This bare slope obviously consisted of dirt washed through from their own side. At the top, it was still moist, but a few yards down, the dry air had eliminated that. The soil was loose and slippery.

  At the bottom, fifty yards from them, was the natural summit of these foreign hills. There was no grass, but gnarled, russet-leaved spreading trees formed an almost solid cover over the descending ground. They picked their way down the bare slope, having to use their staffs to keep their footing. At the edge of the grove Jane whispered, "Let's give our eyes a few minutes to adjust."

  Lisa peered ahead. The light was disturbing; for one thing, it made the other women's faces look strange. She tested her bow, making sure the arrow was properly nocked.

  They started on down. She wanted to look back toward the hole now, even though trees hid it, but didn't.

  Jane, leading, stopped. There was vague movement to one side, in the gloom.

  Then there was a low, hesitant, gobbling sound.

  From that moment, things happened so fast Lisa couldn't remember them all afterward. A dozen or more things, like flying blankets, launched themselves toward the women. Certainly not the Large Beasts—smaller, flatter of body, fast-moving. They came with low, deadly snarls, in long sailing leaps. Lisa frantically pulled her bow, let the one arrow fly, then dropped the now-useless weapon. She swung her staff up desperately to fend off the thing almost upon her. She had a quick, arrested impression of four legs extending to the sides, stretching a pair of flying membranes; of a flat body; of foreclaws outstretched toward her; of a pointed snout; of small but keen fangs in a gaping mouth; of tiny beady eyes. The thing was smaller than, say, a collie, but far more limber and agile than any canine. She saw these things as screams of the other women shrilled in her ears. And she was falling backward, trying to evade those reaching claws. She let herself slide down the slope as she tried to bring her staff into position again. She did do that—and felt the weight of the creature almost knock the staff from her hand. But it sent the creature sprawling. It righted itself, with a grunt of pain, and leaped away downslope. She heard Freda scream again. She struggled to get her footing; came to one knee; saw Jane grimly fighting off at least two of the things that had hold of her; threw herself in that direction and poked one of them viciously with her staff. It squalled and leaped down the slope. She saw another launching itself at her from the side; barely managed to twist her body, get the staff pointed toward the beast, and plant the butt against the ground. The animal impaled itself on the staff. She tried once to shake it off, but couldn't, so she dropped the staff and leaped toward Jane, who was flat on her back punching and clawing at a couple of the things atop her. Lisa grabbed one and simply lifted it and smashed it to the ground. It flopped, squalling, then writhed away. She got a one-handed grip on the one still clinging to Jane, but it decided suddenly to join its fellows in retreat, and jerked away from her. She whirled. Freda was face down, sobbing, but Mary was on both knees, her staff held firmly across her chest, a vicious look on her face. Two dead creatures lay near her, in addition to the one still impaled, and now motionless, on Lisa's staff. Eloise was on her feet, staff ready. She looked dazed.

  But the attack was definitely beaten off.

  The women all gathered around Jane. She was a mass of ugly, gashed wounds. She lay quietly on her back, face up, eyes wide open, breast heaving.

  Then, in the dim light, Lisa saw that blood pumped awfully from Jane's left thigh. Lisa was on her knees immediately, tearing off her own blouse for bandages. But Jane made a weak movement of her hand and said hoarsely, "No, don't touch me—just let me lie still. My… abdomen is ripped open too."

  Mary exploded, "Jane!"

  Jane shuddered, closed her eyes in pain, then opened them again. She seemed hardly able to see at all. "Lisa…"

  "Yes, honey! I'm here!"

  "Lisa, you're… You must be leader now."

  For a moment Lisa misunderstood her, thinking she only referred to the trek home. Then she cried out, "No, Jane! You're—you'll be all right! And—and anyway, Mary is next oldest!"

  Jane sighed shudderingly and squeezed her eyes shut again. "No… You—have necessary traits. I want you… all th-three of you…"

  And that was the last Jane ever said.

  The four of them stood there staring at one another. Lisa was having a hard time to control sobs. "I'm not," she trot out, "not—old enough…"

  Mary came and put a rough arm around her shoulder. "Yes you are, too! And as she said, you're the one. The rest of us here are all quite a few years older—but there's something wrong with each of us. Now—shut up! That's the way it's going to be. I'll help you—all of us will help you. Shut up!"

  And nothing Lisa could sob out would change Mary's mind, nor Freda's, nor Eloise's.

  Each of them had minor wounds, but no serious ones. They did what bandaging was practical, then used their staffs to dig out a grave for Jane. There were rocks enough, a little way farther down the slope, to make a cairn. Eloise protested, at first, that they ought to try to carry the body home; but Mary had the clinching argument for that: "No. The fewer graves we have around for the younger girls to see, the better."

  They found Ruby's body where the band of gliding creatures had been feeding on it. Freda and Eloise were sick, and Mary looked as if only stubbornness kept her from being sick too, and Lisa only just managed, somehow, to control her stomach. They put what was left of Ruby in another grave close to Jane's. They lashed together a pair of crosses out of Jane's staff and longbow and muttered whatever prayers seemed to have any meaning. Then they started "home."

  Chapter Eight

  JOHN STARED GLUMLY at the intercom grille for several minutes, then reached out and pressed one of the studs below it.

  A voice said, "Communications."

  "Damiano," John said, "I want a radio beam to each of the other ships, just strong enough to reach them without carrying too far beyond. There's no telling who or what might be within range of a broadcast. Can you handle that?"

  "Well, yes, Commodore. It'll take a little while, though, if we have to lock onto all of them initially by telescope. Maybe half an hour."

  "Go ahead." John sighed. "I don't think we ought to risk using radar. And while you're at it, aim the telescope at Number Four again. If there's anyone alive aboard, they may have gotten some visual signal rigged up by now."

  "We've already done that, sir—I was just about to call you. Not the faintest light from her."

  "All right." John got restlessly from his seat, glanced with unreasonable annoyance at the two lieutenants, who watched him in somber silence, and left the control room. Damage Control said that whatever patching up had to be done outside Luna was progressing well, but he wanted to go to Engineering and see for himself, on the special screens they'd rigged.

  After that he made a brief tour of the ship, talking to Gunnery (who had no problems, except that they were nearly out of missiles of all classes) and to Stores (who said there'd be no food problem if they got back to Akiel or someplace within three hundred hours). Then he went back to the Control Room to talk to his meager fleet.

  "This is the commodore. I'm afraid we have to assume that Number Four is completely dead. She nulled on comps, but hasn't communicated, moved, or shown a light since. We're going to close in on her now, and if there's no bad radioactivity, board her. If any of you have any problems, keep them until we're in a tight group, when we can exchange weak radio messages. Some of you may show an object or cluster of objects on your mass detectors in direction twenty-eight by six by thirty-one, distance one-third of a million miles. We barely have it on ours. Probably only a stray comet or a cluster or rocks, but we won't take chances. Close in on Luna at will."

  Ten hours later the mutilated corpses off Number Four were in Luna's infirmary, and a crew in spacesuits was at work patching Number Four's hull. The hole was ironically small. But it had been made by a bit of high-velocity steel from some detonation, which had ricocheted around inside and achieved total slaughter. No radioactivity, no rupter shaking, no heat beams—just that deadly chunk of steel, a ten-thousand-to-one chance penetration; and eight more men were gone.

  The object at a third of a million miles had turned out, after cautious scouting, to be a typical mass of cometary material adrift in this sparse, dark region between galactic spiral arms. But that didn't make John feel any better. Eight more men gone! And Vez Do Han might want him to make additional raids on the Bizh. John wouldn't know how many until he nulled back to rendezvous with the Hohdan.

  His insides churned with bitter guilt and self-doubt. He'd felt so confident, so utterly assured, when the idea for that encircling action had flashed into his mind. Hadn't it been, actually, criminal foolhardiness?

  He got up from his bunk, where he'd been sitting for an hour staring dully about his quarters, and wandered into the small office compartment. His eyes went uncontrollably to the locked safe in one corner. "No!" he snarled furiously, and swallowed without ridding himself of the thirst-that-was-not-thirst.

  But why, when he brought that small packet of dron aboard Luna from Council Bluffs, had he locked it in his office safe? Why hadn't he taken it to Infirmary for the medic to keep?

  He leaned against the edge of the hatch, dizzy, wondering if he were going to be sick. "Damn it!" he growled. "That stray hit wasn't anything I could have foreseen!"

  But was he the battle commander he'd once been? Certainly he'd felt fine—but any blundering fool felt fine before he made his clumsy mistakes. Shouldn't he have nulled away at once, avoiding the fight completely? Tangling with whole Bizh fleets was no part of his arrangement with Vez Do Han.

  Twenty men lost, in four insignificant raids. Not only a terrible fraction of all the men left alive—but men he knew. Comrades-in-arms.

  Bart Lange should have left him on Drongail.

  He turned and pounded a fist against the steel bulkhead. What an egomaniacal fool! He swallowed hard, drew in a ragged breath.

  And then, trembling, cursing himself, he turned and walked slowly, defeatedly toward the safe.

  John stirred lazily in his bunk. What was that sound? He recalled vaguely that there was something besought to do… Oh, yes… it was the intercom. He turned his face toward it "Hello. Who is it?"

  "Engineering, sir. Emergency repairs to all ships are complete."

  "Oh. Well… that's good."

  There was a pause, then the voice, sounding puzzled, asked, "Are we nulling soon, sir?"

  "Nulling?" John thought that over. Of course they could null, anytime he felt like it. He was commanding the fleet, wasn't he? He chuckled, then yawned. "I don't think we'll go anywhere for a while yet. There's no hurry. Tell everyone to relax and be comfortable, will you?"

  There was another silence. Finally the voice said doubtfully, "Yes, sir."

  John rolled onto his side, wiggled himself into a comfortable position, and let drowsiness stalk him as it might. He felt wonderful. There'd been something worrying him, some anxiety or other about decisions he'd made that had cost several men. That was too bad—but everyone died sooner or later, didn't he? And to die gloriously in a battle—quickly, without any prolonged suffering—wasn't bad at all. He hoped he'd die that way, whenever the time came. Unless, of course, he could arrange just to sleep, and slip away without knowing it at all.

  He felt wonderful! Why had he so perversely denied himself dron for so long? He'd been very foolish…

  "John! John! Wake up!"

  John rolled onto his back, worked at raising his languid eyelids, and peered up at whoever was shaking him. "Oh—Bart. How are you?"

  Bart stared down at him, mouth a grim line. "That, eh? How much did you have, and how long ago?"

  John pushed himself into a sitting position. He yawned. "I've got to have a shower, then something to eat. Oh. How much did I have, you ask? Just a muzhee. A pellet the size of a pea. If there were any peas anymore." He chuckled. "Stop looking at me like a dean of men! I'm all right—I'm fine! Test me—ask me the multiplication table, or the decimal logarithm of three! Ask me to recite our roster. Aaron—Anders—Baker—Bunstill—" He broke off. "Oh. We lost Bunstill, didn't we?"

  Lange growled an obscenity. "Yes, we lost Bunstill. And we've lost nineteen others in five raids. But this last time we gave a Bizh fleet a real clobbering! We've fulfilled our obligation to Hohd, or most of all and we're a fighting unit again. There are almost two hundred of us left, John—and we've got our job to do! Are you going to yellow out and go back to that infant medicine?"

  John frowned mildly. "You don't understand dron, Bart." He sighed. "I guess we'd better be nulling to our rendezvous with Vez. Are you going back to your own ship right away? If not, will you stop in at my Control Room and give the orders—"

  Lange snarled, seized him by the shoulders, and hauled him to his feet. "Damn it, John, you're the commodore! Even more than ever, after this last battle, the men look up to you as just about half-god! Don't let them see you limp and—and spineless like this!"

  John sighed again. "I'll tell you, Bart, I don't want to be any part god. But I suppose you're right." He bent to pick up his jacket from the floor, where he'd evidently let it fall. "We'll null as soon as you're aboard your own ship."

  Vez Do Han said, "Yes, it is disturbing that they were able to predict so accurately where you would strike on the fourth raid." He made a palms-down gesture of foreboding. "It bespeaks acuteness on their part. And I am sorry you lost a crew. That, in view of your generalship—which was once more demonstrated!—was plain bad luck. But I feel, John Braysen, that we had better not ask you to raid again in that general area. I am thinking that a very brief strike or two at some base elsewhere would be wiser. Say, far out along the spiral arm, beyond the bulk of their empire. A strike there could not be construed as direct interdiction of their moves against our allies, who, by the way, report gratifying effects." He rubbed his furry cheek. "The prime purpose, after all, is not to damage bases, but to make trouble, if we can, between the Bizh and the Vulmoti. The distant strikes I suggest will better fit that purpose now."

  John said, "A campaign that far away will call for some reconnoitering."

  "Yes, it will require some hopping about. I have been thinking—could you not use a rendezvous somewhere near the edge of the Vulmotean Empire? The timing, then, of your appearance at various spots would force the Bizh to think in that direction."

  John suppressed a sigh. "We would have to start absolutely loaded with munitions, fuel, and food. Are you prepared to supply the first two? Food we can get at Akiel."

  "We are prepared to do so, yes—but only over a period of some hundreds of hours. Assembling and moving such a large stock would attract the attention of spies. You still have two Bizh ships being refitted on Akiel—wherever that is. By the time they are ready, we will have gotten together your missiles and fuel wire at some little-visited place."

  John's mind raced. He'd been thinking with longing of the Klee ship the Omniarch had promised him. Aside from its possibly fearsome potential in battle, it would provide almost as comfortable a base (if it were as big as claimed) as a planet. He could take his whole roster of men aboard at one time. But he couldn't tell Vez about that… He said, "By the way, speaking of unvisited places, our welcome on Akiel has worn thin. At your last meeting and mine, we spoke of some uninhabited planet within the safety of your region that we might occupy. If you've chosen one, perhaps it can also serve as the depot where you assemble the munitions."

  Vez's eyes fixed on him intently for a minute. "An excellent idea. I have chosen the planet. When would you like to examine it?"

  "Not for several Hohdan days, if you will indulge me. I have a lot of refitting to get started, not to mention morale matters. May I dispatch a drone to your headquarters when I am ready?"

  "By all means, friend John Braysen. Until next joining, then?"

  "Until next joining, Vez Do Han."

  John returned to Akiel and hastily looked up the Full Mule Chelki. "I must get word to the Omniarch quickly. I'll null to wherever he wants me to meet him."

  The Chelki eyed him expressionlessly, his four legs planted solidly, his head elevated to a level with John's. "As you can know, Co-mo-dore, my ancestor's location is not of knowledge to me. A message will go by routes not direct. I can not say how long it must travel. But I will send it at once."

  Chapter Nine

  BULVENORG, Second Prime Senior Marshal of the Defense Perimeter of the Grand Empire of Vulmot, sat listening to the gab and palaver and wrangling of the hastily assembled symposium. Most of the officers here were his direct subordinates, but as usual he allowed them a period of free rein. He listened as a concerned but unfrightened feline might listen—slumped in his chair, eyelids drooped half-shut, ears only occasionally flicking at some significant bit of the babble.

  Not that Bulvenorg was feline in body form. He was humanoid, beyond any argument, even to the four thick but deft fingers and one thumb on each capable-looking hand. If the nails were even thicker and more firmly rooted than a Hohdan's, that was because the Vulmoti had evolved in a harsh environment. He could have worn a man's shoes, of rather wide contour, even though the toes in them would have been more prehensile than a man's. His face would not have been mistaken for human—the planes of the cheeks, widely separated just forward of the ears, converged toward the front so that his large nose, moderately jutting chin, close-set eyes, and front teeth occupied too narrow a space to be human. Those teeth were more carnivorous than a man's, but not to the extent that a Vulmot couldn't chew grain.

  Bulvenorg was stocky, by human standards—an inch over six feet, with an Earth-gee weight of a little more than three hundred pounds. He was not fat, nor was he musclebound. Most other humanoid species found it hard to understand how a Vulmot could be so lithe and quick-moving, so nearly double-jointed, so capable of relaxing all his muscles when he wished. But then, few humanoid species knew how Terran felines (while they still existed) could metamorphose instantly from limp somnolence to spring-steel action.

 

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