Part 12

1

The recreation hall of the compound was ablaze with light and bursting with noise. It was jammed full of Psychlos and they were mostly drunk. It was a grand party on the evening of the semiannual firing. Char and two other executives were going home.

It was something to celebrate: the end of a duty tour on this accursed planet. Attendants rushed about with saucepans of kerbango, held six or eight at a time in their paws. Female Psychlo clerks, released from the cowed decorum that was their normal lot, joked and got their bottoms smacked. A couple of fights had already started and ended without anyone discovering what the fight had been about. Games of chance and marksmanship were a tangle of disorganized confusion.

Jokes of a bawdy and discreditable nature were being buffeted at the departing executives. “Have a saucepan on me at the Claw in Imperial City!” “Don’t buy more wives than you can handle in one night!” “Tell them a thing or two at the home office about what it’s like out here, the mangy slobs!”

The atmosphere was so convivial that even Ker was included, and the midget sat with pompous importance trying to judge a contest of how many bites a minute could be taken from a saucepan with the participant’s paws held behind him.

Five executives were chanting a school yell that went, “Psychlo, Psychlo, Psychlo, kill’m, kill’m, kill’m,” over and over, tunelessly but loud.

Down back of the firing platform, a train of pack horses, hoofs muffled with furred hide, moved silently out of a ravine and through the dark toward the unlit morgue. The greenish compound glow reached toward them unrevealingly. A faint clink of metal as Angus MacTavish unlocked the morgue door with a master key.

Char was very drunk, drunk and reeling. He walked unsteadily over to Terl—who looked drunk, but was cold and tensely sober.

“That’s a goo’ idea,” said Char. He was always a nasty drunk and the more he drank the nastier he got.

“What is?” said Terl through the uproar.

“Tell’m a thing or two at the home office,” hiccuped Char.

Terl went very still. Char did not see his eyes narrow and flame. Then Terl said in a drunken slur, “I got a little presen’ for you, Char. C’m outside for a minute.”

Char lifted his eyebones. “Ain’ gotta mask.”

“Thersh masks beshide the door port,” said Terl.

Unobserved by the rest, Terl steered him to the hall and they got into masks in a tangled fashion. Terl went through the atmosphere lock, dragging Char behind.

Terl led him down near the zoo cages. There was no fire burning. It was too late. There was no bundle in front of the cage.

The spring chill of the exterior revived Char a trifle and he returned to being nasty. “Animals,” he said. “You’re a animal lover, Terl. I never did like you, Terl.”

Terl was not listening to him. What was that down by the morgue? He peered more closely. There were animals down there!

“You’re awful clever, Terl. But you’re not clever enough to fool me!”

Terl took a couple of steps toward the morgue, trying to see in the dark. He took out a pocket torch and flashed it in that direction. Brown hide? Hard to see.

Then he got a better view of it. A small herd of buffalo. They’d been drifting north for days now. Mixed in with some horses. He turned the torch off. The casually walking hoofs were distant, tiny thuds. Louder were the squeaks and crunches of the new spring grass being pulled up as the herd grazed its way along. An owl was hooting off somewhere. Usual nonsense of this accursed planet. He gave his attention back to Char.

Terl put his arm around Char’s shoulder and guided him back to a point where the circles of the compound domes made a recess as they met. It was very dark here, hidden from all views.

“What didn’t fool you, friend Char?” asked Terl.

The owl hooted again.

Terl looked around. There were no vantage points from which they could be seen.

Char was sneering. “The blast cap smoke,” he said, putting his face mask very close to Terl’s. He reeled and Terl held him up.

“What about it?” said Terl.

“Why, that wasn’t no blast gun that went off in old Numph’s office. That was a blasting cap. Y’think an old mine boss like me can’t smell the difference between a blast gun and a blast cap!”

Terl’s paw was reaching for the small of his own back, under the jacket. He’d been trying to work out a way to furnish a reason for launching the gas drone day after tomorrow. He suddenly had it, and without stirring up any psychic powers either.

“Appointin’ Ker, that miserable excuse, just hours before. Oh!” exclaimed the hostile Char. “You are clever enough for some people, but I see through you, Terl. I see through you.”

“Why, what did you think?” said Terl.

“Think! I didn’t have time to think! When I get home I can tell them a thing or two. You ain’t so smart, Terl. Think I don’t know one smoke for another? And people will agree with me when I get home!”

Terl shoved ten inches of stainless steel knife into Char’s heart. It was the knife Jonnie had given Chrissie.

He lowered the sagging body down to the ground. He took a nearby scrap of discarded tarpaulin and covered it.

Terl went back to the cage and looked in. The girls were sleeping.

The buffalo herd was still moving quietly past the morgue.

Terl went back inside. There was more to do tonight but just now the party must not realize he had been absent. He joined the Psychlos who were chanting. They were very drunk.

Down at the morgue, men moved carefully so as not to disturb the buffalo they had drifted in on the place from the plain. The horses were unloaded and gone.

Nobody had observed the murder of Char. It was not possible to get that close to the domes without being seen. Those in the morgue continued their work, unaware that a new factor had been entered into planning, one they did not know about and had not predicted.

The farewell party continued to racket noise out of the compound, unaware that their guest of honor was missing.

2

Jonnie lay in a coffin at the near end of the morgue. The lid was slightly propped open to give him air and an interior view. On the outside roof a button camera brought the exterior scene to a hand viewer resting beside him in the dark confines. He was dressed in Chinko blue, but he wore moccasins, the better to speed him today.

For today in the space of just two exact minutes, he had to cover certain exact grounds and do very drilled and exact things, and do them in an exact time, or the whole project would fail and he would be dead. And Chrissie and Pattie would die as well. And all the Scots and others left on Earth.

He heard the transshipment area control tower warning horn for the incoming phase.

“Motors off. Stand clear!”

The humming came on. The ground vibrated. The coffin lid trembled. The humming built up and up.

Suddenly two hundred new incoming Psychlos appeared on the platform along with their baggage.

The humming dropped. A faint vibration remained.

“Coordinates holding and linked up with second stage.”

The whole area came to life. One hour and thirteen minutes would elapse now until they fired back to Psychlo.

Personnel department members were herding the incoming draft off to the side and getting them in line.

Terl eyed the assemblage. The last time a draft had come in he had had a bad shock, and now he wasn’t taking any chances. He was half-expecting to find a new Planet Head in this lot, somebody to replace Ker, and he might have to think fast. He walked down the line, not looking at baggage for contraband. He was just looking at faces through their domed transport helmets, checking off the names. Two hundred. More of old Numph’s nonsense to get as many on the swindle payroll as he could. Terl went down the whole line. He breathed a sigh of relief. No replacement here for Ker, just the usual gutter sweepings from the slums of Psychlo plus an oddball junior executive and a couple of graduates from the mine school. Routine. Not one in the lot that could qualify as a Planet Head. All a bit lethargic. No agents from I.B.I. either!

Terl raised a paw to personnel and they divided some off for waiting transport planes destined for other minesites and some to berthing here. They loaded them on flatbeds with their baggage and they were gone.

That was a relief to Terl. He approached the morgue. That blasted horse of the animal’s that was always hanging around the compound was grazing in back of the morgue. “Get away from here!” Terl yelled at the horse and made paw motions to shoo him off. The horse looked at Terl indifferently, and when Terl went to open the door it came even closer.

Terl unlocked the morgue door and threw it wide.

There were ten coffins lying there, ready to be scooped up by lift machines. He checked for the small X marks on the covers. Nothing like taking precautions. Every lid had its little X mark.

He patted one of them fondly. He took a deep breath. Maybe eight or ten months from now he would be digging these up some dark Psychlo night in the isolated and dreary cemetery on Psychlo. And it would be riches, power! The fruits of his project were hard won. They wouldn’t be that hard to spend!

The first lift came, thrust its prongs under a coffin. Terl went back outside. He checked off the name on his records. The second coffin, the third, the fourth . . . Terl looked at the fourth one, a bit puzzled. How come he had spelled Jayed’s false name wrong? Not “Snit” but “Stni.” He checked for the X. That was there all right. Well, to crap with it. He’d enter the error on the record. One good false name deserved another. The ex-agent was good and dead. That’s all that mattered.

The lifts were dumping the coffins any which way on the platform. Terl watched, a bit apprehensive at the rough handling. But none landed upside down.

Nine of the coffins were lying out there now. The lift superintendent stopped his machine beside Terl to let him check off number ten, the last one he was carrying.

“These coffins seem awful heavy,” commented the superintendent.

Terl looked up, masking any alarm. They were only about a hundred pounds overweight, not enough to notice and certainly not enough to make much difference to a lift machine. The coffins should weigh about seventeen hundred each, even with those lids.

“Your power cartridge is probably half-discharged,” said Terl.

“Maybe,” said the superintendent. The coffins seemed like three thousand pounds. But he rolled the machine and dumped the tenth one on the platform.

The personnel department flatbed for outgoing personnel came up. Its driver was looking a little harassed. There were five Psychlos and their baggage on the truck, two of them returning executives and the other three ordinary miners going home. The driver gave Terl the list.

“You’ll have to change that list,” said the driver. “Char is supposed to be on it. He was scheduled to go home today and all of us in personnel have been running around looking for him, and we can’t find him. His baggage is here but we can’t find Char.”

“Which is his baggage?” asked Terl. The driver pointed to a separate pile and Terl swept it off the truck with one sweep of his arm.

“We looked everywhere,” said the driver. “Shouldn’t we hold up the firing?”

“You know you can’t do that,” said Terl quickly. “Did you look in the beds of the female admin people?”

The driver let out a guffaw. “I guess we should have done that. That was some party last night.”

“We’ll fire him off in six months,” said Terl and wrote, “Fires later,” on the document after Char’s name and signed it.

The personnel flatbed went off to dump the passengers on the platform. They stood about in a group, making sure their firing helmets were on tight. They were several feet away from the coffins.

Terl glanced at his watch. One hour and eleven minutes. Two more minutes to go.

“Coordinates holding on second stage!” came from the bullhorn over the operations dome. The white light was flashing.

Terl walked back closer to the morgue. That blasted horse was poking around the door. Terl made shooing motions with his paws. The horse moved off a few steps and began to graze again.

It was a relief to see those coffins out there. Terl stood gazing upon them fondly. About one minute to go.

Then his hair seemed to stand on end. From within the morgue, the empty deserted morgue, came a voice!

3

When the last coffin had gone out the open door, Jonnie had silently slid out of his coffin. He had three kill-clubs thrust in his belt and he was holding a fourth, the heaviest one. He laid a picto-recorder player in the middle of the floor with one flashing motion and backed up behind the door. The shadow of Terl outside lay across the floor.

The recorder started to play. It was a recording of Terl’s own voice. It said, “Jayed, you silly crunch, what a crap lousy I.B.I. agent you were.”

It was playing loudly enough to be heard outside.

The shadow of Terl contracted, turning.

The recorder said, “It ain’t smart, Jayed, to come in here worrying your betters. . . .”

Terl lunged through the door, slamming it shut with a frantic hand. He raised his boot to stamp the recorder into oblivion.

Jonnie dove forward. With a motion he had drilled and drilled with a dummy, the kill-club crashed into Terl’s skull.

With his other hand, even as Terl fell forward, Jonnie ripped up the pocket flap and got the remote control box to the cage.

A horn was going outside. “Coordinates holding on first stage. Motors off!”

Jonnie hit Terl again. The body collapsed. Jonnie ripped the breathe-mask off Terl’s face and threw it clear to the far end of the morgue where it landed with a clatter. He bent over Terl. Green blood was running down the side of the monster’s head. The feet were drumming. Then Terl was still. There was no breathing. The eyes seemed glazed. He would have liked to put a shot in Terl. He took the belt gun. But he didn’t dare shoot. Until those wires out there started to hum, they could stop the firing. The instant the wires began to hum he knew the process was irreversible.

The bullhorn bawled, “Stand clear!”

The wires had begun to hum.

Jonnie’s two minutes had begun, and they might well be his last two minutes alive. He had clicked on the stopwatch on his wrist.

He flashed out the door and twisted the lock closed behind him. In these two minutes, nobody would fire a gun since it might hit wires or mess up coordinate settings.

He took in the scene. Windsplitter was only three paces away from where he was supposed to be. Jonnie was on him and with one heel jab they were running.

In a flying blur they raced to the platform!

The humming was intensifying. Anything that stayed on that platform was going to go to Psychlo where you couldn’t even breathe the atmosphere. And a very messy arrival this would be if all went well.

Windsplitter’s hoofs hit the metal of the platform and he reared to a stop as Jonnie dove for the first coffin.

His fingers sought a little round ring that imperceptibly stood out, just under the lid at the top end. He pulled it and a strip came away in his hand. One!

Second coffin. Ring found. Pull. Strip in hand. Two!

The third coffin. Ring. Strip. Three!

A hysterical Psychlo voice came on the bullhorn. “Clear the platform! Clear the platform!”

The small group of Psychlos beyond the coffins woke up to something strange going on. They stared. One of the executives, hungover from the party, raised his arm to point.

Fourth, fifth, and sixth rings!

In these coffins were ten “planet buster” nuclear missile bombs, forbidden by treaties because they could crack the planet’s crust and spray the world with fallout.

Packed around them were the “dirtiest” early radioactive atomic bombs, outlawed because of their extreme pollution potential.

The seventh ring was bent. Jonnie fumbled with it.

“Grab him!” screamed the executive on the platform.

The five Psychlos moved to attack.

Jonnie threw his kill-club at the executive. He went down.

Jonnie yanked two more kill-clubs from his belt and hurled them in a blur of speed. Two more Psychlos went down.

He got back to number seven. He untwisted it and got it out.

He grabbed number eight and pulled it.

There was a suicide squad of Scots in the bushes, standing by in case at the last moment Jonnie failed. He had forbidden it but they insisted. He had timed the run. He wanted no dead Scots.

Jonnie had refused to simply let the fuses be set. If the firing had been canceled they would have blown Earth out of existence. They had to be sure the irreversible action of actual firing was in progress before these fuse strips were pulled.

Nine strips in hand!

The two remaining Psychlos had been further away but they were coming now.

“Strike!” shouted Jonnie at Windsplitter.

The horse reared and struck the nearest Psychlo.

The last monster on the platform reached to grab Jonnie.

Ten!

Jonnie struck with the kill-club and smashed the Psychlo’s helmet.

The reaching talons tore his sleeve. He struck again.

He leaped to the back of Windsplitter.

“Run!”

Someone on the control porch had come out with a blast rifle but did not dare shoot.

The humming wires were building up to crescendo.

Jonnie was off the platform and racing up the hill to the cage. His watch said forty-two seconds left to go. He had never known time to flow so slowly! Or so fast!

He had not gone to Psychlo.

But blast rifles were waiting to cut him down.

He had already switched the remote control box he had recovered so as to shut off the current to the bars. He had gotten out the metal severing tool so he could slash off the girls’ collars.

Windsplitter plunged to a halt before the cage door. Jonnie threw himself off the horse.

He paused for an instant.

The cage door was open! The wood barrier was torn aside!

Where were the girls? Their effects were all here.

Not up? There was a mound under the robes. Ah, they must still be asleep.

He rushed in, metal tool ready to cut the collars, shouting their names.

No motions in the robes.

He threw the furs aside.

He was staring at the corpse of Char. It lay on its back and the stainless steel knife he had given Chrissie was sticking out of Char’s middle.

He had no time for speculation. He was out of the cage, staring about. Old Pork and Dancer were not there. Could it be possible the girls had actually killed Char and escaped? Not likely! Not with this remote box in Terl’s possession.

Seconds were ticking away. Blast rifles were waiting.

He leaped on Windsplitter and dashed for the edge of the bluff. They started a small avalanche as they halted halfway down the slope.

Jonnie sprang off and made sure they were covered from sight.

The humming came to top crescendo. The strange quiver was in the air. He recognized the feeling.

The shipment had shimmered and vanished from the platform!

4

Now would come the usual minor recoil that followed a semiannual firing.

Jonnie counted the seconds. He was panting heavily from his sprint. Windsplitter beside him was blowing, trembling.

Suddenly the ground shook. The air was rent with a splintering crash. A flash lit the sky.

Recoil? Sounded more like the place had blown up!

Jonnie scrambled to the top of the cliff and peered over the edge.

Too much recoil!

By fuse, the nuclear weapons should not have gone off on Psychlo for another ten seconds.

The operations dome was still in the air, flames geysering from it.

The network of wires around the platform was melting.

Machines in the area were sent skidding. Psychlo operators were tumbled to the earth.

Wild, aura-like, sheet lightning bloomed over the transshipment scene!

The compound domes were rocked but seemed intact.

The concussion was racketing across the plains.

It was too soon for the bombs to go off on Psychlo. What had happened? Had they missed their target and landed their lethal cargo on some nearer space? Did this mean Psychlo armament from the home planet could still appear in the sky and crush them?

But right now the question was: had this messed up their assault plans?

He looked anxiously toward the row of battle planes. The instant after recoil was their cue.

He looked toward the nearby ravines. Scot teams in camouflage radiation dress were due to sprint out of cover and take position with their weapons.

That recoil might also be radioactive, and here he was with no radiation battle suit.

Yay! There went the battle planes! Sixteen of them had been manned, each with a pilot and copilot. They had hidden in the planes all night. Keys to them had been placed on each seat.

Up soared the battle planes! A blasting, combined roar of heavy motors. Thirty-two Scot pilots and copilots.

Fifteen planes peeled off and darted at hypersonic toward their destinations. One plane for each distant minesite on the planet. The mission was to batter and destroy them and prevent a counterattack here. One plane to act as air cover for this central minesite. Radio silence was the watchword. No warning!

Jonnie looked at the remaining planes on the ground to see whether they had been battered. He noted they were a bit turned. They seemed all right. . . .

Wait! Something was wrong. There should be four planes left there. They only had thirty-two pilots and copilots. But there were three planes left, not four!

He raised himself above the cliff edge again and swept the scene.

And there it was.

The whole side wall of the morgue had been battered out, and the coffin with which it had been done lay in the rubble!

Terl had somehow come to life and hammered his way out of the morgue.

Jonnie looked up.

Where there should have been one battle plane up there for this minesite, there were two!

Jonnie grabbed for Windsplitter. Something was wrong. The horse had gone lame in its plunge down the cliff. It was three hundred yards to those planes.

With a glare at the sky, Jonnie was running down the hill, putting all his strength into it.

A blast rifle spat at him from the compound. He raced on through a cloud of dirt.

Where were the assault teams? Had they been knocked flat?

Racing, Jonnie headed for the nearest battle plane, shots streaking the air about him. More blast rifles were firing from the compound.

He got to the plane door and got it half open. A blast rifle shot slammed it shut. He dove under the plane and went in the other door.

The key. The key! Where had Angus put this plane’s key? He was scrambling through the edges of the seats. The recoil jolt had jarred the key off the seat. A blast rifle splattered a shot onto the windscreen. There was the key! On the floor!

The instant before he touched the starters, he heard the chunk of a bazooka go. Then the flailing chatter of assault rifles.

The motors barked and he raced his hands over the console. The plane flashed upward to two thousand feet.

He caught a glimpse of the attack groups moving in. Two bazooka teams. Four assault rifle parties. They had been protected in the ravines in which they had crouched all night, covered with antiheat shields.

Jonnie flipped on the viewscreens. Where was Terl?

5

A few miles to the north, Terl and the minesite cover plane were engaged in a dance of battle.

Jonnie slammed his battle plane toward the two ships. Suddenly they moved farther north. One plane was running away to the north. The other took off in pursuit. Two Scots running away? No! Jonnie suddenly understood what was happening. It was a trick! Terl was pretending to run away to lure the Scots into a trap maneuver.

Radio silence. Damn radio silence!

The Scots fell for it.

Before Jonnie could get there, Terl had looped back and deadly fingers of flame were raking the Scots’ ship.

The target flamed! It roared toward the ground.

Two men ejected, right and left, from the burning plane. Their jet packs smoked as they bit and arrested their falls. They were sailing some distance apart.

If Jonnie could get behind Terl while he was still concentrating on the plane . . . yes! Terl dove to shoot one of the pilots, unable to resist a sadistic touch.

The pilot was hit and spun back upward.

Jonnie was right behind Terl. He pressed his gun trips and the artillery blasters knifed into the ship.

Then abruptly Terl’s plane was gone!

A quick glance at the viewscreens. Terl was above him.

But Terl didn’t shoot.

Abruptly Jonnie realized that Terl was going to ignore him and try to get back to the compound and shoot up the ground troops.

The keynote of Psychlo battle tactics was outguessing with a plane’s keyboard. The planes could dart so quickly and at such changing speeds that one had to divine what the other would do and do it first.

Jonnie snapped his battle plane in front of Terl’s. For an instant he could see the face-masked Psychlo through the armored windscreen. It was Terl. A madly efficient Terl, a Terl who for all his insanity was a past master at flying and a top marksman. Jonnie wondered whether he could match this maniac.

Terl went to the right. Jonnie had outguessed him and gone the same direction. Terl went farther right. Jonnie had outguessed him and was in front of him with ready firing guns.

Terl went up. Jonnie’s hands on the keyboard did not outguess him and Terl was almost able to dart past and return to rake the compound assault teams. Jonnie corrected and almost rammed Terl from below.

Why hadn’t he battered the monster’s head off in the morgue? But there had been no time.

Terl went low to the right, then to the left, then to the right. Rhythmical. Easy to predict. Jonnie was in front of him every time.

Too late, Jonnie realized it was a trap. The fourth time, Terl’s guns were firing at the place Jonnie was about to be. Only the slip of a finger on a key saved him from being blasted out of the sky.

Abruptly Terl seemed to abandon his effort to get through to the compound. He headed straight north.

Down below, the burning plane sent up soaring piles of black smoke.

Was this another Terl trick? Luring him off?

Ears blasted by the scream of tortured motors, Jonnie swept his eyes across his viewscreens. Where was Terl going and why? With a sudden hunch he flipped on a heat detection screen.

Chrissie and Pattie, riding to the north! Their horses’ bellies to the ground as they raced along.

Leverage. Jonnie suddenly realized Terl was trying to get back his leverage! If he could recover his hostages he might bring pressure on Jonnie.

Jonnie flipped open the local command radio. Sure enough—Terl’s voice!

“If you don’t go down there and land, animal, I’ll kill them both.”

Terl was right ahead of him, dropping down to about four thousand feet.

Jonnie hit his keys. He estimated exactly where Terl would be.

Jonnie’s battle plane slammed into the back of Terl’s. Jonnie closed the switch for the magnetic grips. The skids of his plane locked to the back of Terl’s.

Half-deafened by the thud of contact, Jonnie stepped up his speed control to hypersonic. His motors shrieked. He punched in coordinates to compare with six feet underground directly below them.

He glanced over the side to see that the riders were clear of that spot. They were.

The motors of both ships were screaming in discord, fighting against one another in howling dissonance. They jerked and wrestled in the sky, suspended in space. The motors began to get hot. Very shortly they would burn and explode.

Jonnie reached back for the jet packs. The straps had already been shortened. He shrugged into it. He made sure he still had Terl’s belt gun.

He took one final glance at the keyboard. Locked in. Six feet underground, directly below, four thousand feet down, speed control at hypersonic.

Jonnie dove out the plane door. The air bit at him as he plummeted down.

His jets barked alive and the descent slowed. By swinging his legs, he went up to a higher altitude.

He looked at the locked and fighting ships.

He had expected that Terl would bail out. The outcome was inevitable. The ships would explode. He was counting on Terl’s having no belt gun, and he intended to hunt him down in a jet pack or on the ground. But Terl didn’t bail out. Jonnie could see him battering away at his control console.

Jonnie, holding in space with his backpack jets, had the sickening feeling he had made a mistake. Terl, after all, knew Psychlo tactics backward.

What Terl was doing in that jerking, fighting mess where one ship’s motors fought the other’s, was trying to outguess the settings of the plane that rode his back. If he could, both motors would agree. Possibly, then, a quick roll and reversal of the settings would throw the other ship off his back.

The smoke from those conflicting motors was already beginning to rise in the battle plane Jonnie had bailed out of.

Suddenly, Terl got the combination! Both ships’ motors smoothed into shrieking agreement.

But Jonnie’s combination was straight down and six feet under, hypersonic.

At an abrupt two thousand miles an hour, both ships hurtled toward the earth.

In an instant, Terl apparently realized that this set of console coordinates was sudden death.

Jonnie could see him in the cabin, moving urgently.

With only five hundred feet to go, Terl frantically punched in the reverse combination. His ship motors went into a fighting howl.

The inertia of the mass carried it down to within twenty feet of the ground before the descent halted.

But the force on the hot motors was too great for them to overcome.

Both ships burst into an orange ball of fire!

Terl’s body hurtled out of the door and struck rolling.

The ships struck!

With a swing of his legs Jonnie headed downward into a dive. With a thumb on the jet pack throttle, he guided himself to land about a hundred feet from the fiercely flaming wreck.

Terl was still rolling.

6

Jonnie shed his jet backpack. It was almost expended anyway. Not taking his eyes from Terl, he drew the belt gun and slid off its safety.

Terl had been on fire for a moment. He was not now. He had rolled it out in the damp spring grass. He was fifty feet away. He was lying motionless. He had a breathe-mask on.

Jonnie approached cautiously. This was a very treacherous beast. He walked within forty feet. Thirty feet. Terl was just lying there, inert.

A statement Robert the Fox had made drifted through Jonnie’s head: “Plan well, but when battle is joined, expect the unexpected! And cope with it!” Terl’s escape had scrambled their plans. The compound down there was without air cover. The Lord alone knew what was going on. The sound of gunfire was rattling and thudding in the distance. The mutter of flames came from the burning planes nearby.

Jonnie didn’t look. He had his eyes on Terl, watchful. He stopped. Twenty-five feet was close enough. He could not quite see through the faceplate. Terl was singed. There was some dried green blood on his jacket.

Suddenly Terl’s hand blurred and a small gun appeared in it like magic.

Jonnie dropped at the first hint of motion and fired.

There was a flash as Terl’s gun exploded in his paw. Then he was up and starting to run.

There were questions Jonnie wanted answered. His first snap shot had been lucky and had hit the gun. He drew a careful bead on Terl’s right leg. “Here’s one for the horses,” flashed through his head. He fired.

The leg buckled and Terl went down. The foot stayed twisted in the wrong direction.

Jonnie walked over to where the exploded gun lay. It was a very slim weapon. Was this what was called an “assassin gun”?

Terl was lying there, motionless.

“Quit shamming, Terl,” said Jonnie.

Terl suddenly laughed and sat up.

“Why didn’t you die in the morgue?”

“Animal,” said Terl, putting his foot right way to, but carefully sitting quiet under the menace of the gun twenty feet away, “I can hold my breath for four minutes!”

He was too cheerful. His leg was bleeding through his pants. He was singed. But he was too cheerful. Jonnie knew there was something else. He backed up.

Moving so that he could keep Terl in view out of the corner of his eye, he glanced around the plain. The compound was behind them, possibly twenty miles. Gunfire was coming faintly from that direction. He knew he should make some effort to help them.

Where were the girls? Probably they had gone on. No! There they were! Jonnie hadn’t expected that. They were coming back. Riding at a slow trot, cautiously, they were coming back. They were about a mile away.

It hit Jonnie suddenly. The shock of not finding them in the cage, the fear that they were still in that holocaust down there, had stayed suspended. He was swept by a tide of relief. They were all right!

Jonnie waved his arm to signal them to come on in.

Still alert to Terl, Jonnie scanned farther afield. One of the pilots that had bailed out had come in this direction. He peered. Yes! There was somebody moving about four miles to the south—hard to see due to camouflage dress—but a trained eye such as Jonnie’s detected by the motion of things, not only by contrasts.

Terl was laughing again. “You’ll never get away with it, animal. Psychlo will be into this place in a swarm!”

Jonnie didn’t answer. He waved the girls in. The horses were shying as they came around the burning wreck. Chrissie was mounted on Old Pork, Pattie on Dancer. The horses weren’t blowing, so their earlier riding must not have been so fast.

The girls were unable to believe it was Jonnie. Chrissie stayed mounted, some distance away. She was ghastly pale. Her neck was raw red from the collar now gone. “Jonnie? Is that you, Jonnie?” He looked different in the blue clothing. Pattie had no doubts. She sprang from the back of Dancer and raced to Jonnie and put her arms around his waist, her hair coming up to his pocket. “See? See?” she was shouting back to Chrissie. “I told you Jonnie would come! I told you and told you!”

Chrissie was sitting her horse and crying.

“You got the monster!” said Pattie, excited, pointing at Terl.

“Don’t get between me and him,” said Jonnie, caressing her hair but holding the gun on Terl. He should be at the compound; he must not dally here.

Jonnie didn’t want the girls near him in case Terl moved. He had a sudden idea. “Chrissie! Look down to the south there about four miles.”

Chrissie took a grip on herself and wiped her eyes. Jonnie wanted her to do something. She looked. She tried to speak, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Yes, Jonnie.” She looked harder. “It’s something moving.”

“It’s a friend,” said Jonnie. “Ride down there as fast as you can whip up Old Pork and bring him back here!”

Chrissie straightened up. She guided Old Pork well around Terl and then lit out to the south, her hair streaming back as Old Pork raced away.

The gunfire was picking up in volume to the south. Being gentle with Pattie and walking sideways while keeping a gun on Terl, Jonnie got to a position where he could see the compound. They stood on a slightly higher rise than it.

In the clear afternoon air he could see it, in miniature, but vividly.

White water was spraying two or three hundred feet in the air. It looked like a waterfall in reverse. Then he knew what had happened. The automatic fire sprinkler system had let go.

Those Scots down there were fighting in a torrent of water!

What he was afraid of was that the Psychlos would get out a tank or some additional battle planes. He surveyed the sky. It was free of planes.

As he watched he saw a flash of fire and then the distant boomp came to them, the sound bazookas make. He was not sure the bazookas could get through a Psychlo tank.

They needed air support down there! And here he was twenty miles away! There wasn’t another single pilot in those assault teams. They had committed their all.

He shifted the gun impatiently. Terl was sitting there laughing again. By rights he should simply shoot him full of daylight. But he had a feeling Terl knew something, and was up to something more.

“How’d the girls get away?” said Jonnie to Terl.

“Why, animal, how can you doubt me? I promised you I’d let them loose as soon as you delivered the gold. I simply kept my word this morning. I didn’t suspect you’d be so false you would . . .”

“Come off it, Terl. Why’d you let them loose?”

Terl laughed again, more loudly.

Pattie had gone over to get Dancer who was wandering off. She was coming back. “I don’t know why this nasty-old-awful thing did it. But just before dawn, he cut off our collars and told us to get on the horses and ride away. We went about ten miles and hid, thinking maybe you’d show up. We had no place to go. Then this afternoon the whole place seemed to blow up, bang, bang, and we rode toward the mountains.”

Suddenly Jonnie added it up. He spoke to Terl. “So you murdered Char, did you, and left him in the cage with that man-knife in him so that man could be blamed for his death. The question is, Terl, how were you going to wipe out the humans?”

Terl had been looking at his watch. He reached toward his pocket. Jonnie abruptly made him desist.

“Just two talons,” said Terl, holding them up.

Jonnie indicated he could but was very watchful.

Terl plucked something that was about a foot square from his side pocket, moving very delicately and gingerly under the watchful gun. It was a large remote computer board. Thin. Familiar in machine operation but a bit bigger and dirtier than usual.

With a laugh Terl tossed it toward Jonnie, who backed up in case it exploded.

“You took the wrong remote off me, rat brain.”

Jonnie stared down at it, not comprehending. The keyboard only had date, hour and fire on it. It had no stop or correction tab.

“It’s irreversible,” said Terl. “Once punched and activated, the board is worthless. This morning before the semiannual, I used it up.”

Terl glanced at his watch. “In about ten minutes now, you’ll all collect your pay whether you messed up Psychlo or not!” He went into a gale of laughter. “You were after the wrong remote!”

The laughter made him sputter in his face mask. “And here you are,” he finally managed, “twenty miles away and you can’t do a thing about it. And couldn’t anyway!”

He pounded his paws in the dirt, he was laughing so hard.

7

At that exact moment Zzt in the underground hangars was almost out of his wits.

Ever since that wild recoil had occurred at the end of the semiannual, things had been in chaos.

The rumor had been flying about that it was humans out there. Men! Zzt knew better. Those silly slugs could do nothing. It was undoubtedly Tolneps, landing in here from their system. Zzt, although his thinking was interrupted every few seconds by curses at Terl, had it all worked out. The Tolneps had buggered up the teleportation bands to paralyze counter-attack and were in here after the still not inconsiderable mineral content of this planet. There had been trouble with the Tolneps before and the last war with them was inconclusive. They were short, about half the size of a Psychlo, and they could breathe almost anything. And were immune to Psychlo gas barrages, worse luck. Therefore he was rigging a Mark 32 low-flying ground strafer, the most heavily gunned plane in the hundreds of planes in these hangars.

And damn and blast that Terl. He was supposed to be in charge of defense! And where were the standby, alert battle planes? Out in the weather. And where were the tanks? Snug and rusting in the underground tank park! And where were the reserves at other minesites? Pulled in here!

Damn Terl! There was no fuel cartridge or ammunition supply inside the compound. Zzt was illogical in blaming Terl for this, since it was against company rules to store them inside a compound. They were nearly a half-mile from here, and two parties of Psychlos that had tried to get to the dump had been slaughtered. And that was another thing that proved it was Tolneps. The Psychlos who had been hit simply exploded into a pale green flash. Only Tolneps could invent weapons like that!

So he had to scavenge in the old planes and ground cars for half-used cartridges and ammunition charges. Oh, there was quite a bit to be found, but it couldn’t be depended on.

He had come to physical blows with the two Chamco brothers, blast them. They were readying up a heavy armored tank. Two tanks that had gotten out that violent afternoon had been blown to cinders. So the Chamcos were rigging one of the old brutes of the Basher class: “Bash Our Way to Glory.” Nothing could penetrate its hide and its guns wrecked things for miles. The Chamcos were salvaging fuel and ammunition cartridges for it, and they had the nerve, the twisted metal nerve, to maintain that the attackers were Hockners from Duraleb, a system Psychlo had completely whipped two hundred years ago.

The battle had been over who got the cartridges, and that pompous midget, Ker, had come down and given them both half. Another Terl mess!

The cartridges didn’t fit the Mark 32. Zzt had spent valuable time machining a false case around them to get them into the tubes. Damn Terl!

He had told his men to MOVE THAT DAMNED DRONE! two hours ago. Damn Terl!

Now here he was. He had found a copilot: one of the executives in the draft that had just arrived, rated combat on a Mark 32, named Nup; a dimwit—but that’s what you got on an out-of-the-way planet like this—who thought it was a typical Bolbod attack, based on a rumor he had heard in the kerbango shops lately in the Imperial City that a conquest of the Bolbods was intended.

Zzt had collected a combat breathe-mask, gotten a shoulder bag of extra vials, gotten his sidearms, put spare rations in his pocket, and last but not least, put his favorite wrench into the side of his boot, a wrench that sometimes came in handy in any kind of fight or situation.

The Mark 32 motors turned over easily. It purred. In no time at all he would be out there and that would be the very positive end of this attack! Damn Terl!

Zzt let off the skid grips and taxied the Mark 32, “Hit ’Em Low, Kill ’Em,” toward the firing door. Mechanics leaped to get out of his way. The place was in a turmoil of Psychlos trying to get planes ready with nothing. And that damned drone was still standing there.

Ordinarily you could fire three planes at once through that door. It was high enough even to add a fourth. But that ancient relic of a gas drone was so wide and so tall it was blocking the whole door. Just what he’d told Terl. Damn Terl! There was no way he could get the Mark 32 past it.

Zzt leaned out the door and screamed for the shift foreman. He came rushing up. Zzt almost bit him. “Move that damned drone! Two hours ago I—”

“It won’t dolly,” panted the foreman. He pointed. Four dolly trucks had been trying to push it away. “It won’t move!”

Zzt gave his equipment bag a hoist onto his shoulder and sprang down. “You imbecile crunch! The only inside control that thing has is its mag-grapnels. Why haven’t you let it off? Those big skis are magnetically locked to this platform! Why don’t you learn—”

“It’s a very old drone,” chattered the foreman, his wits starting to crumble under Zzt’s glare.

Zzt rushed to the door of the drone. It was a huge door, big enough to load a dozen gas canisters at a time. Somebody had put a rolling ladder there and Zzt ran up it, his equipment clattering, and pried at the door. It was locked! An armored door itself the size of a plane.

“Where’s the key?” screamed Zzt.

“Terl had it!” the foreman shouted up at him. “We’ve looked everywhere for Terl. We can’t find him!”

Damn Terl! “Have you searched his rooms?” Zzt yelled down from the rolling ladder.

“Yes, yes, yes!” cried the foreman. “We—”

At that moment a higher-pitched voice bit into the row of the hangar. “Yoohoo!” It was Chirk. Zzt stared in daggers of hostility. The cheap twit!

But she was holding a single huge key. “I found this in his desk,” she caroled.

“Where are the other keys to this thing?” shouted Zzt. “The preset box keys.”

“That’s the only one there was in the desk,” lilted Chirk.

It gave Zzt an instant’s pause. He didn’t want this damned old relic firing itself off in the hangar with no way to get out. But he had to move it. This was the door key they were passing up to him.

He glared at the key. Three toggles. Pitted. The shaft almost in two. Terl could at least have made a new key! But oh, no, it was paws off.

He shoved the key, all twenty pounds of it, at the lock hole. He twisted it with a curse. Damn Terl!

The rusty, magnetic clenchers gave. The key fell apart.

Zzt flung it to the platform below, narrowly missing Chirk. At least the door was open.

He struggled to swing it back. Even the hinges were decayed and stiff. It opened to reveal the enormous interior.

Zzt got a torch. There were no lights in this thing. It was never meant to have a pilot in it. It was just tons and tons and tons of gas canisters, engines and armor.

He thought belatedly he might have robbed some fuel from it. Too late now.

He lumbered forward to the control compartment. He had better throw them off. But no! They were armor-locked solid. They couldn’t be unset without a key. And this metal wouldn’t surrender to anything. It was armored! Damn Terl!

He darted his light around. There was the magnetic grip release, the only interior control, put there so hangar and firing people could lock and unlock it when moving it about with tractors.

Zzt reached for the release brake.

Before he could touch it, it moved!

He froze, looking at it in horror. Yes, there was a click in the preset box. He dove for the door.

The forward jerk of the motors threw him off his feet. He scrambled for the exit.

Too late!

The hangar door was fleeing by. It was already yards down to the ground. He didn’t dare jump.

The drone took off, its rusty side door flapping in the wind.

Zzt let out a shuddering groan. Damn Terl!

Well, at least they could get the battle planes out and end the Tolnep attack.

And all this on half-pay and no bonuses.

Probably that was Terl’s doing, too.

8

Jonnie, twenty miles away, saw the drone launch. It was a huge thing. The gas drone? He went ice cold.

The flash of an explosion bloomed on the side of it. He knew it would be a bazooka firing. There was a team there to prevent the launching of planes. A second flash against the hull as the boom of the first one drifted faintly to them. Neither had the slightest effect upon the drone. It rose in stately massiveness to two thousand feet as it turned. Still climbing, it headed northwest.

It went by them to the east, looming in the sky, so big it looked close even though two miles away. It was ragged and patched and dented, evidences of former combat on its discolored hide. A tense Jonnie clocked it at about three hundred miles an hour. A battle plane had fired just behind it. Bazooka missiles hit the plane, exploded in two flares of light. It continued sedately on its way, following the drone. As it passed over them he saw it was a different type of battle plane. The Psychlo numbers “32” were on its side and then the smoke logos of the Psychlos. An escort?

The heavy roars beat at the earth.

When they had gone, Terl said, “Why not admit it, animal? You’re licked. When the Psychlos counterattack from home planet, you’ll already be gone. So why not toss that gun over here and we can make a deal?”

Jonnie ignored him. He was carefully tracking the compass course of the drone relating it to the afternoon sun. He watched it as long as he could as it droned away to the northeast. It was not turning further. Be calm, he told himself. Don’t panic.

“Where’s it going first?” he said to Terl. A battle plane could do two thousand miles an hour. You can catch it. Be calm.

“Throw the gun over and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Terl.

Terl’s motions alarmed Pattie. “Don’t believe anything he says,” she pleaded. “He promised us food and didn’t bring it. He even made out to us two or three times that you were dead!”

“You’ll tell me about it,” said Jonnie, “or I’ll start shooting off your feet.” He aimed his gun.

“Do it!” said Pattie. “He’s a nasty old brute! A devil!”

Jonnie was glancing in the direction Chrissie had gone. She was taking an awful long time coming back. He couldn’t leave the girls out here alone and certainly not with Terl alive. Be calm, he told himself. You can catch up with it.

“All right,” said Terl as though resigned. “I’ll give you the places it’s going.

“In proper order,” said Jonnie, raising the gun suggestively.

“You’d get a kick out of shooting me up, wouldn’t you?” said Terl.

“I don’t get any enjoyment out of hurting things the way—”

“That’s because you’re a rat brain,” laughed Terl.

All this Psychlo talk between Jonnie and Terl was making Pattie very nervous. “Don’t listen to him, Jonnie, just shoot him,” she demanded, grabbing Jonnie’s gun arm.

“All right,” said Terl. “It’s first target is the bottom of Africa. The next is China. The next is Russia. Then it is preset to fly to Italy and then right here.”

Good, thought Jonnie. He didn’t mention Scotland. It’s heading over the Arctic on that course. Scotland. That’s its first target. And it would be because the Psychlos couldn’t get up there, or thought they couldn’t. Thank you, Terl.

“Good,” he said aloud. “For information received, you live a while longer.” It would take it seventeen hours to get to Scotland. Look calm. You can catch it.

Chrissie was coming down. They had been hidden by a dip in the plains. The horse was at a walk. And he saw why as she came near.

It was Thor. She was holding him upright in front of her on the horse. She had removed her buckskin jacket and used it for bandages. Thor’s antiradiation suit was stained with blood around the left shoulder. She had torn it away there and used buckskin and grass to staunch the blood flow. Thor’s left arm was broken, bound in rough sticks for splints. It was he who had been shot out of the sky when he was using the jet pack.

With Chrissie’s help Thor slid off the horse. He was gray from blood loss and stood unsteadily. He looked at Jonnie ruefully. “I’m sorry, Jonnie.”

“It was my fault, not yours,” said Jonnie. “Ease him down on that rock, Chrissie.”

Thor looked at Terl. He had seen the monster close up only a couple of times. Thor was wearing a .457 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver from the old base arsenal loaded with radiation bullets. He suddenly recognized Terl and grabbed for his gun to shoot him.

“No, no,” said Jonnie. “Keep the gun drawn and train it on him and shoot him the moment he looks like he’s going to move, particularly his hands. Can you sit there okay?”

Thor was about fifty feet from Terl. He eased down further and got the gun trained on Terl.

“Now, Terl,” said Jonnie, “that gun he is holding can put a hole in you a horse could dive through. It has special explosive bullets, worse than your own blast gun. Got it?” Be calm in front of these people. You can catch up with it.

He turned to Pattie. He gave her the huge blast pistol to hold. He showed her where the trigger was and she determinedly walked back of a rock so she could support the gun with it.

“I point it like this?”

“And keep it on him.” You have time, he told himself. Do a good job here.

“Why not kill him?” said Thor.

“He leaks information,” said Jonnie.

Terl couldn’t understand what they were saying but he got their drift.

Jonnie took out a knife and, keeping out of the line of possible fire, made Terl swivel around. He inserted the knife at Terl’s collar and cut the cloth down the back. He went around front, watching Terl’s eyes for a telltale clench signaling action and pulled the coat sleeves off. He ripped the cloth down the side of each of Terl’s legs. He darted a shallow stab at Terl when he sought to spring. Terl subsided. Jonnie got Terl’s boots and pants off. He took his watch. He took his cap. The only thing Terl had left was his breathe-mask and Jonnie even took the emergency vials off that. Terl glared.

There he sat, his fur matted with sweat, his claws twitching to rake Jonnie.

Jonnie took the belt and made Terl put his paws behind him and cinched the belt as tight as he could around the wrists. Then he took Old Pork’s bridle and tied the wrists and belt and then passed the rope under the mask tube. He cinched it up. If Terl tried to wrestle his wrists loose he would choke himself. Do a good job, Jonnie told himself. Don’t panic. In a battle plane you can catch the drone.

He had been working very fast. He now stepped away from Terl and quickly went through the clothes. Sure enough, Terl had two more weapons secreted. A knife and a second assassin gun.

Jonnie fired a round with the assassin gun. It was silent. The bush he aimed at began to burn. He gave the light gun to Pattie and took the belt gun back.

“Let me shoot him now,” said Pattie.

Thor said to Terl, in Psychlo, “The little girl over there is begging to shoot you.”

“I’ll be quiet here,” said Terl.

“Don’t go near him. Light a fire from that wreck over here to the side, Chrissie, so that Thor stays warm and you can see this area.” He turned to Thor. “Who was with you?”

“Glencannon,” said Thor. “He’s over there in the hills somewhere. I think he tried to get closer to the base. I tried to reach him on this mine radio twice. He’s got one but he doesn’t answer. They’ve only a five-mile range.” He looked curious. “Where are you going?”

At that moment there was an explosion flash at the compound. A battle plane had come out of the hangar and apparently been hit with a bazooka. It soared in a flame ball and crashed at the sound of the bazooka and then the plane explosion reached them. A second battle plane came out and met the same fate.

“See?” said Jonnie. “I’ll send back a mine car for you.” Be calm. At two thousand miles an hour you can catch that drone.

The girls looked numbly at Jonnie.

But what could he do? He had meant to send them to the Academy base, but Thor was in no shape to travel at all. Why not kill Terl? No, that would solve nothing. Sound calm to these people. The speed of the drone was 302 miles an hour, he remembered from the messages he had taken from the hand of a president a thousand years dead. A battle plane could go hypersonic at two thousand miles an hour. Even if it were halfway to Scotland, he could catch it hours before it arrived.

He swung up on Dancer. The base was about twenty miles away. Make it in an hour or so of hard riding.

“We can still make a deal, animal,” said Terl. “If you sent uranium to Psychlo, you’re really messed up. It’s been tried before. They have a force field around their receipt platform and if any uranium flashes on Psychlo, that force field triggers solid to enclose their whole platform. The flashback occurs at the sending point just like you saw today. Psychlo will be attacking this place, animal. You’ll need me to mediate.”

Jonnie looked at him. He raised his hand in farewell to the girls and Thor and thumped a heel into Dancer, and she streaked off through the declining sunlight.

Ahead of him pulsed and flickered the battle at the compound. He had wasted time. He could not have done anything else. Be calm, he told himself. Don’t panic. A battle plane could catch that drone.

As he raced across the plain, he put out of his mind a thought that kept crowding in. Not all the armed forces of the United States in its days of power had been able to do anything at all to that gas drone. Not with planes, missiles, atomic bombs, or even suicide crashes.

You have time. You can catch up with it. Don’t panic.