to be a big cavity back in behind that rainbow
cliff. The seismo crew is busy with new locations now, to try to get as
much information as we can before we blast that cliff down."
   "Our campsite comes up pretty close to that cliff," he said. "I think
down in the ruins of the city would be the best place for the women and
children. The Ragnarok can watch all the underground entrances in case
any Kilvarl try to come out. Has the Ghost ship moved yet?"

  "Not yet. It no doubt will, though—we'll be ready to blast into that
mountain shortly after midnight."

   He had long since calculated the time required to reach Kilvar and he
said, "I'll be there several hours before then."

   Barbara came into the control room an hour later, walking with
extreme difficulty, her young girl's face sagging and distorted by the pull
of the multiple gravities. She sat down heavily beside him and said:

   "Why are you in such a hurry to get back to Kilvar?"

   He wondered if he should tell her the truth, and could see no reason to
do otherwise. She would not care…

   "Lora is dying," he said.

  The fever-bright eyes looked at the viewscreen, where Kilvar's sun was
only a star, and back to him.

   "Shomar is a lot closer than Kilvar—let's turn back and help the Kilvarl
on Shomar."

   "What about Lora?" he asked.

   "Lora?" Again there was the momentary blankness, as there had been
when he asked about the mocker. "Oh— Lora. This is no time to be
sentimental—all of us have to work hard to kill the Shomarians because
they'll make slaves of all of us if we don't. Let's turn back. Or are there lots
of Shomarians on Kilvar to kill?"

   "There are Shomarians there," he said, "Thousands of them."

   There was no conversation in the hours that followed. Barbara watched
the viewscreen like one hypnotized, speaking only once: "They're waiting
for us there—Shomarians to kill. I wish we could go faster."

   Fenrir and Sigyn, lying on the floor at their feet, watched her with dark,
puzzled eyes. They knew she was really no longer Barbara and they could
not understand why. They must have seen the Kilvarl take her, though…

  No, he thought. They would have died fighting for her— the Kilvarl
must have used it's hypnotic powers to get past them and get away with
Barbara without them knowing until too late.

   But if the Kilvarl could hypnotize the prowlers to that extent, why had
it—or they—not gone all the way and turned the prowlers into Shomarian
killers along with Barbara?

  There seemed to be no answer to the question. Only Fenrir and Sigyn
knew, and prowlers could not talk.

   They came to Kilvar at last. The city was gold and sapphire in the light
of the setting sun and he wondered if it was symbolic that he should have
returned barely in time to see the sunlight fade away, as he would see Lora
so briefly before she, too, was gone.

   He put the Prowler against the airlock of the Ragnarok and Fenrir and
Sigyn went with them into the other ship. Barbara was still carrying the
now-empty disintegrator.

   Paul Chiara met them in the corridor and said as he watched Barbara
closely, "How are you, Barbara?"

    "I'm all right," she said. "Where are these Shomarians we're going to
kill?"

  "Some are coming right away. Let's get on back where we can be
waiting for them," Paul said.

   When Barbara was lying unconscious in the chair in Paul's office—she
had never felt the tiny hypodermic needle—John took the Shomarian
disintegrator out of her hand and shoved it in his belt.

  "Has anything new happened?" he asked.

   "Two Kilvarl were seen about an hour ago in the tunnels," Paul said. He
looked at Barbara. "Did she really kill Shomarian children, Johnny?"

  "I saw twenty-one little dead children. All of them had been killed with
a Shomarian disintegrator… and a Kilvarl paw could never hold a
Shomarian disintegrator."

  Paul sighed. "I'm afraid we can't deny that she did it. But the Kilvarl
changed her—she's not Barbara, any more."

  Lora's name had not been mentioned and John knew that there had
been no improvement.

   "I want to see her, Paul," he said.

   Paul went with him, down the corridor to the silent little room.

   She was lying so white and still that at first he had the terrible fear that
she was already dead. Someone had set a vase of wild flowers on the table
beside her and they were filling the room with a fragrance of which she
would never be aware. He went to her and looked down at her.

   "How long?" he asked.

   "Very soon."

   "Isn't there anything at all that you can do, Paul?"

   "We have tried everything. There is nothing left to try."

  The black noses of Fenrir and Sigyn reached out to sniff Lora's cheek
and Sigyn looked up at him with & forlorn whimper.

   "Yes—we're going to lose her, girl," he said to Sigyn, "If only we knew—"

   "Johnny—"

   Red Anders was standing in the doorway; heavily armed, his unshaven
face grim and no longer that of a nineteen-year-old boy.

   "Norman just came in," Red said. "He's got one of the Kilvarl."

  Norman was in the control room, blood on his torn shirt and blond
beard, his eyes bright and restless with the desire for more violence.

   "The Kilvarl shot back," Norman said. "It wasn't too accurate. It was at
the end of a tunnel—I think there might be a secret opening there and it
didn't have time to get through without my seeing the opening."

   Dale, who had been examining an odd-looking weapon, said, "This is
the Kilvarl blaster."

   The functioning part of it was that of a small, machine-perfect blaster.
The butt was large and clumsy, made to fit a Kilvarl paw. It was roughly
shaped out of plastic and fastened on with rivets. There were scars in the
plastic around each rivet head, to show where a Kilvarl paw had tried to
be a hand and use a hammer.

   "A Rell blaster," he said to Dale. "And this crude job of improvising a
different butt on it was done by the Kilvarl to fit their paws and claws. Is
this the best they have in the way of weapons?"

   "That's what I was wondering," Dale said.

  "A museum piece from the Shomarian-Kilvarl war," Norman said.
"They sent an expendable Kilvarl out with it to make us think that the
poor Kilvarl have no weapons but a few makeshift things like this, no ship,
and we ought to stop trying to hunt them down."

   Ed Barber, who had been in charge of the seismograph crew, came into
the room with a sketch in his hand. His reading glasses—unusual for a
Ragnarokan—were shoved up on his forehead and he had the look of a
man who had not rested for a long time.

   "Here's a drawing of the interior of that mountain, the best we could
figure it," Barber said. "There's a big cavity in there, all right, and what
seems to be a network of tunnels."

   "How big is this cavity?" John asked.

   "Big enough to hold a small cruiser, we think."

   "I don't suppose you could make even the roughest kind of a guess as to
the number of Kilvarl that might be in there?"

  "We make a guess of around six thousand Kilvarl, assuming that a good
many would be in the ship all the time. We can't—"

   Quick footsteps interrupted him. Bob West, Paul's assistant, came into
the room.

   "Barbara has gone wild," he said. "When she became conscious and saw
that someone had taken that Shomarian disintegrator away from her it
took both of us to get her into an improvised strait-jacket. She has to be
conscious for us to try to help her, so there was no choice but to tie her up
like a mad animal."

  "Go ahead and look that map over," John said to the others. "I'll be
back in just a minute."

   Barbara was tied in a chair with her hands crossed behind her back.
She was struggling to tear free, her face contorted and unrecognizable, her
eyes glaring. He stopped in the doorway and her hate-filled glare centered
on him.

   "Shomarian lover!" The words were a vicious hiss. "I'm going to kill
you! And my sister, who lied about the Kilvarl— I'm going to cut her heart
out!"

  She tore at her bonds with such insane fury that he knew her heart
could not long stand the strain.

  "Stare at me, Shomarian lover! I'm going to see the face of every
Shomarian lover here dissolve in a blaster beam—"

   Paul, who had walked up silently behind her, thrust a hypodermic
needle in her shoulder. She made one last convulsive jerk and went limp in
the chair, sagging against the bonds which were blood-stained from her
efforts to tear herself free of them.

   "We'll try the Arakni shot next," Paul said. "We can't keep giving her
knock-out jolts like the one I just used. I ordered a lifeboat to have Lora
taken down to camp—I'll have Barbara taken, too."

   "Johnny"—Red spoke from just behind him—"let me take them down in
the Prowler. It's already here—and besides, somebody ought to have it out
on guard until you're ready for it."

   "All right," he agreed. "Just so you keep it near the city." When he
returned to the control room, the others were listening to the voice of
Garron in the communicator:
   —We waited to make sure. Now there is no question about it—a Kilvarl
third-level fleet is on its way and will be here shortly after sunrise. Here
are the coordinates…"

  They looked at the screen of the Ghost ship detector and saw a tiny
white spot in the area where Garron had said it would be.

   "By this time tomorrow—unless we can have sufficient Kilvarl for
study—the Shomarian First Fleet will no longer exist." Garron's tone was
flat and fatalistic. "Neither will the Ragnarokan ships nor the Ragnarokan
race. Then Shomar will go."

   The voice of Novla came, tired and worried: "Lord Sar-Fane has
declared a state of extreme emergency on Shomar. Sabotage, arson, and
assassinations are increasing hourly. A conservative estimate of the death
toll is one million, and this is only the beginning."

   Novla paused, then said with something like the last faint, desperate
hope, "Have you seen any Kilvarl? Commander Hesnar's battleship has a
fully staffed laboratory—if we could have Kilvarl soon enough tonight we
might devise something such as a telepathic jammer to make it
impossible for the Kilvarl in the fleet to communicate with one another."

   "I think we've found where they live," he said, and told Novla of the
cavern.

  Novla was elated and Garron's fatalistic tone changed to one of active
decision.

   "Now that we know where the Kilvarl are," Garron said, "we must
attack at once. You will be assisted by a large ground force of Shomarian
troops which will be gathered from the various ships at once. We can
attack within an hour. I assume your own forces will be ready by then?"

  "I'll call you when they are," he said.

   He turned away from the communicator, then turned back to switch it
off so that nothing said in the control room would be heard by the
Shomarians.

  "How come you did that?" Norman asked. "Don't you trust the
Shomarians?"
   "I don't trust either side, so far. The Shomarians are going to be ready
to attack the Kilvarl within an hour and the time has now come when we
have to help one side or the other. If we make the mistake of helping the
enemy, we're sunk for good. So we had better look well before we leap."

  "I've been thinking the same thing," Dale said. "The war with the Gerns
was better—we knew exactly who the enemy was. Here, everything that
has happened could have been done by either side."

   "I'm not so knot-headed that I'm unwilling to look at any pro-Kilvarl
evidence," Norman said. "But I haven't seen any, so far."

   "Just this blaster here," John said. "Maybe it's a trick, like you
figure—but how can we know for sure? This crude job of improvising a
butt on it reminds me of the way we had to work and improvise for two
hundred years to finally get our fighting chance for freedom. We had
hands to work with and no metals. The Kilvarl would have had metals and
no hands. Which would be the worse?"

  "Do you think they might be trying to build a ship back in that cavern?"
Dale asked.

   "I don't think one way or the other, yet. But we had better consider that
possibility. Suppose that for two hundred years the Kilvarl have been
working to build some kind of a crude little second-level ship and that they
were proud enough to think they could take a Shomarian battleship with
it—as we were vain enough to think we could capture a Gern cruiser with
crossbows. Suppose that's why we have seen no Kilvarl, because they're
working day and night, kittens and all, trying to finish their ship before we
attack—and knowing, now, that they can never do it and their work and
hopes of two hundred years will soon be destroyed."

   "Physical form—" Dale said. "Maybe we were more ready to trust the
Shomarians because they're like us physically and the Kilvarl are alien
animals in form."

   "I can tell you this," Norman said, "I don't care whether the enemy
walks on two feet, four, or a dozen. I would be just as happy to kill
Shomarians as Kilvarl. But if the Kilvarl aren't the enemy, why haven't
they tried harder to prove it?"

  "What if we had faced the same situation on Ragnarok?" be asked.
"Suppose a race had come from six hundred lightyears away, to believe
Gern lies and help the Gerns kill and capture us, refusing to believe
anything we told them. Would we have kept begging them to please
believe us and not try to kill us?"

  "No—hell, no!"

   "There are some things that make it look bad for the Kilvarl," John
continued. "The Shomarians that Barbara killed, that ship that blew up,
and Lora's insistence that the Kilvarl are the ones who did that to her. On
the other hand, the Kilvarl have been extremely quiet to be the enemy. For
one thing, why haven't they used the Ghost ship? Ragnarokans could take
that ship and destroy the Shomarian fleet with it. Why haven't the Kilvarl
done so?"

  "A good question," Norman agreed. "How do we find the answer?"

   "The Kilvarl would never come to us, now," he answered. "So I'm going
back in the tunnel, alone and unarmed, and ask to see them again. If I
don't come back—or if I come back not acting normal—you'll know the
Kilvarl are the enemy, after all."

  "When are you going?" Dale asked.

  "Right now. If the Kilvarl aren't the enemy, maybe I can act soon
enough for them to save Lora."

  He was halfway to the door when the communicator signaled. Dale
switched the speaker-microphone on again and Novla spoke:

  "Have the girl ready to transfer to this cruiser as soon as possible. I
have some very good news for you."

  "Do you mean you can help her?" John asked.

   "The break-through I mentioned exceeded all expectations. We can do
more than help her—we can have her returned to perfect health in only
four hours!"

  "Are you sure? There would be no guesswork?"

  "Sir. Shomarian specialists do not guess." Novla said, a little stiffly.
"And this is no attempt to gain a hostage, as the Kilvarl offer to cure her
was. If you doubt us in the slightest, send an armed guard along with her."

   "That sounds honest enough," Norman said, then repeated
thoughtfully, "It sounds honest enough."

   "Your Dr. Chiara has kept the physicians on this cruiser informed of
the girl's condition," Novla said. "She now has less than half an hour to
live. You must act at once, sir."

  "Can't you tell our doctor what to do for her?" he asked.

  "The treatment must be performed with the aid of special equipment
which your doctor does not have. However, he is welcome to come with
her and watch, if he wishes to."

  "Did you just now receive word of the discovery of this cure?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir. I called you immediately, while the specialists on Shomar
were still describing the method of treatment to our physicians here. I
knew you would be glad to hear the good news at once."

   "I was," he said. "I'm very glad you were so prompt about it. I'm going
right down to camp, where the girl is."

   He looked up at the Ghost ship detector and thought, Yes, Novla, I'm
very glad you were so prompt—maybe I'm beginning to wake up before
we completely cut our throats.

  He hurried toward the door, making a small, inconspicuous sign to
Dale as he went by.

  Dale followed him out into the corridor and asked, "What's up?"

   "Several times in the past, when we spoke doubtfully of the Shomarians
there in the control room, we would soon get a call from Novla or Garron
with the word of some new development that would cause us to lose our
suspicions. This time, right in the nick of time, Novla came up with a cure
for Lora so that I won't have to take her to the Kilvarl."

   "So get Norman out of there and tell him that I think that Ghost ship
detector may be rigged with microphones and viewscreens and that the
Shomarians know everything we've said and done since it was installed."

   The lifeboat Paul had ordered was waiting. He got in, Fenrir and Sigyn
with him, and used Tip to learn where Paul had taken Lora. A minute
later he landed on the hill, where Lora lay on a pallet by the bayonet tree.
Paul was with her.

   Fenrir and Sigyn ran to Lora, to sniff her cheek again and then look
with question from Paul to John, as though wondering why they did not
try to help her.

   "When you're at the end of your rope," Paul said, "you'll try almost
anything. I had her brought up here because this country looks something
like Ragnarok did in the spring and I hoped it might subconsciously revive
old memories and hold off the end a little longer…"

   He let the words trail away. It was far too late for her to see or know or
care that the last rays of sunset had turned the Iron Mountains into ruby
and shards of shattered rainbow, the eastern plain into a sea of gold, the
Black Mountains into spires and ramparts of red and violet flame, and
that the gentle wind blowing through the bayonet tree—so much like the
lance trees of Ragnarok—was fresh and sweet with the scents of a summer
evening.

  "The Shomarians claim they can cure her," he said to Paul.

    "They can?" Paul's face brightened, then changed to question. "They
'claim' they can?"

   He told Paul of his suspicions, and said, "Maybe they sincerely want to
save her because they're our friends—and maybe they just want to save her
so they can have her as a hostage."

  "And I'm not supposed to be able to do anything for her down here?"

  "They said she could be treated only on the cruiser."

  "That could be true—special facilities and all that," Paul said. "But you
know the Shomarians better than I do."

  "Which is not at all. I'm going to see the Kilvarl as soon as possible.
Then we'll know which is the enemy… or did Novla tell the truth about the
time?"

  Paul looked down at Lora then back at John. "He told the truth,
Johnny. She has even less time than he thought."

   There was a silence but for the whisper of the wind through the bayonet
tree, then John said, "You might as well go on back and do what you can
for Barbara. If there's no time to learn which is the enemy, I'll have to
decide for myself, now, which I want to trust with her and then take her to
them."

   Ho knelt down beside Lora when Paul was gone and picked up her
hand. It was cold and he could feel no pulse. Sigyn whimpered and he
realized that the gold of sunset was fading from the mountains and the
plain was darkening with the coming of night.

  Time was passing swiftly by—he could delay no longer.

   He picked Lora up in his arms and looked from the lifeboat to the
broken stone of the nearest runnel entrance. One way led to the
enemy—how could he know which?

   Sigyn whined, a pleading sound that said: We must hurry or it will be
too late. Fenrir was shifting restlessly, his yellow eyes slanted and a muted
growl in his throat. He wanted to kill the ones who had caused Lora to
now be dying…

  He remembered something: Fenrir and Sigyn had twice sniffed Lora's
cheek. Was it because they smelled the same hypnosis drug on her that
had been used on Barbara? If they knew who had changed Barbara, they
might also know that the same ones had changed Lora.

   Although prowlers could not make the sounds necessary for human
speech, their intelligence was such that they could understand simple
sentences. And like Terran's dogs, but to a much higher degree, they
developed a semitelepathic rapport with their masters.

  He formed the image of Novla in his mind and said to them, "This
Shomarian, and others, will make Lora well. We will take her to them
now."

  Fenrir flashed around in front of him as he took the first step toward
the lifeboat, to rear up taller than a man on his hind legs and shove back
against John's shoulders with his front paws. Sigyn was tugging at Lora's
skirt, trying to keep him from taking her to the lifeboat and making
urgent sounds of protest; sounds which carried the frantic helplessness of
a creature which must warn of a danger and has no voice with which to
speak.

   "All right," he said. "Suppose we take her to the others"— he made a
mental image of a Kilvarl—"like the one you and I saw, Fenrir, the first
time we were ever here?"

  He turned and started toward the tunnel entrance. They walked beside
him, looking up with question and uncertainty, but not trying to stop him.

   So the Shomarians are the enemy? he thought, and to his surprise he
was glad that it should be so. The independence and arrogance of the
Kilvarl were characteristics he could understand; the Ragnarokans could
feel at home among the Kilvarl where they could never have belonged
among the smooth, civilized Shomarians.

   Then be thought again of the Shomarian ship that he, himself, had seen
explode, of the bodies of the slain Shomarians, of Barbara's raging hatred,
and he said to Fenrir and Sigyn: "Or did the Kilvarl hypnotize you along
with Barbara?" It was, of course, a question they could not answer.

   Dan Destry was among the guards at the tunnel entrance and he said as
he took Lora from John's arms, "We heard by mocker that you might
decide to do this. Do you think you should, Johnny, the way there's no
proof in favor of the Kilvarl?"

   He answered Destry as he laid down his blaster and knife. "Fenrir and
Sigyn tried to stop me when I was going to take her to the Shomarians."

  "They did?" Destry looked pleased. "That means we'll be seeing her alive
and well again—never did know a prowler to make a mistake."

   "We'll soon know." He transferred Tip to Destry's shoulder. "Keep him
for me—I don't want the Kilvarl to think I'm going to send out
information."

   He took Lora in his arms again, ordered Fenrir and Sigyn to wait there
for him, and went back into the tunnels.
    He came to the tunnel that led toward Iron Mountain and turned up it.
He walked on and on and it seemed to him the tunnel was much longer
than he remembered it being. Not once did Lora move or show any sign of
life and he walked faster, the fear growing that it would be too late when
he reached the Kilvarl.

   He came, at last, to the end of the tunnel. He shifted his hand, to try to
find some sign of a heart beat.

   There was none and he thought with a cold and terrible fear: She's
already dead.

  He made his thought to the Kilvarl quick and sharp and clear:

  I ask you to save her if you can.

  The Kilvarl answer was a mocking question:

  "So you have come to the Kilvarl for help, after all?"

  "Yes," he said, and waited for the Kilvarl reply.

   The reply came as a slight stir from Lora in his arms and the whisper of
a drawn breath. He looked and saw the faintest touch of color return to
her cheeks.

   The Kilvarl are already working to save her: he thought I was right—
the Kilvarl are our friends!

  The thought of the Kilvarl came in answer:

   If we are to let you watch us torture her to death, we must first
restore her to consciousness and awareness of pain."

   But he could not believe that the statement was more than an example
of what the Kilvarl regarded as humor…

  The Kilvarl spoke again. "Go back the way you came."

   He had gone only a little way when he came to an intersecting tunnel,
one that had not been there before, and saw the Kilvarl waiting there. It
was the Kilvarl he had shot, an ugly furrow ripped across its chest by the
blaster beam.
  "Go down this tunnel," the Kilvarl said.

  He did so, the Kilvarl padding silently beside him.

   "If the Shomarians are the ones who raided Ragnarok," he said, "we're
soon going to be in battle with them. So I also came to talk about a
Ragnarokan-Kilvarl alliance."

  "Your worth as an ally remains to be seen. Your trust in the
Shomarians has gotten you in a position that you are not yet aware of."

  "Such as what?" he asked.

  "For one thing, you will not use your ships against the Shomarians.
This is not a conjecture—it is the statement of a fact."

  "I cannot believe that anything could ever prevent us from using our
own ships."

   "Then you will learn something tonight. A test of your worth as our
allies will follow; a test which Sar-Fane, himself, will give you."

  "How will we react?" he asked.

   "We do not know. We are telepaths, not seers. Therefore, you will
learn little of the Kilvarl while you are in here."

  "But you will save Lora?" he asked.

  "That is our present intention."

   They came to an area where many tunnels and compartments opened
into the tunnel they went down. All the tunnels were dark, the only light
that of the searchlight on his helmet.

  The Kilvarl said when they entered that area, "Look straight ahead. Do
not try to see what we may have in these other passageways."

  He looked straight ahead.

  They came finally to what seemed to be the beginning of a very large
opening. The nearer part of it was very dimly illuminated.
  "Turn off your light," the Kilvarl said.

  He did so, but he had already seen what seemed to be the skeleton of a
small ship in the darkness beyond.

    "Perhaps," the Kilvarl said laconically. "Carry her to the table to your
left."

  There was a small alcove a short distance to the left, a low, wide padded
couch, and a Kilvarl so old that he—or she— was silver-gold in color.

   He laid Lora on the couch. The gray old Kilvarl sniffed her cheek as the
prowlers had done then looked up at John and said:

  "Shomarian 'menusi? drug—you humans have blind noses or you
could smell it for yourselves."

  "You are a doctor?" he asked.

  The old Kilvarl swung around to look impatiently down a nearby tunnel
and did not answer. The Kilvarl be had shot said:

  "Grandmother Shela is not a doctor by human standards, but she can
cure the girl."

    There was a flash of yellow down the tunnel and a kitten came running
with a small metal bowl in its mouth. Its running ended with a quick,
graceful leap to the top of the table and he saw that the bowl was almost
filled with a green liquid of some kind.

  The old Kilvarl, Shela, said to him:

  "Lift her to a sitting position."

  "This is the medicine that will neutralize the menusi drug?" he asked.

   The faded green eyes of Shela narrowed and her lips pulled back in a
toothless half snarl.

   "Do not ask stupidly unnecessary questions—lift her up and give her
the medicine."

  He put his arm behind Lora's back and lifted her up. He took the bowl
from the mouth of the kitten—who was watching him with bright-eyed
curiosity—and held the bowl to Lora's lips.

   To his surprise, she began drinking. Her eyes were closed and she was
not conscious, yet she drank until the bowl was empty. It would be due to
a telepathic command from Shela, of course…

   He laid her back down, set the bowl down, and said to Shela:

   "Take care of her for me, and make her well again."

   Shela, her eyes on Lora, answered with one short word: "Go!

   Again he obeyed without protest, following the other Kilvarl. There was
an air of competence and authority about old Shela which made him feel
for the first time in days that he would have Lora back.

   "Somehow, I didn't expect telepaths to need names for identification,"
he said to the Kilvarl.

   "We also have a spoken language—a relic of the pre-telepathic days
which we do not want to discard completely. My name is Darag—given
for your information in case the Ragnarokans pass the test and become
our allies."

   "I'm sorry I tried to kill you," he said. "I was a suspicious fool."

   "Yes," Darag said in disturbingly complete agreement "You were very
stupid."

  There was a movement in the half-darkness ahead, then another Kilvarl
was suddenly standing before them.

  He was the largest and most impressive Kilvarl John had yet seen.
About him was an aura of pride and of arrogance so that John thought
again of his first impression of the Kilvarl: Like the lords of all the races.
He knew that the Kilvarl facing him would be the leader of all the Kilvarl.

   "This is Volar." Darag said.

  "You have seen little." The thought of Volar came quick and cold. "You
will see more only after you have proved you are our allies. Go back to
your ship. The Shomarians have only begun with you."
  Volar turned and was gone. The first meeting with the Kilvarl leader
was over.

   He looked over at Lora. Old Shela was sitting beside her, the green eyes
intent on her. He had the impression that Shela was probing deep into
Lora's subconscious, already beginning the work of removing the
memories of horror.

  "I'll go back and tell the others that we've made a mistake," he said to
Darag.

  "You have no conception, yet, as to how great that mistake was,"
Darag replied.

  Fenrir and Sigyn were waiting for him just within the entrance;
question in their eyes because he had returned without Lora. Dan Destry
was waiting outside. His spotlight flashed bright on John's face.

   "Well, you look normal enough," Destry said. "And you left Lora with
them. Which makes it seem like we're about to change sides."

   "I think so," he answered. "I'm going to have a talk with Novla and
Garron next, and make them give some answers. Keep your camp
communicator hooked in with the Ragnarok's control room so you'll know
everything that happens there. Start getting all the women and children
into the tunnels now, and have the men ready to go at any time it seems
necessary."

   He picked up his blaster and knife, set Tip on his shoulder, and went to
the lifeboat. Fenrir and Sigyn trotted ahead of him, as though eager for
the conflicts to come.

   Dale was waiting for him inside the airlock. As Destry had done, he
turned a bright light in John's eyes.

  "You look the same as ever," Dale said. "Dan just sent word that you left
Lora there. The Shomarians have guessed that you did and they already
have it planned how to save her. Hesnar, himself, came with Novla and
Garron to show us what we should do."

  "That's thoughtful of Hesnar. I doubt that we'll do it his way, though."
  "You're certain, now, that the Shomarians are the enemy?" Dale asked.

    "As certain as anybody could be at this stage. I'm going to be absolutely
certain by the time I finish with the Shomarians, and so will everyone who
is listening in."

   "Red is down there with the Prowler, wanting to get started killing
Kilvarl. I'll use a mocker to tell him to keep his communicator in circuit
with ours and be ready to change his mind."

   "When you come back, stand behind the Shomarians, Dale. I want to
try an experiment."

  He went down the corridor and said to Fenrir and Sigyn, just before the
control room door was reached, "Stay by the door when I go in."

   He went into the control room. Fenrir and Sigyn stopped just within
the doorway, one on each side, to become like ebony statues but for the
hatred in their yellow eyes as they watched the Shomarians.

   Norman gave him a searching look of appraisal, then a faint smile that
said, "So you were right!"

  Garron had the hard, almost expressionless look characteristic of him,
combined now with a dark thoughtfulness that John had not seen before.
Novla looked tired and worried, sitting slumped in his chair.

  Hesnar was resplendent in a dress uniform. He took a step forward,
smiling in the manner of one not accustomed to it, and said:

   "I feel that I should apologize for my actions in your little ship when you
were on Shomar. You understand, of course, that the belligerence I
displayed toward the girl—and also, I should say on my own behalf, the
timidity I displayed toward you—were due to hypnosis by the Kilvarl on
your ship."

  "Think nothing of it, Commander," he said. "I'm sure your true
character will soon become apparent to all of us."

  Hesnar's smile vanished and the little mouth tightened with suspicion.

  "The girl, sir,"—Novla was looking at him with both question and dread
on his face—"you left that dying girl with the Kilvarl, didn't you?"

   "They were working with her when I left," he answered. "She was
already getting better."

  Novla sighed, exchanged glances with Hesnar and Garron, and said to
John with pity in his tone:

   "You fell into their trap—they will use the girl as a hostage. Why, sir,
did you have to refuse our own offer to save her and turn her over to those
animals?"

   "Your blunder can be rectified," Hesnar said in a tone of crisp decision.
"I have already told the others what we must do—the only thing we can do
to save the girl. We will attack immediately, and with such smashing force
that we will have Kilvarl hostages of our own to guarantee that they will
not dare harm her."

   Hesnar spoke into his wrist communicator, a brief order of some kind.
John glanced at the viewscreen and saw a cruiser already dropping down
toward the ground.

  "The ground forces selected from our ships," Garron said in
explanation. "Four thousand of our best fighting men."

   Dale came back into the room and unobtrusively took up a position
behind the Shomarians. Novla cleared his throat and said, "You are most
fortunate, sir, that Sector Commander Hesnar should be here to
personally take charge of the situation. He is a most brilliant man, despite
his appearance of youth, and he will certainly see to it that you have the
girl back again, safe and unharmed, if you do exactly as he asks you to do."

   Hesnar turned to John again and said in quick, curt command, "Order
your men to assemble at once. We will attack within twenty minutes at the
latest. Have them form in ranks before the cliff and—"

    The communicator on Hesnar's wrist spoke in Shomarian. Hesnar
listened, frowning, then said in angry question to John:

 "There is a mass movement of your people toward the tunnel entrances.
What is the meaning of this?"
   "Safety precaution," he answered. "The women and children are going
to be much safer in the tunnels."

  "The Kilvarl will hypnotize them—order them all back into the city!"

   There was a movement on the viewscreen and he saw that a
battleship—the First Fleet's flagship, not Hesnar's—had moved up near
the Ragnarok. It could with equal ease fire into the Ragnarok or into the
Ragnarokans in the city…

   "I said you must order your people back out of the tunnels!" Hesnar's
face was turning dark with his increasing anger. "The Shomarian Society
has gone to a great deal of effort and expense to help you Ragnarokans
and I cannot tolerate interference—"

  "Just a minute," John said. "I want to tell you that the Kilvarl claim you
Shomarians are deceitful."

   "Sir!" Novla's tone said plainly that he regarded the statement as very
stupid. "Of course the Kilvarl would tell you such lies as that! I have
warned you many times—how could you be so naive as to place any
credence in the lies of our mutual enemy?"

  "You Shomarians have never deceived us in any way?"

  "Certainly not! Never, in any way whatsoever!"

   "Then why," he asked, "do you have concealed microphones and
viewscreens in those third-level detectors?"

  There was a shocked silence, in which even the mouth of Garron
dropped open in astonishment as they stared at him.

  Novla was the first to recover.

  "I—I'm afraid I don't understand, sir. Concealed microphones?"

  "And viewscreens. Why are they there?"

   "Sir—I cannot understand this sudden baseless suspicion of us! I
thought we were allies! How can you—"

  "Answer my question—why have you been spying on us?"
  Novla sighed and hung his head for a moment, as though in shame.
Then he looked up and said:

  "We admit it, sir—we spied on you. But we had to, for your own welfare.
We—"

  "How did you know we had microphones and viewscreens here?"
Hesnar demanded.

  "That's beside the point, Hesnar. Go ahead, Novla," he said.

   "We had to make sure that the Kilvarl weren't influencing you without
your knowledge—a difficult task since we do not know your language. We
could do this with a fair degree of efficiency only if you were unaware of
the fact that we were keeping you under observation. This—ah—spying,
even though it was even more for your protection than ours, was an act
very repugnant to us and one which only the gravity of the impending
Kilvarl offensive could ever have forced us to engage in. I trust you will
understand, sir, and forgive us."

    "We had a very valid reason for what we did," Hesnar said, his curt
tone of command back again. "I gave you some orders. Obey them at once
if you want us to save the girl for you."

  John spoke in Ragnarokan, without looking away from Hesnar:

   "A forthcoming prescription will be mixed with Terran salt. Shoot these
three enemies in the back, Dale."

   The alarm of men who knew death was at hand flashed instantly across
the faces of all three Shomarians. They whirled to face Dale; Garron's
hand reaching swiftly for his blaster, Hesnar pawing frantically and
fumbling the draw, Novla with his empty hands half lifted and a pleading
"No!" of protest.

   Dale, his blaster still in its holster, knocked Garron's weapon out of his
hand as it came up. He did the same with Hesnar, when Hesnar had
finally managed to draw his own blaster.

  "Relax," John said to the Shomarians. "You were in no danger—Dale
knew the order was not to be carried out."
  They turned back to face him; Novla with the look of a man both
shaken and relieved, Garron with the grim look of a dangerous man who
has just met his master, Hesnar with black-faced fury.

   "That was a test," John said. "I wanted to make sure that you lied when
you said you didn't know our language." Novla licked his lips, in his eyes
the expression of a man whose mind was darting about like a rat in a
cage, trying to find a means of escape.

  "But, sir—you do not understand! We learned a few words of your
parent language from the Gerns who landed on Shomar—enough that we
knew you were ordering this man to kill us. That is all. You are the first
Ragnarokans we ever met and we—"

  "Shut up!" he said. "You learned our language from the ones taken by
your Ghost ship. Now we have found the enemy!"

  "And now," Norman said to the Shomarians, "you will get the action
you wanted."

  He stepped before them and even Garron shrank back a little from him.

   "I, personally," Norman said, "with my bare hands, am going to kill all
three of you. Remember how you had the Ragnarokan prisoners torn to
pieces while they were still alive? You're going to know how it feels to die
that way."

   "Not now, Norman," John said, watching the way Novla was quaking
like speechless jelly in his chair and the way Hesnar's black face had
suddenly turned a sweat-filmed gray. "I want to do some questioning.
Then we'll keep them around as hostages—we'll use Hesnar as they were
going to use Lora."

  The Ghost ship detector spoke, in the voice of Sar-Fane, cold with
warning:

  "You will keep no hostages."

  He looked up at the Ghost ship detector. "So you're with us, too? On
Hesnar's ship—or on Shomar?"

  Sar-Fane ignored the question. "I have a remote-control device before
me. There are three buttons on it; a button for each of your ships."

  "And so?"

  "Each of those third-level detectors contains a small nuclear bomb.
These three buttons control those three bombs. Your smallest ship will be
destroyed in a moment to prove to you that these bombs exist. Look at it
now, and learn that Shomarians do not make idle threats…"

   John looked up at the viewscreen, feeling suddenly very helpless, and
thought, Red will have heard his death sentence through the
communicator pick-up—

   The screen flared with pale blue as the full fire power of the Prowler
lashed out at the Shomarian battleship overhead, and the communicator
said in the voice of Red, as though he was talking to himself:

  "Elaine, this one is for you—"

  Then the viewscreen blazed with the light of a nuclear explosion; a
dazzling flash where the Prowler had been.

   He was blinded by the flash and could see only the bright incandescent
glow which followed. The Ragnarok trembled with the concussion of the
blast and the voice of Sar-Fane asked in metallic tones:

  "Do you believe now?"

   The glow faded swiftly and the outline of the viewscreen became visible.
At that time, ten seconds after the flash of the blast that had destroyed
the Prowler, the audio pick-ups of the Ragnarok registered another
sound.

  It was the crashing thud of a heavy object striking the ground below.

  He went to the control board, his eyes far from completely recovered,
and turned on the Ragnarok's huge searchlights. The viewscreen lighted
and he saw the Shomarian battleship; lying broken and crumpled in the
rubble of the dead city.

   The Shomarians were staring in shocked silence, as though it was
incredible that it could be a Shomarian battleship they saw.
  "Do you realize what you have done?"

   Sar-Fane spoke from the Ghost ship detector; belatedly, as though he,
too, had been voiceless with shock.

   "So you're still with us?" John answered. "I was hoping that you might
have been on that battleship. I'm going to take your son into another
room, now, and ask him some questions. If he's cooperative about it, he
won't get hurt."

   "There will be no torturing of Sector Commander Hesnar. Your
cruiser will be destroyed if you do not permit him to return to his ship at
once."

  The communicator spoke in the voice of Cliff as John hesitated:

   "Well call his bluff, Johnny. He would blow up the Unicorn to save
Hesnar's life but not to save Hesnar from some questions. After all,
cruisers like this one are valuable loot."

   Sar-Fane said nothing and John took Hesnar by the arm. "Come on," he
said.

   Fenrir and Sigyn, snarling, went with them down the corridor and into
the room where Barbara had been tied in the chair.

  "Sit down in that chair," he said to Hesnar.

   Hesnar sat down and the prowlers crowded up close to him, one on
each side of him, their slanted yellow eyes watching him intently as
though hoping be might give them an excuse to attack.

   "I suppose you realize what they would do if I left you alone with
them?"

  Hesnar swallowed. "They would kill me instantly."

   "Not instantly." He shook his head, smiling. "Prowlers are very loyal.
After seeing you try to murder that unarmed girl, they would want you to
die slowly, by tearing you apart in small pieces."

  "Suppose"—Hesnar swallowed again—"suppose I answer your
questions—how do I know you won't let them tear me up, anyway?"
   "You have my word that I won't."

   "But only your word—that is no guarantee—"

  He opened the door behind him and said to the prowlers, "Hesnar
doesn't want to take the word of a Ragnarokan. If he gets to screaming so
much that it annoys you, tear out his tongue."

   Fenrir and Sigyn, with sounds of blood-thirsty anticipation, reared up
to shove their snarling faces close to Hesnar's.

  Hesnar swallowed again. "So that is your threat—if I don't answer your
questions, you will let these beasts tear me to death?"

   John made no comment but went to one of the medical supplies
cabinets. There was alcohol there, and a bottle of Terran whiskey. He filled
a water glass with the whiskey and took it to Hesnar.

   "You might feel more at ease if you drank this," he said, and handed it
to Hesnar.

  Hesnar took it suspiciously, smelled it, then drank in the manner of a
man much in need of something to bolster his courage.

   "This is hardly the equivalent of our aged Shomarian wine," he said,
shuddering, "but—" He took another large drink. "I suppose you gave me
this to make me more talkative?" he asked, assurance already returning to
him. "There is really no reason why I should not answer your
questions—you can do nothing about the situation you now face, anyway."

  "At the first lie you tell, I'll turn you over to the prowlers," he said. "How
many third-level ships do you have?"

  "The one that is here now, and two more almost completed on
Fendeen."

   "Why did you spy on us during the war?"

  Hesnar paused, as though to form an evasive answer. John said to
Fenrir:

   "He's going to lie. Start on him by ripping your claws down through
his—"
   "Wait!" Hesnar said quickly. "I'll tell you! It's because your race was
going to bring about the defeat of the Gern Empire—and we are the race
which created the Gern Empire!"

    There was a silence as John considered the revelation. Hesnar's thin
little mouth twisted in a smile as he watched him.

   "So you find it hard to comprehend?" Hesnar asked. "After finally
defeating the Gern Empire you find that your grand victory is quite
meaningless, that this mighty Gern Empire was merely a puppet faction of
the Shomarian Society which you have now elected to antagonize."

  "When did all this start?" he asked.

  "Five hundred Gern years ago. The Gerns were a race both aggressive
and easily influenced by Shomarian sociologists posing as Gerns. Forces
were set in motion that would within a few centuries produce the
complete integration of all races in that sector, all controlled by
Shomarian agents acting behind the scenes."

   "If you wanted the Gerns to dominate their space sector, why didn't you
give them a helping hand in the war?"

   "The Gerns were no longer of value to us if they could not defeat an
invading force composed of rabble—of sullen Terrans, of half-frightened
ex-slaves from Athena, and of half-animal savages from Ragnarok."

  "Why did you kidnap those women and children?"

  "As specimens for study—and perhaps for breeding purposes."

  "What was the object in driving us from Ragnarok?"

   "If we decided you were a race more troublesome than valuable, we had
only to reseed every twenty years with the blindness isotope and thereby
force you to merge with the people of Earth and Athena and become like
them."

  "How did you lure Barbara out of my ship—by using her sister under
drug-hypnosis control?"

  "Yes."
  "Did you know about the two prowlers in the ship?"

  "No. They sneaked out afterward. We never did see them."

  "What was this so-called new warship that blew up?"

  "An obsolete freighter which we were going to scrap. It was sent out
under robot control and the bomb in it detonated at the proper time from
Garron's ship."

  "The drug-hypnosis treatment given Barbara was a failure, wasn't it?"

  "Shomarians never fail."

   "But she ran amuck with you and actually killed Shomarians, didn't
she?"

   Hesnar hesitated, looked at the prowlers again, and said with hatred,
"So you would like to trick me into agreeing and give you an excuse to let
those beasts tear me to pieces? The answer, damn you, is No!"

  "Barbara killed no one? Then who did?"

  "How should I know about such minor details? Men from the Special
Guard Corps, I suppose."

  "You mean that your father deliberately ordered the murder of
twenty-eight of his own people, including twenty-one helpless children?"

   "They were all taken from among the least essential working classes and
represented no particular loss. It would be beyond your limited social
comprehension if I should explain that these people were honored in being
selected as the ones to make such an important contribution to the
furtherance of the Plan."

  "What about all these Kilvarl directed attacks that Sar-Fane told me
about?"

  "There were no Kilvarl on Shomar."

  "Sar-Fane claimed he couldn't see me that night because he was in
another city inspecting the damage. Where was he, actually?"
   "How should I know? Since it was night, I suppose he was in bed with
his newest Honor Virgin."

   "His newest what!"

   "Honor Virgin—these are exceptionally attractive girls selected from
the working classes to be bred by men of the upper classes to improve the
lower class strain."

  "I see," he said. "And I suppose the supreme honor for one of these girls
would be to be up-bred by Sar-Fane himself?"

   "Of course."

   "This so-called 'Kilvarl third-level fleet'—is that an electronic gadget a
fraction of a lightyear out in space?"

   "Yes."

  "Do these third-level detectors you put in our ships actually show your
Ghost ship?"

   "Do you think we're stupid?"

   "What would you do with the electronic telepath machines if you could
get enough Kilvarl to learn how to build them?"

   "What do you think, barbarian?" The effect of the whiskey was
increasing. "We would carry out the Plan within our own lifetimes. That is
why we went to the effort and expense of holding the First Fleet here and
our third-level ship, of creating certain stage effects here and on Shomar
and of forcing ourselves to pretend that you and your bearded savages
were our equals, and even saying 'sir' to you."

   Hesnar drank the rest of the whiskey and tossed the glass aside. It
shattered on the floor as Hesnar added, "And you and your pack can do
nothing to stop us from getting what we want. You were potentially useful
to us. Now that you do not care to serve us, you will learn what happens to
those who oppose the will of the Shomarian Society."

  "That sounds interesting," he said. "I have a few more questions, then
we'll see what kind of tutors you Shomarians are."
  When they returned to the control room, Sar-Fane was speaking:

  "—and you now have exactly three minutes ol time, as measured by
your own chronometer, in which to bring Sector Commander Hesnar
back into this room."

   Dale walking toward the door, stopped and said, "I had just started
after you, Johnny. Sar-Fane was going to blow up the Unicorn."

  "What did you learn from Junior?" Norman asked.

   "That the Kilvarl told the truth," he said, "and the Gern Empire was
actually Shomarian."

  Sar-Fane spoke from the Ghost detector:

   "No more time shall be wasted. If I find it necessary to destroy your
cruiser, you can do nothing about it. If you kill Commander Hesnar, in
return, there will then be no reason for me not to destroy your
battleship. So you will cooperate with us now against the Kilvarl or lose
your cruiser and all the Ragnarokans on it."

  Cliff spoke from the communicator: I think it's another bluff. Call it."

   "Shomarians do not bluff. However, to save both time and needless
destruction, you are offered an alternative— a generous reward for your
cooperation—the world of Kilvar."

   "I'm sure we are inclined to believe you," John said, "as we stand here
beside these bombs that you put in our ships under the pretense of
friendship."

   "Our trust in you is much greater than your trust in us. Give us your
solemn promise to cooperate with us and the bombs shall be removed
from your ships at once, before the attack ever begins."

  "Which is not so trusting of him," Norman remarked, "when he knows
we would keep our word if he could ever persuade us to give it."

   "There's the matter of ninety-nine of our people that you Shomarians
murdered," John said to Sar-Fane. "I don't think we're quite ready to
forget that."
  There was a silence, then Sar-Fane said:

  "I will make you one more offer, and no more. For your cooperation in
capturing as many Kilvarl as possible you will be rewarded with not
only the world of Kilvar but also with this—

  "Look!"

   Dramatically, as Sar-Fane spoke, the Ghost ship appeared in the
viewscreen.

   It materialized beside the Ragnarok, no more than a ship's length
away. It was an enormous thing, far larger than the Ragnarok, and it
seemed to glow with some strange, pale light of its own.

    "You are a restless race," Sar-Fane said. "As I said, the world of Kilvar
is yours—but perhaps you would prefer to explore another galaxy. The
Greater Magellanic Cloud is less than a year away for Ragnarokans in
that third-level ship. Give us your promise to capture as many Kilvarl as
possible and you may board the third-level ship with armed men, at
once, to watch every move the crew makes as well as to learn from the
crew how to operate the ship.

   "The supplies of the First Fleet are at your disposal—you may take
whatever you want. Cooperate with us tonight and by this time
tomorrow the Race of Ragnarok can already be many lightyears away
on its voyage to another galaxy."

  Fane's closing words were delivered in a manner as dramatic as the
appearance of the Ghost ship had been and John saw that Hesnar and
Novla were both completely at ease now, waiting for his reaction with
confident expectation.

  Norman laughed, a hard, mirthless sound, and Dale said, "I wonder
how it would be to shave without a mirror for the rest of your life because
you were ashamed to look yourself in the face?"

   "I do not understand those references." San-Fane's tone was abruptly
brittle with threat "You have been offered a reward without precedent
and one to which you are not entitled. Make your choice now, without
delay. Which do you want us to give you: freedom and another galaxy,
or your extinction as a race?"
   "We could never go far enough," he said in reply, "to escape what would
follow us all the way and never leave us for the rest of our lives—the
memory of murdered women and children whose deaths we did not try to
avenge, the ghosts of slaughtered Kilvarl, the screams of dying kittens.
These would be things beyond your comprehension, so I'll just get to the
point, which is this: go to hell."

   There was a silence like the one which had followed the destruction of
the Shomarian battleship, one in which the three Shomarians stared in
disbelief.

  Norman looked at the Ghost ship detector and said:

   "Sar-Fane, did anybody ever tell you what the Shomarians are? You're a
breed of parasites who have produced nothing during your existence.
Everything you Shomarians have— such as that Kilvarl third-level
ship—was stolen from other, superior, races. So it's no use for you to try to
buy the alliance of the Ragnarokans. We could never consider lowering
ourselves to the degenerate, parasitic level of the Shomarians."

  John saw that Novla was goggling, unable to believe that anyone could
have spoken so of the Shomarians, and Hesnar's face was black again.

   When Sar-Fane spoke, his voice carried the thick undertone of intense
hatred:

   "You savages will receive the lesson you have asked for. Commander
Hesnar, Novla, and Garron will be in their own ships within five minutes
or your cruiser will be destroyed."

  John looked at Hesnar, thinking, So long as we have him for hostage,
Sar-Fane won't dare—

  As though in answer to his thought, Sar-Fane said:

  "Perhaps you would like to use Commander Hesnar for concessions of
some kind, such as permission to remove the bomb from your ship?
These business discussions will be held after I destroy your cruiser. You
now have four and one-half minutes."

  "I suggest that you release us at once," Garron said. He exhibited no
emotion, his tone that of a man stating a fact. "Lord Sar-Fane will do
exactly as he said."

   Novla was out of his chair, ready to go; the kind, gentle look gone from
his face like a mask and hard lines of cruelty showing through the fat.

   "The Shomarians have encountered many races of backward
primitives," Novla said, his tone like acid. "But the Ragnarokans are
unique—the first race of savages ever found which have the intelligence to
realize, and the frankness to admit, that animals rather than humans are
their peers."

  "Thank you for placing us above the Shomarians," he said. He looked at
Garron. "Do you have any parting personal opinions?"

   Garron answered without expression, "I am a Shomarian soldier. You
represent the enemy. No personal opinions are required."

   "You!" Hesnar jabbed a finger at John in imperious command, his face
twisted and snarling. "Get your fellow animals, those prowlers, away from
that door so I can return to my ship!"

  The allotted five minutes was swiftly diminishing. He said to Norman,
knowing that Dale would stay with the ship, "Let's get on down to camp."

   Dale looked at the Ghost ship detector. "Don't fire on their lifeboat," he
said to Sar-Fane, "Not if you want Junior back all in one piece."

   John and Norman were getting into the lifeboat, Fenrir and Sigyn with
them, when the first thought of any kind came from the Kilvarl. He
recognized it as coming from Volar:

  "You have passed the test. You have proved yourselves to be a race of
hare-brained idealists."

  There was the usual mockery in the words, but now it was different.
There were the undertones of respect, and a certain comradeship, that
had never been in the thoughts of a Kilvarl before.

  He saw by Norman's surprised expression that he had received the
same thought.

   "What are the Shomarians going to do now?" he asked Volar.
   "Sar-Fane is now exceedingly displeased with you Ragnarokans and a
force of twenty thousand ground troops will start for Kilvar as soon as
they have marched into the ships. Twenty thousand more will follow an
hour later. Their orders are to kill and capture every Ragnarokan to the
last child, regardless of the cost."

  "We'll see if we can't make that order cost him his empire."

  There was a sense of amusement from Volar.

  "You sound like a Kilvarl."

   The lifeboat left the Ragnarok and passed under the Ghost ship. It
loomed over them like a pale mountain, more than ever dwarfing the
battleship.

   "You have to be out like this," Norman said, "to realize just how big
that thing is. It could have taken us to another galaxy, all right, with room
to spare."

  "Maybe it will yet," he answered, then said to the distant Volar, "How
much time will we have?"

  "The attack against us will begin as soon as the forty thousand troops
are in position—about twenty hours."

   He used Tip to call Destry as the lifeboat dropped downward and
received the assurance, "Everybody's back inside now. Had to leave a lot of
our stuff, of course, but we took every crossbow and blaster."

  He landed the lifeboat as close as possible to a tunnel entrance,
knowing that a Shomarian ship would try to kill them the instant Hesnar
was out of the Ragnarok. They hurried into the entrance and were no
more than far enough back to be safe when the ground shook and there
came the crashing roar of disintegrator beams.

   "Opening shots of the war," Norman said. "Damn it— we could have
used that lifeboat."

   Only Destry was there to meet them and John asked, "Where are the
others?"
   "The Kilvarl opened up some tunnels back under the mountain that
none of us knew about and these tunnels have enough ground over them to
make them fairly safe," Destry said. "Barbara has been taken back to the
Kilvarl and Paul is going to sew up the Kilvarl you shot. All of us are glad
that we finally know who the enemy is—but what do we do about that
enemy, now?"

   "We'll see," he answered. "Tell Charley Craig to get everybody rounded
up who has studied electronics, metallurgy, and so on. We'll look at that
ship the Kilvarl started." Norman went with him as he hurried ahead of
Destry and he spoke aloud to Volar so that Norman could hear what he
said:

  "There will be about four thousand Ragnarokans for combat, counting
boys down to fourteen and quite a few women. How many Kilvarl for
combat?"

   "One thousand, with the same type of selection. We are not a very
large race."

   "Total: five thousand," he said, "plus six hundred prowlers. Enemy
force; forty-four thousand plus some Weasels and a full battle fleet."

   "If only we could have the Ragnarok and Unicorn," Norman said.
"Those bombs we gratefully let them put in our ships—of all the trusting
idiots! No wonder the Kilvarl had a low opinion of our value as allies."

   They were almost to the first lighted side runnel when a Kilvarl, silvery
with age, came out of it and faced them.

   Fenrir and Sigyn stopped short, dropping to half crouching positions,
ready to spring, the fur lifted a little on their shoulders.

   "For a certain reason," the Kilvarl said, "they are reserving judgment
on the Kilvarl. My name is Zorn. I will show you the ship."

  "Are the drive and drive controls ready in the ship?" he asked.

  "Not yet," Zorn answered.

  They walked on. Fenrir and Sigyn went in front, watching right and left
and moving with the wary alertness of prowlers ready to fight at any
instant. They looked hopefully down each side runnel, then went on
without further interest in it when they failed to see what they were
looking for.

   They passed a large room in which vats for the production of synthetic
food could be seen and Zorn said, 'A tasteless necessity, so that we can
both eat and remain in complete hiding"

   They passed a large runnel which opened into a room at the other end.
Machines were in the room, turning out parts of some kind. Kilvarl sat
before the machines, occasionally rearing up on their haunches to
manipulate controls with their front paws.

   A four-wheel cart, loaded high with unfinished parts, went by. A Kilvarl
was pushing it, walking on his hind legs, his front paws on the back of the
cart.

   "Yes—it must be an odd sight to you," Zorn said, and John realized
that both he and Norman had stopped to stare.

   They walked on again and Zorn said, "Nature didn't design the Kilvarl
for manual labor—whether skilled or unskilled. The results are not
exactly dignified -when a Kilvarl pushes a cart. And now, with all of us
working on the ship, there are not enough carts."

   This was proved at the next runnel they passed.

   They heard a metallic slithering sound and saw four kittens dragging a
heavy metal plate by ropes in their mouths; their feet slipping on the floor
as they tried to pull the plate still faster.

    Hurrying and stumbling behind them came a very small kitten,
carrying by one of the projections a plastic insulator almost as large as it
was. Its neck was bowing from the weight and, as they watched, the
insulator slipped out of the grip of the little teeth and dropped to the floor.
The kitten slumped to the floor beside it, panting, its pink tongue out and
its bright green eyes watching them.

  It rested only a few seconds, however, then it picked up its burden
again and hurried to try to catch up with the others.

   "Reminds you of the story of the Rejects, doesn't it?" Norman said.
"Remember how, when they built the stockade, the very smallest children
were trying to help by dragging in poles that weighed more than they
did?"

  Norman looked back at the kitten again.

  "Determined little fellow, isn't he? He's ready to drop in his tracks and
won't admit it."

  They walked on a little way farther, and Norman said:

  "I wish I hadn't killed that Kilvarl, Johnny. Damn it—I like this race."

   They came to the cavern. It was lighted this time, and the ship was in
plain view.

   It was what John had suspected it to be: the skeleton of a ship no larger
than a twenty-man scout ship.

   Kilvarl were all over the ship, especially around the second-level-shift
section. Adult Kilvarl and kittens were everywhere in the cavern, taking
materials to the ship and doing other work.

   Fenrir and Sigyn took in the scene with quick, sweeping glances, their
heads lifted as though hoping to find scent of something. Then Sigyn saw
the couches to the left and spoke to Fenrir with a sound that was like an
excited squeak…

   Lora was there, Shela still beside her. On the couch which had been
placed beside Lora was Barbara. Both girls seemed to be sleeping.

   Fenrir and Sigyn were two black flashes across the floor as they went to
the girls, snarling at a Kilvarl in passing.

   Shela turned to face them, a snarl on her own face and a paw half lifted
to strike. The prowlers ignored her and reared up over Barbara, to look
down into her face and sniff her cheek. A moment later they were doing
the same with Lora.

   Then they relaxed, all the tenseness and challenge suddenly gone. They
turned to look at old Shela with no slightest sign of enmity. Shela, in turn,
lost her own defiance. The snarl left her face, the uplifted paw dropped
back to the floor, and she and the prowlers looked at each other for a little
while as though each was trying to say something to the other.

  The prowlers came trotting back, satisfied assurance on Fenrir's face
and a happy grin on Sigyn's. This time, when they looked at Zorn, there
was a matter-of-fact acceptance of him.

  " The Kilvarl have passed the test," Zorn said.

   John looked at the still figure of Lora, wanting to see her again. Shela
looked back at him and her quick, curt thought came:

  "Now she sleeps. Get on with your work."

   They went on to the ship, averting their eyes from the electric welders,
used by Kilvarl who looked like monsters in their masks.

  The second-level-shft seemed to be fairly well on the way to completion
but the drive was days from being ready.

   "It doesn't look very promising," he said to Zorn. "I don't see how that
drive could be finished in less than four days."

   "Unfortunately," Zorn said, "the drive situation isn't even that good.
The additional metal we must have is out in the city, being watched over
by the Shomarian First Fleet."

   He used Tip to call Charley Craig and said, "Charley, hurry on back here
with every man who can do anything from electronic assembly to
hammering a rivet or pushing a cart. There's an impossible job waiting for
you."

  "What do you think of the Kilvarl fleet?" It was Volar, suddenly
appearing from somewhere.

   Norman looked with objective interest at Volar's massive shoulders and
huge jaws and said, 'To be honest, I'm more impressed by you than your
fleet."

   "I think we can finish your second-level-shift in time," John said to
Volar. "Hands are a lot faster than paws. The drive—that will be a
problem. What do you have in the way of weapons?"
   "We have six medium-duty disintegrators. Enough to break down the
disintegrator shield of a Shomarian cruiser— if we could get close
enough to it, and be allowed to remain undisintegrated, ourselves, for
long enough."

   "Well think of some way to get ourselves a Shomarian ship," he said.

   He thought of the single alternative, the centuries of running and
hiding for the few survivors, and asked Volar, "Do the Shomarians have
animals for tracking?"

   "They have gillars," Volar answered. "The Shomarian police use them
often—things that resemble Terran wolverines. The Shomarian troop
ships will bring two hundred of them so that no more than one
Ragnarokan woman or child out of ten will have any hope of escaping
capture."

   Charley Craig appeared a few minutes later, a giant of a man, his face
bristling with a red beard, impatience in his quick movements. Ten men
were with him.

   "So that's the ship?" Charley said. "Hell, it's not even a full skeleton. No
drive—but let's take a look…"

   Charley and his men, each accompanied by a Kilvarl to make
explanations and answer questions, gave the ship a quick but thorough
examination.

   "Twenty hours to finish the second-level-shift," Charley said when the
inspection was completed. "If we work like maniacs and are lucky besides.
But what are we going to use for a drive?"

   "Well improvise something," John answered. "That shift is the big
job—without it we can't even get the ship out of this cave."

   Charley turned to Zorn. "Let's see your workshops, so I can get my boys
started. Where in hell"—he was already on his way as he talked—"are they,
anyway? Look at those kittens pulling that stuff in with ropes! Jack, send
out an order for a tote-crew to come on the run—"

  "I'm going to take a look at those Kilvarl disintegrators," Norman said,
and left in company with a Kilvarl. .John turned to Volar. "I suppose the
transition-lag field in your ship here is the same as in ours—about twenty
seconds before the field collapses completely and all the air escapes?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you Kilvarl have any space suits?"

  "No."

   "Neither do we, and the Shomarians would certainly never let the
Ragnarok drop us any. So we'll have no more than twenty seconds in
second-level to capture a ship and get inside it."

   "As you Ragnarokans would say, a good trick if we can do it." There
was the impression of grim amusement in Volar's thought "But we shall
try."

   The first of Charley's men came, some walking silently in moccasins
and some with the hard tramping of combat boots, the light gleaming
with dull reflections on their blasters and knives. They looked with
curiosity at the Kilvarl, who looked back with an appearance of detached
interest.

   Charley was meeting the men as they entered the cavern, giving them
rapid-fire orders:

   "—all welders to Walt Dorn at the ship—all electronics men to that
Kilvarl over there—where's George Ord?—any of you who know hot steel,
to the forge room, that way—you boys with more muscles than training,
over there for some hard labor…"

   The Kilvarl on the ship withdrew as the Ragnarokans arrived to take
their places. A group of Kilvarl, most of them showing the silver of age,
had sat down some distance away from the ship and were watching the
Ragnarokans with what seemed no more than idle curiosity. They would
be the top supervisory group, and their appearance of only slight interest
would be very misleading. Each one of them would be in full telepathic
contact with one of the Ragnarokan crew chiefs or specialists and each
Kilvarl would see and hear everything his Ragnarokan counterpart saw or
heard.

  The first appearance of confused disorder rapidly gave way to
methodical efficiency as he watched. The off-duty hours of study and
training during the war—Earthenans had never been able to understand
the Ragnarokan urge to learn new things—were showing their worth.

   Some minor delays were to be expected, such as the belt-and-string
make-shift inner bands which the welders had to put in the big Kilvarl
welding helmets before they could use them, but such problems were soon
solved.

   He saw that Volar was gone. He looked at the ship again, but there was
nothing he could do to help there at the moment. The desire to see Lora,
held suppressed since he entered the cavern, came stronger than ever. She
had been barely brought back from death the last time he saw her… was
she still improving?

  Shela watched him approach, whatever she might be thinking masked
behind the alien green stare.

   He wondered why she had been so ready to fight the prowlers. Was it
because she had thought they might try to make her leave the girls or
interfere with her watch of them? Lora would be gone now, had it not
been for Shela's care, and Barbara would within a few days have followed
Lora. Did old Grandmother Shela now regard Lora and Barbara as her
own children because she was giving them back the life that the
Shomarians had tried to take away from them?

   No one could tell by outward physical appearance what kind of a heart
an alien being might have. The prowlers, who would lay down their lives
for their people, were at first regarded by the Rejects as hell's special
demons.

   He came to Lora's cot. Her face was like a pale flower against the dark
couch but now she had changed. The lines of weariness and pain were
gone and she lay like a very tired child who was in a deep and dreamless
sleep.

  He looked into Shela's unreadable green eyes and said, "You already
have her in a natural sleep, haven't you, Grandmother?"

   For an instant when he called her "Grandmother" there seemed to be a
strange expression in her eyes—surprise, and a sudden softness.
  "Yes," she answered.

   He touched Lora's cheek and felt the faint warmth of it, rather than the
coldness that had been there before.

  "How long until she is well?" he asked.

  "The drug will be gone from her within fourteen hours. But she is very
weak—it will be many days before she is strong again."

  He looked down at Barbara and said, "Damn!" Her lips were cut and
swollen where she had bitten them, there was a gash on her cheek—Paul
had taken three stitches in it— where she had struck her face against
something while fighting those who were trying to help her, and her arms
were chafed and raw from struggling against her bonds.

   Aside from such relatively minor hurts, however, she seemed to be
almost normal and was apparently in a natural sleep.

   "She will be well within fourteen hours, as strong as ever," She had
said.

   He looked again at Lora and brushed the dark hair back from her
forehead. She stirred restlessly and her hand moved, as though she was
trying to reach for something.

   "She senses your presence," Shela said. "She is trying to awaken and
find you. You must go now, and let her rest."

   He went back to the ship and saw that most of the grown Kilvarl had
disappeared. He wondered how long it had been since any of them had
had the chance to sleep. Many of the kittens had arranged themselves in
rows along the walls, where they could watch the activity with wide,
interested eyes. But half of them were already sound asleep while most of
the heads of the other half were drooping. As he watched, two more sank
to the floor and were asleep.

   He had sent for the camp's communicator and he saw that it had been
left in the clear reception area along the wall of the cavern.

  He switched it into circuit with several different scanners on the
Ragnarok and Unicorn to get views of both the city and the fleet The
Shomarian cruiser which had brought the four thousand ground troops
was gone, but the troops were stationed some distance in front of the
rainbow cliff, their medium-duty disintegrators already set up.

  The Ghost ship was gone, presumably back into third-level where there
would be no danger of any suicide attack by the Ragnarok.

  Volar came silently up beside him and he said, "Volar, what do you
have that we could improvise jets out of? How about liquid oxygen?"

   "We have a method of producing oxygen gas at a pressure sufficient
for our oxy-acetelyne cutting torches," Volar replied, "But we have no
equipment to produce liquified gasses of any kind."

   "We could make some old-fashioned black powder. Black powder in big
jets would give a fast thrust but we would have no time to rig up anything
but a very crude drive control."

     "It could be fairly crude and still put us near a Shomarian cruiser."

   "A Shomarian cruiser… we keep wanting one but the hard fact is that
even if we had one, we couldn't fight the Shomarian fleet with it. We
would get a few ships, then they would get us."

     "Very sound logic," Volar agreed, "but can you name anything better
?"

     "You ought to know—it was in my mind when I spoke to you," he said.

   "Perhaps you are not aware of the fact that it is contrary to the
Kilvarl code of ethics to look uninvited into the mind of a friend. You
Ragnarokans are now supposed to be friends."

   "I was thinking of the Ghost ship. With it we could dart in and out of
third-level, picking off Shomarian battleships and cruisers until they
would have no choice but to surrender."

   "A Kilvarl ambition for some time—but how do we capture the Ghost?
It has only to go into third-level and be safe from all the second-level
ships in the universe."

     "Can the Ghost look from third-level into normal-space with its
viewscreens?"

   "No. Only through one dimension at a time. It has to be in second-level
to look into normal-space."

   "Can the Ghost get as clear a view from second to normal as it would
get if it was in normal-space itself?"

  "No."

   "Then the Ghost would probably be in normal-space when the attack
starts, so the higher officers on it could have a clear view of the show?"

  "Yes, if the Ghost is still here by then."

  "You mean that it might not be here?"

  "Sar-Fane may send it on to the world where the fleet is needed."

  "Tell me, anyway, how the Ghost is made, where the control room is,
and all that."

  "We have some sketches," Volar said.

   "A half-grown kitten came running with the sketches a few minutes
later. John studied them, asking questions as he did so.

  "So this is Sar-Fane's private suite? What's this empty-looking
compartment near it?"

   "That compartment is used by the Shomarians for the transportation
of any large objects found on new worlds which might appeal to them as
being worth taking home. The Ragnarokan prisoners were confined in
that compartment.

  Before then, it was used to transport the gold-and-crystal towers
which now ornament Sar-Fane's summer palace."

   He thought of the way the hundred Ragnarokans would have been
herded like woods goats into a compartment not much larger than half the
skeleton ship. And then he knew suddenly what he wanted to do; what
they would have to do if they could have any hope of defeating the
Shomarian empire…
  He decided not to mention it to Volar. It was so farfetched, so
dependent upon so many as-yet-unknown factors, that he could see it,
himself, only in vague and hopeful outline.

   "If we shot toward one of those Shomarian cruisers with a high-speed
explosives drive, they would disintegrate us before we ever got there," he
said. "There's another kind of drive which we could rig up with precise
controls. It would be much slower than the explosives drive but this would
be compensated for by the fact that it would make our ship look so
makeshift and harmless that the Shomarians would have to take time to
stare, and then laugh, before it occurred to them that we might be
dangerous after all.

   "Which would be what?" Volar asked.

   "A steam-jet drive."

   Volar approved of the idea and Charley was consulted. There would be
a central boiler, with pipes leading to the twenty improvised jets; jets
which would be located all over the ship so that braking as well as thrust
could be applied from any point. There would be a control panel of twenty
buttons, each button controlling a solenoid-operated, fast-action steam
valve.

   "We'll get started on this at once," Charley said. "Just how we're going
to do both this and the shift job with only one lathe—but we'll do it, some
way…"

   " There's one more thing," John said. "There's no reason to have to
move that whole ship with those jets. Place the jets with the idea in mind
that we'll cut this ship in two, just in front of the control panel, if we can
possibly find the time. Tell George to be set up, in that case, to trim the
second-level space-warp field so it will enclose the rear half of the ship
only—we don't want to take the cut-off front half with us."

  He had given a good reason for cutting the ship in two. The fact that it
was not the real reason did not matter. There was no need to raise hopes
among the others that might never come true…

  "And now," Volar said to John. "You might be interested to know that
Sar-Fane has just ordered the Ghost ship back to Shomar."
  He saw his nebulous plan vanishing. "Why?"

  "So that it can take him to Kilvar in time for him to see the show
when the Shomarians attack us."

  "I'm glad to hear that. The Shomarians must not have any doubts
about getting what they want."

   "They felt that they could have captured far more Kilvarl by using
you Ragnarokans, but they think they will still get all they need. And
there are Ragnarokan insults to be rectified."

  A young Kilvarl appeared with a sheet of synthetic paper in his mouth.

  "A map" Volar said.

   John took the map and saw that it was of both the city and the
surrounding country, extending as far as the western foothills of the Black
Mountains. It showed the locations of all tunnel entrances and exits.

  He studied the map and said:

   "It might be that Ragnarokan women and children would stand their
best chances of surviving here in the foothills of the Black Mountains. But
they had better go out as four groups, a group for each exit. As Terrans
say, don't put all your eggs in one basket…"

   "The Kilvarl will be divided among the Ragnarokans," Volar said. "
Kilvarl telepathic powers may be of considerable value to the
Ragnarokans—and Ragnarokan hands and weapons may be of
considerable value to the Kilvarl." They decided upon the details, an
unseen Kilvarl relaying their discussion to Dan Destry. When they were
through, John asked Volar, "How about psychological influence? Suppose
you Kilvarl tried influencing key Shomarians while they were asleep by
giving them dreams like you did me?"

  "All of them here take a certain sleeping drug which so numbs their
subconscious during sleep that this cannot be done."

  "And Sar-Fane on Shomar?"

  "The same thing."
  "Well—that takes care of that," he said.

  Volar left a few minutes later and John started toward the ship, to see
what he might do to help with the work.

  He realized for the first time that he was tired—very tired. How long
ago had he last slept? Was it the night he had made a pallet before Lora's
doorway… ?

  "Come here."

  It was a command from old Shela. He went to her, afraid that Lora
might have taken a change for the worse.

  "Nothing is wrong," Shela said. "You will be of no value whatever
when the Shomarians attack if you do not rest while you can. I have
decided that you shall do this."

  "Not now," he said. "There are too many things to do—"

  "Do not argue. Sit down against the wall there."

   It was almost as though his mother was speaking to him when he was a
small child, ordering him to do something for his own good. And he was
tired—so tired that the sounds of the ship building were fading away into
a murmur, as the Ragnarok winds had murmured through the lance tree
forests when the two suns brought spring and release from winter's
imprisonment.

   He realized vaguely that he was sitting on the floor, leaning against the
wall. In the lassitude that swept over him, he seemed to merge with the
boy who had run across the green hills until he was tired, and then had
gone to sleep in i oft, green grass, the wind in the lance trees fading away…
fading… fading…

   A part of his subconscious sounded a frantic alarm and he fought back
to conscious awareness as though the sleep had been a tangible enemy. He
realized what Shela had done and the drowsiness vanished.

  She hypnotized me!" he said, and started to rise.

  Sit down!"
  "No—not to sleep under hypnotism."

  "Do you question my actions?"

  Shela's eyes flashed green and her thought was suddenly changed,
suddenly very cold and alien. It was as though she was ready to shove him
out from her, exile him from any further concern on her part, and his
answer would decide her.

   In the brief near-silence in the corner, there came a soft sigh from Lora
as she moved a little in her sleep. Lora, who would by now have been
gone…

  "Do you question me?"

  He looked into the eyes that were still blazing like green fire.

  "Make me sleep, Grandmother," he said.

  "The time is near. You can rest no longer."

  Shela's thought came into his dreamless sleep like the thrust of a knife.
He was awake instantly, fully alert, and already getting to his feet.

  He looked at his watch and saw that more than ten hours had gone by.

  The attack was less than eight hours away.

  Lora was now curled up in her sleep like a child. Barbara had turned
over—perhaps half-awakened some time during the past ten hours—and
now she lay with her arm protectively around Lora.

   "Barbara will be awakened within a few hours," Shela said. "She will
be well, then."

  "And Lora?" he asked.

  "She will be awakened in time for you to see her."

  He went to the ship and met Charley there.

   "We still intend to have that second-level-shift ready in time," Charley
said, "and the steam drive, too."
   John used Tip to call Dale and said, "It looks like we'll get our ship
finished in time."

   "The Kilvarl have been keeping all of us posted on the major news,"
Dale said. "They were vague about the chances our women and children
will have if we lose the battle, though. I guess they saw no reason to cause
us to worry—but what are those chances?"

   He hesitated, then said, Volar estimates that one out of ten might
survive."

   "No more than that—only one out of ten?"

    There was a silence and John knew Dale would be thinking of his two
little girls, who would be among the refugees, and his wife, the tall, blonde
Leona, who could use a blaster as well as any man and would be among
the women who stayed to fight.

   Dale spoke again:

   "Everyone on this ship has someone down there. Even the unmarried
men have parents and brothers and sisters. What makes it so hard for us
to take is the fact that we're so helpless up here. At the first move we
should make to go to our families or help them, the bomb would be
exploded. If we could only have the chance to fight…"

  John said at the conclusion of the conversation, "In case we lose, we
had better send a message to Earth while we still can. Send it in code, of
course, and warn them about the Shomarians."

   "I'll do that. After all, they're still our distant relatives even if they did
disown us."

   He talked for awhile with Cliff, who asked a great many questions about
the plans for escape of the women and children. Cliff made no mention of
the other; the fact that he and the men on the Unicorn would be under
much more strain than those on the Ragnarok. Battleships were worth
more than cruisers and the Unicorn would be the first to go if the
Shomarians decided it was necessary to destroy one of the ships.

  When he terminated the conversation with Cliff he saw that the Kilvarl,
Darag, was standing near him. Paul had sewn the wound together and
then sprayed it with a strong flexible temporary-skin solution that would
permit Darag to fight without tearing the wound open again.

   Darag said, "There are great contrasts among you Ragnarokans. Lake
is a man who is really happy only when he is killing an enemy. Paul
Chiara is happy only when trying to heal others."

  "Each one, in his place, is very valuable to us," he answered. "Is there
anything new among the Shomarians?"

   "They think that we may have escape tunnels leading out from here.
As soon as they have successfully attacked us here, they will use their
ship's disintegrators to cut deep trenches in concentric circles around the
city and this mountain. Troops will go by the thousands into each tunnel
they find."

  "Does Destry know of this?" he asked.

   "He was told as soon as the Shomarians made their decision. The
refugees are now getting ready to leave immediately. There will be no
time to spare."

   The hours went by, seeming to go faster and faster as the time for the
attack swept nearer. At four hours short of the estimated deadline, the
second-level-shift work had narrowed down to the slow, tedious job of
installing the electronic components in the assembly shells and connecting
the thousands of leads. Only one man at a time could work at each shell,
which gave John the crew he needed to begin cutting the ship in two.

   It was a job that could have been done quickly by using the Kilvarl
medium-duty disintegrators, the beams cut down to short-range,
knife-edge focus, but the iron mountain around them could not prevent
the escape of telltale hard radiations for the Shomarian ships to pick up.

   "And if the Shomarians suspected we were building something," John
said, "they might blast an opening into here without waiting for the troops
to arrive, just to make sure it wasn't something they wouldn't approve of."

    The Kilvarl had two oxy-acetylene cutting torches, of which Charley
said, "They won't be near enough to get the job done in time, so we'll use
all the arc welders we have, a jet of plain compressed air with each arc to
blow the molten metal out of the cut. It won't be a very neat job, but we
don't care about that."

   Metal plates were put up temporarily to protect the control panel.
Other plates were propped and chained into place, around the
circumference of the ship so that the molten metal produced by the men
working above would not run down on the men working below.

    Within an hour the ship was acquiring a ring around it of glowing red.
The heat kept increasing and water hoses were used to cool the plates on
which the red-hot slag was dripping and making intolerably hot roofs
immediately over the heads of the men who worked beneath them. Steam
rolled out in clouds and all available suction fans were brought in to carry
it away.

    By then the steam boiler had been placed in the center of the ship and
all pipes and solenoid-operated valves were installed. The last of the jets
were being installed. All six of the medium-duty disintegrators were
mounted on the ship. They were only temporarily mounted—held in place
with chains and clamps so they could be quickly detached and used for
retreating defense if the Shomarians gave them no chance to finish the
ship.

   At one hour short of the estimated deadline, the first Shomarian troops
arrived.

   Their ships landed near the cliff and the Shomarian troops marched
out by the thousands, in dead black uniforms. Nineteen thousand of the
troops took up positions before the cliff. The other thousand marched on
into the city and took up positions at strategic points.

   Dan Destry came into the cavern, to shake his head when he looked at
the viewscreen and say, "That's quite a mob."

  "Shomar's finest," John said. "How are you doing at your end?"

   "All the groups are made up. Most are already on their way back into
the escape tunnels, loaded light for fast traveling—blasters, knives,
crossbows, and that's about all."

   "How are the children and the Kilvarl kittens reacting to one another?"
he asked.
   "Good, except when some of the smaller children wanted to pet some of
the smaller Kilvarl kittens at first. It seems the kittens regard being petted
as undignified—there were a few baby-size battles over this which the
mothers soon stopped. The somewhat older boys and girls and the
half-grown Kilvarl are all full of plans to combine the Ragnarokan blasters
and crossbows with the Kilvarl ability to read Shomarian minds into a
combination that will slaughter Shomarians in all directions."

  Destry sighed and added, "When you're young, you don't pay too much
heed to the odds against you and—"

  The thought of Shela came: "Barbara is awake now."

   They went to the corner where Barbara sat beside Lora. Her cut lips
were still swollen, giving her a pouting expression—one that was belied by
the anger smoldering in her eyes.

   She spoke to them in greeting and said, "Shela told me what the
Shomarians did to me—that I even wanted to kill Lora. And she told me
how Lora almost died from what they did to her. I want a blaster apiece
for us."

  "I came to get you," Destry said. "I need another good subgroup leader.
Lora will go in your group, of course."

   Barbara shook her bead. "Lora will be too weak to run and hide like the
others and she would die before she would go along and slow down the
group and maybe cause it to get captured or killed."

  "Neither of you will go?" Destry asked.

  "You can find others better than I am for the job, Dan. I came six
hundred lightyears to find Lora and until the end, whatever it may be, I'm
not going to leave her."

  She stood up. "I'm going to look at our ship for a minute," she said. "I
could have helped on it if I hadn't been doped with Shomarian drugs.
What are our chances with it?"

  "More or less, you might say," he answered. "Nothing like the
opportunity we had when we took that Gern cruiser."
   "No hull—no shield," she said, staring at it. "No view-screen to see
where you're going in second-level… My lord—that drive! Where are the
space blasters stored?"

   He went with Destry back to the tunnels where the refugees were
preparing to leave. With the exception of the subgroup with which
Barbara and Lora would have gone, all the subgroups containing the old
or the very young were already on their way.

   He met Leona, Dale Ord's tall wife. She was already on her way to the
cavern, a steel helmet over her blonde hair, a long knife and two blasters
belted around her waist.

   "I just saw my little girls off," she said, making it sound casual. "Now
I'm ready to meet the Shomarians. Where do we make our stand?"

  "You and the other women will be in the back line," he said.

   "Is there anything new from Dale?" she asked, her blue eyes watching
his. "I mean, maybe something that he wouldn't want to tell me?"

  "Everything is still the same. He's safer than you are, Leona."

  "No," she said. "I can fight—and they'll never give him the chance to."

   The last group was forming in a connected series of large chambers.
Prowlers were everywhere, pacing restlessly as they had done back in the
days when the Ragnarokans were waiting for the coming of the Gern
cruiser. The entire intermixture of prowlers, young Kilvarl, and armed
boys and girls seemed to have a restless swirling effect as though they
could hardly wait to meet the enemy.

  He met Paul, who said, "Bob and I are the only doctors and how can we
know which groups might need us the most?"

  There was no answer that anyone could make.

  "Actually," Paul said, "where we'll be needed the most for the next few
hours will be out there in the cavern where the fighting will take place."

   "No," he said, "If we lose, the Shomarians will take care of our wounded
in their own way. If we win, then you and Bob can come hurrying back."
   "Yes—yes, I suppose you're right." Paul looked at the Ragnarokans and
Kilvarl around them and said, "Nona refused to go with us. She's
pregnant—but she said that wouldn't keep her from using a blaster."

   He saw Nona, Cliff Schroeder's small, dark-haired wife, kissing their
small son before she handed him to the woman who would be his
foster-mother. The boy—he was hardly more than a baby—was not so
young but what he sensed that he might never see his mother again. He
reached out his arms toward her with a forlorn cry of, "Mama!" She
turned away, very quickly, her lower lip quivering. She almost walked into
John before she saw him.

  "Hello, Johnny," she said. "I'm not going with Billy… it seemed to me I
shouldn't. Am I doing the wrong thing?"

  "I would much rather you went with him," he said. "You don't belong
back where you're going now."

   "He would have had a little sister or brother in only another month,"
she said. "If I should go along, like I am, I would be a drag to the entire
subgroup. Billy's chances are better if I stay. Besides, Cliff wouldn't ever be
with us again…

  Once more, the lower lip started to quiver. He patted her on the
shoulder and gave her a little push toward the cavern.

   Most of the Ragnarokan men had already told their families good-bye.
A few had not yet had the chance and were doing so now. They were not
demonstrative about it—such was not the Ragnarokan way—but there was
the gleam of withheld tears in the eyes of the women and children and the
faces of the men as they turned away were hard, and cut deep with lines of
worry.

   Paul said, "Almost none of the Kilvarl who will stay to fight have come
to see their families before they go. The Kilvarl don't have to—they can be
in each other's minds and closer together than any physical contact can
be."

   He wondered how it would be if Ragnarokans could ever learn to do
that; how it would be if he and Lora could have that feeling of being as
one. And then he thought: But what is it like when you're in the mind of
someone you love as that one dies?
  He went back to the cavern. Volar was there with the latest report:

  "Sar-Fane and the Ghost ship will soon be here."

  "It's quite a bit behind schedule, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Some extra time was required for Sar-Fane to get exactly the kind of
Honor Virgins he wanted and exactly the right kind of rare wines."

  "Is Sar-Fane already drinking?"

  "He is enveloped in a rosy glow."

  "Is there any hope that he may get drunk by attack time?"

  "None. He will only maintain the glow—the stakes are far too high for
him to risk any befuddled decisions."

  "If something should happen to Sar-Fane—who would take his place?"

   "If both Sar-Fane and his son, Hesnar-Fane, should be killed or
captured, the five men on Shomar who are the hierarchy's topmost
cabinet would appoint one of themselves to replace Sar-Fane."

   "If we could take the Ghost ship and the Shomarian fleet here, then
send the entire force to Shomar and capture the cabinet members, what
would the Shomarian Society do to save itself?"

   "There would be no large force of ships sent out by other worlds. The
Shomarians ruling those other worlds would be afraid we might invade
them next—they would not be eager to leave themselves completely
undefended by sending their ships to rescue men already in the hands of
the enemy."

  "How could fanatics let their godhead and his holy cabinet be captured
and do nothing about it?"

   "It is now a religion in name only—It has long been an oligarchy in
which the only fanaticism is the conviction of the upper rank
Shomarians that they are divinely destined to rule over all other races. If
the world of Shomar is captured, the Shomarian leaders on other worlds
will look to their own personal safety and let the Divine Plan proceed
with divine assistance only."
   "We would have to go to these worlds, one by one, and relieve them of
their Shomarian overlords. The Shomarians would use every kind of
propaganda and deceit they could think of to prevent that."

   "One of the advantages of being telepathic is that you know who is
doing what and can therefore make plans to offset the enemy plans.
Destroying the Shomarian rule on these other worlds would require
time, but the procedure would be both certain of success and one
involving very few casualties."

   "What would we do with these Shomarians?" he asked. "Sar-Fane, his
cabinet, and all the ones who are responsible for such things as the
murder of the prisoners on the Ghost ship and the killing and capturing
that they have planned for all of us in here?"

  "The Shomarians intend slavery, torture, slow executions, for the
Ragnarokans; vivisection and eventual genocide for the Kilvarl."

   "Do you think we ought to give the Shomarians their own medicine?"
he asked curiously.

  "The Kilvarl would regard such punishments as too crude, too
unsubtle, and too mercifully brief."

  "Then what would you do with Sar-Fane, Hesnar, and the like?"

  "Do you remember the paradise island on Shomar's breadbasket
world?"

   "The one where you would expect to see simple natives dancing along
the shore?—Yes, I remember it."

   "I suggest we provide it with the simple natives which it now lacks. In
that gentle climate, Sar-Fane and his companions would need no clothes.
Since there are no enemies of any kind there—aside from a few billion
insects—they would need no knives or other weapons. And since the
purpose of their exile would be to permit them to devote the rest of their
lives to philosophical reflections, we would make sure that no Honor
Virgins or women of any kind ever went there to disturb their thoughtful
ponderings."

  He considered the plan and said, "I think I can imagine what the
emotions would be of the Temporal Lord of the Sons of Shomar as he
squatted naked under a tree, slapping at gnats and recalling those glorious
days when he had the power to destroy entire races with less effort."

   "The same emotions would apply to all of them. It would be the nature
of each to blame the others for their plight and want bloody vengeance.
There would be no victims ever available but one another. So they could
spend the rest of their lives mourning their vanished days of glory,
plotting and counterplotting against one another, arranging murders,
and slapping at gnats."

   "But what about the ordinary Shomarians?" he asked. "It might turn
out that a lot of them would be willing to swing over to our side. After all,
there are those such as the ones that Sar-Fane had murdered as additional
anti-Kilvarl propaganda, and there are those girls, the Honor Virgins, who
are forced to give themselves regardless of their own wishes. There should
be hundreds of millions who have no reason to want more of Sar-Fane's
type of rule."

  " You would suggest a screening process to distinguish between the
good and bad Shomarians?"

   "No Shomarian could lie to a Kilvarl and get away with it. Shomarians
would make our best agents of information to send to the
outer-worlds—they would know, from personal experience, what life was
like under the hierarchy."

  "It could be done," Volar said. "And now, I'm afraid we must abandon
our ambitious daydreams and face unpleasant reality again. Sar-Fane is
now here and the show will soon begin."

   They went to the viewscreen and saw the Ghost in normal-space, no
more than a mile out from the cavern. Two battleships were already in
such positions that the Ghost was shielded from both the Ragnarok and
the Unicorn.

   He saw by his watch that the second force of Shomarians was a great
deal less than half an hour out in space. Night was coming; the sun was
down and the bright afterglow which preceded dusk was in the western
sky.

  The Shomarian flares blazed into life; six of them, high up and widely
spaced, very bright. They lighted the surface of Kilvar for a radius of fifty
miles around the city. The Black Mountains, where most of the refugees
would try to elude discovery, were made devoid of any shadows for
concealment.

    Small cruisers, heavily armed scout ships, and ship's tenders and
lifeboats packed with Shomarian search parties, spread out from the fleet
like a swarm of insects. Within a few minutes they had assumed circling
guard positions which extended as far out from the city as the prairie
beyond the Black Mountains. Some of the larger craft landed briefly to
unload men and gillars at strategic points of observation. Heavy-duty
disintegrators were immediately set up at these places and heavily armed
men spread out from them to search the surrounding terrain, their gillars
running ahead of them.

   Miniature scout ships appeared by the dozens—containing perhaps six
men each—and began a roving patrol close to the ground, through the tall
trees of the forests, and up the canyons of the Black Mountains. All were
armed, as well as equipped with powerful searchlights for probing back
into any natural caves found.

  He said to Volar, "The chances for escape look to me like one out of
twenty rather than ten."

     "The Shomarians have added to their plans since my first estimate."

     "Is that largest compartment on the Ghost still empty?"

  "It is empty but for some Shomarian workmen and their tools and
supplies."

     It was the answer he had wanted to hear.

  "Good!" he said. "With luck, we'll be in command of the entire
Shomarian fleet half an hour from now."

     Volar looked both surprised and skeptical. "And just how do we do that
?"

   "There is only one way we could ever capture the Ghost and now we can
try it—by materializing our half-ship inside that empty compartment."
   The plan was received with much enthusiasm by all despite the few
chances for success and many chances for failure, and the attitudes of
both Ragnarokans and Kilvarl changed. Before, they had been stubbornly
preparing for a battle in which they would take as high a toll as they could
of the enemy before they were killed. Now, they were going to have a
fighting chance for complete victory.

  Their lack of time was their greatest danger and he said to Norman,
who had taken charge of the disintegrator installations:

   "One disintegrator, hung on a chain so it can be turned in any
direction, will be all we'll need on the ship. The others can be used for
cavern defense—and to try to hold the Shomarians away from the ship if it
isn't quite finished when they come pouring in here."

   He called Dale, who said with satisfaction, "Once you get inside the
Ghost, it can dodge into third-level until hell freezes over and do nothing
but take you along with it. There's one fly in the ointment—there's a
cruiser already in second-level not far from the equivalent of the Ghost's
position."

  Cliff was hopeful, but more concerned over the presence of the
Shomarian cruiser in second-level.

  "To get to the second-level equivalent of the Ghost's normal-space
position, you'll have to head almost straight at that cruiser," Cliff said.
"They'll never let you reach it, let alone go on past it to the point where
you'll drop into normal inside the Ghost."

   "The Shomarians on that cruiser will see the chopped-off rear half of a
small ship," he said, "with a comical steam-jet drive. We're hoping that
we'll look so harmless that they won't do more than throw up their
disintegrator shield."

  "Maybe," Cliff said. "Maybe—and again, maybe they'll suspect a trick of
some kind and take no chances by disintegrating you." There was a pause.
"Well see. If they try that, the Unicorn will clear the way for you."

   Cliff did not add the rest; that the Unicorn would then be destroyed.

  Cliff spoke again. "There's no reason for Nona and the others to know
anything about something that may not have to happen."
  "No," he said. "Of course not, Cliff."

  John asked Volar, when he had the chance to do so:

  "Just what are those workmen doing in that compartment on the
Ghost?"

   "Preparing for Sar-Fane's post-entertainment entertainment." Volar
answered. "They're erecting a tier of seats at one end so that Sar-Fane
and his party can have a clear and comfortable view of the activities
that will take place in the rest of the room. These scenes will be
transmitted to all Shomarian-dominated worlds for the information of
the natives there."

  "Information?"

   "Education, let us say. The Ragnarokan men and women will be
brought in naked, in chains. The punishments to follow will be both very
undignified and very painful, although not of such a nature as to
interfere with their usefulness as slaves. You and Lake will be executed as
the climax to the show."

  "That sounds interesting," he said. "I suppose they won't be in any
hurry about it?"

   "Your executions will require about an hour. Such as is left of your
bodies, after they have finished with you, will be sprayed with a
preservative and left there in the arena. For the next Shomarian day and
night, every public news screen on every world in the Shomarian Society
will have on it the view of your remains as a silent reminder of the folly
of resisting the will of the Shomarians."

   The time went by, seeming to go slowly with the waiting, swiftly
whenever he looked at the ship and saw how much work still remained to
be done. By then the ship was like something in some inferno; a solid ring
of fire seen through a cloud of steam, the smell of burned clothing and
scorched flesh coming from it. It seemed very probable that the ship
would be cut in two before the attack but completion of the
second-level-shift was still uncertain. It was work that could not possibly
be hurried, however—there was no way in which more than one man could
reach inside each remaining assembly shell and install and connect the
components.
   Forty minutes had gone by when the second Shomarian ground force
dropped down out of second-level into the atmosphere of Kilvar.

   One of the ships detached itself from the others and began unloading
Weasels and gillars among the search groups. The other ships landed near
the foot of the rainbow cliff. Ten Weasels emerged, shining new ones, then
the soldiers marched out; six abreast, double-time, to form in ranks
behind the first twenty thousand. The area before the cliff had been a field
of black. Now, the supporting troops added a field of gray, one that grew
as it formed, reaching almost to the city and more still marching from the
ships…

   A hand lightly touched his arm.

   "Johnny…"

   He looked down into the face of Lora; into brown eyes that were not
clear and bright, and into a face on which a smile was half trembling.

  "Shela said there wouldn't be much time to see you, so I thought I'd
come over and say hello before the Shomarians interrupt us—**

  Then she was hugging him tightly, her face pressed against him and
her voice muffled and catching:

   "Oh, Johnny—I have you back again, and it will all be for such a little
time…"

  "A little time?" he asked. He held her close to him. "Didn't you know,
Lora, that we don't intend to let the Shomarians get what they want?
We're going to have all the time of our lives."

   He told her of their plan to capture the Ghostship.

   "Do you suppose we can do it?" she asked, looking up with new hope in
her eyes. "Do you think—"

   "Watch out!"

   The cry of warning came from the ship and men were leaping to
positions of safety. One last electric arc was blazing, then it went out as
the last girder tore apart with a shrieking sound and a shower of
incandescent steel. The front half of the ship jerked, rolled, and the nose
clashed down to its resting place on the floor.

  The ship was now cut completely in two.

  The thought of Volar came then:

  "Hesnar and Novla are now boarding the Ghost ship. No time has yet
been set for the attack, but it will probably be within ten minutes."

   He used Tip to ask George Ord, "How long until you're done with the
ship?"

  "I'm working in the last assembly shell," George said.

   "Keep the Shomarians off my back for ten minutes and you'll have your
ship."

  John called Dale and told him that all would be ready within ten
minutes.

   "Good," Dale said. "The Kilvarl will let us know when you go into
second-level and the Ragnarok and Unicorn will go with you. If the
Unicorn has to blast that cruiser, there will be a dozen cruisers and
battleships come popping into second-level a few seconds later—we'll be
waiting to keep their attention away from you." There was a pause. "Do
you suppose that will be good enough, Johnny?"

   "It should never reach that stage," he said. "After all, in second-level,
that cruiser is the equivalent of only a few feet away in normal space. We'll
be past it and into the Ghost before the Shomarians realize what we're
after."

  He called Cliff, who said of the situation:

   "We have double watches and double disintegrator crews. Everything is
ready and we'll be glad when it's over, whichever way it goes."

  Cliff paused, as Dale had done, then he asked:

   "If we can give you fifteen seconds in second-level to put your ship
where you want it, there won't be any doubt but that you'll take the Ghost,
will there?"
   "The Kilvarl will be watching our second-level position in the
viewscreens of all the ships," he said, "including the viewscreen of the
Ghost. That will be a triangulation fix that will be failproof. They'll direct
us to the exact spacial point and tell us when to drop into normal. There
will be no doubt, Cliff—once we get into second-level and get into position,
the war with the Shomarians is already over."

   "Good. I wanted to know that…"

    Lora had been listening silently and when the talk with Cliff was over
she said, "What they both really wanted to know was that they won't be
dying in vain. They wanted to be reassured that what they do will mean
life and freedom for Nona and Leona and all the others." She looked up at
him with a sigh. "Must it always be like this for the Ragnarokans,
Johnny?"

   "How do you mean, Lora?"

   "Always this fighting and dying for us. Why can't we someday be like
the people in the old fairy stories, our troubles finally over and nothing left
but to live happily ever after when our story is ended?"

   "We wouldn't like that," he said.

   "Why not?"

   "Because we would—"

  He stopped as he saw Barbara coining, a bolstered blaster about her
waist and a knife. She carried another bolstered blaster and knife in her
hand.

  He asked, suspiciously, "Barbara—did you two talk together before she
came over to me?"

   "We said a few words," Barbara answered. She put the belt around
Lora's waist and pulled the buckle to the shortest hole. "Lora, you're so
thin! I can't get the belt any tighter. Maybe you had better just carry the
blaster in your hand— you're going to have that belt down around your
feet if you don't."

   She spoke to John in the same casual tone: "We decided we would stay
out here. I intend to be in the front line— I have some scores to settle with
the Shomarians—and Lora refuses to consider staying in back in the
second line with the other women."

  "You'll both stay back there," he said. "On your way right now—or do
you want me to have you carried?"

  Barbara looked at him thoughtfully, then exchanged a glance with Lora.

  "Well—if that's the way you feel about it!" she said. "Come on, Lora."

  Barbara walked away and he frowned after her. Her ready obedience
could mean only that she intended to be back when the battle began.

  "How many will go on the ship?" Lora asked.

  "As many as are left alive around it when it's ready to go," he said. "If
you're thinking that you and Barbara will go along—"

  "I just asked," she said. She reached out her hand to give his arm a
gentle squeeze in farewell, her eyes soft and dark as she looked up at him
and smiling a little. "I'll go back now and tell Barbara that you said we
must stay there."

   She let the belt drop to the floor and walked away. He watched her go,
already sure that neither she nor Barbara intended to remain in the
second line with the other women.

  Volar was gone—he was always appearing and disappearing without
explanation—and John sent the mental question: ,

  "Volar—what are Sar-Fane's plans now?"

  There was a brief wait, then the thought of Volar came:

  "Would you like to really know his thoughts?"

  For a moment he did not understand what Volar meant, then he said,
"You can put me in Sar-Fane's mind?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Transferring complete awareness will produce a sensation different
from the one you experienced when you merely heard and saw through
Garron."

  "Go ahead," be said again.

   Something like intangible fingers seemed to touch at his mind and he
forced away the instinctive desire to resist. Then be was both himself in
the cavern, and not himself.

   For an instant he seemed to be Volar, somewhere in a small, lighted
tunnel. A female Kilvarl was lying beside him, watching him with pain in
her eyes and her breath coming with a sound like a labored sobbing.

  Then there was the taste of sweet wine in his mouth, a glorious sense of
well-being and power, and he was looking into a viewscreen at the Iron
Mountains and his mass of troops waiting before it, thinking:

   … There, hiding in caves, the animals that can give me the galaxy
before I die. How the humble serve the mighty… And those others, those
hairy-faced bipeds… 'All things that walk or crawl or swim or fly were
created to serve the Sons of Shomar; and those that walk upon two feet as
the Sons of Shomar but are not the Sons of Shomar were created to serve,
even as the lowliest beast in the field,' Articles of Destiny, fourteen ten…

   Taste of the cold, sweet wine again, the tinkle of ice, and the pleasant
glow of well-being and idle thoughts.

   … All the surviving grown males among the savages will have an
unexpected experience in tomorrow's public educational performance…
eunuchs make such docile slaves… I think I'll have last night's Honor
Virgin turned over to the troops… let her learn the penalty of
indifference… Ah… now comes Novla, that fat-faced failure, and my
equally incompetent son… How Novla scrapes and bows when he comes
near me… Do you already suspect my plans for you, you corpse-to-be… ?
All other members of your level can stand at attention and watch the
mechanical garrote choke you to death… valuable lesson for them…
should inspire them to greater efforts toward furthering the Plan and
serving their Temporal Lord with competence… And you, Hesnar, my
son, eager to take my place, but afraid to hasten my demise for the very
same good and valid reasons that caused me to let my own father die a
natural death…
   He was Humbolt standing in the cavern, he was Volar sitting close
beside his mate, and he was Sar-Fane on the Ghost ship listening to his
son saying:

  "Why this delay—when are you going to give the order to attack?"

   He held up the glass and watched the silver bubbles rise up through the
pale-ruby wine, thinking: Whenever the fancy strikes me, my son, I will
give the order that shall change the destiny of a thousand worlds… I
know before you ask that you want the savage named Humbolt, to vent
your hatred for him in your own way… but his execution will serve a
valuable purpose as a lesson to other would-be rebel leaders and you
cannot have him for your personal pleasure.…

  The contact broke, with a last fleeting impression of being Volar as he
watched his mate fight for the breath of life, and he was again John
Humbolt in the cavern.

  "Volar," he said, "I guess you know I saw where you are— that now I
know why you kept leaving here every few minutes?"

  There was a silence, then Volar said:

  "There was no reason to tell anyone about Thorala— nothing can be
done now."

  "What is the matter with her?"

   "She was injured internally by a Weasel the day you first went to
Shomar. We were trying to drag in the last of the materials for the
second-level-shift and she was the sitter guard who saw the Weasel
coming. She had to hold its attention long enough for the others to get
themselves and the material into hiding."

   He thought of the way Thorala's eyes had been clouded with pain and
the way she had drawn each breath as though it might be the last.

  "Why didn't you let our doctor see her?" he asked. "Maybe he could
have saved her."

  "There is still a little time in which she can be saved by an operation
but the necessary facilities are not here. If we capture the Ghost ship we
will have the facilities.

  "Now I detect a subconscious thought in Sar-Fane's mind. I think he is
going to order the attack to begin."

   John turned to look at the ship. The lights dimmed as he did so; an
action intended to create a certain disadvantage for the Shomarians
coming in from the brightly lighted outside. The ends of the severed
girders, where the ship had been cut in two, glowed red in the dim light.
The big boiler in the center of the rear half of the ship was hot; steam
coming in a thin jet out of the safety valve. The ship's one disintegrator
was hung on chains from a top girder. All the other disintegrators were in
the places designated for them in the cavern. Back in the near-darkness of
the innumerable alcoves that surrounded the back and both sides of the
cavern he could see the Ragnarokans, Kilvarl, and prowlers, Fenrir and
Sigyn among them. The eyes of the Kilvarl and prowlers glowed green and
yellow and red as they waited. The Ragnarokans were vague
shadow-shapes, almost invisible but for the myriad metallic gleams from
their helmets and blasters.

   The viewscreen showed the last of the Shomarian troops leaving the last
ship. The ship's airlock was already closing— the Shomarians were taking
no chances of any kind of one of their ships being captured by some
surprise form of attack.

   He could see George's back through the girders as he worked with the
last assembly shell and he spoke to him, his voice surprisingly loud in the
quiet:

   "How much more time will you need, George?"

  George's words came muffled as he answered without looking up. "Five
minutes—maybe a little less."

   Norman, waiting restlessly behind the chain-suspended disintegrator
in the ship, called down:

   "Did you know, Johnny, that we really ought to try to get hold of a ship
honestly someday? We're always conniving around to take them away
from the enemy—"

   "Attack!"
   The Kilvarl warning was given simultaneously to every man in the
cavern. Two seconds later the cavern trembled as the disintegrators of a
battleship overhead ripped down at the face of the cliff.

   John could see it as a tiny image in the distant view-screen; the beams
of the disintegrators like a huge blade slicing the cliff from top to bottom
and feeding back toward the cavern. The red dust of disintegration, more
impalpable than smoke, billowed out and up, half hiding the cliff. Other
Shomarian ships were stationed out from the face of the cliff, to signal
when the cavern was revealed. The Shomarians did not want the
disintegrator beams to destroy any Kilvarl.

  A deep roaring filled the cavern as he hurried away from the wall and it
was dimly that he could hear Charley shout the order:

   "Start the metal foil shower now. As soon as they break through, give
them so much foil their detectors couldn't spot a dozen ships in here."

    The shower came, shredded aluminum foil blown by a directional fan,
filling the cavern from top to bottom with the swirling bits of metal.

   He went on to the nose of the ship where the staggered ranks of ships'
guards were waiting and turned to face the cavern wall. The roaring
increased to a deafening thunder, as though the entire mountain was
caving in on them, then a crashing sound came from the wall, sharp and
ear-splitting, and the cavern was lighted by a sheet of roaring blue flame
where the wall had been.

   The flame vanished and there was an instant of silence; an instant in
which every type of detector known to the Shomarian Empire would be
probing into the cavern. He looked out through the enormous opening
onto the flare-lit surface of Kilvar and saw the Weasels and Shomarians
already charging through the opening. The Weasels came with long, swift
leaps despite their weight. The Shomarians came in a slogging run; big
and thick-muscled, with the dead, expressionless faces of men who had
been conditioned and disciplined out of all conceptions of such things as
mercy or a sense of right and wrong. Like the mindless Weasels, they were
created for killing…

   The Ragnarokan-Kilvarl forces and the Shomarians opened fire
simultaneously; the Ragnarokan-manned Kilvarl medium-duty
disintegrators sending their whining blue beams toward the Weasels, the
Ragnarokan blasters a hissing blue ring inside the cavern directed at the
Shomarians.

   The Weasels split apart, to race to all portions of the cavern, their
bulging eyes observing and sending to the Shomarians on the ships a
picture of everything they observed. A disintegrator along the wall tried to
stop a Weasel, its beam mushrooming for a second against the Weasel's
shield. The Weasel, still running, fired back at the unshielded
disintegrator as its own shield collapsed. The blue beams were parallel for
a moment, side by side, as each found its target. Then they vanished and
the Weasel crashed to the floor with half its bead gone.

  The Ragnarokan disintegrator that had stopped the Weasel did not fire
again. He knew it never would.

   Then the Shomarians were in the cavern in such numbers that there
was no time to watch anything other than to try to keep them away from
the ship. They were coining through the opening fifty abreast, two
hundred of them per second, falling like Terran grain before the
Ragnarokan fire, but their numbers so great that a hundred per second
were left to pour into the cavern over the bodies of the slain. They spread
apart as they came, going along both sides of the cavern as well as
charging straight across the full width of the floor. These, too, were dying
by the hundreds but there were thousands more crowding up to the portal
from outside. The living ran across the dead, fell before the Ragnarokan
fire, and became another layer of dead for the ones behind to scramble
across.

   The Ragnarokan disintegrators could do little to help slow the rush of
Shomarians. They were trying to destroy the Weasels before one of the
Weasels found the ship. The Ragnarokan disintegrators were unshielded,
stationary targets; and shielded Weasels were darting in every direction as
they simultaneously searched the cavern and fired back at the Ragnarokan
disintegrators.

   He felt the blaster growing warm in his hand as he kept up a
continuous fire against the endless waves of Shomarians. They were like
mindless machines and only death could stop them. He saw the right arm
and shoulder of one disappear from a blaster beam and the Shomarian
ran on, no change of expression on his wooden face, reaching for an
auxiliary weapon with his left hand. Another beam came, to dissolve the
wooden face into nothing, and only then did he fall.
   The Kilvarl, possessing only a few of the improvised Rell blasters, could
do little—and the prowlers even less—until there was a sufficient number
of Shomarians in the cavern. At the rate of one hundred Shomarians per
second, this did not take long.

   By prearranged plan, the blaster fire of the Ragnarokans along the back
wall of the cavern suddenly diminished and dwindled to almost nothing.
Shomarian officers shouted orders in tones of exultation and the
Shomarian soldiers increased the speed of their charge across the cavern.
Each soldier carried a coil of slender chain on his belt for binding
captured Kilvarl. They were all confident, now, that the Ragnarokans had
broken in retreat and that they would soon be capturing Kilvarl and
carrying them to the ship as well as driving the Ragnarokans to the ends
of the tunnels and killing them there.

   The front ranks of the Shomarians were almost to the second line when
the women and boys there, unseen in the shadows, opened fire with every
blaster in the line. Three ranks of Shomarians fell before the others
recovered enough to open up a return fire, still charging as they fired.

   Then the Ragnarokans, Kilvarl, and prowlers who had been crowding
along the side passages of the cavern made their flank attack.

   They were into the massed, running Shomarians so quickly that almost
no blaster fire met them. The blasters of the Ragnarokans were firing
throughout the Shomarian force and the Kilvarl and prowlers were
lunging and dodging and killing. The Shomarians fired back, too slow to
hit more than a few of the Kilvarl and prowlers, and killing more of their
own force than Ragnarokans.

   The Ragnarokans fought with a blaster in one hand and a knife in the
other. The prowlers went between the ranks, under the blaster fire that the
Shomarians turned on the Ragnarokans, to leap up and tear out
Shomarian throats and be gone again before the bodies fell.

  But the Kilvarl, as swift or perhaps even swifter than the prowlers and
much larger were the deadliest killers of all. They went between the
Shomarians, over them, and around them; yellow blurs that disemboweled
and ripped out throats with claws and teeth and snapped necks with
heavy paws.

  A Weasel came charging toward the ship. John heard Norman's
disintegrator beam whine over his head and saw it hold against the
Weasel's shield as the Weasel kept coming.

   The shield gave way before the beam and the Weasel crashed to the
floor—but not before it was within ten feet of the nose of the skeleton ship
and had sent the view of what it saw to the Shomarian ships. And not
before it had fired as its shield collapsed.

  Norman fell almost simultaneously with the fall of the Weasel, landing
heavily on one foot and going on down to the floor. He raised himself back
up, to stand on one leg and cling to the ship for support as he used his free
hand to fire into the onrushing Shomarians.

   The other leg seemed half cut in two, blood gushing from it like a red
fountain.

   Ten seconds later there came a shouting of orders from every
Shomarian officer in the cavern. The entire force turned and began
fighting its way toward the ship.

  At the same time, all the Shomarians coming in through the cavern
opening—now slowing as they were forced to climb over the dead—were
charging straight toward the ship.

   The thought of a Kilvarl came:

   "They now know we have a skeleton ship and the orders are for the
entire force to concentrate on reaching it; to kill all Ragnarokans and
Kilvarl around it and be prepared to destroy it if so ordered. The
Shomarians with the yellow sunburst on their uniforms are the suicide
bombardiers."

   There were four blasters still active to his left and five to his right. Then
there were four to his right, and Jimmy Sanders, to his immediate left,
was wavering as he fired with grim stubbornness on his face and a blaster
hole through his chest.

   Jimmy fell, still firing as he died, the beam going into the dead on the
floor before him and there were two blasters to John's left. He sent the
thought to the Kilvarl that would be instantly given to the other
Ragnarokans:
   "We'll drop back to the rear section. Let the Shomarians waste a few
seconds thinking they've gained something by reaching the front end of
the ship."

   He saw that Norman had taken time to tie a quick tourniquet around
his leg—a necessity, since he would soon have bled to death—and was
making a hobbling retreat; walking backward so that he could continue to
fire into the Shomarians with one hand and hold to the ship's girders for
support with the other.

   John was at the severed center of the ship when the blaster on his right
stopped as the man who held it died. Another immediately took its place.
He looked, and saw that Barbara was beside him.

   She stood with her blaster locked in firing position, swinging it back
and forth across the Shomarian ranks, her clothes torn and blood on her
face and arm. In her eyes was the same savage enjoyment he had seen so
often in the eyes of Norman.

  She shouted at him above the sounds of battle:

  "I lost Lora. I'm trying to find her."

   Damn, damn! he thought. You will have let her get killed, and yourself,
too. …

   There was a sudden lull in the force of the attack, and a hurried shifting
of positions among the Shomarians.

  He said quickly to Barbara, "Flank attack coming against the rear half.
Get back around to that other side—she should be there if anywhere—and
both of you get back to that second line."

  She turned and ran in the direction ordered. But the battle lust was in
her eyes and he knew that she was going only to hunt for Lora, that she
would never go back to the second line.

   He saw that Norman, was beginning the climb back up to the
chain-suspended disintegrator. George was dropping down to the floor
one arm wounded and helpless, and Jack Taylor was already taking his
place.
  He ran on, to a place in the guard line where he could quickly reach the
control seat the moment the ship was ready. He wondered how long that
would be. George had said five minutes. How many had already passed?
Two, perhaps? It was difficult to closely estimate the passage of time
during battle—

  A soft hand touched his arm and the voice of Lora said:

  "Here I am, Johnny."

   There was a cut across her cheek, she was using both hands to hold the
heavy blaster, and her legs were shaky with her weakness despite her effort
to stand straight and steady beside him.

  Old Shela was with Lora, blood on her paws, her green eyes narrowed
and her tail twitching as she looked at the Shomarians.

  "She saved my life," Lora said. "I was trying to get to where you were
and two Shomarians came up behind me."

  "What are you doing here?" He made his tone harsh. "Get on back
where you belong!"

   She looked up at him. In her eyes was not the battle lust that had been
in her sister's, but a calm, determined decision.

  "I am where I belong, Johnny," she said. "That's why I'm here."

   A Shomarian whistle shrieked somewhere in the back ranks and the
momentary lull exploded into the most violent attack yet. The suicide
soldiers lunged forward; bombardiers among them with their round, black
spheres already in their hands.

   The Ragnarokan line did not break—it melted. Men continued to fire as
they fell, until the unconsciousness of death stopped them, but that was
not enough. The guard line was going. The other Ragnarokan-Kilvarl
forces, trying to fight their way to the ship, would arrive too late—

  A Kilvarl thought came, quick and urgent:

  "Ship ready but for last seven wires. No time to solder and a man's
hands too large to get both in the small recess to hold wires down on
terminals."

  He thought of Lora's small hands and sent the two-word answer:

  "Tell Lora."

   He killed three more Shomarians, so close upon him that they fell at his
feet, and was aware of Lora and Shela being already gone as he retreated
another step.

   The battle continued, the seconds seeming long as he and the others of
the rapidly diminishing line retreated step by step.

   He wondered if Lora would remember that this half-ship would have no
artificial gravity when they went into second-level. The pressure of her
fingers against the terminals would cause her to float upward and the
connections would be released unless she wedged her knees under the edge
of that portion of the shift assembly.

  The thought of Shela came:

  "I will remind her of that."

   There were six blasters besides his own when his back bumped against
the ship. Two Shomarians, farther down the line, were already clambering
up through the girders. He shot one as Norman shot the other. Four more
Shomarians were instantly taking the place of the two.

   Norman had used a blaster. He saw that Norman was still short of the
disintegrator, so busy trying to keep the Shomarians away from the ship
that he had not yet had time to climb the rest of the way to it.

   The man who had been at the shift assembly was gone and Lora was in
his place, her arms inside the small housing where the seven loose wires
waited. Shomarians on the other side of the ship, breaking through that
guard line, were trying to kill her—

  The words came:

  "Ship ready!"

   He swung around and went up through the girders. A Shomorian beam
bit a steel plate above Lora and showered her with hot sparks. She did not
flinch nor move her arms as she held the wires in place.

   Other beams came quick behind the first, despite the efforts of Norman
and the remaining Ragnarokans to protect her. She turned her face
toward John and he heard her words, thin and faint above the roar of
battle:

   "Quick-Johnny—they're going to kill me and then we'll never get our
ship out of here—"

  He was still an arm's length from the control panel when he hit the shift
button with his hand.

   Three Shomarians were on the half-ship when it jumped into
second-level. There was a sudden, sickening sensation of falling, a
complete darkness and silence but for the blue light of Lake's blaster beam
and the hissing sound of it as it continued to fire.

   The sensation of falling caused the Shomarians to momentarily forget
Lora. They had often been in second-level, but always on ships with
artificial gravity. The feeling that they were suddenly dropping endlessly
downward in darkness caused them to instinctively clutch at the girders
beside them for support.

  That was all Norman needed to give him time to kill them.

   The force of the blaster beam gave the Shomarians a little shove and
they were already entering the limit of the space-warp field and
disappearing into normal-space whenthe last one was killed and Norman's
beam was cut off. *

   The ship was in a universe of absolute darkness then, but for the faint
glow of the luminous jet-control buttons.

   The Kilvarl commands began as he hooked his legs under the edge of
the control seat:

   "Jets one to five, full force—eighteen to twenty, full—cut one to five—
six to ten, full—"

   A brilliant light enveloped the half-ship as the Shomarian cruiser in
second-level projected a light sphere. The Shomarians could detect well
with their various instruments, but for a really clear and detailed view,
they had to have light…

   The air began rapidly leaking away, causing his eardrums to pop. He
jabbed and released firing buttons at the Kilvarl commands and wondered
what the Shomarian commanders —and Sar-Fane, who would be having
the views relayed to his own viewscreen—would be thinking as they looked
at the driveless half-skeleton of a ship on which a Ragnarokan was
randomly playing with buttons which activated only gray-plumed steam
jets while another Ragnarokan, wounded, was pulling himself up to a
disintegrator hung on a chain and a girl knelt with her hands inside part
of the shift assembly as a lanky old Kilvarl slapped with its paw at the
girl's smoldering skirt.

   The course of the half-ship was almost straight toward the cruiser and
the Kilvarl commands came faster:

  "—eleven to fourteen, full—the cruiser is going to fire— the Unicorn
will have to distract it—"

   He thought, So they made you do it, Cliff?—They made you and all the
others on the Unicorn give up your lives for the rest of us as all of you
knew they would do—

  The Kilvarl commands came with almost desperate urgency:

   "—six to ten, cut—Sar-Fane suspects—fifteen and sixteen, cut—ten and
eleven, full—cut— "Drop!"

  He slapped the Drop button.

   There was the sensation of implosion as air rushed in upon him, a
jarring crash as the half-ship fell two feet to a floor, a terrified,
incredulous shout in Shomarian, and four steel walls suddenly around
them.

  They were inside the Ghost ship.

   He went down the girders to the floor as Norman swung the chained
disintegrator around to blast an opening in the wall to the left, beyond
which was Sar-Fane's luxurious private suite. Lora and Shela were
climbing down out of the ship and Lora was calling to him:
   "Wait, Johnny—let me go with you and help you—" He dropped to the
floor, among the broken remains of two torture-execution platforms that
had been built for Norman and himself. He noticed, absently, that they
were very similar to the ones used by the Gerns.

   The Shomarian workman who had given the frightened shout was gone
down a corridor, still shouting. The scream of alarm sirens came, and then
the distant sound of men running down the sternward corridor, coming
toward the half-ship. These would not be harmless workmen, but armed
guards.

   There were four escape routes leading from Sar-Fane's suite. Norman
was already blocking the two toward the stern by sending the
disintegrator beam as a barrier of blue flame through that end of the
suite. John sent the thought to Shela as he ran toward the corridor
opening in front of him:

   "You and Lora watch that first doorway—I'll try to get around to the
other door in time to stop them."

   Shela sent him a brief, "Yes" of acknowledgment. Lora was on the floor
by then, running swiftly in the one-gravity of, the ship despite her
weakness, Shela loping beside her.

  Volar's thought came:

   "Sar-Fane felt the jar and heard the crash as your ship materialized
inside the compartment. He and Hesnar and Novla are now running for
the safety of the Staff Conference compartment; greatly irritated, but
with no real fear that such a minute force can be more than a
momentary menace. Guards are already rushing out into the next
corridor."

  He passed the door which Lora and Shela would guard and ran on, to
where the other corridor intersected from the left.

   He dived forward just before he reached it, so that he was almost prone
on the floor when his head and shoulders passed the corner of the
intersection. His blaster was before him and the four guards running
toward him, expecting him to appear as another running figure, were
enveloped in its fire simultaneously with their belated realization of his
appearance at floor level.
   He was up and running again as they fell. There were two doors some
distance down the corridor, opposite each other. The one to the right led
into the Staff Conference compartment, the one on the left into Sar-Fane's
suite. Just beyond them was the blue wall of Norman's disintegrator
beam, moving steadily toward the doors and leaving emptiness and
destruction in its wake.

  A shameful thing to have to do to our own ship, he thought But the
Shomarians can repair the damage for us—

    A guard jumped out through the doorway on the right, his blaster
firing blindly down the corridor before his body appeared. John shot the
blaster, and then the body.

   Sar-Fane's door slid open and Novla peered out, Sar-Fane and Hesnar
close behind him. Novla saw the slain guard and John's swift approach
and threw himself against the others with a startled yelp. The door
whipped shut a moment later.

  Volar sent the new information:

   "They now know that only Lora and Shela are at the other door. They
are running back to it. Guards from other parts of the ship will be in
that corridor within a few seconds and Lora and Shela will be subjected
to fire from both ends of it."

   Norman's disintegrator beam swept closer, across the doorways. John
knew the Kilvarl would be telling Norman exactly what to do and he did
not slacken his pace, but ran straight on toward the hissing blue wall. It
vanished just before he reached it and he had a fleeting glimpse of the
Staff Conference room and the high officials crowding like stampeded
woods goats out through the farther doorways.

  He swung around the edge of the doorway and into Sar-Fane's suite.
The disintegrator beam came to life the moment he was clear of it.

   He saw that he was in the master bedroom. One person was there; an
almost-nude teen-age girl, very pretty, with a dark bruise on her cheek
and terror in her wide, blue eyes as she stared at him in frozen
motionlessness.

  He ran on through the next room, a luxurious lounging room of some
kind, and into the third room. There he found the Shomarians.

   It was Sar-Fane's executive room, with numerous view-screens and a
desk with a dozen signal buttons. Hesnar was at the far end of the room,
the door already swung open and waiting with his blaster raised for the
guards to kill Lora and Shela so it would be safe for him to run out into
the corridor. Novla was Reside him, using both shaking hands to hold his
blaster and chattering something in Shomarian.

   Sar-Fane was by the desk, his eyes wide and glaring with incredulity as
he swung his blaster up to shoot, a white-faced Honor Virgin held in front
of him as a shield. He was holding the blaster in front of the girl so that it
could not be shot from his hand without killing her.

   Volar's thought came: "He knows that a Ragnarokan cannot kill a
helpless woman—he is counting on that to let him kill you."

   Almost straight above Sar-Fane's head was an ornate ceiling
decoration; a chandelier-like object of gold and silver, set with rows of
diamonds. John sent a blaster beam along the base of it as Sar-Fane's
beam swung toward him. He dodged with a sideward leap and the beam
ripped into the wall behind him.

   Then the broken chandelier crashed down on Sar-Fane's bald head,
with such unexpected and painful impact that he staggered backward, the
blaster beam dropping.

  John reached him an instant later and knocked the blaster from his
hand. The girl slumped to the floor in a dead faint as he did so.

   The action had taken place so quickly, and Hesnar and Novla had been
so intent upon getting out into the corridor as soon as possible, that they
were just swinging around in realization of the new development. Their
blasters were in their hands, and on Hesnar's face was the same
incredulous glare that had been on Sar-Fane's. But on Novla's face, as he
saw that Sar-Fane was already a prisoner, was the sick look of a man who
recognized unalterable defeat.

   The sound of guards running toward the corridor outside was load and
close and he sent the quick command to Lora and Shela: "Come inside!"
Then to Hesnar and Novla he said, "Drop those blasters!" and to Sar-Fane,
"Order all guard action to stop—now!"
   Novla's blaster clattered to the floor, but Hesnar stood motionless,
staring with the wild glare of disbelief and hatred. .

   Lora and Shela darted through the doorway, to stop to one side of it as
the first beams from the guards hissed down the corridor behind them.
Sar-Fane had not moved, as though too stunned by his capture to speak.
Hesnar's mad stare went from John to Lora and back to John. His lips
were working soundlessly, drooling.

   Shela crouched, ready to spring, and said to John while she kept her
eyes on Hesnar:

   "He is so insane he does not know, himself, what he may do. He wants
to hurt you in some way worse than merely killing you."

    "Savage—hairy, stinking savage!" Hesnar's drooling lips spoke thickly.
"I'll make you pay for this! Watch me kill myself—watch me, damn you-
—damn you—"

   Hesnar jerked the muzzle of his blaster up toward his heart, with a
movement so quick and unexpected that the muzzle was out past his
shoulder and pointed at Lora before John saw the ruse and knew with
clear and terrible realization that Hesnar was going to kill Lora, and he
would kill Hesnar too late to save her.

   Then Shela, who would have read Hesnar's intentions a fraction of a
second before, was between Lora and the blaster in a leap so swift that
John did not see it. The blaster hissed, as Shela's paw struck it, and the
beam went through her chest and into the wall to one side of Lora.

   Shela's paw struck again, to rip Hesnar's throat to the bone and fling
him, dying, out into the corridor. Then she fell to the floor and Lora
dropped to her knees beside her with a despairing cry, to lift Shela's head
to her lap and plead, "Don't, Shela—don't die, Shela—"

  But the light was already fading from the green eyes.

  Two of the guards in the corridor outside, urged on by the harshly
shouted commands of the officer behind them, tried to get through the
doorway. He shot them both and they fell across Hesnar.

  He could hear others coming and he said to Sar-Fane, "Give that order
to those guards or I'll make you scream it out."

  Sar-Fane gave the order and the sounds of approach stopped.

  "Now, stop all guard action," he ordered. "All over the ship. Do that and
you won't be harmed."

   Sar-Fane turned to face him, the glare gone and only the hatred left in
his eyes. He seemed almost stoic, although he had forced himself to accept
the inevitable.

   "Yes," Sar-Fane said in an emotionless voice. "The inferior must crawl
before the superior."

   Sar-Fane turned to the desk, spoke very quickly into one of the
communicators, jabbed three buttons in at the same time, then turned
back to face John with his finger on a fourth button and vicious triumph
glittering through the hatred as he said:

  "And you will soon crawl, barbarian!"

  As Sar-Fane spoke, Volar's thought was coming:

  "He has just ordered all-out suicide attacks against you and Norman.
His finger is on the button that can destroy the Ragnarok."

   "Don't move," Sar-Fane said, "or I'll destroy your battleship. Stand
there—-and sweat while you think about what will be done to you and your
mate—"

   Sirens were screaming louder than ever and the guards were coming
again. Lora was still holding Shela's head and stroking the gold-silver fur
that was now damp with tears, saying very softly: "—I followed you out
into that darkness, Shela, but now you're gone and I've lost you…"

   John did what he realized he should have done before; what the
savagely efficient Norman would have done at once. He flipped up the
muzzle of his blaster and sent the beam through the finger Sar-Fane had
on the button. Then he jerked Sar-Fane's arm around and brought his
knee up against the back of it. Sar-Fane screamed as the forearm broke
with a crack like the snapping of a dry branch, screamed again as John
broke the upper arm, then shrieked in horror as the arm was twisted out
of the shoulder socket and wrapped like a noose around his neck.

   "Cancel.'" John said.

   Sar-Fane's eyes were bulging in a face gone gray. He drew a moaning
breath and shouted orders in hoarse, desperate tones, pushing the Cancel
buttons at the same time.

   When Sar-Fane had finished, Volar said:

   "All guard actions are now ceasing."

    "Now," John said to Sar-Fane, "you will inform all officers of the troops
below and all your ship's commanders that you have just surrendered
unconditionally to the Ragnarokan-Kilvarl alliance. No messages will be
sent to Shomar by anyone. And the Ragnarok will now pull alongside and
its crew will take command of this ship."

   Sar-Fane seemed about to hesitate. John gave the broken arm another
twist that brought another scream:

   "Yes—yes! I'll tell them!"

   "Tell it fast and tell it true," he said. "Remember, I'll be watching and
the Kilvarl will be listening. From now on until the day you die, the
Ragnarokans will be watching you and the Kilvarl will be listening."

   It was dawn for the third time since Sar-Fane's surrender. John stood
on the hill, near the bayonet tree where once Lora had lain dying, and
watched her coming up the hill toward him. He could see question on her
face, even at that distance, and he knew she was still afraid he might leave
Kilvar without her.

   Fenrir and Sigyn—both of them bearing minor wounds of battle—were
with her. They had been staying with her a great deal of the time lately,
sensing her uncertainty and trying in their mute way to reassure her.

  But there was nothing for anyone to be afraid of any more. The victory
had been complete and final. Not even Shomar knew, yet, that the end had
begun for the far-flung Shomarian Empire. He had written a message for
Sar-Fane to send to the holy cabinet on Shomar; one which Sar-Fane had
spoken in Shomarian under the watchful eyes of two Kilvarl. The message
had been brief:

   "Victory came very quickly, as planned, with complete surrender. For
certain reasons, the public punishment of the Ragnarokans will not take
place at the time scheduled. The fleet will return to Shomar on
Supremacy Day. There will be many Kilvarl on board the ships; far
more than we had ever hoped to capture. It is desired that all cabinet
members be in Capitol City -when the fleet arrives. It is very important
that there be no more messages of any kind sent to Shomar. The reasons
for this, which involve use of the Kilvarl in furthering the plan, will be
made known to you when the fleet reaches Shomar."

   "Which will leave the holy cabinet puzzled but pleased," Norman had
said, "and will set the dissectionists to happily sharpening their knives."

   "I think, though," Dale had remarked, "that Sar-Fane was shocked by
the degree of your deception, Johnny. You had him tell nothing but the
truth—as seen from our side—to keep his cabinet from suspecting the
truth. I'm sure that this is supposed to be a lot more unethical than
honestly outright Shomarian lies…"

   A shadow flickered across the hill on which John stood. It was the
Ragnarok—the bomb in it long since removed—going to join the armada
that was now the Ragnarokan-Kilvarl fleet. The fleet was visible overhead;
the vast armada of which Destry had once said, "I'm glad they're for us
instead of against us." It would go into second level in a few minutes, with
a command force of Ragnarokans and Kilvarl on each ship, and would
depart for Shomar. Part of the fleet, and the Shomarian troops who had
switched allegiance, would capture the Shomarian capitol city. The rest of
the fleet, assisted by the Ghost ship, would capture all Shomarian ships on
or near Shomar. This should not be the least difficult with Kilvarl to read
the minds of the enemy commanders and know in advance of the
Shomarian crewmen what the orders were going to be.

    Then Shomar would be leaderless, without a single ship left to defend
it, and any appeal for help made by minor officials who bad been absent
from the capitol city when it fell would result in little if any rescue efforts
from other worlds.

   Rule by force could be very effective… until the hands that ruled were
deprived of their whips. Then nothing was left. Most of the Shomarian
crewmen and ground-force troops had not felt any fervid loyalty toward a
society in which they were ordained to be small, unimportant cogs and
could never be more. They had fought and died for the Shomarian Society
because they would receive food and no punishment if they did so, and
would receive no food and severe punishment if they did not do so. They
had no conception of such things as freedom or self-reliance. Without
someone to provide food for them and tell them what to do they would be
bewildered and helpless.

   Now, their former supreme leader was a prisoner of the Ragnarokans
and Kilvarl, together with all their officers. The Shomarian fleet was in the
hands of the former enemy and Shomar, itself, would soon fall. Their
reaction had been as much instinct as reasoning: new leaders had
replaced the old, so they would serve the new leaders and their simple lives
would continue unchanged.

   The reaction among the higher Shomarian officers had been different
All of them had been indoctrinated with Divine Destiny and Shomarian
Supremacy concepts and many of them were in a near-psychotic state as
they contemplated the fact that Shomarian Supremacy and Divine Destiny
had been illusions; forever destroyed, now, by a small force of barbarians
and animals.

   Not all of the higher officers, however, had had their initiative of
thought completely submerged. Garron was one such officer. He had said:

   "I could never go higher, no matter what abilities I might possess nor
how hard I worked. I took orders from strutting young Hesnar-Fane and
bowed to him—and I regarded him as too incompetent to be an oiler on
my ship. I've seen the social systems on other worlds—before we changed
them— and I have often wondered how far I might have gone had I lived
under such a system. Having no desire to be executed for heresy and
treason, I kept these thoughts to myself…"

  "I missed you, Johnny."

   Lora stopped beside him and leaned against him so he could put his
arm around her. She was tired from the climb, still not completely
recovered from the weakness. Fenrir and Sigyn sat down in front of them
to look down on the new Ragnarokan-Kilvarl camp which had been set up
not far from the eastern foot of the hill, where the forested plain began.

  "I just saw Volar and Thorala," Lora said. "Thorala reminds me of Shela
except she isn't old. Sar-Fane's personal physicians must have done a
wonderful job for her to be already so near well."

   "Volar, himself, was there," he said. "The doctors did a good job on
Sar-Fane's arm afterward, I understand, but not with the inspiration
toward perfection that they had when they operated on Thorala while
Volar stood reared up on the table and breathed down the backs of their
necks."

  Another shadow flickered across the hill and the Ghost— they had
decided to name it that—dropped down to land near the camp.

   "Norman has been trying out the Ghost again," Lora said. "He's happy,
now. And that tissue-restorative treatment the Shomarian doctors gave
his leg will leave him with only a slight limp."

   She looked out across the dead city, where the broken Shomarian
battleship lay, and the shallow crater that marked the place where Red
Anders and the Prowler had died, then turned her head to look toward the
camp.

   "So many terrible things have happened," she said, "but so many good
things, too. We're free, now—we found and whipped our real enemy. The
Kilvarl are free and pretty soon a lot of other races will be free. It makes
me feel good inside to think of it."

   A series of crashing sounds came from the sky and they looked up to see
the last of the fleet disappear into second-level.

   "Barbara is another one who is happy," he remarked. "She's on what
used to be Hesnar's flagship; in the control room and no doubt asking the
Shomarians ten thousand questions about the operation of the ship."

   "I was afraid you might have gone with that fleet instead of waiting to
go on the Ghost," Lora said. "That's why I hurried up here to try to find
you."

  "I'll go late tonight on the Ghost."

   "It will be awfully lonesome here, with no one much but the very young
and very old left." Her dark eyes looked up at him. "I don't want to be
alone anymore, like I was under that Shomarian drug."
   "You mean, you want to go, too?"

   "I mean that I am going, Johnny. From now on, wherever you go, I will
go, too."

   There was a silence as they stood close together and looked across the
Ragnarokan-Kilvarl camp, which was scattered among the groves of trees.
Children, young Kilvarl, and young prowlers were running and playing
across the green grass. It was the first real freedom the children and
prowlers had known for many weeks.

   "They're all the same, aren't they?" Lora said. "The young, I mean. Two
legs or four—they like to run and play and know the joy of living. I wish
Shela could be here with us this morning and watch the little Kilvarl
playing out under the sky for the first time in their lives."

   "Darag told me that the Kilvarl are a race who like to lie in the sun and
dream. They can do that again, just as soon as our job with the Shomarian
Empire is finished, and that shouldn't take so very long."

   "No." She shook her head. "I learned a lot about the Kilvarl from Shela.
Everything has changed for them. They can't go home again, anymore
than we can. For two hundred years they haven't really had any home."

   "Kilvar," he said. "The whole wide, green world of Kilvar."

  "Kilvar is ours, too, Johnny—but will all of us want to settle down here
and never leave it?"

    Restlessness stirred again in him at the thought of never leaving, of
living out his life in peaceful pursuits while the years of that life went by;
the years that were so few and so fleeting to men as compared with the
vast time and space dimensions of the universe in which they lived. It was
a restlessness he had tried to subdue for Lora's sake, knowing that she
wanted no more danger and strife. But it was hard to quiet the longing…

   He looked at the Ghost, already seeing it leaving the galaxy behind and
going out across the great, empty space void at a speed of two hundred
lightyears a day while the Greater Magellanic Cloud grew ever larger in
the viewscreen. The Kilvarl said that no being from the galaxy had ever
been there, that there were things in the Cloud that not even the Kilvarl
could understand. The restless ones among the Ragnarokans could go
there—

   "And see what is there," Lora said. "But only if we go soon, before it's
too late and we're too old."

   She had spoken the rest of this thought, to the word, and he asked in
surprise, "How did you know I was thinking that?"

   "I just did," she answered. "Like other times these past three days when
I could feel your restlessness and it would make me afraid you might go
away and leave me behind. I guess that Shela being in my mind so much
made me a little telepathic. I think that maybe the Kilvarl could teach all
of us how to be telepathic."

   She looked out across the green parks where the young of three species
were playing together—the treble laughter of the children mingling with
the high-pitched, joyous yipping of the prowler pups and the purring cries
of the Kilvarl kittens.

   "When you're young like that," she said, "a world can seem to be a big
and exciting place to explore. But we're not that young, anymore… How
long, Johnny, until the job with the Shomarian Empire is finished and the
Ghost will be free?"

   "Two years—maybe only one. You don't mean you want to go to the
Cloud, Lora?"

  "Yes. Don't you?"

  "I've been telling myself I should forget it."

  "Because you thought I wouldn't want to go—I know. And I thought I
wanted for us to settle down to a life of quiet peacefulness—and now I
don't want us to do that."

   She looked up at him, question on her face. "Why is that, Johnny—why
should I feel restless now when I think about it, and not want for us to be
like the people in the old fairy tales who lived happily ever after when their
troubles were over and their story was ended?"

   "You said the reason why, Lora," he answered. "When they settled down
to living happily ever after, their story was ended. We want ours to be just
beginning."