STAR RANGERS

PROLOGUE

There is an old legend concerning a Roman Emperor, who, to show his power, singled out the Tribune of a loyal legion and commanded that he march his men across Asia to the end of the world. And so a thousand men vanished into the hinterland of the largest continent, to be swallowed up forever. On some unknown battlefield the last handful of survivors must have formed a square which was overwhelmed by a barbarian charge. And their eagle may have stood lonely and tarnished in a horsehide tent for a generation thereafter. But it may be guessed, by those who know of the pride of these men in their corps and tradition, that they did march east as long as one still remained on his feet.

In 8054 A.D. history repeated itself—as it always does. The First Galactic Empire was breaking up. Dictators, Emperors, Consolidators wrested the rulership of their own or kindred solar systems from Central Control. Space pirates raised flags and recruited fleets to gorge on spoil plundered from this wreckage. It was a time in which only the ruthless could flourish.

Here and there a man, or a group of men, tried vainly to dam the flood of disaster and disunion. And, notable among these last-ditch fighters who refused to throw aside their belief in the impartial rule of Central Control were the remnants of the Stellar Patrol, a law enforcement body whose authority had existed unchallenged for almost a thousand years. Perhaps it was because there was no longer any security to be found outside their own ranks that these men clung the closer to what seemed in the new age to be an outworn code of ethics and morals. And their stubborn loyalty to a vanished ideal was both exasperating and pitiful to the new rulers.

Jorcam Dester, the last Control Agent of Perun, who was nursing certain ambitions of his own, solved in the Roman manner the problem of ridding his sector of the Patrol. He summoned the half dozen officers still commanding navigable ships and ordered them—under the seal of the Control—out into space, to locate (as he said) and re-map forgotten galactic border systems no one had visited in at least four generations. He offered a vague promise to establish new bases from which the Patrol might rise again, invigorated and revived, to fight for the Control ideals. And, faithful to their very ancient trust, they launched this mission, undermanned, poorly supplied, without real hope, but determined to carry out orders to the last.

One of these ships was the Scout—Starfire.

1 — LAST PORT

The Patrol ship Starfire came into her last port at early morning. She made a bad landing, for two of her eroded tubes blew just as the pilot tried to set her down. She had bounced then, bounced and buckled, and now she lay on her meteor-scarred side.

Ranger Sergeant Kartr nursed his left wrist in his right hand and licked blood from bitten lips. The port wall of the pilot’s cubby had become the floor and the latch of its door dug into one of his shaking knees.

Of his companions, Latimir had not survived the landing. One glance at the crazy twisted angle of the astrogator’s black head told Kartr that. And Mirion, the pilot, hung limply in the torn shock webs before the control board. Blood rilled down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. Did dead men continue to bleed? Kartr didn’t think so.

He drew a slow, experimental breath of his own and knew relief when it was not followed by a stab of pain. Ribs were still intact then, in spite of the slam which had smashed him into his present position. He grinned mirthlessly as he stretched arms and legs with the same caution. Sometimes it paid to be a tough, uncivilized frontier barbarian.

The lights flickered and went off. It was then that Kartr almost panicked, in spite of his carefully nurtured veteran’s calm. He grabbed at the door latch and pulled. Sharp stabs of agony shot from his injured wrist and jerked him back to sanity. He wasn’t sealed in, the door had moved an inch or so. He could get out.

Must get out and find the medico to look at Mirion. The pilot should not be moved until they knew the extent of his injuries—

Then Kartr remembered. The medico wasn’t around any more. Hadn’t been with them since three—or was it four?—planets back. The ranger shook his aching head and frowned. That loss of memory was almost worse than the pain in his arm. He mustn’t lose his grip!

Three planet landings back—that was it! When they had beaten off the Greenies’ rush after the ship’s nose blaster had gone dead on them, Medico Tork had gone down, a poison dart right through his throat.

Kartr shook his head again and began to work patiently, with one hand, at the door. It seemed a very long time before he was able to force it open far enough for a person to squeeze through. A blue beam suddenly shot up at him through the gap.

“Kartr! Latimir! Mirion!” The roll call followed the light.

Only one man on board carried a blue torch.

“Rolth!” Kartr identified him. Somehow it was encouraging that it should be one of his own squad of specialist-explorers waiting below. “Latimir got it, but Mirion is still living, I think. Can you come up? My wrist seems to be broken—”

He edged back to let the other squirm through. The thin blue spear of light swept across Latimir’s body and centered on the pilot. Then the torch tube was thrust into Kartr’s good hand as Rolth crawled over to untangle the webbing which held the unconscious man.

“How bad are we?” Kartr raised his voice to be heard over the moans now coming from the pilot.

“I do not know. Our ranger quarters came through all right, but the hatch to the drive section is jammed and when I beat on it there was no answer—”

Kartr tried to remember who had been on duty with the drive. They were so ruinously shorthanded that everyone was doing another’s job. Even the rangers were pressed into the once jealously guarded Patrol duties. It had been that way ever since the Greenie attack.

“Kaatah—” A call more hiss than word came from the passage.

“Okay.” The sergeant responded almost automatically. “Got a real light, Zinga? Rolth’s up here, but you know how far his two-for-a-credit shiner goes—”

“Fylh is hunting out one of the big spots,” the newcomer answered. “You have trouble?”

“Latimir is dead. Mirion’s still breathing—but there’s no telling how bad he is hurt. Rolth says that the drive room gang didn’t answer at all. You all right?”

“Yes. Rylh and I and Smitt of the crew. We were bumped a little but nothing serious. Hah—”

A yellow-red beam of some brilliance silhouetted the speaker.

“Fylh brings a battle torch—”

Zinga climbed up and went to work with Rolth. They had Mirion free and flat on the plating before Kartr asked his next question.

“How about the Captain?”

Zinga turned his head slowly, almost as if he were unwilling to answer that. His agitation, as usual, was betrayed by the quiver in the pointed neck frill of skin, which would not lie flat on his shoulders when he was worried or excited.

“Smitt has gone to seek him. We do not know—”

“One spot of luck in the whole knock out.” That was Rolth, his voice as usual unemotional. “This is an Arth type planet. Since we aren’t going to lift off it again in a hurry we’d better thank the Spirit of Space for that!”

An Arth type planet—one on which the crew of this particular ship could breathe without helmets, walk without discomfort of alien gravity, probably eat and drink natural products without fear of sudden death. Kartr eased his wrist across his knee. That was pure luck. The Starfire might have blown anywhere within the past three months—she had been held together only with wire and hope. But to blow on an Arth type world was better fortune for her survivors than they would have dared pray for after the black disappointments of the past few years, years of too many missions and no refittings.

“It hasn’t been burnt off either,” he observed almost absently.

“Why should it have been?” inquired Fylh, his voice tinged with almost cheerful mockery—but mockery which also had a bite in it. “This system is far off our maps—very far removed from all the benefits of our civilization!”

The benefits of Central Control civilization, yes. Kartr blinked as that struck home. His own planet, Ylene, had been burnt off five years ago—during the Two-Sector Rebellion. And yet he sometimes still dreamed of taking the mail packet back, of wearing his ranger uniform, proud with the Five Sector Bars and the Far Roving Star, of going up into the forest country—to a little village by the north sea. Burnt off—! He had never been able to visualize boiled rock where that village had stood—or the dead cinder which was the present Ylene—a horrible monument to planetary war.

Zinga worked on his wrist and put it in a sling. Kartr was able to help himself as they angled Mirion through the door. By the time they had the pilot resting in the lounge the Patrolman, Smitt, came in, towing a figure so masked in head bandages as to be unrecognizable.

“Commander Vibor?” Kartr hazarded. He was on his feet, his shoulders squared, his heels brought smartly together so that the vlis hide of his boots rasped faintly.

The bandaged head swung toward him.

“Ranger Kartr?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Who else—?” The voice began with customary briskness but then it trailed off into a disconcerting silence.

Kartr frowned. The vlis skin gave off another whisper as he shifted his feet.

“Of the Patrol—Latimir is dead, sir. We have Mirion here—hurt. And Smitt is okay. The Rangers Fylh, Rolth, Zinga, and myself are all right. Rolth reports that the drive room hatch is jammed and that no one replied when he pounded on it. We will investigate that now, sir. Also the crew’s quarters.”

“Yes—yes— Carry on, Ranger.”

Smitt jumped just in time to catch and ease that lank, limp body to the floor. Commander Vibor was in no shape to resume command.

Kartr knew again a touch of that panic which had gripped him when the lights had failed. Commander Vibor—the man they had come to believe was a rock of certainty and security in their chaotic world— He sucked in the tainted air of the too old ship and accepted the situation.

“Smitt.” He turned first to the Patrol com-techneer, who by all the rigid rules of the service certainly outranked a mere ranger sergeant. “Can you take over with the Commander and Mirion?”

Smitt did have some medico training, he had acted as Tork’s assistant once or twice.

“Right.” The shorter man did not even look up as he bent over the moaning pilot. “Go along and check the rest of the wreckage, fly-boy—”

Fly-boy, eh? Well, the high and mighty senior service of the Patrol should be glad that the fly-boys were with them during this tour of duty. Rangers were trained to calculate and use the products of any strange world. After a crack up they would certainly be more at home in an alien wilderness than Patrol-crewmen.

Holding his injured arm tightly to his chest Kartr made his way back along the corridor, followed by the begoggled Rolth, his eyes shaded against what was to him the violent fire cast by the ordinary beam torch the sergeant clutched in his good hand. Zinga and Fylh brought up the rear, having armed themselves, as Kartr noted, with a portable flamer to cut through jammed bulkheads.

Even with that it took them a good ten minutes to break the hatch of the drive room. And in spite of the clamor they made during the process there came no answer from within. Kartr steeled himself inwardly and pushed through first. He looked only once at what was caught in the full shaft of his beam and then backed out, sick and shaking. The others, seeing his face, asked no questions.

As he leaned against the edge of the battered door fighting nausea they all heard the pounding from the tail section.

“Who—?”

Fylh answered. “Armory and supplies—that would be Jaksan, Cott, Snyn, Dalgre.” He counted them off on the tips of his claw-boned fingers. “They must be—”

“Yes.” Kartr was already leading the rescue party toward the sound.

Again they had to apply the white-hot energy of the flamer to buckled metal. And then they must wait until they metal had cooled before three battered and blood-streaked men came crawling through.

Jaksan—yes, Kartr would have wagered a year’s pay credits that the tough, very tough, Patrol arms officer would survive. And Snyn and Dalgre.

Jaksan began to speak even before he got to his feet again.

“How is it?”

“Smitt’s okay. The Commander has some head injuries. Mirion’s bad. The rest—” Kartr’s hands swept out in a gesture from his childhood—one of those strange barbarian exuberances he had been so careful to suppress during his service years.

“The ship—”

“I’m a ranger, no Patrol techneer. Maybe Smitt could tell you better about that. He’s the nearest to an expert that we have left.”

Jaksan’s fingernails rasped in the stubble on his unshaven chin. There was a long rip in his right sleeve, an oozing scratch under it. He stared at the three rangers absently. Already he was probably cutting losses. If the Starfire could function again it would be because of his drive and determination.

“The planet?”

“Arth type. Mirion was trying to set down in what looked like open country when the tubes blew. No traces of civilization noted before landing.” This information was Kartr’s own territory and he answered with confidence.

If the rangers’ sleds hadn’t been too badly banged up they could break one out soon and begin exploring. There was, of course, the fuel problem. There might be enough in sled tanks for one trip—with a very even chance that the scouting party would walk home. Unless the Starfire was definitely done for and they could tap her supply— But that could all be gone into later. At least they could take a look now at their immediate surroundings.

“We’ll sortie.” Kartr’s voice was crisp and assured and asked no permission from Jaksan—or any crewman. “Smitt is with the Commander and Mirion in the lounge—”

The Patrol officer nodded. This return to routine was correct, right. It seemed to steady them all, Kartr observed, as he found his way into the ranger’s own domain. Fylh was there before him, freeing their packs from the general jumble the crash had made of their supplies. Kartr shook his head.

“Not full packs. We won’t go more than a quarter mile. And, Rolth,” he added over his shoulder to the begoggled Faltharian in the doorway, “you stay here. Arth sun is bad for your eyes. Your turn will come after nightfall.”

Rolth nodded and went toward the lounge. Kartr picked up an explorer’s belt with one hand but Zinga took it from him.

“This I do. Stand still.” The other’s scaled digits buckled and snapped the vlis hide band and its dangling accouterments about the sergeant’s flat waist. He gave a wriggle to settle the weight in the familiar balance. No need to pick up a disrupter—he couldn’t fire it with one hand. The short blaster would have to serve as his sole weapon.

Luckily they had not landed air-lock side down. To burn and burrow their way out was a job none of them would have cared for just then. But they only had to hammer loose the hatch and climb through, Kartr being boosted by his companions. Then they slid down the dull and scored metal to the still smoking ground, ran across that to the clean earth beyond the range of the blast. Once there they halted and wheeled to look back at the ship.

“Bad—” Fylh’s chirp put all their dismay into words. “She will not lift from here again.”

Well, Kartr was no mech-techneer, but he would endorse that. The wrenched and broken-backed ship before them would certainly never ride the space lanes again, even if they could get her to a refitting dock. And the nearest of those was, Space knew, how many suns away!

“Why should we worry about that?” asked Zinga mildly. “Since we first set out on this voyage we guessed that there would be for us no return—”

Yes, they had feared that, deep in their hearts, in the backs of their minds, with that flutter of terror and loneliness which plucked at a man’s nerves as he rode between system and stars. But none of them had before admitted it openly to another. None—unless—

Maybe the humans had not admitted it, but the Bemmys might have. Loneliness had long since become a part of their lives—they were so often the only individuals of their respective species aboard a ship. If Kartr felt alien in Patrol crews because he was not only a specialized ranger but also a barbarian from a frontier system, what must Fylh or Zinga feel—they who could not even claim the kinship of a common species?

Kartr turned away from the broken ship to study the sandy waste studded with rock outcrops. It must be close to midday and the sun beat down heavily upon them. Under this wave of heat Zinga thrived. His frill spread wide—making a fan behind his hairless head, pulsing a darker red with every passing moment, his slender tongue flickered in and out between his yellow lips. But Fylh moved to the protection of the shadow by the rocks.

This was desert land. Kartr’s nostrils expanded, taking in and classifying strange scents. No life except—

His head snapped to the left. Life! But Zinga was before him, his big four-toed feet running lightly over sand, the thin webs between the toes keeping the reptilian ranger from sinking into the stuff through which the others slipped and slid. When Kartr joined him the tall Zacathan was squatting beside a rock on which curled a whiplash of scaled body. A narrow head swung up, a tongue flickered in and out.

Kartr stopped and tried mind touch. Yes, this was native life. Alien, of course. A mammal he might have made contact with. But this was reptile. Zinga might not have the same mind touch power that the sergeant possessed but this creature was distantly of his own kind—could he make friends? Kartr fought to catch and interpret those strange impressions which hovered just on the borderline of thought waves he could read. The creature had been alarmed at their coming, but now it was interested in Zinga. It had a high degree of self-confidence, a confidence which argued that it must have a natural weapon of potency.

“It has poison fangs—” Zinga answered that question for him. “And it does not like your scent. I think that you may suggest some natural enemy. But me it does not mind. It cannot tell us much—it is not a thinker—”

The Zacathan touched a horny fingertip to the creature’s head. It permitted this liberty warily. And when Zinga rose to his feet its head lifted also, swinging higher above the coils of its body as if to watch him the better.

“It will be of little use to us, and to your kind it may be deadly. I shall send it away.” Zinga stared down at the coiled creature. Its head began to sway in a short arc. Then it hissed and was gone, slipping into a crack between the rocks.

“Come here, leaden feet!” Fylh’s voice drifted down from the sky.

The Trystian’s feather-crested head with its large round eyes, unlidded, looked down from the tallest of the rock peaks. Kartr sighed. That climb might be nothing at all for the birdman with his light bones, but he certainly dreaded to try it—with only one hand in working order.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“There are growing things—over there—” The golden arms above his head swung eastward, the large thumb-claw out in added emphasis.

Zinga was already scuttling up the side of the sun-baked rock.

“How far?” Kartr demanded.

Fylh squinted and considered. “Perhaps two fals—”

“Space measure, please,” Kartr pleaded patiently. In his aching head he simply could not translate the measures of Fylh’s home planet into human terms.

Zinga answered. “Maybe a good mile. The growing things are green—”

“Green?” Well, that wasn’t too strange. Yellow-green, and blue-green, and dull purple, red, yellow, even sickly white—he had seen all kinds and colors of vegetation since he had put on the comet insignia.

“But this is a different green—” The Zacathan’s words floated down slowly, as if Zinga was now puzzled by the evidence before his eyes.

And Kartr knew that he must see too. As a ranger-explorer he had walked the soil of countless planets in myriad systems—nowadays he found it hard to reckon how many. There were some easy to remember, of course, because of their horror or their strange inhabitants. But the rest were only a maze of color and odd life in his mind. He had to refer to old reports and the ship’s log to recall facts. The thrill he had once known, when he pushed for the first time through alien vegetation, or tried to catch the mind waves of things he could not see, had long since gone. But now, as he scrabbled for a hand hold and dug the toes of his boots into hollows in the gritty rock, he began to recapture a faint trace of that forgotten emotion.

Claw fingers and scaled digits reached down to hook in his shoulder harness and belt and heave him up to the narrow top of the spur. He flinched from the heat of the stone and shielded his eyes against the glare with his cupped hands.

What Fylh had discovered was easy to see. And that prick of excitement stirred again far inside him. For that ribbon of vegetation was green! But the green! It had no yellow tint, and none of the blue cast it would have held on his own vanished Ylene. It was a verdant green such as he had never set eyes upon before—running in a thin line across the desert country as if it followed some source of moisture. He blinked to clear his sight and then, knowing that his natural powers at that range were far inferior to Fylh’s, he unhooked his visibility lenses. It was hard work to adjust them with only one hand but at last he was able to turn them on that distant ribbon.

Trees, bushes, leaped at him across the baked rock. He might almost touch one of those leaves, trembling in the passing of some faint breeze. And under that same cluster of leaves he caught a fleck of dancing light. He had been right, that was flowing water.

Slowly he turned, the lenses at his eyes, Zinga’s hands closing on his hips to steady him as he moved, following that green streak north. Miles ahead it widened, spread into a vast splotch of the restful color. They must have crashed close to the edge of the desert. And that river could guide them north to life. Fylh stirred beside him and Kartr tipped the lenses skyward, having caught in his mind that far-away shimmer of life force. Wide wings wheeled and dipped. He saw the cruel curve of a hunter’s beak and strong talons as the sky creature sailed proudly over them.

“I like this world—” Zinga’s hissing speech broke the silence. “And I think for us it will be right. Here are those of my blood—even if far distant—and there, in the sky, is one akin to you, Fylh. Do you not wish sometimes that your ancestors had not shed their wings along the path they trod to wisdom?”

Fylh shrugged. “What of the tails and fighting claws your people dropped behind, my brave Zinga? And Kartr’s race once went with fur upon them—maybe tailed too—many animals are. One cannot have everything.” But he continued to watch the bird until it was out of even his range of sight.

“We might try getting one of the sleds loose. There ought to be enough fuel left to take us as far as that patch of green in the north. Where there is grass there should be food—”

Kartr heard a faint snicker from Zinga. “Can it be that our Bemmy-and-animal lover has turned hunter?”

Could he kill—kill to eat? But the supplies were low in the ship—if any had survived the crash. Sooner or later they would have to live off the land. And meat—meat would be necessary for life. The sergeant forced himself to think of that in what he hoped was a sensible fashion. But still he was not sure that he could align the sights of a blaster and pull the trigger—for the purpose of meat!

No need to think of that until the time came. He hooked the lenses back on his belt.

“Back to report?” Fylh began to lower himself over the edge of the pinnacle.

“Back to report,” agreed Kartr soberly.

2 — GREEN HILLS

“—a stream bed with vegetation and indication of better land to the north. Request permission to break out one of the sleds and explore in that direction.”

It was disconcerting to report to a blank mask of bandages, surprisingly difficult, Kartr found. He stood at attention, waiting for the Commander’s response.

“And the ship?”

Sergeant Kartr might have shrugged, had etiquette permitted. Instead he answered with some caution.

“I’m no techneer, sir. But she looks done for.”

There it was—straight enough. Again he wished he could see the expression on the face under that roll upon roll of white plasta-skin. The quiet in the lounge was broken only by the breath, whistling and labored, moving in and out of Mirion’s torn lips. The pilot was still unconscious. Kartr’s wrist ached viciously and, after the clean air outside, the smog in the ship seemed almost too thick to stomach.

“Permission granted. Return in ten hours—” But that answer sounded mechanical, as if Vibor were now only a recording machine repeating sounds set on the wire long ago. That was the correct official order to be given when the ship planeted and he gave it as he had so many countless times before.

Kartr saluted and detoured around Mirion to the door. He hoped that there was a sled ready to fly. Otherwise, they’d foot it as far as they could.

Zinga hovered outside, his pack on his shoulders, Kartr’s dangling from one arm.

“The port sled is free. We’ve fueled it with cubes from the ship’s supply—”

They had no right to do that ordinarily. But now it was sheer folly not to raid the stores when the Starfire would never use them again. Kartr crawled over the battered hatch to the now open berth of the sled. Fylh was already impatiently seated behind the windbreak, testing the controls.

“She’ll fly?”

Fylh’s head, the crest flat against the skull like some odd, stiff mane of hair, swiveled and his big reddish eyes met the sergeant’s. The cynical mockery with which the Trystian met life was clear in his reply.

“We will hope so. There is, of course, a fair chance that within seconds after I set us off we will only be dust drifting through the air. Strap down, dear friends, strap down!”

Kartr folded his long legs under him beside Zinga, and the Zacathan fastened the small shock web across them both. Fylh’s claws touched a button. The craft swept sidewise out of the hull of the Starfire, slowly, delicately until they were well away from the ship, then it arose swiftly with Fylh’s usual disregard for the niceties of speed adjustment. Kartr merely swallowed and endured.

“To the river and then along it, hover twenty feet up—”

Not that Fylh needed any such order. This was the sort of thing they had done before. Kartr edged forward an inch or two to the spy-port on the right. Zinga was already at the similar post on the left.

It seemed only seconds before they were over water, looking down into the tangled mass of bright green which clothed its banks. Automatically Kartr classified and inventoried. It was not necessary this time to make detailed notes. Fylh had triggered the scanner and it should be recording as they flew. The motion of the sled sent air curving back against their sweating bodies. Kartr’s nostrils caught scents—some old, some new. The life below was far down the scale of intelligence—reptile, bird, insect. He thought that this desert country supported little else. But they did have two bits of luck to cling to—that this was an Arth planet and that they had landed so close to the edge of the wasteland.

Zinga scratched his scaled cheek reflectively. He loved the heat, his frill spread to its greatest extent. And Kartr knew that the Zacathan would have much preferred to cross the burning sands on his own feet. He was radiating cheerful interest, almost, the sergeant thought a little resentfully, as if he were one of the sleek, foppish officers of a Control or Sector base being escorted on a carefully supervised sightseeing tour. But then Zinga always enjoyed living in the present, his long-yeared race had plenty of time to taste the best of everything.

The sled rode the air smoothly, purring gently. That last tune-up they had given her had done the trick after all. Even though they had had to work from instructions recorded on a ten-year-old repair manual tape. She had been given the last of the condensers. They had practically no spare parts left now—

“Zinga,” Kartr demanded suddenly of his seat mate. “Were you ever in a real Control fitting and repair port?”

“No,” replied the Zacathan cheerfully. “And I sometimes think that they are only stories invented for the amusement of the newly hatched. Since I was mustered into the service we have always done the best we could to make our own repairs—with what we could find or steal. Once we had a complete overhaul—it took us almost three months—we had two wrecked ships to strip for other parts. What a wealth of supplies! That was on Karbon, four—no, five space years ago. We still had a head mech-techneer in the crew then and he supervised the job. Fylh—what was his name?”

“Ratan. He was a robot from Perun. We lost him the next year in an acid lake on a blue star world. He was very good with engines—being one himself.”

“What has been happening to Central Control—to us?” asked Kartr slowly. “Why don’t we have proper equipment—supplies—new recruits?”

“Breakdown,” replied Fylh crisply. “Maybe Central Control is too big, covers too many worlds, spreads its authority too thin and too far. Or perhaps it is too old so that it loses hold. Look at the sector wars, the pull for power between sector chiefs. Don’t you think that Central Control would stop that—if it could?”

“But the Patrol—”

Fylh trilled laughter. “Ah, yes, the Patrol. We are the stubborn survivals, the wrongheaded ones. We maintain that we, the Stellar Patrol, crewmen and rangers, still keep the peace and uphold galactic law. We fly here and there in ships which fall to pieces under us because there are no longer those with the knowledge and skill to repair them properly. We fight pirates and search forgotten skies—for what, I wonder? We obey commands given to us over the signature of the two Cs. We are fast becoming an anachronism, antiques still alive but better dead. And one by one we vanish from space. We should all be rounded up and set in some museum for the planet-bound to gawk at, objects with no reasonable function—”

“What will happen to Central Control?” Kartr wondered and set his teeth as a lurch of the sled stabbed his arm against Zinga’s tough ribs and jarred his wrist.

“The galactic empire—this galactic empire,” pronounced the Zacathan with a grin which told of his total disinterest in the matter, “is falling apart. Within five years we’ve lost touch with as many sectors, haven’t we? C.C. is just a name now as far as its power runs. In another generation it may not even be remembered. We’ve had a long run—about three thousand years—and the seams are beginning to gap. Sector wars now—the result—chaos. We’ll slip back fast—probably far back, maybe even into planet-tied barbarianism with space flight forgotten. Then we’ll start all over again—”

“Maybe,” was Fylh’s pessimistic reply. “But you and I, dear friend, will not be around to witness that new dawn—”

Zinga nodded agreement. “Not that our absence will matter. We have found us a world to make the best of right here and now. How far off civilized maps are we?” he asked the sergeant.

They had flashed maps on the viewing screen in the ship, maps noted on tapes so old that the dates on them seemed wildly preposterous, maps of suns and stars no voyager had visited in two, three, five generations, where Control had had no contact for half a thousand years. Kartr had studied those maps for weeks. And on none of them had he seen this system. They were too far out—too near the frontier of the galaxy. The map tape which had carried the record of this world—provided there had ever been one at all—must have rusted away past using, forgotten in some pigeonhole of Control archives generations ago.

“Completely.” He took a sort of sour pleasure in that answer.

“Completely off and completely out,” Zinga commented brightly. “Clear start for all of us. Fylh—this river—it’s getting a bit bigger, isn’t it?”

The expanse of water below them was widening out. For some time now they had been coasting above greenery—first over shrubs and patches of short vegetation, and then clumps of quite fair-sized trees which gathered and bunched into woodland. Animal life there—Kartr’s mind snapped alert to the job on hand as the sled rose, climbing to follow the line of rise in the land beneath them.

There were strong scents carried now by the wind they breasted, good scents—earth and growing things—the tang of water. They still hovered over the stream bed and, below, the current was stronger, beating around and over rocks. Then the river curved around a point thick with trees and before them, perhaps half a mile away, was a falls, a spray veil splashing over the rocky lip of a plateau.

Fylh’s claws played over the controls. The sled lost speed and altitude. He maneuvered it toward a scrap of sand which ran in a tongue from the rock and tree-lined shore. They dropped lightly, a perfect landing. Zinga leaned forward and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Consider yourself commended, Ranger. A beautiful landing—simply beautiful—” His voice cracked as he tried without much success to reach the high note which might be sounded by a gushing female tourist.

Kartr scrambled awkwardly out of the seat and stood, feet braced a little apart in the sand. The water purled and rippled toward him over green-covered rocks. He was aware of small life flickers, water creatures about their business below its surface. He dropped to his knees and thrust his hand into the cool wet. It lapped about his wrist, moistened the edge of his tunic sleeve. And it was chill enough and clear enough to offer temptation he could not resist.

“Going for a splash?” asked Zinga. “I am.”

Kartr fumbled for the fastenings of his belt and slipped his arm carefully out of its sling. Fylh sat crosslegged in the sand and watched them both, disapproval plain on his thin delicate face as they pulled off harness and uniforms. Fylh had never willingly entered water and he never would.

The sergeant could not stifle an exclamation of pleasure as the water closed about him, rising from ankle to knee, to waist, as he waded out, feeling cautiously with exploring toes. Zinga kicked up waves, pushing on boldly until his feet were off bottom and he tried his strength against the deeper currents of midstream. Kartr longed for two good hands and to be able to join the Zacathan. The best he could do was duck and let the drops roll down him, washing away the mustiness of the ship, the taint of the too long voyage.

“If you are now finished with this newly hatched nonsense”—that was Fylh—“may I remind you that we are supposed to be doing a job?”

Kartr was almost tempted to deny that. He wanted to stay where he was. But the bonds of discipline brought him back to the sand spit where, with the Trystian’s help, he pulled on the clothes he had taken a dislike to. Zinga had swum upstream and Kartr looked up just in time to see the yellow-gray body of the Zacathan leap through the mist below the falls. He sent a thought summons flying.

But then there was a flash of brilliant color, as a bird soared overheard, to distract him. Fylh stood with hands outstretched, a clear whistle swelling out of his throat. The bird changed course and wheeled about the two of them. Then it fluttered down to perch on the Trystian’s great thumb claw, answering his trill with liquid notes of its own. Its blue feathers had an almost metallic sheen. For a long time it answered Fylh, and then it took wing again—out over the water. The Trystian’s crest was raised proud and high. Kartr drew a full deep breath.

“That one is beautiful!” He paid tribute.

Fylh nodded, but there was a hint of sadness about his thin lips as he answered, “It did not really understand me.”

Zinga dripped out of the water, hissing to himself as if he were about to go into battle. He transferred some object he had been holding in one hand to his mouth, chewed with an expression of rapture, and swallowed.

“The water creatures are excellent,” he observed. “Best I’ve tasted since Vassor City when we had that broiled Katyer dinner! Pity they’re so small.”

“I only hope that your immunity shots are still working,” Kartr returned scathingly. “If you—”

“Go all purple and die it will only be my own fault?” The Zacathan finished for him. “I agree. But fresh food is sometimes worth dying for. Formula 1A60 is not my idea of a proper meal. Well, and now where do we wend our way?”

Kartr studied the plateau from which the river fell. The thick green above looked promising. They dared not venture too far into the unknown with such a small fuel supply and the return journey to plan for. Maybe a flight to the top of that cliff would provide them with a vantage point from which to examine the country beyond. He suggested that.

“Up it is.” Fylh got back in the sled. “But not more than a half mile—unless you are longing to walk back!”

This time Kartr felt the slight sluggishness of their break away, he strained forward in his seat as if by will power alone he could raise the sled out of the sand and up to the crest of the rock barrier. He knew that Fylh would be able to nurse the last gasp of energy from the machine, but he had no longing to foot it back to the Starfire.

At the top of the cliff there seemed to be no landing place for them. The trees grew close to the stream edge, thick enough to make a solid carpet of green. But a quarter of a mile from the falls they came upon an island—it was really a miniature mesa, smoothed off almost level—around which the stream cut some twenty feet below. Fylh set the sled down with not more than four feet on either side separating them from the edge. The stone was hot, sun baked, and Kartr stood up in the sled, unslinging visibility lenses.

On either side of the river the trees and brush grew in an almost impassable wall. But northward he sighted hills, green and rolling, and the river crossed a plain. He was restoring the lenses to their holder when he sensed alien life.

Down at the edge of the stream a brown-furred animal had emerged from the woods. It squatted by the water to lap and then dabbled its front paws in the current. There was a flicker of silver spinning in the air and the jaws of the beast snapped on the water creature it had flipped out of the river.

“Splendid!” Zinga paid tribute to the feat. “I couldn’t have done any better myself! Not a wasted motion—”

Delicately Kartr probed the mind behind that furry skull. There was intelligence of a sort and he thought that he might appeal to it if he wished. But the animal did not know man or anything like man. Was this planet a wilderness with no superior life form?

He asked that aloud and Fylh answered him.

“Did that bump you received when we landed entirely addle your thinking process? A slice of wilderness may be found on many planets. And because this creature below does not know of any superior to itself does not certify that such do not exist elsewhere—”

Zinga had propped his head on his two hands and was staring out toward the distant plain and hills.

“Green hills,” he muttered. “Green hills and water full of very excellent food. The Spirit of Space is smiling on us this once. Do you wish to ask questions of our fishing friend below?”

“No. And it is not alone. Something grazes behind that clump of pointed trees and there are other lives. They fear each other—they live by claw and fang—”

“Primitive,” catalogued Fylh, and then conceded generously, “Perhaps you are right, Kartr. Perhaps there is no human or Bemmy overlord in this world.”

“I trust not,” Zinga raised both his first and second eyelids to their fullest extent. “I long to pit my wits—daring adventurer style—against some fiendish, intelligent monster—”

Kartr grinned. For some reason he had always found the reptile-ancestored brain of the Zacathan more closely akin to his own thinking processes than he ever did Fylh’s cool detachment. Zinga entered into life with zest, while the Trystian was, in spite of physical participation, always the onlooker.

“Maybe we can locate some settlement of your fiendish monsters among those hills,” he suggested. “What about it, Fylh, dare we try to reach them?”

“No.” Fylh was measuring with a claw tip the gage on the control panel. “We’ve enough to get us back to the ship from here and that is all.”

“If we all hold our breath and push,” murmured the Zacathan. “All right. And if we have to set down, we’ll walk. There is nothing better than to feel good hot sand ooze up between one’s toes—” He sighed languorously.

The sled arose, startling the brown-coated fisherman. It sat on its haunches, one dripping paw raised, to watch them go. Kartr caught its mild astonishment—but it had no fear of them. It had few enemies and did not expect those to fly through the air. As they swung around Kartr tried an experiment and sent a darting flash of good will into that primitive brain. He looked back. The animal had risen to its hind legs and stood, man fashion, its front paws dangling loosely, staring after the sled.

They passed over the falls so low that the spray beaded their skins. Kartr caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it. Was that only Fylh’s flying or did power failure drive them down? He had no desire to ask that question openly.

“To follow the river back,” Zinga pointed out, “is to take the long way round. If we cut across country from that peak we ought to hit the ship—”

Kartr saw and nodded. “How about it, Fylh? Stick to the water or not?”

The Trystian hunched his shoulders in his equivalent of a shrug. “Quicker, yes.” And he pointed the sled’s bow to the right.

They left the stream thread. A carpet of trees lay beneath them and then a scrubby clearing in which a group of five red-brown animals grazed. One tossed its head skyward and Kartr saw the sun glint on long cruel horns.

“I wonder,” mused Zinga, “if they ever do any disputing with our river-bank friend. He had some pretty formidable claws—and those horns are not just for adornment. Or maybe they have some kind of treaty of nonaggression—”

“Then,” observed Fylh, “they would be locked in deadly combat most of the time!”

“You know”—Zinga stared at the back of Fylh’s crested head fondly—“you’re a very useful Bemmy, my friend. With you along we never have to wear ourselves out expecting the worst—you have it all figured out for us. What would we ever do without your dark, dark eyes fixed upon the future?”

The trees and shrubs below were growing fewer. Rock and sections of baked, creviced earth and the queer, twisted plants which seemed native to the desert appeared in larger and larger patches.

“Wait!” Kartr’s hand shot out to touch Fylh’s arm. “To the right—there!”

The sled obediently swooped and came down on a patch of level earth. Kartr scrambled out, brushed through the fringe of stunted bush to come out upon the edge of what he had sighted from the air. The other two joined him.

Zinga dropped upon one knee and touched the white section almost gingerly. “Not natural,” he gave his verdict.

Sand and earth had drifted and buried it. Only here had some freak of the scouring wind cleared that patch to betray it. Pavement—an artificial pavement!

Zinga went to the right, Fylh left, for perhaps forty feet. They squatted and, using their belt knives, dug into the soil. Within seconds each had uncovered a hard surface.

“A road!” Kartr kicked more sand away. “Surface transportation here at one time then. How long ago do you guess?”

Fylh shifted the loosened soil through his claws. “Here is heat and dryness, and, I think, not too many storms. Also the vegetation does spread as it would in jungle country. It may be ten years—ten hundred or—”

“Ten thousand!” Kartr ended for him. But the spark of excitement within him was being fanned into more vigorous life. So there had been superior life here! Man—or something—had built a road on which to travel. And roads usually led to—

The sergeant turned to Fylh. “Do you think we could pry enough fuel out of the main drive to bring the sled back here with the tailer mounted?”

Fylh considered. “We might—if we didn’t need fuel for anything else.”

Kartr’s excitement faded. They would need it for other work. The Commander and Mirion would have to be transported on it when they left the ship—supplies carried—all that they would require to set up a camp in the more hospitable hill country. He kicked regretfully at the patch of pavement. Once it would have been his duty as well as his pleasure to follow that thin clue to its source. Now it was his duty to forget it. He walked heavily back to the sled and none of them spoke as they were again airborne.

3 — MUTINY

They circled the crumpled length of the Starfire and saw a figure waving from a point near her nose. When they landed the sled Jaksan was waiting.

“Well?” he demanded harshly, almost before the sand had fallen away from the keel of the sled.

“There’s good, open, well-watered land to the north,” Kartr reported. “Animal life in a wilderness—”

“Eatable water creatures!” Zinga broke in, licking his lips at the memory.

“Any indications of civilization?”

“An old road, buried—nothing else. The animals know no superior life form. We had the recorder on—I can run the wire through for the Commander—”

“If he wants it—”

“What do you mean!” The tone in Jaksan’s voice brought Kartr up short, the reel of spy wire clutched in his good hand.

“Commander Vibor,” Jaksan’s answer came cold and hard, “believes it our duty to remain with the ship—”

“But why?” asked the sergeant in honest bewilderment.

Nothing was ever going to raise the Starfire again. It was folly not to realize that at once and make plans on that basis. Kartr did now what he seldom dared to attempt, tried to read the surface mind of the arms officer. There was worry there, worry and something else—a surprising, puzzling resentment when Jaksan thought of him, Kartr, or of any of the rangers. Why? Did it stem back to the fact that the ranger sergeant was not a child of the Service, had not been reared of a Patrol family in the tight grip of tradition and duty, as had the other human members of the crew? Was it because he was termed a Bemmy lover and alien? He accepted that resentment as a fact, pigeonholed the memory of it to recall when he had to work with Jaksan in the future.

“Why?” The arms officer repeated Kartr’s question. “A commander has responsibilities—even a ranger should realize that. Responsibilities—”

“Which doom him to starve to death in a broken ship?” cut in Zinga. “Come now, Jaksan. Commander Vibor is an intelligent life form—”

Kartr’s fingers moved in the old warning signal. The Zacathan caught it and fell silent while the sergeant cut in quickly on the heels of the other’s last word.

“He will undoubtedly wish to see the record tape before making any plans anyway.”

“The Commander is blind!”

Kartr stopped short. “You are sure?”

“Smitt is. Tork might have been able to help him. We don’t have the skill—the wounds go beyond the help of the medic-first-aid.”

“Well, I’ll report.” Kartr started toward the ship, feeling as if he carried several pounds of lead in the sole of each boot and some vast and undefinable burden had settled down upon his shoulders.

Why, he asked himself dispiritedly as he climbed through the lock of the port, did he have this depression? Certainly leadership now in no way fell upon him. Both Jaksan and Smitt outranked a sergeant—as a warrant officer of rangers he was just barely within the borderline of the Service as it was. But even knowing that did nothing to free him from this unease.

“Kartr reporting, sir!” He came to attention before the masked man propped up against two bedrolls in the lounge.

“Your report—” The request was mechanical. Kartr began to wonder if the other really heard him, or, hearing, understood a word he said.

“We have crashed near the edge of a desert. By sled the scouting party traveled north along a river to a well-watered, forested tract. Because of the limited supply of fuel our cruising range was curtailed. But there is a section to the north which looks promising as a base for a camp—”

“Life indications?”

“Many animals of different types and breeds—on a low scale of intelligence. Only trace of civilization is a portion of roadway so covered as to argue long disuse. Animals have no memory of contact with superior life forms.”

“Dismissed.”

But Kartr did not go. “Pardon, sir, but have I your permission to break out what is left of the main drive energy supply to use when we arrange for transportation—”

“The ship’s supply? Are you completely mad? Certainly not! Report to Jaksan for repair party duty—”

Repair party? Did Vibor honestly believe that there was the slightest chance of repairing the Starfire? Surely— The ranger hesitated at the door of the lounge and half turned to go back. But, guessing the uselessness of any further appeal made to Vibor, he went on to the rangers’ quarters where he found the others gathered. A smaller figure just within the doorway turned out to be Smitt, who got up to face Kartr as he came in.

“Any luck, Kartr?”

“He told me to report for repair party duty. Great Winds of Space, what does he mean?”

“You may not believe it,” answered the com-techneer, “but he means just what he says. We are supposed to be repairing this hulk for a take-off—”

“But can’t he see—?” began Kartr and then bit his lip, remembering. That was just it—the Commander could not see the present condition of the wrecked ship. But that was no excuse for Jaksan or Smitt not making it plain to him—

As if he was able to pick that thought out of the air the com-techneer answered:

“He won’t listen to us. I was ordered to my quarters when I tried to tell him. And Jaksan’s only agreed with every order he’s issued!”

“But why would he do that? Jaksan’s no fool, he knows that we aren’t going to lift again. The Starfire’s done for.”

Smitt leaned back against the wall. He was a small man, thin and tough and almost black with space tan. And now he appeared to share a portion of Fylh’s almost malicious detachment. The only things he had ever really loved were his communicators. Kartr had seen him once furtively stroking the smooth plastic of their sides with a loving hand. Because of the old division of the ship’s personnel—Patrol crew and rangers—Kartr did not know him very well.

“You can easily accept the idea that we’re through,” the com-techneer was saying now. “You’ve never been tied to this hunk of metal the way we are. Your duty is on planets—not in space. The Starfire is a part of Vibor—he can’t just walk into the wide blue now and forget all about her— Neither can Jaksan.”

“All right. I can believe that the ship might mean more to you, her regular crew, than she does to us,” agreed Kartr almost wearily. “But she’s a dead ship now and nothing any of us or all of us can do will make her ready to lift again. We’d best leave her—try to establish a base somewhere near food and water—”

“Cut clean from the past and begin again? Maybe. I can agree with you—intellectually. Only in suggesting that you’ll come up against emotions, too, my young friends. And you’ll find that another matter altogether!”

“And why,” asked Kartr slowly, “is it up to me to deal with anything?”

“Process of elimination elects you. If we’re grounded past hope of escape, who is the best able to understand our problems—someone who has spent his life in space almost since childhood—or a ranger? What are you going to do?”

But Kartr refused to answer that. The longer Smitt needled him in that fashion the more uneasy he became. He had never been treated with such frankness by a crew officer.

“The Commander will decide,” he began.

Then Smitt laughed, a short harsh sound which lacked any thread of mirth. “So you’re afraid to face up to it, fly-boy? I thought you rangers could never be rattled—that the fearless, untamed explorers would—”

Kartr’s good hand closed on the tunic folds just below Smitt’s throat.

“What kind of trouble are you trying to start, Smitt?” he asked, omitting the respect due an officer.

But the com-techneer made no move to strike away the sergeant’s hand or twist free from the hold. Instead his eyes lifted to meet Kartr’s steadily, soberly. Kartr’s fingers loosened and his hand dropped. Smitt believed in what he was trying to say, believed in it very much even though he had been jeering. Smitt had come to him for help. Now for the first time Kartr was glad he possessed that strange gift of his—to sense the emotions of his fellows.

“Let’s have it,” he said and sat down on a bedroll. He was aware that the tension which had held them all for a second or two was relaxing. And he knew that the rangers would follow his lead—they would wait for his decision.

“Vibor is no longer with us—he’s—he’s cracked.” Smitt fumbled for words. And Kartr read in him a rising fear and desolation.

“Is it because of his loss of sight? If that is so, the condition may be only temporary. When he becomes resigned to that—”

“No. He has been heading for a breakdown for a long time. The responsibility of command under present conditions—that fight with the Greenies—he was good friends with Tork, remember? The ship falling to pieces bit by bit and no chance for repairs— It’s added up to drive him under. Now he’s just refusing to accept a present he doesn’t dare believe in. He’s retired into a world of his own where things go right instead of wrong. And he wants us in there with him.”

Kartr nodded. There was the ring of truth in every word Smitt said. Of course, he himself had never had much personal contact with Vibor. The rangers were not admitted to the inner circle of the Patrol—they were only tolerated. He was not a graduate of a sector academy, or even a product of the ranks. His father had not been Patrol before him. So he had always been aloof from the crew. The discipline of the Service, always strict, had been tightening more and more into a rigid caste system, even during the few years he had worn the Comet—perhaps because the Service itself had been cut off from the regular life of the average citizens. But Kartr could at this moment understand the odd incidents of the past months, certain inconsistencies in Vibor’s orders—one or two remarks he had overheard.

“You think that there is no chance of his recovering?”

“No. The crash pushed him over the edge. The orders he’s given during the past hour or so—I tell you—he’s finished!”

“All right.” Rolth’s low voice cut through the thick air. “Then what do we do—or rather, what do you want us to do, Smitt?”

The com-techneer’s hands spread out in a gesture of hopelessness.

“I don’t really know. Only we’re down—permanently—on an unknown world. Exploration—that’s your department. And somebody’s got to take the lead in getting us out of here. Jaksan—well, he might follow the Commander even if Vibor says blast us and the ship. They went through the battle of the Five Suns together and Jaksan—” His voice trailed off.

“What about Mirion?”

“He isn’t conscious. I don’t think he’s going to pull through. We can’t even tell how badly he’s injured. He can be counted out.”

Counted out of what, wondered Kartr, and his green eyes narrowed. Smitt was hinting now of some kind of conflict to come.

“Dalgre and Snyn?” asked Zinga.

“They’re both Jaksan’s squadmen. Who knows how they’ll stand if he starts giving orders?” returned the com-techneer.

“There is one thing I find puzzling.” Fylh broke in for the first time. “Why do you come to us, Smitt? We’re not crew—”

There was the question which had been in all their minds—at last brought into the open. Kartr waited for the answer to it.

“Why—well, because I think that you’re the best equipped for the future. It’s your job. I’m dead weight now anyway—the crash did for the coms. The crew’s dead weight without a ship to raise. So, all right—we should be ready to learn what it takes to keep on living—”

“A recruit, is it?” Zinga’s chuckle was more hiss. “But a very green one. Well, Kartr, do you sign him?” The Zacathan’s grotesque head turned to the sergeant.

“He’s speaking the truth,” Kartr returned very soberly. “I call council!” He gave the order which alerted them all. “Rolth?”

That white-skinned face, more than half masked by the dark goggles, was hard to read.

“The land is good?”

“Very promising,” Zinga replied promptly.

“It’s plain we can’t keep on squatting here forever,” mused the ranger from dusky Falthar. I’d vote to strip the ship, take everything we can possibly use, and establish a base. Then look around a bit—”

“Fylh?”

The Trystian’s claws beat a tattoo on his broad belt. “I agree with that wholly. But it’s probably too sensible.” His half-sneered ending appeared to be directed at Smitt. Fylh was not going to forget in a hurry the old division between ranger and Patrol crewman.

“Zinga?”

“Establish a base, yes. I would say close to that river which houses those delectable creatures. A fine mess of them right now—” His eyelids dropped in mock ecstasy.

Kartr looked at Smitt. “My vote goes with theirs. We have one usable sled left. On it we could ferry the Commander, Mirion and the supplies. If we plunder the main drive we should be able to fuel it for a number of trips. The rest of us can walk out, and pack stuff on our backs besides. The land is good, there’s food and water to be found—and it seems to be deserted—no evidence of anything like the Greenies to fight us for it. If I were the Commander—”

“But you aren’t—you Bemmy ranger—you aren’t!”

Kartr’s hand had fallen to the grip of his hand blaster even before he saw the man who was edging through the door. The wave of menace which he emitted was like a physical blow to the ranger’s sensitive perception.

Knowing that any answer he might make verbally would only feed the other’s rage, Kartr hesitated, and in the moment of silence Smitt took up the challenge.

“Shut up, Snyn!”

Light glinted from the small weapon almost completely concealed in the armsman’s hand as he turned it toward the com-techneer. The waves of fear-based hatred were so thick that Kartr marveled that the others could not feel them too. Without attempting to gain his feet the sergeant hurled himself sideways, his shoulder catching Snyn at knee height. A bolt of searing green flame cut high through the air as the armsman’s trigger finger tightened convulsively. He staggered forward as Kartr tried in vain to use his one good hand to pull him off balance.

A second or two later and it was over. Snyn still rolled and screamed muffled curses under Zinga but Fylh was methodically forcing his arms behind him so that a “safe” bar might be locked across his wrists. That done he was pushed over on his back and settled into position for questioning, with jerks which were anything but gentle.

“He’s crazy!” Smitt stated with honest conviction. “Using a hand blaster like that. What in Black Heaven—!”

“I should have burned you all—” mouthed the captive. “Always knew you ranger devils couldn’t be trusted. Bemmys—all of you!”

But his stark hatred was more than three-quarters fear. Kartr sank down on the bedroll and regarded the twisting man with startled concern. He had known that the rangers were not accepted as full members of the Patrol, he also knew that there was a growing prejudice against nonhuman races—the “Bemmys”—but this raw and frightening rage directed by a crewman against his own shipmates was worse than anything he had ever dreamed possible.

“We’ve done nothing against you, Snyn—”

The armsman spat. And Kartr guessed that he could not reach him with any reasoning. There was only one thing left to do. But it was something he had sworn to himself long ago never to try—not against any of his own kind. And would the others allow him if he wished to? He stared across the writhing body of the armsman at Smitt.

“He’s dangerous—”

Smitt glanced up at the ragged tear in the wall, still glowing cherry red.

“You don’t have to underline that!” Then the com-techneer shifted his feet uneasily. “What are you going to do with him?”

Long afterward Kartr realized that that had been the turning point. For, instead of appealing to Smitt or to his own men for backing, he made his own decision. Lightning swift and compelling he launched his will against the guard of the man before him. Snyn’s contorted face was a dusky red, his twisted mouth flecked with foam. But he had no control, no mind barrier which could hold against the sergeant’s trained power. His eyes glazed, fixed. He ceased to struggle, his mouth fell slackly open.

Smitt half drew his own blaster.

“What are you doing to him?”

Snyn was relaxed and very still now, his eyes on the metal above him.

Smitt reached out to clutch at Kartr’s shoulder. “What did you do to him?”

“Quieted him down. He’ll sleep it off.”

But Smitt was edging toward the door, backing out. “Let me alone!” His voice rose shakily. “Let me alone—you—you blasted Bemmy!” He scrambled for the opening in panicky haste but Rolth reached it before him to block his exit. Smitt turned and faced them, breathing hard—a hunted animal.

“We’re not going to touch you.” Kartr did not move from his seat or raise his voice. Rolth caught the hand signal he made. The Faltharian hesitated a second and then he obeyed, stepping out of the doorway. But even seeing a clear exit now Smitt did not move. Instead he continued to watch Kartr and asked shakily:

“Can you do—do that to any of us?”

“Probably. You’ve never cultivated a high mind block—any of you.”

Smitt’s blaster went back into its holster. He rubbed his sweating face with trembling hands.

“Then why didn’t you—just now—?”

“Why didn’t I use the mind power on you? Why should I? You weren’t planning to burn us—you were entirely sane—”

Smitt was steadying. The panic which had ridden him was almost gone. Reason controlled emotion. He came forward and peered down at the sleeping armsman.

“How long will he be like this?”

“I have no way of knowing. I have never used this on a human being before.”

Awe overrode the other’s personal fear.

“And you can knock us all out like that?”

“With a man of greater self-control or strong will, it would be a harder task. Then they have to be tricked into dropping their mind guards. But Snyn had no guards up at all.”

“That,” Zinga said smoothly, “is not going to be your way out of this, Smitt. If you are planning to have the sergeant go around and drop all the opposition in their tracks you can just forget it. We will either reason it out with them or—”

But Smitt was already aware of the next point. “We fight?” he asked almost grimly. “But that will be—”

“Mutiny? Of course, my dear sir. However, if you had not had that in your mind all along you would not have come to us, would you?” Fylh demanded.

Mutiny! Kartr made himself consider it calmly. In space or on planet Vibor was the Commander of the Starfire. And every man aboard had once sworn an oath to obey his orders and uphold the authority of the Service. Tork, realizing the officer’s condition, might have removed Vibor. But Tork was gone and not one man aboard the ship now had the legal right to set aside the Commander’s orders. The sergeant got to his feet.

“Can you get Jaksan and Dalgre—”

He looked about the rangers’ quarters. No, it would be wiser to hold a meeting in some more neutral place. Outside, he decided swiftly, where the psychological effect of the ruined ship right before their eyes all during the discussion might well be the deciding point.

“Outside?” he ended.

“All right,” agreed Smitt, but there was a note of reluctance in that. He went out.

“Now,” Zinga asked, after watching the com-techneer safely out of hearing range, “what are we in for?”

“This would have come sooner or later anyway—it was inevitable after the crash.” That was Rolth’s soft voice answering. “When we were space borne, they had a reason for life—they could close their eyes and minds to things, drugging themselves with a round of familiar duties. Now that has been swept away from them. We are the ones who have a purpose—a job. And because we are—different—we have always been slightly suspect—”

“So,” Kartr put into words the thought which had been growing in his own mind, “unless we act and give them something to work for, we may become the target for their fear and resentment? I agree.”

“We could cut loose,” Fylh suggested. “When the ship crashed our ties with her were broken. Records—who’s ever going to see any of our records now? We’re able to live off the land—”

“But they might not be able to,” Kartr pointed out. “And it is just because that is true that we can’t cut loose and go. Not now anyway. We shall have to try and help them—”

Zinga laughed. “Always the idealist, Kartr. I’m a Bemmy, Fylh’s a Bemmy, Rolth’s half Bemmy and you’re a Bemmy lover and we’re all rangers, which in no way endears any of us to these so-called human Patrolmen. All right, we’ll try to make them see the light. But I’ll do my arguing with a blaster near my hand.”

Kartr did not demur. After the resentment with which Jaksan had greeted him when they returned from the trip and the insane attack of Snyn, he knew enough to understand that such preparedness on their part was necessary.

“Do we count on Smitt, I wonder,” Zinga mused. “He never before impressed me as a ranger recruit.”

“No, but he does have brains,” Rolth pointed out. “Kartr”—he turned to the sergeant—“it will be your play—we’ll let you do the talking now.”

The other two nodded. Kartr smiled. Inside him was a good warm feeling. He had known it before—the rangers stood together. Come what might, they were going to present a united front to danger.

4 — BEACON

Together the four rangers crossed the ground burnt off by the ship’s drive to stand partially in the shadow of a tall rock outcrop. The sun was far down now—sending red and yellow spears of light up the western sky. But its day heat still radiated from both sand and stone.

Jaksan, Dalgre and Smitt awaited them, eyes narrowed against the light reflected from the metal of the Starfire—standing close together as if they were expecting—what? Attack? There were grim lines about the mouth of the arms officer. He was middle-aged, but always before there had been an elasticity in his movements, an alertness in his voice and manner which had given the lie to the broad sweeps of gray hair showing on his temples. In the golden days of the Service, Kartr realized with a slight shock of surprise, Jaksan would not have been in space at all. Long since, regulations would have retired him to some administrative post in one of the fleet ports. Did the Patrol still have any such ports? Kartr himself had not earthed in one for at least five years now.

“Well, what do you want with us?” Jaksan took the initiative.

But Kartr refused to be in any way impressed or intimidated. “It is necessary”—by instinct he fell back into the formal speech he had heard in his childhood—“for us to consider now the future. Look at the ship—” He did not need to wave his hand toward that shattered bulk. They had, none of them, been able to keep their eyes away from it. “Can you truly think that it shall ever lift again? We began this last flight undersupplied. And those supplies we have drawn upon now for months—they must be almost gone. There remains but one thing for us to do—we must strip the ship and establish a camp on the land—”

“That is just the sort of yap we expected to hear out of you!” snapped Dalgre. “You are still under orders—whether we have crashed or not!”

But it wasn’t Jaksan who had made the hot retort. Jaksan was steeped, buried in the Patrol, in orders, in tradition—but he was not blinded or deafened by it.

“Whose orders?” asked Kartr now. “The Commander is incapacitated. Are you in command now, sir?” He addressed Jaksan directly.

The arms officer’s space-burned skin could not pale, but his face was drawn and old. His lips drew back from his teeth in an animal’s snarl of rage, pain and frustration. Before he answered he stared again at the broken ship.

“This will kill Vibor—” He bit out the words one by one.

Kartr braced himself as the wild emotion of the other tore at his perceptive sense. He could still Jaksan’s pain by joining the other—by refusing to believe that the old life was ended and gone. Perhaps the Service had warped them all, the rangers as well as the crew, perhaps they needed the reassurance of orders, of routine—even going through the forms might be an anchor now.

The sergeant saluted. “Have I your permission to prepare to abandon ship, sir?”

For a moment he tensed as Jaksan whirled upon him. But the arms officer did not reach for a blaster. Instead his shoulders hunched, the lines in his face deepened into gashes of pain.

“Do as you please!” Then he strode away from them, behind the rocks and no one moved to follow him.

Kartr took command. “Zinga, Rolth, get out the sled and two days’ supplies. Raid the main drive for fuel. Then go up and establish a base below the falls. You bring the sled back, Rolth, and we’ll send along the Commander and Mirion—”

They ate an unpalatable meal of rations, and went to work. Some time later Jaksan was back among them to labor doggedly without speech. Kartr thankfully surrendered to him the responsibility of gathering the arms and the crew’s supplies. The rangers kept away from the crewmen—there was plenty to do in stripping their own quarters and breaking out all the exploring gear the Starfire had ever carried. Piloted by Rolth, to whom the darkness was as bright as day, the sled made three trips during the night, taking the injured and the still unconscious Snyn as well as supplies of salvage.

A moon, a single one, rose to hang in the night sky. They were glad of its light to eke out the short line of their small portable lamps. They worked, with brief periods of rest, until the gray of dawn made a rim about the desert. It was in that last hour of labor that Jaksan made the most promising find. He had crawled alone into the crushed drive room and then shouted loud enough to bring them, numb with fatigue, hurrying to him.

Fuel—a whole extra tube of cubes! They stared round-eyed as the arms officer dragged it out into the passageway.

“Save it,” Jaksan panted. “We may need the use of the sled badly later—”

Kartr, remembering the height of the falls cliffs, nodded.

So it was, that in spite of their find, when Rolth came back the next time they loaded the tube on the sled but gave him orders not to return. They would eat, sleep away the heat of the coming day, and make the trip on foot, packing their personal possessions on their backs.

The sun was shining when they gathered together in a little group by the rocks. And a blue-black shadow cast by the wrecked ship fell on three mounds in the sand. Jaksan read with parched lips and a stumbling tongue the old words of the Service farewell. They would erect no monument—until the years wore her remains into red dust the Starfire would mount guard above her crewmen.

After that they slept soddenly, for the last time, in the stripped ship. Fylh shook Kartr awake after what seemed only a moment’s rest—but it was close to sunset. The sergeant choked down dry scraps of ration with the others. Then together, without much talk, they settled their packs and set out across the wedge of desert, steering by rock formations Kartr had noted the day before.

It was soon night again, lighted by a full moon, and they did not turn on the hand lamps. Which was just as well, thought the sergeant grimly, as there was no hope of ever renewing the fire units in those. Since they were not trying to follow the river, but cutting cross country by the route the sled had followed on its first return, they came out on that smooth section of roadway. Kartr called it to Jaksan’s attention.

“Road!” For the first time the arms officer was lifted out of his depression. He went down on his knees to pass his hands over the ancient blocks, snapping on his torch to see the better. “Not much of it showing. It must have been here a long, long time. Could you trace it—?”

“With the tailer on the sled, yes. But with fuel so low—would it be worth it?”

Jaksan got wearily to his feet again. “I don’t know. We can keep that in mind. It could be a lead, but I don’t know—” He lapsed into a deep study as they moved on but at the next halt he spoke with some of his old fire. “Dalgre, what was that process you told me about—the one for adapting disruptor shells for power?”

His assistant armsman looked up eagerly.

“It is—” Within three words he had plunged into a flood of technicalities which left the rangers as far behind as if he were speaking some tongue from another galaxy. The Starfire might have lacked a mech-techneer, but Jaksan was an expert in his field and he had seen that his juniors knew more than just the bare essentials of their craft. Dalgre was still pouring out his explanation when they moved on and the arms officer walked beside him listening, now and then shooting a question which set the younger man’s tongue to racing again.

They did not make the lift up the cliff to the plains country at once. Mirion died three days later, to be buried in a small clearing between two of the tall pointed trees. Fylh and Zinga rolled a sizable boulder from the river’s edge and Rolth used a palm disrupter as lightly as a color brush to etch into its side the name, home world, and the rank of that thin wasted body they had laid to rest there.

Vibor never spoke. He ate mechanically, or rather chewed and swallowed what Jaksan or Smitt put into his mouth. He slept most of the time and showed no interest in what went on about him. The old division between rangers and crew, between the regulars and the less strictly disciplined specialists, was slowly closing as they worked together, hunted together, ate of unfamiliar flesh, nuts and berries. So far their immunity shots continued to work—or else they had not sampled anything poisonous.

The morning after Mirion’s burial Kartr suggested that they go up into the more hospitable country behind the falls. Jaksan raised no objection and they lifted their supplies via the sled to a point about a mile up and farther ahead of their first base. From there Fylh took the sled with Vibor and Jaksan as passengers toward the promise of open country, while the others cached such equipment as they could not pack and started to follow overland.

Zinga splashed first through the flood pools along the rocky shore of the river—the leader because he had two hands to Kartr’s one. The sergeant followed behind with Dalgre, Snyn, and Smitt strung out in his wake and Rolth bringing up the rear to discourage straggling. There was a sweetness in the morning air. It was chill enough to prickle the flesh, but it bore with it scents which promised and pleased. Kartr lifted his head to the touch of the wind, drawing it deeply into his lungs. The smog of the Starfire was very far in the past. He discovered that he had few regrets for its loss. What if they were exiled here for life—just to find such a world was luck enough!

He sent out his sense of perception, blanking out the touches of those about him—trying to make contact with a native life. A reddish animal with a pouf of tail escorted them for a space, traveling high in tree limbs, making a chattering noise. It was only curious—curious and totally unafraid.

A bird—or maybe it was some form of insect—sailed through the air, coasting on wings which were brilliant patches of color. Then another animal trotted out of concealment perhaps a hundred feet ahead of their line of march. It was large—almost as formidable in size as the brown-coated fisher they had seen on their first day. But this one’s fur was a tawny yellow-brown and it moved shadow-silent, slipping across the rocks with surety and arrogance. It crouched, belly close to the gray stone, and watched them through slitted eyes. The tip of its tail twitched. Zinga stopped to allow Kartr to join him.

Arrogance—arrogance and curiosity—and the faint stirrings of hunger, no thread of fear or wariness. The beast was beginning to consider them as food—

Kartr studied it, saw the muscles ripple under the thick fur as it moved slowly forward. It was beautiful—so wonderful in its wild freedom that he wanted to know more of it. He made contact, felt his way into that alien brain.

The hunger was there, but at his touch it began to submerge—the curiosity was stronger. It sat up, front limbs straight, haunches tucked in. Only the twitching tail tip betrayed its slight unease.

Without turning his head Kartr gave an order. “March to the left a bit—angle around the rock there. It will not attack us now—”

“Why don’t you just blast it?” demanded Snyn querulously. “All this stupid ‘don’t kill this—don’t kill that’! That thing’s only an animal after all—”

“Shut up!” Smitt gave the crewman a slight push to set him going. “Don’t try to teach a ranger his business. Remember, if they hadn’t made contact with those purple jelly flying things we wouldn’t have come through the Greenie attack—those devils would have wiped us out without warning.”

Snyn grunted, but he turned to the left. Smitt, Dalgre and Rolth followed—Zinga went last of all. Kartr remained until the last of the party had passed the forest beast. It yawned abruptly, displaying wicked fangs. Then, almost sleepy-eyed, it sat there, statue still, to watch them out of sight. Kartr brought up the rear. The creature was in two minds about following them. Curiosity pulled it after the travelers, hunger suggested the more immediate employment of hunting. And, at last, hunger won, the sergeant’s contact faded as the animal slipped back into the woodland, away from their path.

But the meeting left Kartr both puzzled and faintly disturbed. He had made contact easily enough—had been able to impress the animal properly with the idea that they were not food and that they meant no harm. But he had been totally unsuccessful in his attempt to establish any closer relationship. Here was certainly nothing like the purple jelly thing, nothing which could be counted upon to render aid to man. The forest animal had a wild and fierce independence which refused the command of his will. If all the natives of this world were so conditioned it would leave the handful of shipwrecked survivors just that much more isolated and alone.

Man, or at least some type of superior life form had once lived here. They had been here a long time and in some numbers—or that road would not run through the edge of wastelands. And yet no living creature he had so far encountered had any memory, or even an instinctive fear, of man. How long had the race who built that road been gone—where had they gone—and why? He longed to take off with the sled and the tailer and run along the road which could never be buried so deeply that the pointer could not betray it—run along it to the city which must lie somewhere near its end or beginning.

Cities—cities were mostly found along the edges of continental land masses where there were opportunities of sea travel—or in strategic points by river beds. There were seas on this planet—he mourned again in silence the crushing of the pilot’s recorder which had rendered useless the notations made as they had come in to that fatal landing. Maybe if they struck due east now—or west—they would come out upon the sea coast. Only which way—east or west? He had had only one fleeting glimpse at the ship’s viewplate and it had appeared that the land mass they had set down upon had been a very large one. They might be hundreds of planet miles from either coast. Would even that road be the right guide?

Once they had a good base established he was going, Kartr promised himself, to get to the bottom of the fuel source Dalgre and Jaksan had been talking about. With the sled repowered they could explore much farther than they could hope to do on foot. And with the road as a beginning—

Rolth had come to a full stop and was looking back.

“You are happy?”

Kartr realized that he had been humming.

“I was thinking about that road—of following it—”

“Yes—it sticks in one’s mind—that road. But what good would it be to us? Do you honestly believe that we shall find man—or even man’s distant kindred—at the end of it?”

“I don’t know—”

“That, of course”—Rolth wriggled his shoulders to settle his pack the better—“is my true answer. What we do not know, we must find out— It is that urge to go and see what lies beyond the hills which brought us into the rangers. We are conditioned to such searching. I must admit that I would relish such an expedition much more than I do this crawling from place to place through a wilderness, bending under burdens as if I were a draft pfph from the outer islands of Falthar!”

It took them almost two full days of tramping to reach the camp Fylh and Jaksan had made. But once there they found waiting them shelters constructed from tree branches, a fire going to light them in through the dusk of evening, and the savor of roasting meat to turn their tired shuffle into strides again.

A shelf of rock ran down smoothly into the shallows of the stream, offering a natural landing place for the sled. At the back of this was piled the material ferried up the river. Jaksan had located some wild grain, fully ripe, and some sourish fruit from trees growing at the edge of the woods. A man would have no difficulty living off the land here, Kartr decided. He wondered about the seasons—whether there was any great change between them during the years. Not to know—not to have any guides! Seasons had not mattered when they were only visitors in a strange world—but now— There was so much they should know—and would have to learn by the hard way of experience.

He stretched out by the fire, trying to list all that should be done—so deep in his thought that he was honestly startled when Rolth touched his shoulder. The night world was Rolth’s and he was alive with it as were the beasts now prowling beyond the circle of the firelight.

“Come!” The urgency in that one whispered word got Kartr to his feet. He gave a quick glance about the fire. The rest were in their bedrolls, asleep, or putting on a good show of being so. The sergeant crept out of the light, not setting his full foot to the ground until he reached the shadows.

“What—?” But he did not get to complete that question. Rolth’s hand was on his arm and the fingers pressed into his flesh as a warning.

Then those fingers slipped down until they tightened about his and Rolth drew him on into the full dark.

They were going up a slope which steepened as they advanced. The trees thinned out and vanished, leaving them in the moonlit open. On the crown of the hill the Faltharian pulled the sergeant around to face north.

“Wait!” Rolth ordered tersely. “Watch the sky!”

Kartr blinked into the curtain of the night. It was a clear one, stars made familiar and unfamiliar patterns across the sky. He remembered other suns and the myriad worlds they nourished.

Across the horizon from left to right swept a yellow-white beam, reaching from some point on the earth ahead far into the heavens. It took three seconds for it to complete the full sweep. Kartr counted. Sixty seconds later it leaped into sight once more, moving in the same course. A beacon!

“How long—?”

“I saw it first an hour ago. It is very regular.”

“It must be a beacon, a marker—but for whom—run by whom—?”

“Must it be run by anyone?” asked Rolth thoughtfully. “Remember Tantor—”

Tantor, the sealed city. Its inhabitants had been overwhelmed by a ghastly plague two centuries ago. Yes, he recalled Tantor well. Once he had flown above the vast bubble which enclosed it in an eternal prison for the safety of the galaxy, and had watched the ancient machines going about their business below, running a city in which no living thing walked or ever would walk again. Tantor had had its beacons too, and its appeals for help streaming into the skies mechanically long after the hands which had set them going had been dust. Behind those hills ahead might well rest another Tantor—it would explain the puzzle of a fair but deserted world.

“Ask Jaksan to come,” Kartr said at last. “But do not arouse the others.”

Rolth disappeared and the sergeant stood alone, watching the light sweep across the sky in its timed sequence. Was the machine which cast that tended or untended? Was that some signal for help, a help long since unneeded? Was it a guide set for a ship from the stars which had never arrived?

He heard the roll of loose gravel started by an impatient foot. The arms officer was on his way.

“What is it?” Jaksan demanded impatiently a moment later.

Kartr did not turn around. “Look due north,” he ordered. “See that!”

The beam made the arc across the horizon. Kartr heard a gasp which was almost a cry.

“It must be a signal of some sort,” the sergeant continued. “And I would judge mechanically broadcast—”

“From a city!” Jaksan added eagerly.

“Or a landing port. But—remember Tantor?”

The other’s silence was his answer.

“What do you propose to do?” Jaksan asked after a long moment.

“This process you were discussing with Dalgre—can you use disruptor charges in the sled? We must keep the extra fuel for emergencies.”

“We can try to do it. It was done once and Dalgre read the report. Suppose we can—what then?”

“I’ll take the sled and investigate that.”

“Alone?”

Kartr shrugged. “With not more than one other. If that is a dead monument, another Tantor, we dare not be too precipitant in exploration. And the fewer to risk their necks the better.”

The arms officer chewed on that. Again the touch of resentment he could not altogether keep under reached Kartr. He guessed what the other must be feeling now. That signal ahead might mean at the very best a star port, a chance to find another still navigable ship, to return to the safe familiar life the Patrol officer had always known. At the very least it promised remains of a civilization of sorts, if only a pile of ruins which could be used to shelter men against the raw life of a wilderness world.

It was up to the rangers to be patient with such men as Jaksan. What to them was a promise of a free and proper way of life was to these unwilling companions of theirs a slipping back into utter darkness. If Jaksan would give way entirely to his emotions now he would rush madly for the sled, and ride it toward the beacon. But he kept that desire under stiff curb, he was no Snyn.

“We go to work on the sled at dawn,” the arms officer promised. As Kartr started down the hill, he did not move to follow, “I shall stay here a little while longer.”

Well, Rolth was making the rounds as night guard. He would see that Jaksan came to no harm. Kartr went back to the fire alone. Crawling into his bedroll he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. But in his dreams a thrust of yellow-white light both threatened and beckoned.

Jaksan was as good as his word. The next morning Dalgre, Snyn and the arms officer dismantled the largest of the disruptors and gingerly worked loose its power unit. Because they were handling sudden and violent death they worked slowly, testing each relay and installation over and over again. It took a full day of painful work on the sled before they were through, and even then they could not be sure it would really rise.

Just before sunset Fylh took the pilot’s seat, getting in as if he didn’t altogether care for his place just over those tinkered-with power units. But he had insisted upon playing test pilot.

The sled went up with a lurch, too strong a surge. Then it straightened out neatly, as Fylh learned how to make adjustments, and sped across the river, to circle and return, alighting with unusual care considering who had the controls. Fylh spoke to Jaksan before he was off his seat.

“She has a lot more power than she had before. How long is it going to last?”

Jaksan rubbed a grimy hand across his forehead. “We have no way of telling. What did that report say, Dalgre?”

“That kind of hook-up brought a cruiser in three light years to base. Then they dug it out. They never learned how long it might have lasted.”

Fylh nodded and turned to Kartr.

“Well, she’s ready and waiting. When do we take off, sergeant?”

5  — THE CITY

In the end the rangers drew lots for the pilot’s place and the choice fell, not to Fylh, but to Rolth. Secretly Kartr was pleased. To fly with Rolth at the controls would mean going by night—but that would be the wiser thing to do when covering a strange city. And, after all, Rolth had been the one to discover the beacon.

They set off at dusk, rations and bedrolls strapped under the single seat remaining in the stripped-down sled. And with the bedrolls was the single disruptor they had left. Jaksan had insisted upon their taking that.

Rolth sang softly as they sped through the chill of the dusk—one of the minor wailing airs of his own twilight world. Without his protective goggles his dark eyes were alive in his pallid face.

Kartr leaned back against the seat pad and watched the ground darken from green to dusky blue. Just on chance he triggered the tailer. Now if they did pass above any large man-made object they would be warned.

There was life abroad in the hills below—animal hunters on the prowl. And once a wild screech reached them. Kartr read in that sound the rage and the disgust of a hunter that had missed its spring and must stalk again. But no man walked below them—nothing even close to human.

The tailer clicked. Kartr leaned forward and consulted the dial. One point only. And a small one. But—man-made. A single building perhaps—maybe long buried. Not the site of the beacon.

Even as he thought of it the beam swept across the dusk-darkened sky. No, whatever lay below had no connection with that.

There were hills and more hills. Rolth applied power which raised them over, sometimes hardly skimming above rocks which crowned the peaks. Then they began to drop away again, making steps for a giant down into another low land.

And now they could see what lay in the heart of that. A blaze of light, not all yellow-white, but emerald, ruby, sapphire too! A handful of gigantic gems spilled out to pulse and glow in the night.

Kartr had visited the elfin ruins of lost Calinn—needle towers and iridescent domes—a city no man living in the days of human civilization could duplicate. He had seen sealed Tantor, and the famous City of the Sea, built of stone-encased living organisms beneath the waters of Parth. But this—it was strangely familiar as well as alien. He was drawn and repelled by it at the same time.

He put a hand to the controls to give Rolth a chance to resume his goggles. What was bright light for the sergeant was blinding to the Faltharian.

“Do we just fly in—or scout first?” asked Rolth.

Kartr frowned, sending his perceptive sense ahead—a surgeon’s delicate probe, prying into the source of the lights.

He touched what he sought, touched and recoiled in the same instant, fleeing the awareness of the mind he had contacted. But what he had found was so astounding that he was too startled to answer that question at once. When he did it was decisively.

“We scout—!”

Rolth cut down the speed of the sled. He swung it out in an arc to encircle the splotch of light.

“I wouldn’t have believed it!” Kartr gave voice at last to his bewilderment.

“There are inhabitants?”

“One at least—I contacted an Ageratan mind!”

“Pirates?” suggested Rolth.

“In an open city—with all that light to betray them? Though, you may be right at that, that is just where they might feel safe. But be careful, we don’t want to walk straight into a blast beam. And that kind fire before they ask your name and planet—especially if they see our Comets!”

“Did he catch your mind touch?”

“Who knows what an Ageratan gets or doesn’t get? No one has been able to examine them unless they are either completely unaware or deliberately open. He could have been either then.”

“More than one?”

“I got out—fast—when I tapped him. Didn’t stay to see.”

The tailer was clicking madly. Kartr should have switched on the recorder, too. But without a machine to read the wire that was useless. From now on scouting reports would be oral. The sled glided slowly over a section where the buildings stood some distance apart, vegetation thick between them.

“Look—” Rolth pointed to the left. “That’s a landing stage there—if I ever saw one. How about setting down on the next one and going ahead on foot—”

“Get in closer to the main part of the city first. No use in walking several miles after we go down.”

They found what they wanted, a small landing stage on the top of a tower, a tower which seemed short when compared to the buildings around it, though they must have landed forty floors above street level. But it was a good place from which to spy out the land.

They dropped on it. Then Kartr whirled, his blaster out—aimed for the middle of the black thing scuttling toward him from the roof shadows. He tried in the same instant for mind contact—to recoil with an instant of real panic. And Rolth put his discovery into words.

“Robot—guard—maybe—”

Kartr was back in the sled as Rolth brought it up above the head of the figure.

Robot, guard or attendant, the thing stopped short when the sled left the stage surface. As they went on up it turned squarely and trundled away into the dark. Kartr relaxed. The metal guardian could have beamed them both before they had even had a chance to sight it. Of course, it might only have been an attendant—but there was no sense in taking the risk.

“No more landing stages,” he said and Rolth agreed with him fervently.

“Those creatures might be conditioned to a voice or a key word—give them the wrong answer and they take you apart quick—”

“Wait a minute.” Kartr put his blaster back in its holster. “We’re judging this city by what we know of our own civilization.” He squinted against the brilliance of a wave of green light and recited the instructions of their manual, “There is always something new for the finder, go out with an open mind—”

“And,” Rolth added, “a ready blaster! Yes, I know all that. But human nature remains the same and I’d rather be wary than dead. Look down there—see those squares of pavement between the buildings? How about setting down on one of those? No landing stage alarms or controls we could trigger—”

“Promising. Can you get in behind that big block? Its shadow should hide us well—”

Rolth might not get as much speed out of the sled as Fylh did, but his caution on such a mission as this was more to be desired than the Trystian’s reckless disregard for the laws of gravity. Earthing required of him a good five minutes of painful maneuvering, but he brought them down in the middle of the pool of shadow Kartr had indicated.

They did not stir from their seats at once, but sat watching for robots, for any moving thing which might promise menace.

“A city”—Rolth stated the obvious—“is not the place to play hide and seek in. I’m sure that I’m being watched—maybe from up there—” He jerked a thumb at the lines of blank windows overlooking the court in which they had landed.

That eerie sensation—that myriad eyes were peering hostilely from the blank expanses—Kartr knew it too. But his sense told him it was a lie.

“Nothing lives here,” he assured the Faltharian. “Not even a robot.”

They moved away from the sled, skirting the side of the nearest building, staying in the shadows, racing across lighted open spaces. Rolth ran his fingers along the wall at his shoulder. “Old, very old. I can feel the scars of erosion.”

“But the lights? How long could those keep running?” wondered Kartr.

“Ask your friend from Agerat. Maybe he put them in working order when he arrived. Who knows?”

There was little ornamentation on the buildings they passed, the walls were smoothly functional, yet the very way the towers and blocks were fitted into a harmonious whole argued that they were the product of a civilization so advanced in architecture as to present a city as a unit, instead of a collection of buildings and dwellings of individual tastes and periods. So far Kartr had seen no inscriptions on any of the structures.

Rolth’s blue torch flashed on and off regularly as they went, pin-dotting their trail through this new kind of wilderness. When they wanted to retrace their way he need only touch his light again on these walls and the tiny blue circles would glow in return for a second.

The rangers made a half circle around one of the three buildings hedging in the court and crept along a street into the surface of which their feet sank almost ankle deep. The old pavement was covered with a thick growth of short tough grass. Half a block ahead, from a recess between two buildings, a rainbow of light played. They approached it cautiously—to come upon a fountain, a fountain of plumed light as well as tinkling water. The flood it raised sank back into a round basin, the rim of which was broken on the side near them so that a small stream was free to cut a channel through the sod until it reached a hole in the ancient pavement.

“No one around,” Kartr whispered. Why he whispered he could not have explained. But the feeling of being watched, of being followed, persisted. Beneath the shadow of these dead towers he felt it necessary to creep and crawl silently—unless he awaken—what?

They dared to leave the protection of the dark and come out to the edge of the fountain. Now, through the spray of water and light, they could see its center column. There was a statue on it—more than life size, unless the builders of the city had been giants. It was not of any stone they could recognize but some white, gleaming stuff upon which time had left no marks. And, at the full sight of it, both Kartr and Rolth stopped almost in midstride.

The figure was a girl, her arms above her head, with a mane of unbound hair flowing free below her slender waist. In her upheld hands she grasped a symbol they both knew—a star of five points. And it was from the tips of those points that the water gushed. But the girl—she was no Bemmy—she was as human as they.

“It’s Ionate—the Spirit of the Spring Rain—” Kartr reached far into his mind and drew forth a legend of his blasted home.

“No—it’s Xyti of the Frosts!” Rolth had memories, too, stemming from his own dusky world of cold and shadow.

For a second they stared at each other almost angrily and then both smiled.

“She is both—and neither—” Rolth suggested. “These men had their spirits of beauty, too. But it is plain by her eyes and hair she is not of Falthar. And by her ears—she is no kin of yours—”

“But why—” Kartr stared at the fountain in puzzlement. “Why does she seem as if I have known her always? And that star—”

“A common symbol—you have seen it a hundred times on a hundred different worlds. No, it is as I have said. She is the ideal of beauty and so we see her, even as he who fashioned her dreamed her into being.”

They left the court of the fountain reluctantly and came into a wide avenue which stretched its green length straight toward the center of the city. Now and again colored lights formed untranslatable signs in the air or across the fronts of the buildings. They passed by what must have been shops and saw the cobwebs of ancient wares spread inside the windows. Then Kartr caught Rolth’s arm and pulled him quickly into the shelter of a doorway.

“Robot!” The sergeant’s lips were close to his companion’s ear. “I think it is patrolling!”

“Can we circuit it?”

“Depends upon its type.”

They had only their past experience to guide them. Robot patrols, they knew, were deadly danger. Those they had seen elsewhere could not be turned from duty except by the delicate and dangerous act of short-circuiting their controls. Otherwise the robot would either blast without question anything or anyone not natural to that place—or who could not answer it with the prescribed code. It was what the rangers had feared on the landing stage, and it would be even worse to face it now when they had no sled for a quick getaway.

“It will depend upon whether this is a native or—”

“Or introduced by the Ageratan?” Rolth interrupted. “Yes, if he brought it, we know how to handle it. A native—”

He stopped whispering at the faint sound of metal clinking against stone. Kartr straightened and flashed his torch above their heads. The doorway in which they crouched was not too high and a small projection overhung it. Just over that was the dark break of a window. Seeing that he began to plan.

“Inside—” he said to Rolth. “Try to reach the second floor and get out of that window upon the ledge. Then I’ll attract the robot’s attention and you can burn its brain case from above—”

Rolth was gone, slipping into the darkness which was no barrier to him. Kartr leaned against the side of the doorway. It would be a race, he thought, with a little sick twinge in the pit of his stomach. If the robot got here before Rolth reached that ledge—! If he, Kartr, couldn’t manage to avoid the first attack of the patroller—! Luckily he didn’t have too long to wait and catalogue all those dismal possibilities.

He could see the patroller now. It was at the far end of the block. The flashing lights on the buildings played across its metal body. But the sergeant was almost sure that it was unlike the ones known to galactic cities. The rounded dome of the head casing, the spider-like slenderness of the limbs, the almost graceful smoothness of its progress, were akin more to the architecture of this place.

Its pace was steady and unhurried. It paused before each doorway and shot a spy beam from its head into the entrance. Manifestly it was going about its appointed task of checking the security of each portal.

Then the sergeant sighed with relief. Rolth had crawled into place and crouched now well above the line of the robot’s vision. If only this patroller was constructed on the same general pattern they knew and could be short-circuited through the head!

But when it reached the next doorway it hesitated. Kartr tensed. This might be worse than he had thought. The thing had some sense perception. He was sure that it suspected his presence. No spy beam flashed. Instead it stood there unmoving—as if it were puzzled, making up its mind.

Was it relaying back to some dust-covered headquarters an alarm?

But its arms were moving—

“Kartr!”

Night sight or no night sight, Kartr had not needed that shout from Rolth to warn him. He had already seen what the patroller held ready. He hurled himself backward, falling flat on the floor of the hall, letting momentum carry him in a slide some distance along it. Behind him was a burst of eye-searing flame, filling the whole entrance with an inferno. Only his trained muscles and sixth sense of preservation had saved him from cooking in the midst of that!

Shakily he crawled on his belly away from the fury. Was the robot going to follow him in and complete its mission?

Hollow sounds of feet pounding—

“Kartr! Kartr!”

He had levered himself to a sitting position when Rolth plunged around an angle in the hallway and almost fell over him.

“Are you hurt? Did he get you?”

Kartr grinned lopsidedly. To just be alive—he winced as Rolth’s examining hands touched skin scraped raw.

“What about—?”

“The bag of bolts? I scragged him all right—a blast hole right through his head casing and he went down. He didn’t reach you?”

“No. And at least he’s told us something about the civilization they had here.” The sergeant surveyed the blaze behind him with critical distaste. “Blow a hole in a city block to get someone. Wonder what they would have thought of a stun gun.” With Rolth’s hand under his arm Kartr got to his feet. He hoped that he had not rebroken his wrist and that the red agony in it was only from the jar of his fall.

“I have a feeling,” he began and then was glad that Rolth had retained a grip on him because the hallway appeared to sway under his feet, “that we’d better get away from here—fast—”

The thought which plagued him was the memory of that momentary pause before the robot had attacked. Kartr was sure that then a message had been flashed from the patroller—where? If the timeless machine had only been performing rounds set him generations before the city had been deserted by its builder—then such a report would be no menace—unless it activated other machines in turn. On the other hand, if the mysterious Ageratan controlled the robots, then the rangers might have successfully met a first attack, only to face other and perhaps worse ones.

Rolth agreed with this when he suggested it aloud.

“We can’t go back that way anyhow.” The Faltharian pointed to the blazing pit of radiation which had once been the door. “And they may just be combing the streets for us, too. Listen, this city reminds me in some ways of Stiltu—”

Kartr shook his head. “Heard of it, but have never been there.”

“Capital of Lydias.” Rolth identified it impatiently. “They’re old-fashioned there—still live in big cities. Well, they have an underground system of links—ways of traveling under the surface—”

“Hm.” Kartr’s mind jumped to the next point easily. “Then we might try going down and see what we can find? All right. And if that patroller did rouse out the guard before you burned him, it will be some time before they can even get in here to see if their tame hunter bagged us. Let’s look for a way down.”

But to their bafflement there seemed to be no way down at all. They threaded rooms and halls, pushing past the remains of furnishings and strange machinery which at other times would have set them speculating for hours, hunting some means of descent. None appeared to exist—only two stairways leading up.

In the end they discovered what they wanted in the center of a room. It was a dark well, a black hole in which the beam of Kartr’s flash found no end. Although the light did not reveal much it helped them in another way because its owner dropped it. He gave an exclamation and made a futile grab—much too late. Rolth supplied an excited comment, reverting in this stress to his native dialect and only making sense when Kartr demanded harshly that he translate.

“It did not fall! It is floating down—floating!”

The sergeant sat back on his heels. “Inverse descent! Still working!” He could hardly believe that. Small articles might possibly be upborne by the gravity-dispelling rays—but something heavier—a man—say—

Before he could protest Rolth edged over the rim, to dangle by his hands.

“It’s working all right! I’m treading air. Here goes!”

His hands disappeared and he was gone. But his voice came up the shaft.

“Still walking on air! Come on in, the swimming’s fine!”

Fine for Rolth maybe who could see where he was going. To lower oneself into that black maw and hope that the anti-gravity was not going to fail—! Not for the first time in his career with the rangers Kartr silently cursed his overvivid imagination as he allowed his boots to drop into the thin air of the well. He involuntarily closed his eyes and muttered a half-plea to the Spirit of Space as he let go.

But he was floating! The air closed about his body with almost tangible support. He was descending, of course, but at the rate of a feather on a light breeze. Far below he saw the blue light of Rolth’s torch. The other had reached bottom. Kartr drew his feet together and tried to aim his body toward the pinprick of light.

“Happy planeting!” Rolth greeted the sergeant as he landed lightly, his knees slightly bent, and with no shock at all. “Come and see what I have found.”

What Rolth had found was a platform edging on a tunnel. Anchored to this stand by a slender chain was a small car, pointed at both ends, a single padded seat in its center. It had no drive Kartr could discern and it did not touch the floor of the tunnel, hovering about a foot above that.

A keyboard was just before the seat—controls, Kartr deduced. But how could they aim it to any place? And to go shooting off blindly into the dark, liable to crash against some cave in— The sergeant began to reconsider that—too risky by far. To face a battalion of robot patrollers was less dangerous than to be trapped underground in the dark.

“Here!”

Kartr jumped at Rolth’s call. The other ranger had gone to the back of the platform and was holding his dim torch on the wall there. The sergeant could just barely see by the blue light. Rolth had found something all right! A map of black lines crossing and recrossing—it could only be of the tunnel system. Having solved much more complicated puzzles in the past they set to work—to discover that this was apparently a way leading directly into the heart of the city.

Ten minutes later they crowded together on the narrow seat. Rolth pressed two buttons as Kartr threw off the restraining chain. There was a faint puff of sound—they swept forward and the dank air of the tunnel filled their nostrils.

6 — THE CITY PEOPLE

“This should be it,” Rolth half whispered.

The car was slowing down, drawing to the right side of the tunnel. Ahead a dim light glowed. They must be approaching another platform. Kartr glanced at the dial on his wrist band. It had taken them exactly five minutes planet time to reach this place. Whether or not it was the one they wanted—that was another question. They had aimed at a point they thought would be directly under what seemed to be a large public building in the very center of the city. If any human or Bemmy force had taken over here that would be the logical place to find them.

“Anyone ahead?” asked Rolth, trusting as usual to Kartr’s perception.

The sergeant sent a mind probe on and then shook his head. “Not a trace. Either they don’t know about these ways or they have no interest in them.”

“I’m inclined to believe that they don’t know.” The Faltharian grabbed at a mooring ring as the car came along the platform.

Kartr climbed out and stood looking about him. This place was at least three times the size of the one from which they had embarked. And other tunnels ran from it in several directions. It was lighted after a fashion. But not brightly enough to make Rolth don his goggles again.

“Now”—the Faltharian stood with his hands resting on his hips, surveying their port—“how do we get out—or rather up—from here?”

There were those other tunnels, but, on their first inspection, no other sign of an exit. Yet Kartr was sure that this platform must have one. It was air which betrayed it—a puff of warmer, less dank breeze which touched him. Rolth must have felt it too for he turned in the direction from which it had come.

They followed that tenuous guide to a flat round plate at the foot of another well. Kartr crooked his neck until his throat strained. Far above he was sure he could see a faint haze of light. But they certainly couldn’t climb— He turned to Rolth bitterly disappointed.

“That’s that! We might as well go back—”

But the Faltharian was engrossed by a panel of buttons on the wall.

“I don’t think we need do that. Let’s just see if this works!” He pressed the top button in the row. Then he jumped back to clutch his companion in a tight hold as the plate came to life under them and they zoomed up.

Both rangers instinctively dropped and huddled together. Kartr swallowed to clear the pressure in his buzzing ears. At least, he thought thankfully, the shaft was not closed at the top. They were not being borne upward to be crushed against an unyielding surface overhead.

Twice they flashed by other landing places abutting the shaft. After they passed the second Kartr squeezed his eyes shut. The sensation of being on a sideless elevator moving at some speed was one he believed he would never choose to experience again. It was infinitely worse—though akin to—the one attack of space fear he had had when he lost his mooring rope and had floated away from the ship while making repairs on the hull during flight.

“We’re here—”

Kartr opened his eyes, very glad to hear a quaver in Rolth’s voice. So the Faltharian had not enjoyed the voyage any more than he had!

Where was “here”? The sergeant scrambled off the plate, almost on all fours, and looked around him. The room in which they appeared was well lighted. Above him, rising to a dizzy height, reached floor after floor, all with galleries ringing upon the center. But he did not have long to examine that for a cry from Rolth brought him around.

“It’s—it’s gone!” The Faltharian was staring with wide eyes at the floor.

And he was entirely right. The plate-elevator on which they had just made that too swift ascent had vanished and the floor where it had entered was, as far as Kartr could see, now a smooth, unbroken stretch of pavement.

“It sank back”—Rolth’s voice was under better control now—“and then a block came out from one side and sealed it.”

“Which may account for the under ways not being discovered,” suggested Kartr. “Suppose this shaft only opened when our car pulled up at the platform in the tunnel, or, because we started some other automatic control—it may be set to operate in that fashion—”

“I,” Rolth stated firmly, “am going to stay away from the middle of rooms in here until we leave this blasted place. What if you were on the trapdoor and somebody stepped on the proper spot below? Regular trap!” He scowled at the floor and walked carefully, testing each step, to the nearest of the doorways. Kartr was almost inclined to follow his example. As the Faltharian had pointed out there was no way of knowing what other machinery their mere presence in the ancient buildings might activate. And then he wondered if it had been their sled’s landing which had set the patroller to its work and so brought the robot upon them.

But a potential menace greater than machines which might or might not exist alerted him a few seconds later. There was an unknown and living creature ahead. The Ageratan? No. The strange mind he touched was not that strong. Whoever was before them now lacked the perception sense. Kartr need not fear betrayal until they were actually seen. Rolth caught the signal he made. And, while the Faltharian did not draw his blaster, his hand hovered just above its grip.

But the hall beyond the first door was empty. It was square and furnished with benches of an opaline substance. Under the subdued lighting, which came out of the walls themselves, sparks of rich color caught fire in the milky surface of the simply wrought pieces. This must be an ante-room of some sort. For in the opposite wall were set a pair of doors, twice Kartr’s height, bearing the first relief sculpture he had seen in the city—conventionalized and symbolic representation of leaves. It was behind those doors that the other awaited them.

The sergeant began the tedious task of blocking out his own impressions, of concentrating only on that spark of life force hidden ahead. He was lucky in that the unknown was not a sensitive, that he could contact, could insert the mind touch, without betraying his own identity.

Human, yes. A point three—no more. A four would have been dimly aware of his spying—uneasy under it—a point five would have sensed him at once. But all this stranger knew was a discouragement, a mental fatigue. And—he was no pirate—or a prisoner of pirates—all feeling of violence past or present was lacking.

But—Kartr had already set his hand on the wide fastening of the door. Someone else had just joined the man in there. And from a first tentative contact the sergeant recoiled instantly. The Ageratan! In the same second he identified that mind, he knew that all hope of concealment was now over—that the Ageratan knew where they were as well as if his eyes could pierce stone and metal to see them. It was, Kartr’s lip caught between his teeth, almost as if the Ageratan had dropped his own mind shield to bait them into showing themselves. And if that were so—! The ranger’s green eyes were centered with a spark of dangerous yellow fire. He made a sign to Rolth.

Reluctantly the other’s hand moved away from his blaster. Kartr studied him almost critically and then glanced down along the length of his own body. Their vlis hide boots and belts had survived without a scratch in spite of the rough life in the bush. And those blazing Comet badges were still gleaming on breast and helmet. Even if that Comet was modified by the crossed dart and leaf of a ranger it was the insignia of the Patrol. And he who wore it had authority to appear anywhere in the galaxy without question—in fact by rights the questions were his to ask.

Kartr bore down on the fastening of the doors. They parted in the center, withdrawing in halves into the walls, leaving an opening wide enough for six men instead of just the two standing in it.

Here the light radiating from the walls was brighter and much of it was focused on an oval table in the exact center of the room—a table so long that the entire crew of a cruiser might have been accommodated around it. It was of the opaline stone and there were benches curved to follow its line.

Two men sat there, quietly enough, though, Kartr noted, a blaster lay close to the hand of the taller one—the Ageratan. But when he saw the badge of the Patrol his face was a mirror of amazement and he was on his feet in one swift movement. His slighter companion stared, licked his lips—and Kartr knew when his utter surprise turned into incredulous joy.

“The Patrol!” That was the Ageratan and there was certainly no pleasure to be read in his identifying exclamation. But his mind block was tightly in place and Kartr could not know what lay behind those black, hooded eyes.

They were not pirates—those two. Both were dressed in the fantastically cut and colored tunics favored by the civilians of the decadent inner systems. And the blaster on the table was apparently their only weapon. Kartr strode forward.

“You are?” he demanded crisply, molding his stance and voice on Jaksan’s. He had never before assumed the duties of a Patrolman, but as long as he wore the Comet no civilian would be allowed to guess that.

“Joyd Cummi, Vice-Sector Lord of Agerat,” the tall man answered almost sneeringly. He had the usual overbearing arrogance of his race. “This is my secretary, Fortus Kan. We were passengers on the Nyorai X451. She was attacked by pirates and went into overdrive when in a damaged condition. When we came out we discovered that her computer had failed and we were in a totally unfamiliar section of the galaxy. We had fuel enough to cruise for two weeks and then it gave out and we were forced to land near here. We have been trying to communicate with some point of civilization but we had no idea that we were so successful! You are from—?”

A Vice-Sector Lord, eh? And an Ageratan into the bargain. Kartr was treading on dangerous ground now. But, he decided, he was not going to let this Joyd Cummi know that the Patrol had not arrived to rescue castaways—but as fellow refugees. There was a suggestion of something wrong here. His perception was alert, trying to measure words where he could not tap minds.

“We are Ranger Rolth and Ranger Sergeant Kartr, attached to the Starfire. We shall report your presence here to our commander.”

“Then you did not come in answer to our signals?” burst out Fortus Kan. His round boyish face sagged with disappointment.

“We are engaged in a routine scouting mission,” returned Kartr as coldly as he dared. The uneasiness in the atmosphere was growing stronger every moment. The Ageratan’s shield might be strong but he could not altogether control all emotions. And he might not be trying to.

An Ageratan was a five point nine on the sensitive scale, yes. But unless Cummi had met one of Kartr’s little-known race before—which was hardly likely since so few of them had ever volunteered for off-planet duty—he could not guess he was now facing a six point six!

“Then—” Fortus Kan’s voice became close to a wail. “You can’t get us away from here. But at least you can bring help—”

Kartr shook his head. “I will report your presence to my commanding officer. How many of you are here?”

“One hundred and fifty passengers and twenty-five crew members,” Joyd Cummi returned crisply. “May I ask how you reached this building without our notice? We activated for our protection the patrol robots we found here—”

He was interrupted, much to his evident annoyance by Fortus Kan.

“Did you destroy that patroller?” he demanded eagerly. “The one on Cummi Way?”

Cummi Way! Kartr caught the significance of that. So the Vice-Sector Lord ruled here—enough to give his name arbitrarily to the main thoroughfare of the city.

“We deactivated a robot in what we thought a deserted city,” he returned. “Since your being here is of importance we shall end our exploration and return immediately to our camp.”

“Of course.” Cummi was now the efficient executive. “We have been able to restore to running order several of the ground transportation vehicles we discovered here. Let one of them drive you back—”

“We flew in,” Kartr countered swiftly. “And we shall return the same way. Long life, Vice-Sector Lord!” He raised his hand in the conventional salute. But he wasn’t to escape so easily.

“At least you can be driven to where you left your flyer, Ranger Sergeant. There are other robot patrollers in use and it will be safer if one who knows their code accompanies you. We cannot afford to risk you of the Patrol—”

Kartr dared not refuse what so smoothly appeared to be a sensible suggestion. Yet—he knew that there was trouble here. He felt along his spine the cold prickle of fear which had warned him so many times in his life before. If he could only probe Fortus Kan! But he dared not try it when the Ageratan was there.

“I think it is best not to over-excite the people with the report of your arrival at just this moment,” the Lord continued as he escorted the rangers back across the ante-room. “It will, of course, be encouraging for them to know that we have been contacted by the Patrol. Especially when, after five months of broadcasting from here on a feeble com, we had begun to believe that we were exiled for life. But I would prefer to discuss matters with your commander before allowing their hopes to arise. You probably noted Kan’s response to your appearance. He saw in it the promise of an immediate return to the comforts of civilization. And since a Patrol ship could not possibly transport all of us we must make other arrangements—”

Twice during that speech the Ageratan had made assaults at Kartr’s mind, trying to learn—or—trying to win control? But the sergeant had his shield up and he knew that Cummi would only receive carefully planted impressions of a Patrol ship set down in a far district, a ship under the command of an alert and forceful officer, a difficult man for a civilian administrator to overawe.

“I think you are wise, Vice-Sector Lord,” Kartr inserted into the first oral pause. “You have been here for five months then—within this city?”

“Not at first, no. We made an emergency landing some miles from here. But the city had registered on our photoscreens when we came down and we were able to locate it without undue difficulty. Its functions are in an amazing state of preservation—we must consider that we have been unusually favored by fortune. Of course, having Trestor Vink and two of his assistants among our number was an additional aid. He is the mech-techneer for the Nyorai line. And he has become quite absorbed in the mechanics here. He believes that originally its inhabitants were in some ways more advanced than we are. Yes, we have been very lucky.”

They crossed the room of the hidden elevator shaft and came out on a vast balcony overhanging a hall so large that Kartr felt swallowed up in space. There was a stairway from the balcony to the lower floor of the hall—a flight of steps so wide that it might have been fashioned to accommodate a race of giants. And the lower hall opened through a series of tree-like pillars into the street.

“Coombs!”

The figure lounging against one of the pillars snapped to attention.

“You will take the road vehicle and drive these Patrolmen to their ship. I do not say good-bye, Sergeant.” The Lord turned to Kartr with the graciousness of a great man addressing an admitted inferior. “We shall meet again soon. You have done a very good night’s work and we are exceedingly grateful to you. Please inform your commanding officer that we shall be eagerly waiting to hear from him.”

Kartr saluted. At least the Ageratan was not insisting upon going with them to the sled. But he did stand there until they had taken their places in the small car and the driver put it into motion.

As they moved away from the building Kartr turned his attention to the driver. That bristling shock of black hair with its odd brindling of brown showed up clearly as they swept beneath one of the banners of city light—the long jaws, too. So—that was why Cummi let them go off alone! No wonder he had not thought it necessary to accompany them himself. He would be with them in one way if not bodily. Their driver was a Can-hound, the perfect servant whose mind was only a receiving set used for the benefit of his master.

Kartr’s skin roughened as if something slimy trailed across him. He had the sensitive’s inborn horror for the creature before him—a thing he would not dignify as either human or Bemmy. And now he would have to—have to—! The very thought made him so sick that his empty stomach twisted. This was the worst, the lowest task he had ever had forced upon him. He would have to go into that mind, skillfully enough not to be detected by the distant master, and there implant some false memories—

“Which way?” Even that voice rasped sickeningly along his nerves.

“Along this wide street here,” he ordered with stiff lips. His hand closed over Rolth’s. The Faltharian did not move but he answered with a light return pressure.

Kartr began, while his mouth twisted into a tortured ring of disgust and his mind and body alike fought wildly against the will which forced him to do this thing. It was worse than he had expected, he was degraded, soiled unspeakably by that contact. But he went on. Suddenly the car pulled to the side of the street, wavered into an open space between buildings, came to a stop in a courtyard. They remained in it while Kartr fought the miserable battle to the end. That came when the Can-hound’s head fell forward and he slumped limply in the driver’s seat.

Rolth got out. But Kartr had to steady himself with his hands as he followed. He reeled across the court and hung retching on a window sill. Then Rolth reached him and steadied his shaking body. With the Faltharian’s arm still around him, the sergeant wavered out on the street.

“Just ahead—” Kartr got out the words painfully between spasms of sickness.

“Yes, I have seen.”

The faint gleam of radiation was undoubtedly clearer to Rolth’s light-sensitive eyes than it was to his own. They were about four blocks now from the point where the robot had fired at the doorway. And from there they could easily find their marked trail back to the sled.

Rolth asked no questions. He was there, a hand ready to support, a vast comforting glow of clean friendship. Clean—! Kartr wondered if he would ever feel clean again. How could a sensitive—even an Ageratan—deal with and through a creature such as that? But he mustn’t think of the Can-hound now.

He was walking steadily again by the time they detoured around the nuclear fire in the doorway. And he turned the walk into a ground-covering lope as the Faltharian retraced the trail he had earlier marked. When they got to the sled Kartr made a single suggestion.

“Lay a crossed course out of here—they may have some sort of scanner on us—”

Rolth grunted an assent. The sled took to the air. A cold wind, heralding the dawn, cut into them. Kartr wanted to wash in it, wash away the filth of the encounter with the Can-hound.

“You do not want them to know about us?” That was half question, half statement.

“It isn’t up to me—that’s Jaksan’s problem,” returned Kartr, out of a vast and overwhelming weariness. The drain of that mind battle had almost meant a drain of life force too. He wanted to lie down and sleep, just sleep. But he couldn’t. And he forced himself to give Rolth an explanation of what they had been pitted against—what they might have to fear in the future.

“That driver was a Can-hound. And there is something very wrong—completely wrong back there.”

Rolth might not be a sensitive but as a ranger he knew a lot. He snapped out a biting word or two in his own tongue.

“I had to get into his mind—to make him a set of false memories. He will report back that he took us to the sled, certain things we were supposed to have said during the trip—the direction in which we departed—”

“So that was what you were doing!” Rolth’s dark eyes lifted from the course indicator long enough to favor his companion with a look in which respect and awe were mingled.

Kartr relaxed, his head drooped to rest on the back of the seat. Now that they were out of the glare of the city the stars shone palely overhead. How was Jaksan going to handle this? Would he order them in to unite with the castaways in the city? If so—what about Cummi? What was he doing—planning right now?

“You distrust the Ageratan?” Rolth demanded as they streaked north on the evasive path Kartr had suggested.

“He is an Ageratan—you know them. He is a Vice-Sector Lord, there is no doubt he is in complete command in the city. And—he would not take kindly to having his rule disputed—”

“So he might not be in favor of the Patrol?”

“Maybe. Sector Lords are uneasy enough nowadays—there is a pull and tug of power. I would like very much to know why he was making a trip on an ordinary passenger ship anyway. If he—”

“Were getting away from some local hot spot he would be only too glad to found a new kingdom here? Yes, that I can well understand,” said Rolth. “Now we go home—”

The sled made a long curve to the right. Rolth shut off the propulsion rockets, kept on only the hover screens. They drifted slowly on the new course. It would take time, add an extra hour or so to their return journey. But unless the city had something new in scanners they were now off every spy screen.

They did very little talking for the rest of the trip. Kartr dozed off once and awoke with a start from a black dream. The need for complete rest drugged his mind when he tried to flog his weary brain into making plans. He would report the situation to Jaksan. The arms officer was hostile to the impressions of a sensitive—he might not welcome Kartr’s description of the unease in the city. And the sergeant had no proof to back his belief that the farther they stayed away from Cummi the better. Why did he fear Cummi? Was it because he was an Ageratan, another sensitive? Or was it because of the Can-hound? Why was he so sure that the Vice-Sector Lord was a dangerous enemy?

7 — THE RANGERS STAND TOGETHER

“You must admit that his account was plausible enough—”

Kartr faced Jaksan across the flat rock which served the camp as a table.

“And the city,” persisted the arms officer mercilessly, “is in an excellent state of preservation. Not only that, but this party from the X451 includes mech-techneers who have been able to start it functioning again—”

The sergeant nodded wearily. He should have brought to this contest of will a clear mind and a rested body. Instead he ached with both mental and physical fatigue. It was an effort to hold his stand against the hammering disapproval of the other.

“If all this is true”—Jaksan reached what he certainly believed to be a logical and sensible conclusion—for the third time—“I cannot understand this reluctance of yours, Kartr. Unless—” he was radiating hostility again but the sergeant was almost too tired to care—“unless you have taken a dislike to this Ageratan for personal reasons.” Then he paused and his hostility was broken for an instant by an emotion close to sympathy. “Wasn’t it an Ageratan who gave the order to burn off Ylene?”

“It might have been for all I know. But that is not the reason why I distrust this Joyd Cummi,” began Kartr with such remnants of patience as he could muster.

There was no use in making an issue of Cummi’s use of the Can-hound. Only another sensitive could understand the true horror of that. Jaksan had settled on an explanation for Kartr’s attitude which was reasonable to him and he would hold to it. The sergeant had learned long ago that those who were not sensitives had a deep distrust of perception and the mind touch and some refused to even admit its existence as a fact. Jaksan was almost of that group—he would believe in Kartr’s ability to meet and deal with animals and strange non-humans, but he inwardly repudiated the sergeant’s being able to contact or read his fellow men. There was no arguing with him on that point. Kartr sighed. He had done what he could to prevent what he knew would be Jaksan’s next move. Now he could only wait for the menace he believed was in the city to show itself.

So they made the journey to join the X451’s survivors, and they admitted, against all Kartr’s pleas, their own shipwrecked condition. Joyd Cummi greeted them with urbane and welcoming ease. There was a ship’s medico to attend to Vibor—there were luxurious quarters in, as Kartr noted with suspicion, corridors adjacent to the Vice-Sector Lord’s own, for the crewmen and the officers.

The welcome granted the rangers was, however, somewhat cooler. Kartr and Rolth were accepted, given subtly to understand that, as humans, they would stand equal with the commoners of Cummi’s kingdom. But the Ageratan had given Zinga and Fylh no more than a nod and made no suggestions for their lodging. Kartr gathered his small command together in the center of a large bare room where no eavesdropper could possibly listen in.

“If,” Zinga said as they settled themselves cross-legged on the floor, “you still maintain that the odor issuing through these halls is far from flower-like, I shall agree with you! How long”—he turned to Kartr—“are you going to let some ragged tails of loyalty pull you into situations such as this?”

Fylh’s claws rasped along the hard scales on the other’s forearm.

“Rangers should only speak when spoken to. And Bemmy rangers must let their superiors decide what is best for them. Such must be dutiful and humble and keep their places—”

The close guard which Kartr had kept upon his temper ever since his warning had been so quickly disregarded vanished at Zinga’s remark.

“I’ve heard enough of that!”

“Zinga has a point,” Rolth paid no attention to Kartr’s outbreak. “We either accept the prevailing conditions here—or we leave—if we can. And maybe we can’t wait too long or be halfway about it.”

“ ‘If we can,’ ” repeated, Zinga with a grin displaying no humor but many sharp teeth. “That is a most interesting suggestion, Rolth. I wonder if there were—or are—any Bemmys numbered in the crew or among the passengers of the X451. You notice that I am inclined to use the past tense when I refer to them. Indications would make that seem proper.”

Kartr studied his two brown hands, one protruding from the dirty sling, the other resting on his knee. They were scratched and calloused, the nails worn down. But though he was examining each one of those scratches with minute attention he was really absorbed in the nasty implications of Zinga’s words. No—he didn’t have to accept matters as they were. He should make a few preparations of his own.

“Where are our packs?” he asked Zinga.

Both eyelids closed in a slow wink. “Those creatures are under our eye. If we have to leave in a hurry we’ll be able to do so with full tramping equipment.”

“I shall suggest to Jaksan that the rangers take quarters on their own—together—” Kartr said slowly.

“There is a three-story tower on the west corner of this building,” cut in Fylh. “Should we withdraw to that lofty perch—well, it may be that they will be so glad to be rid of us that they will permit it.”

“Let ourselves be bottled up?” asked Zinga with some sting in his hissing voice.

Fylh clicked his claws with an irritated snap. “No one is going to be bottled up. Please remember we are dealing with highly civilized city dwellers, not explorers. To them all possible passages in and out of a building are accounted for by windows and doors only.”

“Then this tower of yours boasts some feature not included in that catalogue which would serve us in a pinch?” There was a little smile curving Rolth’s pale lips.

“Naturally. Or I would not have seen its possibilities as our stronghold. There are a series of bands projecting in a pattern down the outer walls. As good as a staircase to someone who knows how to use fingers and toes—”

“And keep his eyes closed while he does it,” groaned Zinga. “Sometimes I wish I were civilized and could lead a sane and peaceful life.”

“We could allow”—Fylh had talked himself back into his best humor again—“these people to believe that we are safely out of mischief. They can put a guard at the single stairway leading up in that tower if they wish.”

Kartr nodded. “I’ll see Jaksan. After all, we may be rangers, but we are also Patrol. And if we want to stick together no civilian has any right to question us—Vice-Sector Lord or not! Stay out of trouble now.”

He got up and the three nodded. They might not be sensitives—though he suspected that Zinga had some power akin to his, but they knew that they were only four in a potentially dangerous environment. If they could just get themselves exiled into Fylh’s tower!

But he had to wait a long time to see Jaksan. The arms officer had accompanied Vibor to the medico. And when he at last returned to his quarters and found Kartr waiting for him, he was anything but cordial.

“What do you want now? The Vice-Sector Lord has been asking for you. He had some orders—”

“Since when,” Kartr interrupted, “has even a Vice-Sector Lord had orders for one of the Patrol? He may advise and request—he does not order any wearer of the Comet, patrolman or ranger!”

Jaksan had crossed to the window and now he stood there, tapping his nails against the casing, his shoulders and back stubbornly presented to the sergeant. He did not turn when he answered:

“I do not believe that you take our position now into proper consideration, Sergeant. We do not have a ship. We—”

“And since when has a ship been necessary?” But maybe that was the exact truth, right there. Maybe to Jaksan and the crew the ship was necessary—without it they were naked, at a loss. “It is because I feared this very thing,” he continued more quietly, “that I was against our coming here.” Whether it was politic or not he had to say that.

“Under the circumstances we had very little choice in the matter!” Jaksan showed some of his old fire in that burst. “Great Space, man, would you have us fight the wilderness for food and shelter when there was this to come to? What of the Commander? He had to have medical attention. Only a—” He stopped in mid-sentence.

“Why not finish that, sir? Only a barbarian ranger would argue against it. Is that what you want to say? Well, I maintain, barbarian that I am, that it is better to be free in the wilderness than to come here. But let me have this clear—am I to understand that you have surrendered the authority of the Patrol to Joyd Cummi?”

“Divided authority is bad.” But Jaksan refused to turn and face him. “It is necessary that each man contribute his skills to help the community. Joyd Cummi has discovered evidence that there is a severe cold season coming. It is our duty to help prepare for that. I think he wishes to send out hunting parties as food may be a problem. There are women and children to provide for—”

“I see. And the rangers are to take over the hunting? Well, we shall make a few plans. In the meantime we will take quarters for ourselves. And it might be well to arrange those with an eye to the future—unless there is also a butcher to be found among these city men.”

“You and Rolth were assigned rooms here—”

“The rangers prefer to remain as a unit. As you know, that is only Patrol policy. Or has the Patrol totally ceased to exist?” If Kartr had not been needled by increasing uneasiness he might not have added that.

“See here, Kartr.” Jaksan turned away from the window. “Isn’t it about time that you looked straight at some hard facts? We’re going to be here for the rest of our lives. We are seven men against almost two hundred—and they have a well-organized community going—”

“Seven men?” queried Kartr. “We number nine if you count the Commander.”

“Men.” Jaksan stressed the word.

There it was—out in the open. Kartr had feared to hear it for a long time now.

“There are four qualified Patrol rangers and five of you,” he returned stubbornly. “And the rangers stick together.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

“Why shouldn’t I have that privilege?” Kartr’s rage was ice cold now. “All the rest of you seem to enjoy it.”

“You’re a human being! You belong with your kind. These aliens—they—”

“Jaksan”—Kartr repudiated once and for all the leadership of the arms officer—“I know all those threadbare, stock arguments. There is no need to run through them again. I have had them dinned into me by your kind ever since I joined the Service and asked for ranger detail—”

“You young idiot! Since you joined the Service, eh? And how long ago was that? Eight years? Ten? You’re no more than a cub now. Since you joined the Service! You don’t know anything at all about it—this Bemmy problem. Only a barbarian—”

“We’ll admit that I’m a barbarian and that I have odd tastes in friends, shall we? Admit it and leave it out of this conversation!” Kartr was gaining control of his temper.

It was plain that Jaksan was attempting to justify some stand he had taken or been forced into agreement with, not only to Kartr but to himself.

“Suppose you allow me to go to perdition my own way. Is this ‘All humans stand together’ a rule of Cummi’s?”

Jaksan refused to meet the sergeant’s demanding gaze. “He is very prejudiced. Don’t forget he is an Ageratan. They had an internal problem in that system when they had to deal with a race of alien non-humans—”

“And they solved that problem neatly and expediently by the cold-blooded massacre of the aliens!”

“I forgot—your feeling against Ageratans—”

“My feeling for Ageratans, which, I might say, is different from the one you deem it to be, has nothing to do with this case. I simply refuse now or ever to hold any such views against any stranger, human or Bemmy. If the Vice-Sector Lord wants the rangers to do his hunting—all right. But we shall stick together as a unit. And if to continue to do so means trouble—then we might oblige in that direction also!”

“Look here.” Jaksan kicked moodily at the bedroll which lay on the floor. “Don’t stop thinking about it, Kartr. We’ll have to live the rest of our lives here. We’re really lucky beyond our dreams—Cummi believes that this city can be almost entirely restored. We can start all over. I know that you don’t care for Cummi, but he is able enough to organize a shipload of hysterical passengers into a going settlement. Seven men can’t fight him. All I ask of you for the present is don’t repeat to Cummi what you just said to me. Think it over first.”

“I shall. In the meantime the rangers will take quarters together.”

“Oh, all right.” Jaksan shrugged. “Do it—wherever you please.”

“Maybe he should have said where Cummi pleases,” thought Kartr as he left the room.

He found the rangers waiting for him and gave his own orders.

“Rolth, you and Fylh get up to that tower. If anyone tries to stop you pull Patrol rank on him. It may still carry some weight with the underlings here. Zinga, where did you leave our packs?”

Five minutes later Kartr and the Zacathan gathered the four pioneer packs. “Slip an anti-gravity disc under them,” said Kartr, “and come on.”

With the packs floating just off the floor and easy to tow, they made their way toward the rear of the building. But, as they approached the narrow flight of stairs Zinga said led to the roof, they were met by Fortus Kan. He edged back against the wall to let them pass, since Kartr did not halt. But he asked as they went by:

“Where are you going?”

“Settling in ranger quarters,” the sergeant returned briefly.

“That one is still watching us,” Zinga whispered as they mounted. “He is none too stout of heart. A good loud shout of wrath aimed at him would sent him scuttling—”

“But don’t try it,” Kartr returned. “There is enough trouble before us now without stirring up any more.”

“Ho! So you learned that, did you? Well, a short life and a merry one, as my egg brother often said while we were still shipmates. I wonder where Ziff is now—rolling in silk and eating brofids three times a day if I know that black-hearted despoiler! Not that it wouldn’t be good to see his ugly face awaiting us above when we have finished this climb. His infighting is excellent, a very handy man with a force blade. Zippp—and there’s an enemy down with half his insides gone—”

They could do, thought Kartr bitterly, with about fifty good infighters right now—or even with only ten.

“Welcome home, travelers!” That was Rolth, his goggled eyes lending his face an insect-like outline as he looked down at them. “For once the old pepper bird has found us a real perch. Come in and relax, my brave boys!”

“Flame bats and octopods!” Even Zinga seemed truly amazed as he stared about the room they entered.

The walls were a murky translucent green. And behind them came and went shapes of vivid color, water creatures swimming! Then Kartr saw that it was an illusion born of light and some sort of automatic picture projection. Zinga sat down on the packs, bearing them under his weight to the floor.

“Luscious! Luscious! Enough to tempt the most fastidious palate. The being who planned this room was a gourmand. I would be proud to shake his hand, fin or tentacle. Magnificent! That red one—does it not resemble almost to the last scale the succulent brofid? What a wonderful, wonderful room!”

“What about rations?” Kartr inquired of Rolth over Zinga’s head.

The Faltharian’s eyebrows raised until they could be seen over the rim of his goggles. “Are you contemplating our sitting out a siege? We have a few basic supply tins still unopened—about five days of full meals—twice that if we have to draw in our belts.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” Zinga broke out, “that you have brought me into this place of culinary promise and now propose to feed me extract of nourishing—bah—what a word, nourishing! As if nourishment and food are ever the same—to feed me extract of fungus and the rest of that unexciting goo we have to absorb when we are climbing over bare rock with no chance of hunting! This is a torture which cannot be refined upon. I insist upon my rights as a freeborn citizen—”

“A freeborn citizen?” queried Fylh. “Second class—third class twice removed, would be much more apt. And you have no rights at all—”

But Rolth had been watching Kartr’s expression and now he broke in.

“Is that the way of it—honestly?”

“Just about, I’m afraid.” Kartr sat down on the room’s single piece of furniture—an opaline bench. “I went to Jaksan. He said Cummi had orders for me—”

“Orders?” Again the Faltharian’s eyebrows betrayed his surprise. “A civilian giving orders to the Patrol? We may be rangers, but we are also still Patrol!”

“Are we?” Fylh wondered. “A Patrolman has ships, force to back him up. We’re just survivors now, and we can’t ring in the fleet if we get in a tight place—”

“Jaksan agrees with that. I gathered that he has more or less abdicated in Cummi’s favor. The idea is that the Vice-Sector Lord has a running concern here—”

“And that we are more or less lucky to be included in?” demanded Rolth. “Yes, I can see that argument being advanced. But Jaksan—he’s veteran Patrol to the core. Somehow his standing aside this way—it doesn’t fit!”

Fylh made a gesture of brushing aside nonessentials. “Jaksan’s psychological response need not concern us as much as something else. Do I gather that here Bemmys are second class citizens?”

“Yes.” That answer was bald but Kartr saw no need to temper it.

“I take it that you were urged to—er—withdraw from contagion,” Zinga drawled, leaning back and hooking his taloned fingers over his knees.

“That was part of it.”

“How stupid can they get?” Rolth wanted to know. “If they want us to do their hunting, they must need food. And a bunch of these soft inner system men are not going to get much game by running out and beating the bushes. Instead of antagonizing us they ought to be making concessions.”

“When did you ever know prejudice to act logically? And Jaksan seems to have agreed to this down-with-the-Bemmys plan, hasn’t he?” Fylh’s red eyes had gleams in them not very pleasant to see.

“I don’t know what’s happened to Jaksan,” Kartr exploded. “And I don’t care! It’s what is going to happen to us which is more important right now—”

“You and Rolth,” Fylh pointed out, “need not worry—”

Kartr jumped to his feet and took two strides across the room so that his green eyes were on a level and boring into those round red ones.

“That is the last time I ever want to hear anything like that! I told Jaksan and I shall tell Cummi—if it becomes necessary—that the rangers stand together.”

Fylh’s thin lips shut. Then the hard points of fire in his eyes softened. He made a small soothing gesture with his claws and when he spoke his voice was even again.

“What was Jaksan’s reaction to your speech?”

“Just a lot of words. But it gave me an excellent chance of putting through our coming here together.”

Zinga had arisen and was prowling around the room. “Done any more exploring, you two?” he asked Rolth. “What’s the layout?”

“One more room beyond that archway on this floor. It has two windows both of which overhang Fylh’s outside stairway. There is one large room immediately above this one and a third over that with a bathroom off. Believe it or not—the water is running in that!”

Kartr disregarded Zinga’s exclamation of approval. “Only the one way in—unless someone climbs up the wall? Sure of that?”

“Yes. Of course they might descend upon us from the sky. But I hardly think we need fear that. And this door can be locked—watch—”

Rolth trod on a dull red block set in the floor. A door moved silently out of the right wall and sealed the entrance. On it was a metal plate and the Faltharian set his hand on it for an instant.

“Now try to get that open,” he urged the sergeant.

But, even when Zinga and Fylh added their strength to his, Kartr was unable to force the door. Then Rolth stepped again on the stone and it opened easily.

“Fylh locked me out when we were exploring and we had a time finding out how to open it again. Tricky, the fellows who built that. It would take a full size disruptor to breach that.”

“Which leads me to wonder if they do have one of those.” Zinga put Kartr’s thought into words.

But then that worry was blocked out for he sensed someone coming up the stairs. At the sergeant’s signal the rangers melted away. Zinga was now flat against the wall beside the door where he could be at the back of anyone who entered before the stranger would know of his presence. Fylh lay belly down behind the pile of packs, and Rolth had drawn his blaster, standing a little behind the sergeant who waited, his good hand empty.

“Kartr!”

They knew the voice but they did not relax.

“Come in.”

Smitt obeyed. He gave a start as Zinga materialized behind him. But there was a worried frown on his face and Kartr knew that he was no danger to them. For the second time the com-techneer had come to them because he was in trouble and not because he was an enemy.

“What is it?” asked the sergeant with very little welcome. After all Smitt was to be normally reckoned with Jaksan’s forces.

“They’re talking—a lot. They’ve said you rangers are too alien to be trusted.”

“Well”—Kartr’s lips curled back in what was not even a shadow of a smile—“I’ve heard that a good many times before and I can’t see that we’re any the worse for it.”

“Maybe you weren’t—before. But this Ageratan—he’s—the man must be mad!” Smitt exploded. “I tell you”—his voice slid up the scale a little—“he must be raving mad!”

“Suppose,” hissed Zinga, “you just sit down—over there where we can keep an eye on you—and tell us all about it.”

8 — PALACE REVOLUTION

“That’s it— I’ve practically nothing concrete to tell. It’s just a kind of feeling—the way he persists in keeping us away from all but his own men. He has a guard—that Can-hound, a couple of jetmen from the X451, one of the officers, two intal planters, and three professional mercenaries. They’re all armed—Control issue blasters and force blades. But I haven’t heard of or seen any of the other officers from the X451. And Cummi’s taken over—gives commands to us! Dalgre and Snyn were sent to join his techneers and help run the city. Ordered to do so, mind you—and they Patrolmen! And Jaksan didn’t make any objection.”

“And what about you—has he drafted you yet?” asked Rolth.

“Luckily I wasn’t there when they came hunting techneer recruits. Look here—how does he dare give orders to the Patrol?” There was honest bewilderment in Smitt’s voice.

For the second time Kartr explained. “Better get it into your head, Smitt, that as far as you, and Cummi, and the rest of us are concerned, the Patrol has ceased to exist. We’ve nothing to back up any show of authority—he has. That is just why—”

“You argued against our coming here?” Smitt’s lips thinned. Kartr felt the other’s rage. “Well, you were right! I know you rangers don’t feel the same about the Service as we crewmen do. You’ve always been independent cusses. But my father died on the barricades at the Altra air locks—one of the rear guard who held their posts long enough for the survivors’ ships to leave. And my grandfather was second officer of the Promixa dreadnaught when she tried to reach Andromeda. We’ve served five generations in the Patrol. And may I be Space-burned if I ever take orders from a Cummi while I still wear this!” His hand went to his Comet badge.

“A very fine sentiment which will not help you any if Cummi’s private police force comes a-hunting,” Zinga remarked. “But was it just this disinclination to take orders from a mere civilian which drove you to us?”

“You,” Smitt snapped at the Zacathan, “needn’t be so cocky. I overheard enough to learn that Cummi is death on fraternization with Bemmys and that goes for rangers, too,” he aimed in Kartr’s direction. “There’s a rumor, it came in the form of a secondhand warning from one of the intal planters, that Cummi’s had a couple burned already—”

“A couple of what?” That was Fylh, and his crest was rising. “Bemmys? Of what species?”

Smitt shook his head. “I don’t know, the planter was vague. Only, you’re not going to get a fair deal from Cummi, that’s plain. And I’m not going to take his orders. Maybe we haven’t always run the same course before, but we have a common problem before us now.”

“So?” Fylh’s claws preened his crest. “But the best of the bargain seems to be yours under the circumstances. What do you have to offer us in return?”

“He has something we might need,” Kartr broke in.

The appeal of the com-techneer was an honest one. He did want to throw in with them.

“It will depend upon you, Smitt. Can you swallow your pride enough to co-operate with Cummi’s party—co-operate until you can learn something of their set-up—how much power Cummi really has, whether there are any rebels among the passengers, what are some of his future plans? We’re not”—he spoke now to the rangers—“going to strike out blindly. You two, Fylh and Zinga, will have to lie low until we do know how we stand. No use attracting any attention. As for me, since my talk with Jaksan, I am doubtless down in their black books with a double star. Rolth is handicapped for daytime work. So, Smitt, if you are really willing to join up with us, keep that wish under mind block—and I mean under block. The Ageratan is a sensitive and what he can’t scrape out of an unsuspecting mind the Can-hound may be able to get for him. It’ll be a tough assignment, Smitt. You’re got to join the anti-Bemmy, pro-Cummi crowd—at least with lukewarm attachment. A little initial rebellion is all right, they would expect that from a Patrolman with your background. But can you play a double game, Smitt—and do you want to?”

The com-techneer had listened quietly and now he raised his head and nodded.

“I can try. I don’t know about this mind block business.” He hesitated. “I’m no sensitive. How much can Cummi do with me?”

“He’s a five point nine. He can’t take you over, if that is what you’re afraid of. You’re from Luga—or your family was Lugan stock originally, weren’t they?”

“My father was Lugan. My mother came from Desart.”

“Lugan—Desart—” Kartr looked to Zinga.

“High resistance core,” the Zacathan informed him promptly. “Imaginative, but excellent control. Resistance is above eight. No, no Ageratan could take him over. And you do have a mind block, Smitt, whether you’ve ever tried to use it or not. Just think about some com-machine when you’re around a sensitive. Concentrate on some phase of your old job—”

“Like this?” demanded Smitt eagerly.

It was as if he had snapped off some switch. Where Smitt sat there was now a mental blank. Kartr bit off an exclamation and then said:

“Keep that up, Smitt! Zinga—!”

His own power went out toward the com-techneer, and then he felt a second stream of energy unite with it, driving into that blankness with him like the tip of a blaster beam. So, he had been right! Zinga was a sensitive, too, and to a degree he could not even measure. Together their wills smashed at Smitt, smashed on a barrier which held as staunchly as the hull of a space ship.

There were beads of moisture on Kartr’s forehead, gathering under the edge of his helmet to trickle down his cheeks and chin. Then his free hand moved in a gesture of defeat and he relaxed.

“You need not worry about mind invasion, Smitt. Unless you get careless.”

The com-techneer was on his feet. “Then we are allied?” He asked that almost shyly, as if he had come there expecting to be turned away.

“We are. Just stir around some and see what you can find out. But don’t, if possible, get sent off from here where we can’t reach you. We may have to move fast if trouble comes.”

“I won’t let you down.” Smitt crossed to the door. Now he hesitated and turned. And before he went out his hand moved in a gesture which included all of them—human and Bemmy alike—the full salute of a Patrolman to his equals.

“Now—just in case—” Fylh flitted across the room and stamped on the door-controlling block, locking the portal with the heat of his claws.

“Yes,” Zinga agreed, “one does feel more relaxed when it isn’t necessary to think about guarding one’s back. Shall we settle in?”

Kartr slipped his left wrist out of the sling and rubbed it thoughtfully.

“They have a medico here. I wonder—”

Rolth moved up beside him. “Are you thinking of venturing into the slith’s cave alone?”

“A well-equipped ship’s hospital should include a renewer ray. And I’d like to go into battle—if I have to—with two good hands instead of one. Also it gives me a legitimate excuse for wandering around below. I can ask questions—”

“All right. But you don’t go alone,” Rolth agreed. “Somehow I don’t fancy any of us prancing about alone in this building. Two’s pretty good company—and two blasters can clear a wider path than one.”

“None of that! I’m a sufferer in search of a medico, remember?” But Kartr’s lips stretched in what had come during these past days to be an unfamiliar curve, a genuine smile. “Have you two enough to amuse yourselves with while we are gone?”

“Don’t worry about us.” Zinga grinned and his inch fangs shone in the greenish light to ghoulish advantage. “We shall set up housekeeping. We do, I take it, lock the door behind you?”

“Yes. And you open it only when you pick up our mind patterns.”

Zinga didn’t even blink at that. Of course, he had revealed the extent of his power when he had aided Kartr in attacking Smitt’s block. But, with his usual disregard for human emotions, he apparently saw no reason for discussing his long concealment now.

Fylh opened the door and they started down the stairs. It was quiet below and they were almost into the corridor before Kartr’s perception warned him of a stranger’s approach. It was a young man, in the rather ornate uniform of a passenger ship’s officer, who strode confidently toward them.

“You are Sergeant Kartr?”

“I am.”

“The Vice-Sector Lord wishes to see you.”

Kartr stopped and gazed with mild interest at the newcomer. Perhaps the sergeant was even a year or so younger than this assured Flight Spacer—allowing for planetary and racial difference—but suddenly he felt almost grandfatherly.

“I have not received any orders from my superior officer delegating me to be attached to the service of the Central Control Civil Section.”

And for a wonder that pomposity actually disconcerted the other. Maybe the old magic of the Patrol still held a small power. Kartr and Rolth started on, passed the officer, and were several feet down the hall before he caught up with them again.

“See here!” He tried to project the sting of an order into his voice, but it faded when both rangers wheeled to give him grave and courteous attention. “The Lord Cummi—he is in charge here, you know,” he ended lamely.

“Section six, paragraph eight, general orders,” answered Rolth. “ ‘The Patrol is the guardian of the law under Central Control. It may assist the civil branch if and when requested to do so. But at no time and in no manner does it surrender its authority to any planetary or sectional advisor or ruler, except under the direct seal and order of Central Control.’ ”

The youngster stood with his mouth slightly open. The last thing he had expected, thought Kartr with a relieving chuckle of real humor which he was able to suppress, was to have general orders spouted in his face. Zinga would have loved to hear this. Kartr hoped that the Zacathan had followed them mentally and was enjoying it.

“But—” whatever protest the Spacer was about to make died away as the rangers’ expressions of polite but impatient attention did not alter.

“Now,” Kartr said when the officer added nothing to that forlorn “but,” “perhaps you can direct me to your medico’s quarters. I require attention for this.” He indicated his wrist.

The officer was eager to oblige. “Down two flights of stairs at the end of this corridor and turn to your right. Medico Tre has the first four rooms in that hall.”

He remained where he was, still staring after them as they moved on.

“What do you suppose he is going to report to the great Cummi?” Rolth wondered as they followed directions. “I don’t think that I would care to be in his boots. “Do you believe—”

“That I was wise to stand up and resist at this point? Maybe I wasn’t, but they must have discovered from Jaksan that I am hostile. And”—Kartr’s face was entirely expressionless—“that was something I had to do. He set the Can-hound on us!”

And Rolth, having seen that fighting face before and knowing what its mask covered, decided to say no more.

They met no one else on those two flights of stairs. Apparently this portion of Cummi’s stronghold was more or less deserted. And they were approaching the first door along the medico’s corridor when a thin whisper of sound caught their attention. Here the tall windows were set in deep recesses and it was from one of those that the summons came.

“A woman—”

But Kartr already knew that, having met the block which always prevented a sensitive from interpreting the emotions of one of the opposite sex. She was leaning forward, daring to beckon with one hand. Rolth edged toward that side of the hall and Kartr nodded. The Faltharian would contact the woman while the sergeant kept on to their destination. If any one except Zinga had a mind watch on them at present such a move might be confusing.

Rolth stepped into the embrasure and drew back against the window, taking the woman with him. To anyone not directly before the recess they were not visible. Kartr went on a yard and glanced back. Rolth had made the right move—from where he was now they could not be seen.

The sergeant turned into the next open door. Medico’s quarters all right from the equipment in sight. Almost at the same instant a tall man came from an inner room. Kartr tried mind contact and then lost some of his tension. This was no Ageratan, and no enemy either. He could scan nothing but good will in the other’s mind.

“You have a renewer ray?” he asked, drawing his arm out of the sling.

“We have. How long it will continue to function locked to these city currents is another question. We cannot be sure of anything. I am Medico Lasilo Tre. A break?” His fingers were already busy about Kartr’s wrist, unfastening the bandages Zinga had put on that morning.

“I don’t know. Ah—” Kartr sucked in his breath as Tre began probing the bruised and purple flesh.

Then the ranger was pushed down on a stool at the edge of the renewer beam, his throbbing arm stretched out under the concentrated ray, feeling again the draw of those invisible healing motes. Twice Tre snapped off the current and came to examine the hurt with delicate finger tips—only to turn it on again after shaking his head. The third time he was satisfied. Kartr lifted his arm gingerly and flexed first his fingers and then his wrist. Although he had once before been under the ray—to renew a leg almost chewed to pieces—the wonder of the restoration was as great as ever. He pulled off his sling and grinned happily at the medico.

“Better than new,” Tre commented. “Only wish that your officer could be as easily put to rights, Sergeant—”

Vibor! Kartr had almost forgotten the Commander. “How is he?”

Tre frowned. “The physical wounds—those we were able to heal. But the other— I’m no psycho-sensitive. He needs the type of care and treatment he’ll never be able to get now—unless a miracle occurs and we are rescued—”

“Which you do not believe will ever happen,” suggested Kartr.

“How can any sensible man believe that we will?” countered the medico. But there was something else, another emotion hidden beneath that answer. “This planet—this solar system—does not even exist on any map the X451 carried.”

“But those who built this city were at a high level of civilization,” Kartr pointed out. “Where did they go?”

“They were and they weren’t. Mechanically they were far advanced, yes. But there are odd gaps. I understand you rangers are trained to assess strange civilizations. I shall be eager to have your reaction to the ruins of this one after you have had the time to study it. The one thing I have noticed is that there is no space port here and there never was. Maybe the men of this world never knew space flight—”

“But what happened to them?”

Tre shrugged. “At least this is no second Tantor. We made sure of that before we entered the city. And we have found no human remains here. It seems almost as if they all walked away one day, leaving their city ready and waiting, all geared to go again when they wished to return. There are signs of time—some erosion. The machinery, though, had all been left protected, oiled, laid up in such a way as to set our mech-techneers running around begging people to come and look at an excellent preservation job.”

“They must have planned on returning, then.” Kartr digested that. Was there, on some other land mass of this unknown world, a remnant of civilization?

“If they did they were prevented. It has been a long time since they left. Wrist okay, Sergeant?”

Kartr did not start at the abrupt change in the other’s speech. He knew that Rolth was at the door behind him.

“Medico Tre, Ranger Rolth.” He was careful to glance around before making the introductions. No need to tip off Tre that he was a sensitive.

The medico acknowledged the Faltharian’s salute. “Pleased to see you, ranger. Any aches or pains to report? Goggles holding up? Need any skin burn cream? You are a Faltharian?”

The lips below Rolth’s goggle mask curved into a smile which expanded under the medico’s friendliness. “You know all about my problems then, Medico?”

“Had a Faltharian patient once—bad skin burn. That’s what started me messing around with creams. Found one which did help a lot. Wait a minute—”

He hurried to a medicine case in the corner and began checking over the assortment of plaso-tubes it held. “Try this.” He brought one out. “Spread it on before you go into direct daylight. I think you’ll find it will stop irritation.”

“Thanks, Medico.” Rolth put the tube into his belt pouch. “So far I’ve been okay. Only the sergeant here had work for you.”

Kartr flipped his left hand up and down from the restored wrist. “And this is as good as new. What’s your fee?”

Tre laughed. “Credit slips wouldn’t have much value here, would they? If you come across anything interesting in my line when you go exploring, just let me know. That will be good enough for me. Glad to be of service to the Patrol at any time, anyway. You boys deserve the best we civilians can give you. I hear that you may be hunting—any chance of going along some time on one of your trips?”

Kartr was surprised. There was an urgency in that question and the medico’s eyes locked with his as if Tre were trying desperately to tell him something—a message vitally important to both of them.

“I don’t see why not,” the sergeant returned. “If we do go. I’ve had no orders as yet. Thanks again, Medico—”

“Not at all. Only too glad to be able to help. See you around—”

But still underneath that urgent appeal. Then Kartr’s eyes widened. The fingers of the medico’s right hand—they had moved—were moving again—to shape a figure he knew well. But how—how and when had Tre learned that? Automatically he made the prescribed answer with his forefinger, even as he said loudly:

“If and when we go out, we’ll let you know. Clear skies—”

“Clear skies.” The other returned the spaceman’s good-bye.

Outside the door Kartr’s hand closed for a moment only on Rolth’s. The Faltharian at once began talking about hunting.

“Those horned beasts we saw in the clearing,” he said as they mounted the stairs again, “they should make excellent eating. There may be some way of salting down the flesh—if we could locate salt deposits. And the same for those river creatures Zinga is always talking about. We needn’t send him to bring in those.” The Faltharian laughed as light-heartedly as if he had not caught the message and was speaking now for other ears. “He’d eat more than he’d bring back.”

“We’d better not use the blasters,” Kartr cut in as if he were giving some serious thought to the questions. “Spoils too much of the meat. Force blades—”

“Have to get in close to use them, wouldn’t you?” asked Rolth dubiously.

Both of them were climbing faster. There was someone behind them now. Kartr’s mind touched and then recoiled, sickened. The Can-hound was trailing them. But they did not run, though they were breathing hard when they reached the top of the last flight and saw the door to the tower open just enough for them to squeeze through. Zinga slammed it shut on their heels with an open-jawed snarl of rage.

“So that’s after you!”

“As a trailer only, I think. Let him stew around outside. Now, Rolth, what about that woman. What did she want?”

“She thought we were brave heroes come to the rescue. Cummi’s kept it dark—our arrival—but word got around—our uniforms are too well known. She came to ask for help. The situation here is just about what you thought it was. Cummi’s set himself up as a pocket-sized Central Control. You do just as he says or you don’t eat. And if you protest too loudly you disappear—”

“How many have disappeared?” Fylh wanted to know.

“The Captain of the X451 and three or four others. Then there were four Bemmy passengers—they disappeared too. But not in the same way. I gather that they saw which way the stars were showing right after the landing and went off into the blue by themselves—”

“Bemmys! What species?” Zinga’s frill made a fan behind his head. He still stood by the door as if listening to something on the other side of the portal.

“I couldn’t get that out of her. She didn’t see them until after the ship came down—it was a two-class liner. Anyway there is now a Cummi party, small but armed and dangerous, and an anti-Cummi party badly organized and just milling around—taking it out in talk where they can’t be overheard by the lord and master. Cummi himself keeps holed up here and has his men patrolling. Those who know anything—the techneers, the medico—he keeps right under his eyes. That Can-hound is one of his big threats.”

“Are we invited to join the anti-Cummi party?” Fylh asked.

“I don’t think it has gone that far yet. They had an idea that the Patrol had moved in to take over. And do you know—I think that that is just what we might have done if we had handled this the way you wanted to, Kartr—allowed them to think we had an undamaged ship and were on duty. I had to tell the woman that we were not in charge. But I also informed her that the rangers were sticking together.”

“They may plan a palace revolution,” Kartr mused. “Very well. I say we stick tight here until we know more.”

“Where did that medico learn ranger hand talk?” Rolth wondered.

“A question I’ll ask him if I ever get the chance. He’s another who suggested the waiting game and to keep our eyes open and our mouths shut.”

“Our eyes and other things open—” Zinga’s head was pressed against the surface of the door. “The Can-hound is about to do a little prying. Think sweet thoughts for him—quick!”

9 — SHOWDOWN

“Then you press this little knob and— Neat, isn’t it?”

Kartr had to agree with the Zacathan that the results of pressing the little knob were neat. Water, clear, honest, fresh water splashed out of a spout disguised as a monster’s head and fell into a basin set in the floor, a basin large enough to accommodate with ease even Kartr’s inches.

“Go on—try it!” urged Zinga. “I did—twice! And you don’t see me any the worse for it, do you?” He turned slowly around flexing his muscles and grinning toothily.

Rolth leaned back against the edge of the doorway and watched the flood suspiciously.

“What about the water supply? Could our friends down below shut it off if they wanted to?”

Kartr had unbuckled and thrown aside belt and tunic. Now he paused uncertainly. It might be wiser to conserve water instead of wasting it on baths. But the Zacathan shook his head.

“The pipes carrying this run up through the walls. If they shut us off they will probably have to shut off their own supply also. Anyway—if a siege is included in their future plans we’d be fools to allow ourselves to get bottled up here any longer than it would take us to climb down that outer wall. Don’t be a spoilsport,” he ended. “Or do you like to go dirty?”

Kartr peeled off the rest of his clothing and kicked it across the floor. He had one clean outfit in his bag and he reveled in the thought of using it.

“I wonder what they looked like—” He tried the temperature of the pool with his toes and found it to be pleasantly warm—much more comfortable than the mountain stream.

“Who—? Oh, you mean the builders of this delightful spot? Well”—Zinga indicated the mirrored walls—“they were not ashamed to look themselves in the face. Wonder if those ever before reflected any bathers as ugly as you two—”

Kartr laughed and splashed water at the Zacathan. “Speak for yourself, Zinga. I’ll have you know that my face is not considered suitable for frightening children—”

Or did that still hold true, he wondered suddenly, and for the first time surveyed his reflection critically as it appeared in the mirror which ran the full length of the wall behind the basin.

The deep brown skin which proclaimed his space-borne occupation had only a few lines as yet. Of course, above that dark expanse the color of his hair did look rather odd. But its soft cream and red brown in waving strips was perfectly natural for a son of Ylene. He had two eyes, green, set slightly aslant—a straight nose—a mouth centrally placed—all proper for a human.

“Teeth too small—”

Kartr flushed and watched the dark crimson creep up along his sharply defined cheek bones.

“Freeze and blast you, Zinga! Can’t you leave a man’s thoughts alone?”

“Admiring himself, was he? But I don’t agree about the teeth—large ones aren’t marks of beauty among our kind, you know—”

Zinga was standing open-jawed just before his own section of mirror. “And why not? Useful and beautiful both. I’d like to see either of you two puny humans take part in one of our warrior duels—no talons—no proper teeth—you wouldn’t last a minute!”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and conditioned by upbringing,” announced the Faltharian. “Now Kartr’s people have two-shaded hair—so does their ideal of beauty. My race”—he had been shedding helmet and tunic as he talked—“have white hair, white skin—pale eyes. So—for us those attributes are necessary to be considered handsome.”

“Oh, you are all answers to the sighs of maidens.” Fylh’s voice deflated from the doorway. “Why not finish up that absurd splashing about in liquid and come and eat. Such a stupid waste of time—”

But Kartr refused to be hurried and Rolth was as leisurely in enjoying Zinga’s discovery. When they were again clad and followed Fylh into the outer room they found the Trystian curled up on the ledge of an open window exchanging trills with several large birds.

“Gossiping again,” commented Zinga. “And where is this food that it was so important that we eat? I’ll wager two credits that he’s passed it out to those feathered friends of his!”

“Serve you right if I had. But you’ll find it just beyond your noses.”

The concentrated rations were twice as tasteless to anyone who had recently dined on roasted meat and the fresh fruits of the wilderness. Kartr chewed and swallowed conscientiously and longed to return to the past.

“I’ll take it back.” Zinga gagged realistically after he downed the last cube. “Fylh wouldn’t pass this offal on—it would kill the birds and he likes birds—”

“What are we doing here anyway?” There was the whir of wings as the birds went and Fylh dropped to the floor, closing the window. “We should have stayed out there. This is a dead place and there is no sense in trying to bring it to life!”

“Don’t worry. We’ll probably be outside again sooner than we bargain for. Let’s go down and agree to go hunting like good little rangers and then go—and never come back!”

Kartr looked up. He could understand that plea of Zinga’s, and part of him wanted to do just what the Zacathan suggested. And he could participate in Fylh’s feeling that this was a dead place returned to an unnatural life. But—there were women and children below in the city and there was a cold season approaching—unless Cummi had lied about that also. Maybe the intal planters, and some of the other passengers had hunted, but could their efforts supply all the needs of the community? And that woman today, she had appealed to Rolth, believed in their help just because they wore the Comets.

“It is like this,” the sergeant began slowly, trying to put all these tangled feelings into the right words, to spread out before the others both sides of the question. “Do we have any right to walk out when we may be needed? On the other hand, if Cummi’s anti-Bemmy talk puts you two in danger, you must go—”

“Why—?”

Zinga interrupted Fylh. “We don’t go yet. But I see your point. Only, let me warn you, Kartr, there are times when a man—or a Bemmy—has to harden his heart. We needn’t make any decisions tonight. A good rest—”

“Locked door or not, I’m suggesting a watch,” Fylh stated.

“They won’t try to reach us—that way.” Kartr shook his head.

“You mean—mind touch!” Rolth whistled. “Then Fylh and I won’t be much help.”

“True. So Zinga and I will divide the night.”

There followed uneasy hours. Three rolled in bedrolls, one on guard, slipping on unbooted feet from room to room, up and down, listening with both ears and mind. They did it in two-hour watches and Kartr had taken to his bed for the second time when Zinga hailed him with a low hiss. The sergeant pulled out with a sigh to join the Zacathan at an open window.

“Smitt is coming—across that other roof—”

The Zacathan was right; the mind pattern of the com-techneer identified him. And only a trained ranger could have sighted him. His dodging from shadow to shadow, his use of every bit of cover was Patrol work at its best.

“I’ll go down to meet him.” Before Zinga could protest Kartr was through the window and on that ladder of block design. Fortunately it was a cloudy night and he thought that unless someone were watching him through vision lenses he could not be seen, his uniform being almost the same shade as the stone.

As the sergeant came within a foot or two of the roof over which Smitt was advancing he gave a soft whistle of Patrol recognition. There was a moment of silence and then he was answered and the com-techneer came running to join him.

“Kartr here—”

“Thank the Spirit of Space! I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”

“What’s up?”

“The men—those against Cummi. They’ve taken our appearance here as a signal to fight him. The idiotic fools! He has a disruptor mounted in every main corridor, they can’t get anywhere near him. And that Can-hound has knocked out two of the leaders—put them to sleep the same way you did Snyn back in the ship. It’ll be nothing but raw murder if they try to storm Cummi’s quarters! He had Jaksan locked up with the medico—and the techneers are under guard. He’ll wipe out all opposition—”

“He’s planted a force bomb at the foot of your tower stairs. If you try to come down—finish! And he and the Can-hound are cooking up something special to smoke you out—”

Something special! If the Ageratan believed that he was only dealing with a sensitive of equal powers there were many things he could try. But against a six point six and Zinga such attacks might backfire.

“I’ve got to get back.” Smitt nursed his blaster in one hand. “I’ve got to keep those fools from attacking head on. Is there anything you can do?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll try. Hold off your men as long as you can. Maybe we can turn the tables—”

Smitt melted away into the night. If he kept his mental guard he was going to be a formidable addition to the rebel forces. Neither the Ageratan nor the Can-hound could get to him that way. Kartr climbed back up to the tower window to discover all the rangers waiting for him.

“That was Smitt.” As usual darkness had not confused Rolth. “What did he want?”

“There’s a rebellion against Cummi. The other side took our arrival for the signal to break loose.”

“And Cummi, of course, has not been slumbering peacefully meanwhile. What have his merry men prepared for us?”

“Yes”—Rolth added his question to Fylh’s—“what is ready and waiting for us?”

“Smitt said a force bomb at the foot of the stairs, ready to go off as we go down—”

“Play rough, don’t they? Do you know, I think that somebody should put the old healthy fear of the Patrol into these gentlemen—”

“Where’s Zinga?” Kartr interrupted the Faltharian.

“Gone below to do what he calls ‘listening.’ ” Fylh laid a torch on the floor, pulled the edge of his bedroll partially over it and by the shielded light began to count out the extra clips for their blasters. It did not, unfortunately, take him very long to finish the task.

“That all we have?” Kartr asked grimly.

“You have the charges now in your weapons and the extras in your belt loops—if you’ve followed regulations. These are the rest.”

“All right. It comes to three apiece and the one over for Rolth. If this is to be a night fight we might as well give the advantage to the one who can make the best us of it.”

The Faltharian was busy at a task of his own, securing their packs. If they did not have to make a run for it, they might be able to bring off their equipment too.