The Stars Are Ours!

PROLOGUE (Excerpt from the Encyclopedia Galactica)

THE FIRST GALACTIC exploratory and colonization flight came as a direct outgrowth of a peculiar sociological-political situation on the planet Terra. As a result of a series of wars between nationalistic divisions atomic power was discovered. Afraid of the demon they had so loosed the nations then engaged in so-called “cold wars” during which all countries raced to outbuild each other in the stock piling of new and more drastic weapons and the mobilization of manpower into the ancient “armies.”

Scientific training became valued only for the aid it could render in helping to arm and fit a nation for war. For some time scientists and techneers of all classes were kept in a form of peonage by “security” regulations. But a unification of scientists fostered in a secret underground movement resulted in the formation of “Free Scientist” teams, groups of experts and specialists who sold their services to both private industry and governments as research workers. Since they gave no attention to the racial, political, or religious antecedents of their members, they became truly inter-national and planet—, instead of nation—, minded—a situation both hated and feared by their employers.

Under the stimulus of Free Scientist encouragement man achieved interplanetary flight. Terra was the third in a series of nine planets revolving about the sun, Sol I. It possessed one satellite, Luna.

Exploration ships made landings on Luna, and the two neighboring planets, Mars and Venus. None of these worlds were suitable for human colonization without vast expenditure, and they offered little or no return for such effort. Consequently, after the first flurry of interest, space flight died down, and there were few visitors to the other worlds, except for the purpose of research.

Three “space stations” had been constructed to serve Terra as artificial satellites. These were used for refueling interplanetary ships and astronomical and meteorological observation. One of these provided the weapon the nationalists had been searching for in their war against the “Free Scientists.”

The station was invaded and occupied by a party of unidentified armed men (later studies suggest that these men were mercenaries in the pay of nationalist forces). And this group, either by ignorant chance or with deliberate purpose, turned certain installations in the station into weapons for an attack upon Terra.

There are indications that they themselves had no idea of the power they unleashed, and that it was at once beyond their control. As a result the major portion of the thickly populated sections of the planet were completely devastated and no one was ever able to reckon the loss of life.

Among those who were the sole survivors of an entire family group was Arturo Renzi. Renzi, a man of unusual magnetic personality, was a believer in narrow and fanatical nationalist doctrines. Because of his personal loss he began to preach the evil of science (with propaganda that the Free Scientists themselves had turned the station against the earth that had apparently been carefully prepared even before the act) and the necessity for man to return to the simple life on the soil to save himself and Terra.

To a people already in psychic shock from the enormity of the disaster, Renzi appeared the great leader they needed and his party came into power around the world. But, fanatic and narrow as he was, his voiced policies were still too liberal for some of his supporters.

Renzi’s assassination, an act committed by a. man arbitrarily identified as an outlawed Free Scientist, touched off the terrible purge which lasted three days. At the end of which time the few scientists and techneers still alive had been driven into hiding, to be hunted down one by one through the following years as chance or man betrayed them.

Saxon Bort, a lieutenant of Renzi’s, assumed command of the leader’s forces and organized the tight dictatorship of the Company of Pax.

Learning, unless one was a privileged “Peaceman,” became suspect. Society was formed into three classes—the nobility as represented by the Peacemen of various grades, the peasantry on the land, and the work-slaves-descendants of suspected scientists or techneers.

With the stranglehold of Pax firmly established on Terra, old prejudices against different racial and religious origins again developed. All research, invention, and study was proscribed and the planet was fast slipping into an age of total darkness and retreat. Yet it was at this moment in her history that the first galactic flight was made.

SEE ALSO:

Astra: First Colony

Free Scientists

Renzi, Arturo

Terra: Space Flight

1: THE ROUNDUP

DARD NORDIS PAUSED beneath the low-hanging branches of a pine, sheltered for the moment from the worst of the cutting wind. The western sky was striped with color, dusky purple, gold, red almost as sultry as if this were August instead of late November. But for all their splendor the colors were as bleakly chill as the wind whipping his too—thin body through the sleazy rags of clothing.

He shrugged his shoulders, trying to settle more evenly the bundle of firewood which bowed him into an old man. There came a tug at the hide thong serving him as a belt. “Dard—there’s an animal watching—over there—”

He stiffened. To Dessie, with her odd kinship for all furred creatures, every animal was a friend. She might now be speaking of a squirrel or a wolf! He looked down to the smaller, ragged figure beside him and moistened suddenly dry lips.

“Is it a big one?” he asked.

Hands, which wrappings of sackcloth made into shapeless paws, projected to measure off slightly more than a foot of air.

“’So big. I think it’s a fox—it must be cold. Could we— could we take it home?” Those eyes, which seemed to fill about a quarter of the grimy little face turned up to his, were wistful as well as filled with a too-old patience.

He shook his head. “Foxes have thick fur skins—they’re warmer than we are, honey. He probably has a home and is going there now. Think you can pull the wood all the way down to the path?”

Her mouth twisted in an indignant pout. “’Course. I’m not a baby any more. It’s awfully cold, though, isn’t it, Dardie? Wish it were summer again.”

She gave a quick jerk on a piece of hide and brought into grudging motion the flat piece of battered wood which served as a sled. It was piled high with branches and a few pieces of shredded bark. Not much of a haul today, even combining Dessie’s bits and patches with his own load. But since their axe had vanished it was the best they could do.

He followed the little girl down the slope, retracing the tracks they had made two hours before. There was a frown drawing deep lines between his black brows. That axe—it hadn’t just been mislaid—it had been stolen. By whom? By someone who knew just what its loss would mean, who wanted to cripple them. And that would be Hew Folley. But Hew had not been near the farm for weeks—or had he—secretly?

If he could only get Lars to see that Folley was a danger. Folley was a landsman which made him a fanatic servant of Pax. The once independent farmers had always believed in peace—true peace, not the iron stagnation imposed by Pax—and they had early been won over as firm followers of Renzi. When their sturdy independence had been entirely swallowed up by the strangle controls of those who had assumed command after the death of the Prophet, some had rebelled—too late. Landsmen were now as proud of their lack of education as they were retentive of the few favors allowed them. And it was from their ranks the hated Peace-men were recruited.

Folley was a fervid follower of Pax and for a long time he had wanted to add the few poor Nordis acres to his own holding. If he ever came to suspect their descent—that they were of Free Scientist blood! If he ever guessed what Lars was doing even now!

“Dardie, why must we run?”

Dard caught his breath in a half sob and slowed. That prick of frantic panic which had sent him plunging down to the main trail still goaded him. It was always this way when he was away from the farm even for an hour or two. Each time he feared to return to… Resolutely he closed his mind to the picture his imagination was only too ready to supply him. He forced his lips into a set half-smile for Dessie’s sake.

“Going to be dark early tonight, Dessie. See those big clouds?”

“Snow, Dardie?”

“Probably. We’ll be glad to have this wood.”

“I hope that the fox gets home to his den before the snow comes. He will, won’t he?”

“Of course he will. We’d better, too. Let’s try to run, Dessie—here along the trail—”

She regarded doubtfully the almost shapeless blobs of wrappings which concealed her feet. “My feet don’t run very well, Dardie. Too many coverings on them, maybe. And they’re cold now—”

Not frostbite—not frostbite! he prayed. They had been lucky so far. Of course they were always cold, and very often hungry. But they had had no accidents, nor serious illnesses.

“Run!” he commanded sharply, and Dessie’s short-legged shuffle became a trot.

But, when they reached the screen of second-growth brush at the end of the north field, she halted in obedience to old orders. Dard shrugged off the bundle of firewood and dropped to his hands and knees, crawling forward under cover until he could look down across the broken field-stone wall to the house.

Carefully he examined the sweep of snow about the half-ruined dwelling. There were the tracks he and Dessie had made about the yard. But the smooth expanse of white between house and main road was unbroken. There had been no invaders since they had left. Thankfully, though without any lessening of his habitual apprehension, he went back to gather up the wood.

“All right?” Dessie shifted impatiently from one cold foot to the other.

“All right.”

She jerked the sled into motion and plodded on along the wall where the snow had not drifted. There was a faint gleam of light in one of the windows below. Lars must be in the kitchen. Minutes later they stamped off snow and went in.

Lars Nordis raised his head as his daughter and then his brother entered. His smile of welcome was hardly more than a stretch of parchment skin over thrusting bones and Dard’s secret fear deepened as he studied Lars anxiously. They were always hungry, hut tonight Lars had the appearance of a man in the last stages of starvation.

“Good haul?” he asked Dard as the boy began to shed his first layer of the sacking which served him as a coat.

“Good as we could do without the axe. Dessie got a lot of pine cones.”

Lars swung around to his daughter who had squatted down before the small fire on the hearth where she began to methodically unwind the strips of burlap which were her mittens.

“Now that was lucky! Did you see anything interesting, Dessie?” He spoke to her as he might have addressed an adult.

“Just a fox.” she reported gravely. “It was watching us— from under a tree. It looked cold—but Dardie said it had a home—”

“So it did, honey,” Lars assured her. “A little cave or a hollow tree.”

“I wish I could have brought it home. It would be nice to have a fox or a squirrel—or something—to live with us.” She stretched her small, grime-encrusted, chapped hands out to the fire.

“Maybe someday…” Lars’ voice trailed oil He stared across Dessie’s head at the scanty flames.

Dard hung up the cobbled mass of tatters which was his outdoor coat and went to the cupboard. He lifted down an unwholesome block of salted meat as his brother spoke again.

“How are supplies?”

Dard tensed. There was more to that question than was merely routine. He surveyed the pitiful array on the shelves jealously.

“How much?” he asked, unable to keep out of his voice the almost despairing resentment he felt.

“Maybe enough for two days—if you can put up such a packet.”

Swiftly Dard’s eyes measured and portioned. “If it is really necessary—” he couldn’t stop that half-protest. This systematic robbing of their own, too scanty hoard—for what? If Lars would only explain! But he knew Lars’ answer to that, too: The less one knew, the better, these days. Even in a family that could be so. All right, he’d make up that packet of food and leave it here on the table and in the morning it would he gone—given to someone be didn’t know and would never see. And within a week, or maybe a month it would happen again…

“Tonight?” He asked only that as he sawed away at the wood-like meat.

“I don’t know.”

And at the tone of his brother’s answer Dard dropped the dull knife to turn and watch Lars’ face. There was a new light in the man’s eyes, a brightness about him that his younger brother had never seen since Dessie’s mother had died two years before.

“You’ve finished,” Dard said slowly, hardly daring tobelieve what might be true, that they might be free!

“I’ve finished. They’ll pass the word and then we’ll be sent for.”

“’Honey,” Dard called to Dessie, “bring in the pine cones. We’ll have a big fire tonight.”

As she scampered toward the shed Dard spoke over her head.

“There’s a heavy snow on the way, Lars.”

“So?” the man at the table did not appear worried.

“Well, snow’s never stopped them from coming before.” He was relaxed, at peace.

Dard was silent but his eyes flickered beyond Lars’ shoulder to the objects leaning against the wall. They were never mentioned, those crutches. But in deep snow! Lars never went outside in winter, he couldn’t! How could they get away unless the mysterious others had a horse or horses. But perhaps they did. That was always his greatest fault—worrying over the future-borrowing trouble ahead, as if they didn’t have enough already to go around!

Dessie was back to feed the fire slowly one cone at a time. Dard scraped the meat slivers into the iron pot and added a shriveled potato carefully diced. Then he grew reckless and wrenched off the lid of a can to pour its treasured contents to thicken the water. If they were going away they’d need feeding up to make the trip and there would be little sense in hoarding supplies they could not carry with them.

“Birthday?” Dessie watched this move in wide-eyed surprise. “But my birthday’s in the summer, and Daddy’s was last month, and yours,” she counted on her fingers, “is not for a long time yet, Dardie.”

“Not a birthday. Just a celebration. Get the spoon, Dessie, and stir this carefully.”

“’Celebration,” she considered the new word thoughtfully. “I like celebrations. You going to make tea, too, Dardie? Why, this is just like a birthday!”

Dard shook the dried leaves out on the palm of his hand Their aromatic fragrance reached him faintly.Mint, green and cool under the sun. He sensed that he was different from Lars—colors, scents, certain sounds meant more to him. Just as Dessie was different in her way-in her ability to make friends with birds and animals. He had seen her last summer, sitting perfectly still on the wall, two birds on her shoulders and a squirrel nuzzling her hand.

But Lars had gifts, too. Only he had been taught to use them. Dard shook the last crumbling leaf from his hand into the pot and wondered for the thousandth time what it would have been like to live in the old days when the Free Scientists had the right to teach and learn and experiment. It probably had been another kind of world altogether—the one which existed before the Big Burning, before Renzi had preached the Great Peace.

All he could remember of his early childhood in those days was a vague happiness. The purge had come when he was eight and Lars twenty-five, and after that things simply got worse and worse. Of course, they’d been lucky to survive the purge at all belonging to a Scientific family. But their escape had left Lars a twisted cripple. He and Lars and Kathia had come here. But Kathia was different—she forgot everything, mercifully. And after Dessie had been born five months later it had been like caring for two babies at once. Kathia had been sweet and obedient and lovely, but she lived in her own dream world and neither of them had ever tried to bring her out of it. Seven, almost eight years now, they bad been here. But in all that time Dard had never quite dared to believe they were safe. He lived always on the ragged edge of fear. Maybe Kathia had been the luckiest one of all.

He took over the stirring of the stew and Dessie set the table, putting out the three wooden spoons, the battered crockery howl, the tin basin and the single chipped soup dish, the two tin cups and the graceful fluted china one which had been Dessie’s last birthday gift after he had found it hidden on a rafter out in the barn.

“Smells grand, Dard. You’re a good cook, son.” Lars offered praise.

Dessie bobbed her head in agreement until her two pencil-thick braids flopped up and down on shoulders where the blades, as she moved, took on the angular outlines of wings. “I like celebrations!” She announced. “Tonight may we play the word game?”

“We certainly shall!” Lars returned with emphatic promptness.

Dard did not pause in his stirring though he was alert to every inflection in Lars’ voice. Did he read a special significance into that last answer? Why did Lars want to play the word game? And why did he himself feel this aroused wariness—as if they were secure in a den while out in the dark danger prowled!

“I have a new one, Dessie went on. “It sings—”

She put her hands down on the table on either side of her soup plate and tapped her little broken nails in time to the words she recited:

Dard made an effort and pushed the rhythm out of his mind—no time now to “see” the pattern in that. Why did he always “see” words mentally arranged in the up and down patterns of lines? That was as much a part of him as his delight in color, texture, sight and sound. And for the past three years Lars had encouraged him to work upon it, setting him problems of stray lines of old poetry.

“Yes, that sings, Dessie,” Lars was agreeing now. “I heard you humming it this morning. And there is a reason why Dard must make us a pattern—” he broke off abruptly and Dard did not try to question him.

They ate silently, ladling the hot stuff into them, lifting the dishes to drink the last drops. But they lingered over the spicy mint drink, feeling its warmth sink into their starved, chilled bodies. The light given out by the fire was meager; only now and again did it reach Lars’ face, and shadows were thick in the corners of the room. Dard made no move to light the greased fagot supported by the iron loop above the table. He was too tired and listless. But Dessie rounded the table and leaned against Lars’ crooked shoulder.

“You promised—the word game,” she reminded him.

“Yes— the game—”

With a sigh Dard stooped to pick up a charred stick from the hearth. But he was sure now about the suppressed excitement in his brother’s voice. With the blackened wood for a pencil and the table top for his writing pad he waited.

“Suppose we try your verse now, Dessie,” Lars suggested.

“Repeat it slowly so Dard can work out the pattern.”

Dard’s stick moved in a series of lines up, down, up again. It made a pattern right enough and a clear one. Dessie came to look and then she laughed.

“Legs kicking, Daddy. My rhyme made a picture of legs kicking!”

Dard studied what he had just done. Dessie was right, legs kicked, one a little more exuberantly than the other. He smiled and then glanced up with a start, for Lars had struggled to his feet and was edging around the table without the aid of his crutches. He looked at the straggling lines his brows drawn together in a frown of concentration. From the breast pocket of his patched shirt he took out a scrap of peeled bark they used for paper-keeping it half-concealed in the palm of his hand so that what was noted on it remained a secret. Taking the writing stick from Dard he began to make notations, but the scratchings were all numbers not words.

Erasing with the side of his hand now and again he worked feverishly until at last he gave a quick nod as if in self-reassurance, and let his last combinations stand among the line pattern Dard had seen in Dessie’s nonsense rhyme.

“This is important—both of you—” his voice was almost a whip lash of impatient command “The pattern you see for Dessie’s lines, Dard—but—these words.” Slowly he recited, accenting heavily each word he spoke.

Dard studied the smudged diagram on the table top until he was sure that it was engraved on his memory for all time.

When he nodded, Lars turned and tossed the note chip into the fire. Then his eyes met his brother’s in a straight measuring look over the little girl’s bent head.

“It’s all yours, Dard, just remember—”

But the younger Nordis had only said, “I’ll do it,” when Dessie, uncomprehendingly, broke in.

“Seven, nine, four and ten,” she repeated solemnly,

“Twenty, sixty, and seven again. Why, it sings just as mine does—you’re right, Daddy!”

“Yes. Now how about bed.” Lars lurched back to his chair. “It’s dark. You’d better go, too, Dard.”

That was an order. Lars was expecting someone tonight, then. Dard raked two bricks away from the fire and wrapped them up in charred pieces of blanket. Then he opened the door to the crooked stairs which led to the room overhead. There it was dark and the cold was bitter. But moonlight made a short path from the uncurtained window—enough to show them the pile of straw and ragged bed covers huddled close to the chimney where some heat came up from the fire below. Dard made a nest with the bricks laid in to warm it and pushed Dessie back as far as he could without smothering her. Then he stood for a moment looking out across the moonlit snow.

They were a safe mile from the road and be had taken certain precautions of his own to insure that no sneaking patrol of Peacemen could enter the lane without warning. Across the fields was only Folley’s place—though that was a lurking danger. Behind loomed the mountains, which, wild as they were, promised safety of a kind. If only Lars were not crippled they could have gone into the hills long ago.

When they first reached the farm it had seemed a haven of safety after two years of hiding and being hunted. There was so much confusion after Renzi’s assassination and the following purge, with the Peacemen busily consolidating their power, that small fry among the remaining techneers and scientists had managed to stay free of the first nets. But now patrols were combing everywhere and some day, sooner or later, one would come here—especially if Folley revealed his suspicions to the right people. Folley wanted the farm, and he hated Lars and Dard because they were different. To be different nowadays was to sign your own death warrant. How much longer would they escape the notice of a roundup gang?

Dard was aroused from the blackest of forebodings to discover that he was biting savagely on the knuckles of a balled fist. With two quick steps he crossed the small room and felt along the shelf. His heart leaped as his groping fingers closed about the haft of a knife. Not much good against a stun rifle maybe. But when he held it so, he did not feel completely defenseless.

On impulse he put it inside his clothing, against skin which shrunk from the icy metal. And then he crawled into the nest of straw.

“Hmm— ?” came a sleepy murmur from Dessie.

“It’s Dardie,” he whispered reassuringly. “Go to sleep.”

It might have been hours later, or minutes, when Dard came suddenly awake. He lay rigid, listening. There was no sound in the old house, not even the creak of a board. But he pulled out into the cold and crawled to the window. Something had awakened him, and the fear he lived with put him on guard.

He strained to see all the details of the bright white and black landscape. A shadow moved between moon and snow. There was a ’copter coming down, making a silent landing just before the house. Figures leaped out of it and flitted to right and left, encircling the dwelling.

Dard ran back to scoop Dessie out of the warmth of the bed, clapping his hand over her mouth. Her eyes opened, wide with fear. as he put his lips close to her car.

“Go down to Daddy,” he ordered. “Wake him!”

“Peacemen?” She was shaking with more than cold as she started down the stairs. “Say that I think so. They came in a ’copter.” That was the one thing he had not been able to guard against surprise from above. But they had so few of the ’copters left, now that it was forbidden to manufacture any of the prepurge machines. And why should they use one to raid an insignificant farmhouse sheltering a child a cripple and a boy? Unless Lars’ work was important—so important that they dared not allow him to pass along his findings to the underground.

Dard watched the dark shapes take cover. They were probably all around the house by this time, moving in. They wanted to take the inhabitants alive. Too many cornered scientists in the past had cheated them. So they would move slowly now—slow enough to—Dard’s smile was no more than a drawn grimace.He still had one secret, one which might save the Nordis family yet.

Having watched the last of the raiders take cover Dard ran down into the kitchen. The fire was still burning and before it crouched Lars.

“They came by air. And they have the house surrounded,” Dard reported in a matter-of-fact voice. Now that the worst had at last happened he was surprisingly calm. “But they don’t have their trap completely closed as they are going to discover!”

He brushed past Lars and jerked open the cupboard doors. Dessie stood beside her father, and now Dard threw her a bag.

“Food— everything you can pack in,” he ordered. “Lars, here!”

From the pegs he pulled down all the extra clothing they had. “Get dressed to go out.”

But his brother shook his head. “You know I can’t make it, Dard.”

Dessie went on stuffing provisions into the hag “I’ll help you, Daddy,” she promised “’just as soon as I can.”

Dard paid no attention to his brother. Instead he ran to the far end of the room and raised the trap door of the cellar.

“Last summer,” he explained as he came back to gather up the clothing, “’I found a passage down there behind the wall. It leads out to the foundations of the barn. We can hide there—”

“They know we are here They’ll be looking for a move such as that,” objected Lars.

“Not after I cover our trail.”

He saw that Lars was pulling on the remnants of a coat. Dessie was almost ready to go and now she helped her father not only to dress but to crawl across the floor to the hole. Dard gave her a pine knot torch before he went to work.

The doors and all the downstairs shutters were barred. Those ought to hold just long enough—

He took a small can from the cupboard and poured its long-saved contents liberally about the room. Then he withdrew to the head of the cellar ladder before hurling a second blazing torch into the nearest patch of liquid. A billow of fire sent him hurtling down with just enough time to pull the trap door shut behind him.

As he shoved aside the rotting bins which concealed the opening to the passage, he could hear the crackling above, and smoke drifted down through the flooring cracks.

A moment later Dessie scuttled into the passage ahead as Dard hauled Lars along with him. Over their heads the house burned. These outside might well believe that their prey burned with it. At the very least the blaze would cover their escape for the precious minutes which meant the difference between life and death.

2: HIDING OUT

BEFORE THEY REACHED the outlet below the barn, Dard brought them to a halt. There was no use emerging into the arms of some snooping Peaceman. It was better to stay in hiding until they could see whether or not the enemy had been fooled by the burning house.

The passage in which the three crouched was walled with rough stone and so narrow that the shoulders of the two adults brushed both sides. It was cold, icy with a chill which crept up from the bare earth underneath through their ill-covered feet to their knees and then into their shivering bodies. How long they could stay there without succumbing to that cold Dard did not know. He bit his lip anxiously as he strained to hear the sound from above.

He was answered by an explosion, the sound and shock of which came to them down the passage from the house. And then there was a slightly hysterical chuckle from Lars.

“What happened?” began Dard, and then answered his own question, “The laboratory!”

“Yes, the laboratory,” Lars said, leaning against the wall. There was relaxation in both his pose and voice. “They’ll have a mess to comb through now.

“All the better!” snapped Dard. “Will it feed the fire?”

“Feed the fire! It might blow up the whole building. There won’t be enough pieces left for them to discover what was inside before the blast.”

“Or who might have been there!” For the first time Dard saw a ray of real hope. The Peacemen could not have known of this passage, they probably believed that the dwellers in the farmhouse had been blown up in that explosion. The escape of the Nordis family was covered—they now had a better than even chance.

But still he waited, or rather made Lars and Dessie wait in hiding while he crept on into the barn hole and climbed up the ladder he had placed there for such a use as this. Then, making a worm’s progress crawling, he crossed the rotting floor to peer out through the doorless entrance.

The outline of the farmhouse walls was gone, and tongues of blue-white flame ate up the dark to make the scene day-bright. Two men in the black and white Peace uniforms were dragging a third away from the holocaust. And there was a lot of confused shouting. Dard listened and gathered that the raiders were convinced that their prey had gone up with the house, taking with them two officers who had just beaten in the back door before the explosion. And there had been three others injured. The roundup gang was hurrying away, apprehensive of other explosions. Peacemen, who prided themselves on their lack of scientific knowledge, were apt to harbor such suspicions.

Dard got to his feet. The last man, trailing a stun rifle, was going around the fire now, keeping a careful distance from the chemically fed flames, such a distance that he plunged waist deep through snow drifts. And a few moments later Dard saw the ’copter rise, circle the farm once, and head west. He sighed with relief and went back to get the others.

“All clear,” he reported to Lars as he supported the crippled man up the ladder. “They think we went up in the explosion and they were afraid there might be another so they left fast—”

Again Lars chuckled. “They won’t be back in a hurry then.”

“Dard,” Dessie was a small shadow moving through the gloom, “if our house is gone where are we going to live now?

“My practical daughter,” Lars said. “We will find some other place… ”

Dard remembered. “The messenger you were expecting! He might see the blaze from the hills and not come at all!”

“And that’s why you’re going to leave him a sign that we’re still in the land of the living, Dard. As Dessie points out we haven’t a roof over us now, and the sooner we’re on our way the better.Since our late callers believe us to be dead there’s no danger in Dessie and I staying right where we are now, while you do what’s necessary to bring help. Follow the wall in the top pasture to the corner where the old woods road begins. About a quarter of a mile beyond is a big tree with a hollow in it.Put this inside.” Lars pulled a piece of rag out of his wrappings. “Then come back here. That’ll bring our man on down even if he sees an eruption going on. It tells him that we’ve escaped and are hiding out waiting to make contact. If he doesn’t come by morning— we’ll try moving up closer to the tree.”

Dard understood. His brother daren’t attempt the journey through the snow and brush at night. But tomorrow they could rig some kind of a board sled from the debris and drags Lars into the safety of the woods. In the meantime it was very necessary to leave the sign. With a word of caution to them both, Dard left the barn.

By instinct he kept to the shadows east by the trees and brush which encroached on the once fertile fields. Near the farm buildings was a maze of tracks left by the Peacemen, and he used them to hide the pattern of his own steps. Just why he took such precautions he could not tell, but the wariness which had guided every move of his life for years had now become an ingrown part of him. On the other hand, now that the raid he had feared for so long had come, and he and his were still alive and free, he felt eased of some of the almost intolerable burden.

As he tramped away from the dying fire the night was very still and cold. Once a snowy owl slipped across the sky, and deep in the forest a wolf, or one of the predatory wild dogs, howled. Dard did not find it difficult to locate Lars’ tree and made sure that the rag was safe in the black hollow of its trunk.

The cold ate into him and he hurried on his back trail. Maybe they might dare light a small fire in the cellar pit, just enough to keep them from freezing until morning. How close was the dawn, he wondered, as he stumbled and clutched at a snow-crowned wall to steady himself. Bed—sleep—warmth— He was so tired—so very tired—

Then a sound ripped through the night air. A shot! His face twisted and his hand went to the haft of the knife. A shot! Lars had no gun! The Peacemen—but they had gone!

Clumsily, slipping, fighting to keep his footing in the treacherous snow drifts, Dard began to run. Within a matter of minutes he came to his senses and dodged into cover, making his way to the barn in such a manner as to provide no target for any marksman lurking there. Dessie, Lars— there alone without any means of defense!

Dard was close to the building when Dessie’s scream came. And that scream tore all the caution from him. Balancing the knife in his hand, he threw himself across the churned snow of the yard for the door. And his sacking covered feet made no sound as he ran.

“Got ya’—imp of Satan!”

Dard’s arm came up, the knife was poised. And, as if for once Fortune was on his side, there was a sharp tinkle of breaking glass from the embers of the house and a following sweep of flame to light the scene within the barn.

Dessie was fighting, silently now, with all the frenzy of a small cornered animal, in the hands of Hew Folley. One of the man’s hard fists was aimed straight for her face as Dard threw the knife.

The months he had practiced with that single weapon were now rewarded. Dessie flew free as the man hurled her away. On hands and feet she scuttled into the dark. Hew turned and bent over as if to grope for the rifle which lay by his feet. Then he coughed, and coughing, went down. Dard grabbed the rifle. Only when it was in his hands did he come up to the still-coughing man. He pulled at Folley’s shoulder and rolled him over. Bitter hatred stared up at Dard from the small dark eyes of the other.

“Got— dirty— stinkman—” Folley mouthed and then coughed. Blood bubbled from his slack lips. “Thought—he—was—hiding—right—Kill—kill—” The rest was lost in a gush of blood. He tried to raise himself but the effort was beyond him. Dard watched grimly until it was over and then, fighting down a rising nausea, undertook the dirty business of retrieving his knife.

The sun did not show when he came out of the barn with Dessie after some hours which he did not want to remember. From a gray sky whirled flakes of white. Dard regarded them blankly at first and then with a dull relief. A snow storm would hide a lot. Not that anyone would ever find Lars poor twisted body, now safely walled up in the passage. But Folley’s people might be detained by a heavy storm if they started a search. The landsman had been a tyrant and the district bully—not beloved enough to arouse interest for a sizable searching party.

“Where are we going, Dardie?” Dessie’s voice was a monotone. She had not cried, but she had shivered continually, and now she looked at the outer world with a shadow of dread in her eyes. He drew her closer as he shouldered their bag of supplies.

“Into the woods, Dessie. We’ll have to live as the animals do—for a while. Are you hungry?”

She did not meet his eyes as she shook her head. And she made no effort to move until his hand on her shoulder drew her along. The snow thickened in a wild dance, driven by gusts of wind to hide the still smoldering cellar of the farmhouse. Pushing Dessie before him Dard began the hike back along his path of the night before—toward the hollow tree and the meeting place. To contact Lars’ messenger might now be their only chance.

Under the trees the fury of the storm was less, but the snow packed against their bodies, clinging to their eyelashes and a wisp of hair which hung across Dessie’s forehead so that she brushed at it mechanically. Food, heat, shelter, their needs made a pattern in Dard’s mind and he clung to it, shutting out memories of the past night. Dessie could not stand this tramping for long. And he was almost to the end of his own strength. He used the rifle as a staff.

The rifle—and three shells—he had those. But he dared not use the weapon except as a last resort. The sound of a shot carried too far. There were only a few guns left and they were in the hands of those whom the Peacemen had reason to trust. Anyone hunting for Folley would be attracted by a shot. If their escape became suspected… He shivered with something other than cold.

Herding Dessie at a steady pace he fought his way to the hollow tree. There was no need to worry about the trail they had left, the snow filled it in a matter of minutes. But they must stay near here—for Lars’ messenger to find them.

Dard set Dessie to treading back and forth in a space he marked out for her. That not only kept her moving and so fighting the insidious cold numbness, but it packed down a flooring for the shelter he built. A fallen tree gave it backing and pine branches, heaped up and covered with snow, provided a roof.

He could see the hollow in the tree from this lair and he impressed upon Dessie the necessity of watching for anyone coming along the path.

They ate handfuls of snow together with wooden bits of salted meat. But the little girl complained of sleepiness and at last Dard huddled in the shelter with Dessie in his arms, the rifle at hand, fighting drowsiness to keep his grim vigil. At length he had to put the rifle between his feet, the end of the barrel just under his jaw, so that when he nodded, the touch of the cold metal nudged him into wakefulness. How long they dared stay there was a question which continued to trouble him. What if the messenger did not come today or tomorrow? There was a cave back in the hills which he had discovered during the past summer but—

The jab of the rifle barrel made his eyes water with pain. The snow had stopped falling. Branches, heavily burdened, were bent to the ground, but the air was free. He pulled back his top covering and studied Dessie’s pinched face. She was sleeping, but now and again she twisted uneasily and once she whimpered. He changed position to aid his cramped legs and she half roused.

But right on her inquiring “Dardie?” came another sound and his hand clamped right across her lips. Someone was coming along the woods trail, singing tunelessly.

The messenger?

Before Dard’s hope was fully aroused it was dashed. He saw a flash of red around a bush and then the wearer of that bright cap came into full view. Dard’s lips drew back in a half-snarl.

Lotta Folley!

Dessie struggled in his arms and he let her crawl to one side of the tiny shelter. But, though he brought up the rifle, he found he could not aim it. Hew Folley—betrayer and murderer—yes. His daughter—though she might be of the same brutal breed-though he might be throwing away freedom and life—he could not kill!

The girl, a sturdy stout figure in her warm homespuns and knitted cap, halted panting beneath the very tree he must watch. If she glanced up now—if her woodsight was as keen as his—and he had no reason to doubt that it was.

Lotta Folley’s head raised and across the open expanse of snow her eyes found Dard’s strained face. He made no move in a last desperate attempt to escape notice. After all he was in the half-shadow of the shelter, she might not see him— the protective “playing dead” of an animal.

But her eyes widened, her full mouth shaped a soundless expression of astonishment. With a kind of pain he waited for her to cry out.

Only she made no sound at all. After the first moment of surprise her face assumed its usual stupid, slightly sullen solidity. She brushed some snow from the front of her jacket without looking at it, and when she spoke in her hoarse common voice, she might have been addressing the tree at her side.

“The Peacemen are huntin’.”

Dard made no answer. She pouted her lips and added,

“They’re huntin’ you.”

He still kept silent. She stopped brushing her jacket and her eyes wavered around the flees and brush walling in the old road.

“They say as how your brother’s a stinkman—”

"Stinkman,” the opprobious term for a scientist. Dard continued to hold his tongue. But her next question surprised him.

“Dessie— Dessie all right?”

He was too slow to catch the little girl who slipped by him to face the Folley girl gravely.

Lotta fumbled in the breast of her packet and brought out a packet folded in a piece of grease-blotted cloth. She did not move up to offer it to Dessie but set it down carefully on the end of a tree stump.

“For you,” she said to the little girl. Then she turned to Dard. “You better not stick around. Pa tol’ the Peacemen about you.” She hesitated. “Pa didn’t come back las’ night—”

Dard sucked in his breath. That glance she had shot at him, had there been knowledge in it? But if she knew what lay in the barn—why wasn’t she heading the hue and cry to their refuge? Lotta Folley, he had never regarded her with any pleasure. In the early days, when they had first come to the farm, she had often visited them, watching Kathia, Dessie, with a kind of lumpish interest. She had talked little and what she said suggested that she was hardly more than a moron. He had been contemptuous of her, though he had never showed it.

“Pa didn’t come back las’ night,” she repeated, and now he was sure she knew—or suspected. What would she do? He couldn’t use the rifle—he couldn’t

Then he realized that she must have seen that weapon, seen and recognized it. He could offer no reasonable explanation for having it with him. Folley’s rifle was a treasure, it wouldn’t be in the hands of another—and surely not in the hands of Folley’s enemy—as long as Folley was alive.

Dard caught the past tense. So she did know! Now— what was she going to do?

“Pa hated lotsa things,” her eyes clipped away from his to Dessie. “Pa liked t’ hurt things.”

The words were spoken without emotion, in her usual dull tone.

“He wanted t’ hurt Dessie. He wanted t’ send her t’ a work camp. He said he was gonna. You better give me that there gun, Dard. If they find it with Pa they ain’t gonna look around for anybody that ran away.”

“But why?” he was shocked almost out of his suspicion.

“Nobody’s gonna send Dessie t’ no work camp,” she stated flatly. “Dessie—she’s special! Her ma was special, too. Once she made me a play baby. Pa—he found it an’ burned it up. You—you can take care of Dessie—you gotta take care of Dessie!” Her eyes met his again compellingly. “You gotta git away from here an’ take Dessie where none of them Peacemen are gonna find her. Give me Pa’s rifle an’ I’ll cover up.”

Driven to the last rags of his endurance Dard met that with the real truth.

“We can’t leave here yet—”

She cut him off. “Some one comin’ for you? Then Pa was right—your brother was a stinkman?”

Dard found himself nodding.

“All right,” she shrugged. “I can let you know if they come again. But you see to Dessie—mind that!”

“I’ll see to Dessie.” He held out the rifle and she took it from him before she pointed again to the packet.

“Give her that. I’ll try to git you some more—maybe tonight. If they think you got away they’ll bring dogs out from town. If they do—” She shuffled her feet in the snow.

Then she stood the rifle against the hollow tree and unbuttoned the front of her jacket. Her hands, clumsy in mittens, unwound a heavy knitted scarf and tossed it to the child.

“You put that on you,” she ordered with some of the authority of a mother, or at least of an elder sister. “I’d leave you my coat, only they’d notice.” She picked up the rifle again. “Now I’ll put this here where it belongs an’ maybe they won’t go on huntin’.”

Speechless Dard watched her turn down trail, still at a loss to understand her actions. Was she really going to return that rifle to the barn—how could she, knowing the truth? And why?

He knelt to wind the scarf around Dessie’s head and shoulders. For some reason Folley’s daughter wanted to help them and he was beginning to realize that he needed all the aid he could get.

The packet Lotta had left contained such food as he had not seen in years—real bread, thick buttered slices of it, and a great hunk of fat pork. Dessie would not eat unless he shared it with her, and he took enough to flavor his own meal of the wretched fare they had brought with them. When they had finished he asked one of the questions which had been in his mind ever since Lotta’s amazing actions.

“Do you know Lotta well, Dessie?”

She ran her tongue around her greasy lips, collecting stray crumbs.

“Lotta came over often.”

“But I haven’t seen her since—” he stopped before mentioning Kathia’s death.

“She comes and talks to me when I am in the fields. I think she is afraid of you and—Daddy. She always brings me nice things to eat. She said that some day she wanted to give me a dress—a pink dress. I would very much like a pink dress, Dardie. I like Lotta—she is always good—inside she is good.”

Dessie smoothed down the ends of her new scarf.

“She is afraid of her Daddy. He is mean to her. Once he came when she was with me and he was very, very mad. He cut a stick with his knife and he hit her with it. She told me to run away quick and I did. He was a very bad man, Dardie. I was afraid of him, too. He won’t come after us?”

“NO!”

He persuaded Dessie to sleep again and when she awoke he knew that he must have rest himself and soon. Impressing upon her how much their lives depended on it, he told her to watch the tree and awaken him if anyone came.

It was sunset when he aroused from an uneasy, nightmare-haunted sleep. Dessie squatted quietly beside him, her small grave face turned to the trail. As he shifted his weight she glanced up.

“There was just a bunny,” she pointed to small betraying tracks. “But no people, Dard. Is—is there any bread left? I’m hungry.”

“Sure you are!” He crawled out of the shelter and stretched cramped limbs before unwrapping the remains of Lotta’s bounty.

In spite of her vaunted hunger Dessie ate slowly, as if savoring each crumb. The light was fading fast, although there were still red streaks in the sky. Tonight they must remain here—but tomorrow? If Lotta’s return of the rifle to the barn did not stop the search—then tomorrow the fugitives would have to take to the trail again.

“Is it going to snow again, Dardie?”

He studied the sky. “I don’t think so. I wish it would.”

“Why? When the snow is so deep, it’s hard to walk.”

He tried to explain. “Because when it snows, it is really warmer. Too cold a night…” he didn’t finish that sentence, but encircled Dessie with a tong arm and drew her back under the shelter with him. She wriggled about, settling herself more comfortably, then she jerked upright again.

“Someone’s coming!” her whisper was warm on his cheek.

He had heard that too, the faint creak of a foot on the icy coated snow. And his hand closed about the haft of his knife.

3. THE CLEFT DWELLERS

HE WAS A SMALL MAN, the newcomer, and Dard overtopped him by four inches or more. And that gave the boy confidence enough to pull out of the shelter. He watched the stranger come confidently on, as though he knew just how many steps lay between himself and some goal. His clothing, what could be seen of it in the fast deepening dusk, was as ragged and patched as Dard’s own. This was no landsman or Peaceman scout. Only one who did not hold all the important “confidence cards” would go about so unkempt. Which meant that he was an “unreliable,” almost as much an outlaw as a techneer or a scientist

The newcomer stopped abruptly in front of the tree. But he did not raise his hand to the hollow, instead he studied the tracks left by Lotta. But finally he shrugged and reached into the hole.

Dard moved and the other whirled in a half-crouch. There was the gleam of teeth in his bearded face, and another glint—of bare metal—in his hand.

But he made no sound and it was Dard who broke the quiet.

“I am Dard Nordis—”

“So?…” The single word was lengthened to approximate a reptile’s hiss.

And Dard sensed that he was facing a dangerous man, a menace far worse than Hew Folley or any of his brutal kind.

“Suppose you tell me what has happened?” the man added.

“Roundup raid—last night,” Dard returned laconically, his initial relief at the other’s coming considerably dampened. “We thought we had escaped. I came up to leave that message for Lars.” He motioned to the rag. “When I got back Lars was dead—killed by the neighbor who probably set them on us. So Dessie and I came here to wait for you.”

“Peacemen!” the man spat. “And Lars Nordis dead! That’s a bad piece of luck—bad.” He made no move to put away the gun he held. It resembled a hand stun gun, but certain peculiarities of the stub barrel suggested that it was more deadly a weapon than that.

“And now,” the man moved a step or two in Dard’s direction, “what do you expect me to do with you?”

Dard moistened dry lips with a nervous tongue. He had not considered that, without Lars and what Lars had to offer, the mysterious underground might not wish to burden themselves with an untrained boy and a small child. Grim necessity was the law among all the present outlaws, and useless hands coupled with another mouth to feed were not wanted. He had a single hope…

Lars had been so insistent about that word pattern that Dard dared now to believe that he must carry his brother’s discovery in that memorized design of lines and numbers. He had to believe that and impress the importance of his information upon this messenger. It would be their passport to the underground.

“Lars had finished his work,” Dard schooled his voice to conversational evenness. “I think you need the results—”

The man’s head jerked. And now he did put away that oddly shaped gun.

“You have the formula?”

Dard took a chance and touched his own forehead. “I have it here. I’ll deliver it when and if I reach the proper persons.”

The messenger kicked moodily at a lump of snow. “It’s a long trip—back into the hills. You have supplies?”

“Some. I’ll talk when we’re safe—when Dessie is safe—”

“I don’t know—a child—the going’s pretty tough.”

“You’ll find we can keep up,” Dard made a promise he had no surety of keeping. “But we had better start now— there’s just a chance that they may be after us.”

The man shrugged. “All right. Come ahead—the two of you.”

Dard handed the bag of supplies to the other and took Dessie’s hand. Without another word the man turned to retrace the way he had come and the other two followed, keeping as well as they could to the trail he had broken.

They traveled on all that night. Dard first led and then carried Dessie, until, after one halt, the guide waved him on and raised the little girl to his shoulder, leaving Dard to stumble along unburdened. They rested at intervals but never long enough to relax, and Dard despaired of being able to keep up the pace. This messenger was a tireless machine, striding as might a robot along some hidden trail of which he alone knew the landmarks.

At dawn they were close to the top of a rise. Dard pulled himself up the last of a steep slope, panting, to discover the other waiting for him. With a jerk of his thumb the man indicated the crest of the divide.

“Cave— camp—” he got out the two words stiffly and put Dessie down. “Can you make it by yourself?” he asked her.

“Yes,” her hand sought his confidently. “I’m a good climber.”

There was a hint of smile, an awkward smile, pulling long forgotten muscles about his tight mouth. “You sure are, sister!”

The cave was fairly deep, the narrow entrance giving little hint of the wide room one found after squeezing through. It was a revelation to Dard as the guide snapped on a hand beam from a tiny carrying case he took from a ledge by the entrance. This was, the boy gathered, a regular camping place used by the underground travelers. He sank down on a bed of leaves and watched their companion pull out a black box, adjusting a dial on its side. Within seconds they began to feel the heat radiating from it. Free Scientist equipment all of this—all top contraband. Dard had dim pre-purge memories of such aids to comfort,

Dessie gave a sigh of pure content and curled up as close to that wonder as she could get. She watched with sleepy eyes the owner of this marvel break open a can of soup and pour its half-frozen contents into a pan which he set on top of the heating unit. He rummaged through the bag of supplies Dard brought, grunting at the scantiness of the pitiful collection.

“We didn’t have much time to pack,” said Dard, finally irritated by the other’s unspoken contempt.

“What brought them down on you?” the man asked, squatting back on his heels. He had the strange gun out, checking the clip which carried its charge, squinting down its few inches of barrel.

“Who knows? There was a landsman—he wanted the farm. He was the one who shot Lars.”

“Hmm—” The man peered into the now bubbling soup. “Then it may have been only a routine raid after all—sparked by just general malice?”

That, Dard gathered from his tone, was the answer more desired by this stranger. And his own thoughts went back to the last evening in the farm house when Lars had made his announcement of success. The raid had followed too aptly—almost as if Lars’ discovery at all costs had to be prevented from reaching those who might make use of it. What had Lars been working on, and why was it so important? And did he, Dard Nordis, actually know anything about it?

“What’s your name?” Dessie eyed their companion over the cup of soup he had poured for her. “I never saw you before—”

For the second time that shadow smile appeared on the guide’s lips.

“No, you never saw me, Dessie. But I’ve seen you—several times. And you may call me Sach.”

“Sach,” she repeated. “That is a funny name. But this is very good soup, Sach. Is this a celebration?”

He looked startled. “Don’t know about its being a celebration, Dessie. But it is going to be a day of sleep for all of us. We still have a long way to go. Suppose you bed down over there and close your eyes.”

Dard was nodding over his own supply of food and a very short time later followed the same orders.

He awoke with a start. Sach was stooping over him, his grimed hand over Dard’s mouth as he shook him by the shoulder. As soon as he saw the awareness in the boy’s eyes, he dropped down on one knee to whisper:

“There’s a ’copter circling—been up and around overhead for a half hour. Either we’ve been trailed or they’ve found out about this cave and put a watch on it. Now you listen and get this straight. What Lars Nordis was doing means more than life to the Cleft Dwellers. They’ve been waiting for the results of his last tests.” He paused and in quite a different voice as if repeating some talisman added two words Dard had once heard from Lars “Ad Astra.” Then in a harsh command he continued, “They’ve got to have it and have it quick. We’re some five miles from the valley. Set a line straight to the peak you can see from this cave entrance and keep to it. Give me a good start and watch. If the ’copter follows me, then it’s okay for you to make a break to reach the peak. Keep undercover all you can. There’s only one long stretch where you cross the river that you have to be in the open.”

“But you—” Dard was trying to pull his sleep scattered thoughts together.

“I’ll go down slope the opposite way. If they are suspicious of this hiding hole and are watching it, they may take out after me. And I’ve played this type of hide and seek before, I know the game. You watch from the entrance while I go—now!”

Dard followed him to the narrow opening where Sach lingered just within the shadow listening. Now Dard could hear it too, the faint whine of a ’copter beating through the cold afternoon air. It grew to a steady drone, passed overhead, and faded. Sach still waited. Then he gave a curt nod to Dard and melted away.

The boy crawled to the very edge of the concealing overhang. Sach by some trick had won a good ten feet down slope. It would be difficult for anyone sighting him now to guess just where he had appeared from. He slid down, in only enough hurry to suggest that he was bolting from a position he considered dangerous.

Now the ’copter was on its way back—either on a routine sweep or because the dark figure of Sach had been sighted. He leaped into the shelter of a pine grown thicket, but not soon enough to escape detection. The ’copter circled down. There was a loud crack awaking echoes from the surrounding rocks. Somebody had shot at the fugitive.

“Dardie!”

“It’s all right,” the boy called reassuringly over his shoulder into the cave. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Sach had probably wormed his way down to the edge of the deep woods. The ’copter made another smaller and tighter circle and came closer to the ground, to allow three men to leap into the snow. Before they could gain their feet and their balance a pencil of green light beamed a tight ray at one. He screamed and threshed the snow into a high shower of drift. The others threw themselves flat but continued to snake toward the wood from which that attack had come, and the ’copter swooped to spray death into the silent trees. Sach had not only drawn the attention of the trackers, he was using every means of keeping it on him. The ’copter soared above the trees, westward, away from the cave. When the two men broke into the brush undercover Dard watched them out of sight.

It would be evening soon. And the eastern slope was well provided with cover. There were sections of bare rock on the slope where no snow clung. Dard’s eyes narrowed—footprints were easy to see from the air. But there was another way of getting down to the valley, one which would leave no such tell-tale traces. He went inside and clicked on the light Sach had left.

“Time to go, Dardie?” Dessie asked.

“First we eat.” He made himself move deliberately. If Sach’s information was right they still had a long trip before them. And they must not start it with empty stomachs. He used supplies recklessly before tying up enough of the remains to provide them with food for at least one more day.

“Where is Sach?” Dessie wanted to know.

“He had to go away. We will travel alone now. Eat all that, Dessie.”

“I am,” she answered almost peevishly. “I wish we could stay here. That box makes it so nice and warm.”

For a moment Dard was tempted to do just that. To venture out on an unknown trail through the snow and cold when they could lay snug here seemed not only foolish but almost criminal, especially when it involved taking Dessie into the wilderness. But the urgency which had sent Sach out into the very mouth of danger to draw off pursuit could not be denied. If Sach believed that the information they carried was as important as that— Well, they would uphold their part of the bargain. And there was always the fear in his mind since the coming of the ’copter, that the cave had been marked down and was known to the Peace men.

It was dusk when they came out into the snap of the cruel night air. Dard pointed to the nearest ledge of bare rock sloping downward.

“We must walk along that ledge so as not to leave tracks in the snow.

Dessie nodded. “But where the rock ends, Dardie, what do we do then?”

“Wait and see!”

They edged along the ledge and it seemed to Dard that the chill struck up from the stone with double intensity But Dessie flitted ahead and was teetering back and forth on the very edge as he caught up.

“Now,” he told her, ” we are going to jump. Into that big drift down there.”

He had meant to make that leap first, and was tensing his muscles for the spring, when Dessie went over. Whether she had voluntarily thrown herself over or whether she had lost her balance he could not tell. But before he could move she had disappeared, and a plume of snow puffed to mark her landing place. Dard crouched there uncertainly until he saw the wave of an arm. Then he plunged, calculating his fall to land him apart from Dessie. He was a moment in the frosty air and then deep in snow which choked his mouth and blinded his eyes.

When they had fought their way out of the drift Dard glanced back up the slope. They had won into the shadow of the woods where their trail would be concealed from ’copter spies. His ruse had succeeded!

Now, he swung to the east, five miles Sach had said. Their progress would depend upon drifts and footing. It wouldn’t be too hard going in the shelter of the trees. Luckily this was no dense forest. And by steering with the peak and the river they could reach their ultimate goal.

In the beginning the journey appeared simple and Dard was lighthearted. But before morning dawned they were caught in a nightmare. They had reached the river’s bank, only to find the ice crust there too thin to use as a bridge. Time and time again, as they hunted along its bank, they sank knee deep into the powdery snow. Dard carried Dessie again and had to abandon the bag of supplies. He knew with a sinking heart that the periods of struggle between the rests were growing shorter and shorter. But he dared not give up and try to camp-being sure that if he once relaxed he would never rise again.

Morning found them at the one place where the river might be crossed. An arch of ice, snow crowned, made a perilous bridge over which they crept fearfully. The peak stood needle—pointing into the sky—probably, the boy thought bitterly, looking closer than it was.

He tried to keep to the cover afforded by brush and trees, but the rays of the rising sun reflected from the snow confused him and at last he plodded on, setting each foot down with exaggerated care, grimly determined only upon keeping his feet, with or without protection from a ’copter.

Dessie rested across his shoulder, her eyes half-closed. He believed that she was unconscious now, or very close to it. She gave no protest when he laid her body down on a fallen tree and leaned against another forest giant to draw panting gasps that cut his lungs with knives of ice. Some instinct or good fortune had kept him on the right course the peak was still ahead. And now he could see that it guarded the entrance to a narrow cleft through which a small pathway led. But what lay beyond that cleft and how far he would still be from help if he could reach it he had no idea.

Dard allowed himself to rest until he had counted slowly to one hundred, and then he lifted Dessie again and lurched on, trying to avoid the clutching briars on neighboring bushes. In that moment, as he straightened up with the girl in his arms, he thought that he had sighted a strange glint of light from near the crown of the peak. Sun striking on ice, he reasoned dully as he plodded on.

He was never to know if he could have made the last lap of that journey under his own power. For, before he had gone a hundred yards, his fatigue-dulled ears caught the ominous sound of a ’copter engine. And, without trying to locate the source, he threw himself and his burden into the bushes, rolling through the snow and enduring the lash of branches.

The whine of the machine’s supporting blades sounded doubly clear through the morning air. And a second later he saw splinters fly from a tree trunk not a foot away. Dragging Dessie he pulled back into thicker cover. But he knew that he was only prolonging the end. They knew that he was alone except for the child, they would conclude that he was unarmed. They had only to land men and take him at their leisure.

But, though the ’copter swept back and forth over the tangle of brush into which he had burrowed his way, it made no move to land anyone. So, thinking that he now was screened from their sight, Dard squatted down holding Dessie tightly, trying to think.

Sach— Sach and the green ray which had brought down the Peacemen back on the heights by the cave; that was it. They knew that he carried no rifle. But they were afraid that he might be armed with one of those more potent weapons such as Sach had used. Dessie whimpered and clung closer to him as the ’copter made another dive above their hiding place—one which leveled off only inches above the branches which might have tangled in the undercarriage.

The crack of rifle fire punctuated the whine of the engine. Again he watched splinters fly—one close enough to score his cheek. By will alone he held himself immovable and kept Dessie captive, though her little body flinched at the sound of each shot. Those above could not see their quarry or they would not be spraying bullets so indiscriminately. This raking of the brush was to force him out.

And the worst of it was that they could do just that! Dard knew that the searching stream of death quartering the thicket would either kill them or force them to move.

He blinked at the bushes and made his first constructive move, stripping Lotta’s scarf off Dessie’s head and shoulders. Quickly he tangled the thick wool in some thorned branches. Then he put Dessie on her knees in the snow and pushed her away from that thorn bush. She obediently wormed her way off[as Dard followed, moving by inches. Luckily the ’copter was now making the rounds of the perimeter of the thicket and for a minute or two there had been no shooting. Dard traveled on until the scarf end pulled taut in his hand, until he could keep his grip on the loose end only with thumb and forefinger at the full extent of an outstretched arm. Then he lay waiting.

The ’copter was moving in again while more than one marksman added to a crisscross fire. Dard bit deep on the soft inner side of his lip. Now! By the sound the ’copter was just in the right position. As a rifle cracked, Dard gave two quick jerks of the scarf, and was answered by a loud burst of fire. Then he screamed wildly, and Dessie, shocked out of her bewilderment, echoed him thinly. Another tug at the scarf for good measure and then he was racing on hands and knees, bumping Dessie before him. If they would only believe that he, or Dessie, or both had been hit! That should bring them down, set them fighting their way to the spot where he had fastened the scarf. And then there would be a slim chance, a terribly slim chance, to get away.

Dard cringed at the sound of the vicious attack the ’copter riders were still centering behind him—an attack delivered without any call to surrender. All that blind hatred which had boiled over during the purge was still smoldering in those who were now hunting them. He had always known that anyone of proven scientist blood would have little chance if the Peacemen tracked him down, but now the last faint hope of mercy for the helpless was gone.

Pulling Dessie he reached the end of the thicket in which they bad taken refuge. By some blind chance they had come out on the side which faced the peak. But before them lay a wide open sweep of ground, impossible to cross undetected. Dard faced it bleakly. The brightness of the sunlight somehow made that last blow harder.

But, even as his misery and despair weakened him, he suddenly noted again flashes of light on the peak-coming in too regular a pattern to be sun fostered. While he was still gaping up at that, a shadow swept over. The ’copter landed directly on that virgin expanse of snow before him. He sagged and his arms tightened about Dessie who gave a muffled cry as his grip hurt her. This was the end—the could not run any more.

The Peacemen were taking their time about leaving the ’copter. It looked as if they were still reluctant to approach that thicket. What had Sach done that made them so wary?

Two of them crept around the tail of the machine, and Dard saw the gun mounted on the ’copters’ roof swing about to cover them. The men crawled slowly through the snow. But before they had reached beyond the length of the ’copter, that blink of light on the peak stepped up into a steady glow. Dard’s eyes dropped from it to the Peacemen and so he did not see deliverance arrive.

There was a swish of sound followed by a tinkle as if glass had splintered. Green fog bellowed out about the machine—the same fatal green of the ray Sach had used on the cave slope.

Without knowing why, he threw himself face down, carrying Dessie with him, as traces of the fog wafted slowly toward the thicket. It must be gas, and those men were now floundering in it. Then the world went black and Dard fell into deep space, a place where Dessie, too, was swept away from him.

4. AD ASTRA

DARD LAY ON HIS back staring up into unfamiliar gray reaches. Then a pinkish globe swam into position over him and he concentrated upon it. Eyes, nose, a mouth that was opening and shutting, took proper place.

“How is it, fella?”

Dard considered the question. He had been face down in the snow, there had been Peacemen creeping after him and— Dessie! Dessie! He struggled to sit up and the face of that figure above him moved.

“The little girl, she’s all right. You’re both all right now. You are the Nordis kids?”

Dard nodded. “Where is here?” he formed the inquiry slowly. The face crinkled into laughter.

“Well, at least that’s a variation on the old ’Where am I?’ You’re in the Cleft, kid. We saw you trying to make it across the river valley with that ’copter after you. You managed to delay them long enough for us to lay down the fog. Then we gathered you in. Also we’re a ’copter and some assorted supplies to the good, so you’ve more than paid your admittance fee—even if you weren’t Lars Nordis’ kin.”

“How did you discover who we are?” Dard asked.

Dark brown eyes twinkled. “We have our little ways of learning what is necessary for us to know. And it is a painless process—done while you’re asleep.”

“I talked in my sleep? But I don’t!”

“Maybe not under ordinary circumstances. But let our medico get the digester on you and you do. You’ve had a pretty hard pull, kid, haven’t you?”

Dard levered himself up on his elbows and the other slipped extra support behind him. Now he could see that he was stretched out on a narrow cot in a room which seemed to be part cave, for three of its walls were bare rock, the fourth a smooth gray substance cut by a door. There were no windows, and a soft light issued from two tubes in the rock ceiling. His visitor perched on a folding stool and there was no other furniture in the cell-like chamber.

But there were coverings over him such as he had not seen for years, and he was wearing a clean, one piece coverall over a bathed body. He smoothed the top blanket lovingly. “Where is here—and what is here?” he expanded his first question.

“This is the Cleft, the last stronghold, as far as we know, of the Free Men.” The other got to his feet and stretched. He was a tall lean-waisted man, with dark brown skin, against which his strong teeth and the china-white of his eyeballs made startling contrast. Curly black hair was cropped very close to his round skull, and he had only a slight trace of beard. “This is the gateway to Ad Astra—” he paused, eyeing Dard as if to assess the effect those last two words had on the boy.

“Ad Astra,” Dard repeated. “Lars spoke of that once.”

“Ad Astra means ’to the Stars.’ And this is the jumping off place.”

Dard frowned. To the stars! Not interplanetary—but galactic flight! But that was impossible!

” I thought that Mars and Venus—” he began doubtfully.

“Who said anything about Mars or Venus. kid? Sure, they’re impossible. It would take most of the resources of a willing Terra to plant a colony on either of them—as who should know better than I? No, not interplanetary flight stellar. Go out to take our pick of waiting worlds such as earth creepers never dreamed of, that’s what we’re going to do! Ad Astra!”

Galactic flight—his first wild guess had been right.

“A star ship here!” In spite of himself Dard knew a small thrill far inside his starved body. Men had landed on Mars and Venus back in the days before the Burn and the Purge, discovering conditions on both planets which made them almost impossible for human life without a vast expenditure which Terra was not willing to make. And, of course, Pax had forbidden all space flight as part of the program for stamping out scientific experimentation. Rut a star ship—to break the bounds of Sol’s system and go out to find another sun, other planets. It sounded like a very wild dream but he could not doubt the sincerity of the man who had just voiced it.

“But what did Lars have to do with this?” he wondered aloud. Lars’ field had been chemistry, not astronomy or the mechanics of space flight. Dard doubted whether his brother could have told one constellation from another.

“He had a very important part. We’ve just been waiting around for you to wake up to get the report of his findings.”

“But I thought you got the full story out of me while I was unconscious.”

“What you personally did in the past few days, yes. But you do carry a message from Lars, don’t you?” For the first time some of the dark man’s lightheadedness vanished.

Dard smoothed the blanket and then plucked at it with nervous fingers. “I don’t know—I hope so—”

His companion ran his hands across his tight cap of hair.

“Suppose we have Tas in. He’s only been waiting for you to come around.” He crossed the room and pushed a wall button.

“By the way,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m forgetting introductions. I’m Simba Kimber, Pilot-astrogator Simba Kimber,” he repeated that title as if it meant a great deal to him. “And Tas is First Scientist Tas Kordov, biological division. Our organization here is made up of survivors from half a dozen Free Scientist teams as well as quite a few just plain outlaws who are not Pax-minded. Oh, come in, Tas.”

The man who entered was short and almost as broad as he was tall. But sturdy muscle, not fat, thickened his shoulders and pillared his arms and legs. He wore the faded uniform of a Free Scientist with the flaming sword of First Rank still to be picked out on the breast. His eyes and broad cheek bones had Tartar contour and Dard believed that he was not a native of the land in which he now lived.

“Well, and now you are awake, oh?” he smiled at Dard.

“We have been waiting for you to open those eyes—and that mouth of yours—young man. What word do you bring from Lars Nordis?”

Dard could hesitate about telling the full truth no longer.

“I don’t know whether I have anything or not. The night the roundup gang came Lars said he had finished his job—”

“Good!” Tas Kordov actually clapped his hands.

“But when we had to clear out he didn’t lay to bring any papers with him—”

Kordov’s face was avid as if he would drag what he wanted out of Dard by force. “But he gave to you some message—surely he gave some message!”

“Only one thing. And I don’t know how important that may be. I’ll have to have something to write on to explain properly.”

“Is that all?” Kordov pulled a notebook out of his breeches’ pocket and flipped it open to a blank page, handing it to him with an inkless stylus. Dard, equipped with the tools, began the explanation which neither of these men might believe.

“It goes way back. Lars knew that I imagine words as designs. That is, if I hear a poem, it makes a pattern for me—” he paused trying to guess from their expressions whether they understood. Somehow it didn’t sound very sensible, now.

Kordov pulled his lower lip away from his yellowish teeth and allowed it to snap back. “Hmm—semantics are not my field. But I believe that I can follow what you mean. Demonstrate!”

Feeling foolish, Dard recited Dessie’s jingle, marking out the pattern on the page.

“Eesee, Osee, Icksie, Ann; Fullson, Follson, Orson, Cann.”

He underlined, accented, and overlined, as he had that evening on the farm and Dessie’s kicking legs came into being again.

“Lars saw me do this. He was quite excited about it. And then he gave me another two lines, which for me do not make the same pattern. But he insisted that this pattern be fitted over his lines.”

“And those other lines?” demanded Tas.

Dard repeated the words aloud as be jotted them down.

“Seven, nine, four and ten; twenty, sixty and seven again.”

Carefully he fitted the lines through and about the numbers and handed the result to Kordov. To him it made no possible sense, and if it didn’t to the First Scientist, then he would not have had Lars’ precious secret at all. When Tas continued to frown down at the page, Dard lost the small flicker of confidence he had had.

“Ingenious,” muttered Kimber looking over the First Scientist’s shoulder. “Could be a code.”

“Yes,” Tas was going to the door. “I must study it. And look upon the other notes again. I must—”

With that he was gone. Dard sighed.

“It probably doesn’t mean a thing,” he said wearily. “But what should it be?”

“The formula for the ’cold sleep,’ ” Kimber told him.

“Cold sleep?”

“We go to sleep, hibernate, during that trip—or else the ship comes to its port manned by dust! Even with all the improvements they have given her the new drive—everything—our baby isn’t going to make the big jump in one man’s lifetime, or in a number of lifetimes!” Kimber paced back and forth as he talked, turning square corners at either end of the room. “In fact, we didn’t have a chance—we’d begun thinking of trying to make a stand on Mars—before one of our men accidentally discovered Lars Nordis was alive. Before the purge he’d published one paper concerning his research on the circulatory system of bats—studying the drop in their body temperature during their winter sleep. Don’t ask me about it, I’m only a pilot—astrogator, not a Big Brain! But he was on the track of something Kordov believed might be done—the freezing of a human being so that he can remain alive but in sleep indefinitely. And since we contacted him, Lars has continued to feed us data bit by bit.”

“But why?” Why, if Lars bad been working with this group so closely, hadn’t he wanted to join them? Why had they had to live in the farmhouse on a starvation level, under constant fear of a roundup?

“Why didn’t he come here?” It was as if Kimber bad picked that out of Dard’s mind. “He said he wasn’t sure he could make the trip-crippled as he was. He didn’t want to try it until the last possible moment when it wouldn’t matter if he were sighted trying—or traced here. He believed that he was under constant surveillance by some enemy and that the minute he, or any of you, made a move out of the ordinary, that enemy would bring in the Peacemen, perhaps before he had the answer to our problem. So you had to live on a very narrow edge of safety.”

“Very narrow,” Dard agreed. There was logic in what Kimber said. If Folley had been spying on them, and he must have or else he would not have appeared in the barn, he would have suspected something if any of them had not shown around the house as usual. Lars could never have made the journey they had just taken. Yes, he could see why his brother had waited until it was too late for him.

“But there’s something else.” Kimber sat down on the stool again, his elbows resting on his knees, his chin supported by his cupped hands.

“What do you know about the Temple of the Voice?”

Dard. still intent upon the problem of the cold sleep, was startled. Why did Kimber want to know about the innermost heart of the neighboring Pax establishment?

The ’Voice” was that giant computer to which representatives of Pax fed data—to have it digested and to receive back the logical directives which enabled them to control the thousands under their rule. He knew what the “Voice” was, had had it hazily described to him by hearsay. But he doubted whether any Free Scientist or any associate of such proscribed outlaws had ever dared to approach the"Temple” which housed it.

“It’s the center of the Pax—” he began, only to have the pilot interrupt him.

“I mean— give me your own description of the place.”

Dard froze. He hoped that his panic at that moment was not open enough to be marked. How did they know he had been to the Temple—through that mysterious digester which had picked over his memories while he was unconscious?

“You were there—two years ago,” the other bored in relentlessly.

“Yes, I was there. Kathia was sick—there was just a chance of getting some medico to attend her if I could show a ’confidence card.’ I made a Seventh Day visit but when I presented my attendance slip to the Circle they asked too many questions. I never got the card.”

Kimber nodded. “It’s okay, kid. I’m not accusing you of being a Pax plant. If you had been that, the digester would have warned us. But I have a very good reason for wanting to know about the Temple of the Voice. Now tell me everything you can remember—every detail.”

Dard began. And discovered that his memory was a vivid one. He could recall the number of steps leading into the inner court and quote closely enough every word that the

“Laurel Crowned” speaker of that particular Seventh Day had spouted in his talk to the faithful. When he finished he saw that Kimber was regarding him with an expression of mingled amazement and admiration.

“Good Lord, kid, how do you remember everything—just from one short visit?”

Dard laughed shakily. “What’s worse, I can’t forget anything. I can tell you every detail of every day I’ve lived. since the purge. Before then,” his hand went to his head,

“before then for some reason it’s not so dear.”

“Lots of us would rather not remember what happened since then. You get a pack of fanatics in control—the way Renzi’s forces have taken over this ant hill of a world—and things crack wide open. We’ve organized our collective sanity to save our own lives. And there’s nothing we can do about the rest of mankind now—when we’re only a handful of outlaws hiding out in the wilderness. There’s a good big price on the head of everyone here in the Cleft. The whole company of Pax would like nothing better than to round us up. Only we’re planning to get away. That’s why we have to have the help of the Voice.”

“The Voice?”

Kimber swept over the half interruption. “You know what the Voice is, don’t you? A computer—mechanical brain they used to call them. Feed it data, it digests the figures and then spews out an answer to any problem which would require months or years for a human mind to solve. The astrogation course, the one which is going to take us to a sun enough like Sol to provide us with a proper world, is beyond the power of our setting up. We have the data and all our puny calculations—but the Voice has to melt them down for us!”

Dard stared at this madman. No one but a Peaceman who had reached the ratified status of “Laurel Wearer” dared approach the inner sanctuary which held the Voice. And just how Kimber proposed to get there and set the machine to work on outlawed formula, he could not possibly guess.

Kimber volunteered no more information and Dard did not ask. In fact he half forgot it during the next few hours as he was shown that strange honeycomb fortress, blasted out of the living rock, which served the last of the Free Scientists as a base. Kimber was his guide and escort along the narrow passages, giving him short glimpses of Hydro-gardens, of strange laboratories, and once, from a vantage point, the star ship itself.

“Not too large, is she?” the pilot had commented, eyeing the long silvery dart with a full-sized frown. “But she’s the best we could do. Her core is an experimental model designed for a try at the outer planets just before the purge. In the first days of the disturbance they got her here—or the most important parts of her—and we have been building ever since.

No, the ship wasn’t large. Dard frankly could not see where all the toiling inhabitants of the Cleft were going to find berths on her, whether in the suspended animation of hibernation or not. But he didn’t mention that aloud. Instead he said:

“I don’t see how you’ve been able to hide out without detection this long.”

Kimber grinned wickedly. “We have more ways than one. What do you think of this?” He drew his hand from his breeches pocket. On his dark palm lay a flat piece of shining metal.

“That, my boy, is gold! There’s been precious little of it about for the past hundred years or so—governments buried their supplies of it and sat tight on them brooding. But it hasn’t lost its magic. We have found many metals in these mountains and, while this is useless for our purposes, it still carries a lot of weight out there.” He pointed to the peak which guarded the entrance to the Cleft. “We have our trading messengers and we fill hands in proper places. Then this is all camouflaged. If you were to fly across this valley in a ’copter, you’d see only what our techneers want you to. Don’t ask me how they do it—some warping of the light rays—too deep for me.” He shrugged. “I’m only a pilot waiting for a job.”

“But if you are able to keep hidden, why ’Ad Astra’?”

Kimber rubbed the curve of his jaw with his thumb.

“For several reasons. Pax has all the power pretty well in its hands now, so the Peacemen are stretching to wipe out the last holes of resistance. We’ve been receiving a steady stream of warnings through our messengers and the outside men we’ve bought. The roundup gangs are consolidating—planning on a big raid. What we have here is the precarious safety of a rabbit crouching at the bottom of a burrow while the hound sniffs outside. We have no time for anything except the ship, preparing to take advantage of the thin promise for another future that it offers us. Lui Skort—he’s a medico with a taste for history—gives Pax another fifty to a hundred years of life. And the Cleft can’t last that long. So we’ll try the chance in a million of going out—and it is a chance in a million. We may not find another earth—type planet, we may not ever survive the voyage. And, well, you can fill in a few of the other ifs, ands, and buts for yourself.”

Dard still watched the star ship. Yes, a thousand chances of failure against one or two of success. But what an adventure! And to be free—out of this dark morass which stunted minds and fed man’s fears to the point of madness—to be free among the stars!

He heard Kimber laugh softly. “You’re caught by it, too, aren’t you, kid? Well, keep your fingers crossed. If your brother’s stuff works, if the Voice gives us the right course, if the new fuel Tang concocted will really take her through why we’re off!”

Kimber seemed so confident that Dard dared now to ask that other question.

“She isn’t very big. How are you going to stow away all the people?”

For the first time the space pilot did not meet his eyes. With the toe of his shabby boot Kimber kicked at an inoffensive table savagely.

“We can stow away more than you would believe just looking at her, if we are able to use the hibernation process.

“But not all,” Dard persisted, driven by some inner need to know.

“But not all,” Kimber agreed with manifest reluctance.

Dard blinked, but now there was a veil between his eyes and the sleek, silver swell of the star ship. He was not going to question farther. There was no need to, and he had no desire for a straight answer. Instead he changed the subject abruptly.

“When are you going to try to reach the Voice?”

“As soon as I hear from Tas—”

“And what do you wish to hear from Tas?” came a voice from behind Dard. “That he has succeeded in making sense of gibberish and ’kicking legs’ and all the rest of the fantastic puzzle this young man has dumped into his head? Because if that is what you wait for, wait no longer, Sim! The sense has been made and thanks to Lars Nordis and our messengers,” Kordov’s big paw of a hand reached up to give Dard’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, “we can now take off into the heavens at our will. We wait only for your part of the operation.”

“Good enough.” Kimber started to turn when Dard caught his arm.

“Look here. You’ve never been to the Temple of the Voice.”

“Of course not,” Tas cut in, “Is he completely crazy? Does one thrust one’s hand into raw atomic radiation?”

“But I have! Maybe I can’t work your computations but I can guide you in and out. And I know enough about the official forms to—”

Kimber opened his mouth, plainly to refuse, but again the First Scientist was too quick for him.

“Now that makes very good sense, Sim. If young Nordis has already been there—why, that is more than any of the rest of us have done. And in the disguise you have planned the risk is less.”

The pilot frowned and Dard prepared for an outright refusal. But at last Kimber gave a half-nod. Tas pushed Dard after him.

“Go along with you. And mind you bring him back in one piece. We can do many things among us, but he remains our only space pilot, our only experienced astrogator.”

Dard followed Kimber along rock passages, back through the maze of the Cleft dwelling to a flight of stairs crudely hacked from the stone. The stairs ended in a large room holding a ’copter which bore all the markings of a Pax machine.

“Recognize it! This is the one which you played tag with out in the valley. Now-get into this and hurry!”

From the ’copter he took a bundle of clothing which he pitched over to Dard. The boy put on the Peaceman’s black and white, buckling around him as a finishing touch a belt supporting a hand stun gun. Although the clothes were large the fit was good enough to pass in the half-light of evening. And they had to visit the Voice at night to have any chance at all.

He took his place gingerly beside the pilot inside the ’copter. Overhead a cover had rolled back so that the sky was open to them. As Dard secretly gripped tile edge of his seat Kimber took the controls. And Dard continued to hold on as the machine started the slow spiral up into the air.

5: NIGHT AND THE VOICE

DARD SURVEYED the country over which the ’copter flew. It required only a few minutes to cover the same rugged miles across which he and Dessie had fought their way. And he was sure that he saw traces of that trip left on the snow below.

The machine skimmed over the heights which concealed the cave. And then, for the first time in crowded hours, Dard remembered Sach. It was down this very slope that the messenger had led the chase.

“You’ve heard from Sach?” He was anxious to be reassured concerning that small, wary man.

But Kimber didn’t reply at once. And when he did, Dard was aware of the reservations in his tone.

“No news yet. He hasn’t reported at any of our contacts. Which reminds me—”

Under the pilot’s control the ’copter swung to the right and headed away from the path Dard had followed into the hills. He was unreasonably glad that they were not going to wing over the charred ruins of the farmhouse.

Instead, within a short space, they were circling another farm, one in much better condition than the farm which had sheltered the Nordis family. In fact, the buildings gave such an air of Pax-blessed landsman prosperity that Dard wondered at Kimber’s visiting the place. Only a man with the brightest of prospects under the new rule would dare to keep his buildings in such good repair. And the volume of smoke curling fatly from the chimney spoke of unlimited warmth and food, better conditions than anyone but a staunch supporter of the Company of Pax could attain.

Yet Kimber set the ’copter down without hesitation on a stretch of packed snow not too far from the house. Once down however the pilot made no move to leave the machine.

The house door opened and a man wearing the good farm homespun of an “approved” landsman-another Folley by all outward signs-crossed the yard. For one wild moment Dard was inclined to doubt the man beside him, being still more uneasy when the round plump face of the landsman was thrust close to the window of the ’copter.

Pale blue eyes in a weather-beaten face flicked over them both, and Dard did not miss the fact that they widened a fraction as they passed from Kimber’s impassive face to his flashy uniform. The landsman turned and spat at a hound that approached, showing white teeth and growling.

“Time?” he asked.

“Time,” Kimber returned. “Get moving on tonight if you can, Harmon.”

“Sure we’ve been packin’ some stuff already. Th’ boy’s got th’ road cleared—”

Then those blue eyes slid back to Dard. “Who’s th’ youngster?”

“Nordis’ brother. He got in with the Nordis girl. Lars is dead-raid.”

“Yeah. Heard a rumor they all were-that th’ roundup got ’em. Glad to know that ain’t th’ truth. Well-be seein’ you—”

With a wave of the hand he headed back to the house. And Kimber took them aloft.

“I didn’t think—” Dard began. Kimber chuckled.

“You didn’t think a man such as Harmon would be one of us? We have some mighty odd contacts here and there. We have men who drove ground trucks and men who were first rank scientists-before the purge. There’s Santee- he was a non-com of the old army-he can read and write his name-and he’s an expert with weapons-to us he’s as important a part of the Cleft as Tas Kordov, who is one of the world’s greatest biologists. We ask only one thing of a man-that he believes in true freedom. And Harmon is going to be more important in the future. We may know how to grow hydro-style-you had a meal or two with us and know that-but an honest dirt farmer will be able to teach us all better tricks. Added to that Harmon’s been our biggest ace in the hole all along. He and his wife, their son, and their twin girls-they’ve been playing a mighty hard role for more than five years-doing it splendidly, too. But I can well believe that he welcomed my news that it is over. Double lives are tough going. Now, back to work.”

The ’copter wheeled and flew due west into a sky now painted with sunset colors. It was warm inside the cabin, and the clothing about his thin body was the finest he had worn in years. Dard relaxed against the padded cushion, but far inside him was a warming spark of excitement, an excitement no longer completely darkened by fear-Kimber’s confidence in himself, in the eventual success of their mission was comforting.

Below ran a ribbon of road, and by the churned snow, it was a well-traveled one. Dard tried to identify landmarks. But, never having seen the country from above, he could only guess that they were now being guided to town by that same artery which had tied Folley’s holding and the tumbledown Nordis place to the overgrown village which was the nearest approach to a pre-Burn city.

Another farm road, rutted and used, cut into the main road and its curve was familiar. It was Folley’s! And it had seen considerable travel since the storm. He thought briefly of Lotta-wondered if she had gone back to the message tree with some food for Dessie as she had promised. Dessie!

Dessie!

Hoping he could keep from revealing to Kimber his own secret problem, the one which had gnawed at him ever since he had seen the star ship, he asked a question:

“I didn’t see any children in the Cleft.”

Kimber was intent upon flying; when he answered it was with a faint touch of absent-mindedness:

“There’re only two. Carlee Skort’s daughter is three and the Winson boy-he’s almost four. The Harmon twins are-ten, I think-but they don’t live in the Cleft.”

“Dessie is six-almost seven.”

Kimber grinned. “Bright little trick, too, isn’t she? Took to Carlee right away-after we had persuaded her you were going to recover. Last I heard she’d taken command in the nursery quarters. Carlee was surprised at how sensible she was.

“Dessie’s a pretty big person,” Dard said slowly. “She’s old for her years. And she has a gift, too. She makes friends with animals-not just tame ones-hut the wild ’things. I’ve seen them come right up to her. She insists that they talk.”

Had he said too much? Had he labeled Dessie as one so far outside the pattern that she would not “fit” into a ship’s company where a farmer was considered important? But surely, a child’s future was worth more than an adult’s! Dessie must be considered-she must be!

“Carlee thinks she is quite a person, too.” That was certainly noncommittal enough. But, although he did not know Carlee, her approbation was comforting to Dard. A woman, a woman with a little girl of her own, would see that another little girl would get a fair break. As for him-self-resolutely he refused to think ahead for himself. Instead he began to watch the twilight-cloaked road and think of the problem immediately before them.

“The ’copter park is at the back of the Temple. And you can’t fly over the building-nothing crosses the sacred roof.”

“Then we circle. No use taking chances. Park well guarded?”

“I don’t know. Only Peacemen get inside. But I’d think that in the dark, and with this machine—”

“We could brazen it out? Let us hope they don’t ask for any recognition signals. I’m going to try to land as close to the edge as I can and in the darkest part-unless they have floodlights—”

“Town lights!” Dard interrupted, intent on the sparks of yellow. “The Temple is on that rise to the south. See!!”

It was easy enough to see. The lights of the town houses were small and sickly yellow. But above and beyond them were concentrated bars of vivid blue and startling white, somehow garish and out of place against the purple-blue of the sky. Kimber circled.

The Temple occupied about a third of the rise which bad been leveled off to form a wide platform. Behind the building itself was a floodlit space in which they could see a row of’copters.

“Ten down there,” Kimber counted, the lighting of the instrument panel showing the planes and hollows of his face. “You’d think they would have more. This is a center for their control and they don’t do much raiding by night. Or at least they haven’t in the past.”

“They may now. They struck our place at night.”

“Anyway, the fewer the better. Look, that’s a nice long shadow-one of their floods must have burnt out. I’m going to see if I can bring us down in it!”

They lost speed, it was something like coasting, much like floating, Dard decided. Then the lights arose about them and a second later the undercarriage made contact. They didn’t bounce. Kimber shook hands with himself vigorously, in congratulation.

“Now listen, kid,” the pilot’s voice was a faint murmur.

“That’s a stun gun you have in your belt. Ever use one?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t require training to point it and push the button. But you’re not to do that unless I give the word, understand? You have only two charges and I have the same in mine-we can’t afford to waste them. Nothing- absolutely nothing must happen to prevent our interview with the Voice!” There was a passionate determination in that. It was an order, delivered not only to Dard, but to Destiny or Fortune herself. “Afterward we may have to fight our way out-though I hope not. Then the stun guns will be our hope. But we’ve got to use bluff to get us in!”

The Peacemen hoarded the remains of pre-purge invention, Dard noted as he matched his steps to Kimber’s across the park at an unhurried pace, but their maintenance of such appliances was not promising. Several of the flood- lights were out and there were cracks in the concrete under his boots. There couldn’t be too many techneers left in the slave-labor camps of the Temple gangs. Some day no ’copter would rise from this park, no light would burn. Had the leaders of Pax thought of that, or didn’t they care? The old cities built by the techneers were rubble fit only for bats and birds. Now there were only grubby villages slipping back and back, with the wilderness edging down across the field to nibble at man’s building.

So far they had not met anyone, but now they approached the western gate of the Temple and there was a guard. Dard straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin summoned that arrogance of bearing which cloaked a Peaceman as tightly as the gaudy uniform. Kimber had the right presence. He strode along with a damn-devil air suitable to a Laurel Wearer. Dard did his best to copy that. But the boy couldn’t quite suppress a half-sigh of relief when the guard did not attempt to stop them and they crossed the threshold unchallenged.

Of course, they were still far from the sanctuary of the Voice. And Dard’s knowledge of the place would not take them farther than the second court.

Kimber stopped and touched his companion’s sleeve. Together they slipped out of the direct path of the light up to the shadowed obscurity behind one of the massive pillars.

Before them lay the inner court where the commoners might gather-in fact were expected to gather-to hear words of wisdom as mouthed from the August Sayings of Renzi by one of the Laurel Wearers. It was now deserted. After dark none of those not “Wedded to the Inner Peace” dared enter the Temple. Which would make the venture more precarious since they would be alone among the Peacemen and might betray themselves by ignorance of custom. Dard’s hand twitched, but he kept it off the stun gun.

“The Voice?”

Dard pointed to the archway at the other end of the inner court. What they sought lay beyond that, but where-he wasn’t sure. Kimber went on, flitting from pillar to pillar, and Dard followed on a woodman’s sure, silent feet.

Twice they stiffened into inanimateness as others tramped into the open. Peacemen, two Laurel Wearers and, just as they had almost reached the archway, a third party-two shuffling labor slaves carrying a box under the malicious eye of a single lounging guard.

Kimber leaned back behind a pillar and drew Dard in beside him.

“Lot’s of traffic.” The whispered comment was tinged with laughter and Dard saw that the pilot was smiling, an eager fire in his eyes.

They waited until slaves and guard were gone and then stepped boldly into the open and through the archway. They were now in a wide corridor, not too well lighted, broken at regular intervals with open doorways through which came solid blocks of illumination to trap the passerby. But Kimber went on with the assurance of one who had a perfect right to be where he was. He did not attempt to steal a look at any of the rooms-it was as if he had seen their contents a thousand times.

Dard marveled at his complete confidence. The Voice-where was it housed in this maze? He never suspected all this to lie beyond the inner court. They had neared the end of the corridor before Kimber slackened pace and began glancing from right to left. With infinite caution he tried the latch of a closed door. It gave, swinging silently open to disclose a flight of stairs leading down. Kimber’s grin was wide.

“Down here! It has to be down—” his lips shaped the words.

Together they crept close to the edge of the stairway and peered over into a cavern where the best lighting arrangements of the Temple made little headway against a general gloom. The hollow went deep, it was the heart of the eminence upon which the Temple stood. And on the floor far below was the Voice-a bank of metal, faceless, tongue- less, but potent.

Two guards stood at the bottom of the staffs, but their attitudes suggested that they had no fear of being called upon to carry out any duties. And on a crowed bench before a board of dials and levers lounged a third man wearing the crimson and gold tunic of a second circle Laurel Wearer.

“The night shift,” mouthed Kimber at Dard’s ear, and then he sat down on the platform and proceeded to remove his boots. After a moment of hesitation Dard followed the pilot’s example.

Kimber, boots swinging in one hand, started noiselessly down the staircase, hugging the wall But he did not draw the gun at his belt and Dard obediently kept his own weapon sheathed.

It was not entirely quiet in the chamber. A drowsy hum from the internals of the Voice was echoed and magnified by the height and width of the place.

Kimber took a long time-or what seemed to Dard a very long time-to descend. When they were still on the last flight of steps above the guard the pilot reached out a long arm and pulled Dard tight against him, his lips to the boy’s ear.

“I’ll risk using my gun on that fellow on the bench. Then we jump the other two with these—”

He gestured with the boots. Four steps-five-side by side they crept down. Kimber drew his stun gun and fired. The noiseless charge of the ray hit its mark. The man on the bench twisted, turning a horribly contorted face to them before he fell to the floor.

In that same instant Kimber hurled himself out and down. There was one startled shout as Dard went out into space too. Then the boy struck another body and they went to the floor together in a kicking clawing fury. Dodging a blow Dard brought his boots down club fashion in the other’s face. He struck heavily three times before hands clutched his shoulders and wrenched him off the now limp man. Kimber, a raw and bleeding scrape over one eye, shook him out of the battle madness.

Dard’s eyes focused on the pilot as the terrible anger drained out of him. They tied the limp bodies with the men’s own belts and lacings before Kimber took his place on the bench before the Voice.

He pulled a much-creased sheaf of papers from the breast of his blouse and spread them out on the sloping board beneath the first rank of push buttons. Dard fidgeted thinking the pilot was taking entirely too long over that business.

But the boy had sense enough to keep quiet as Kimber rubbed his hands slowly together as if to clear them of moisture before raising his eyes to study the row upon row of buttons, each marked with a different symbol. Slowly, with a finicky touch and care, the pilot pressed one, another, a third. There was a change in the hum of the Voice, a faster rhythm; the great machine was coming to life.

Kimber picked up speed, stopping only now and again to consult his scrawled notes. His fingers were racing now. The hum deepened to a throb which, Dard feared, must certainly be noticeable in the Temple overhead.

The boy withdrew to the stairway, his attention as much on the door at the top as on Kimber. He drew his gun. As Kimber had said, the mechanism of the arm was childishly simple-one pointed it, pushed the button on the grip-easy. And he had two charges to use. Caressing the metal he looked back at the Voice.

Under the light Kimber’s face displayed damp drops, and now and again he rubbed his hand across his eyes. He was waiting-his part of the job finished-waiting for the Voice to assimilate the data fed it and move in its ponderous way to solve the problem. But every minute they were forced to linger added to the danger of their position.

One of the captives rolled over on his side, and, over the gag they had forced into his jaws, his eyes blared red hate at Dard. The hum of the Voice faded to a lulling murmur. There was no other sound in the cavern. Dard crossed to touch Kimber’s shoulder.

“How long?” he began.

Kimber shrugged without taking his eyes from the screen above the keyboard. That square of light remained obstinately empty. Dard could not stand still. He had no time- keeper, and he believed that they had been there too long-it might be close to morning. What if another shift of watcher and guards was due to come on presently?

A sharp demanding chime interrupted his thoughts. The screen was no longer blank. Across it slowly crawled formula, figures, equations. And Kimber scrambled to write them down in frantic haste, checking and rechecking each he scribbled. As the last set of figures faded from the screen the pilot hesitated and then pushed a single button far to the right on the board. A moment of waiting and five figures flashed into being on the screen.

Kimber read them with a sigh. He thrust the sheets of calculations back into safety, before, with a grin playing about his generous mouth, he leaned forward and pushed as many buttons as he could reach at random. Without pausing for the reply, though the Voice had gone into labor again, he joined Dard.

“That will give them something to puzzle out if they try to discover what we were after,” he explained. “No reading that back. Not that I believe any of these poor brains would have the imagination to guess what brought us here. Now-speed’s the thing! Up with you, kid.”

Kimber took the steps at a gait Dard had a hard time matching. It was not until they stood directly before the corridor door that the pilot stopped to listen.

“Let us hope that they’ve all gone to bed and are good sound sleepers,” he whispered. “We’ve had a lot of luck tonight and this is no time for it to run out.”

The corridor was as empty as it had been on their first trip. Some of the blocks of light from the rooms were gone. They had only three such danger spots to cross now. Two they negotiated without trouble, but as they stepped into the third, it was broken by a moving shadow, a man was coming out of the room. He wore a scarlet and gold tunic, with more gold on it than Dard had ever seen before-plainly one of the hierarchy. And he stared straight at them with annoyance and the faint stirrings of suspicion.

“Pax!” the word was hardly the conventional and courteous greeting, it carried too much authority. “What do you here, brothers? These are the night watches—”

Kimber drew back into the shadows and the man unconsciously followed him, coming out into the corridor.

“What- ” he began again when the pilot moved. Both his dark hands closed, about the other’s throat, cutting off voice and breath.

Dard caught the hands clawing at Kimber’s hold and together they dragged the struggling captive through the archway into the dimly lighted inner court.

“Either you come quietly,” Kimber hissed, “or you don’t come at all. Make your choice quick.”

The struggles ceased as Kimber pulled him on.

“Why try to take him?” Dard wanted to know.

Kimber’s grin was no longer pleasant, it was closer to a wolfish snarl. “Insurance,” he returned concisely. “We aren’t out of this place yet. Now move!” He gave the captive a vicious shove, keeping one hand clamped on the nape of the other’s neck, as the three moved on toward the outer door and freedom.

6: FIVE DAYS-FORTY-FIVE MINUTES

A GRILLE of bars and metal wire was down across the entrance of the outer court. When they reached it their captive snickered. He had snapped out of his first panic- surprise, and though he was quite helpless in Kimber’s hands, the voice with which he asked a question now was entirely self-possessed.

“How do you propose to get past this?”

The pilot met that demand almost jauntily. “I suppose that this is equipped with a time lock?”

The Laurel Wearer did not reply to that, he had a second demand: “Who are you?”

“What if I should say a rebel?”

But that was the wrong answer. The man’s lips thinned to a single cruel line.

“So- ” his half-whisper was soft but it promised deadly reprisals, “Lossler dares this, does he? Lossler!”

But Kimber had no time for that. He shoved the captive into Dard’s ready hands before he applied a black disc to the grille’s lock. There was a crackle, a shower of spitting sparks. Then Kimber struck the barrier with his shoulder and it yielded. Taking the prisoner with them, they went out into the freedom of the night.

The town was in darkness, a dark broken only by a scattering of street lights. The full moon picked out light and shadow in vivid black and white across the snow on roofs and yards.

“March!” Kimber pushed the captive before him in the direction of the ’copter park. Dard trotted behind, nervously alert, not yet daring to believe that they had been successful.

Before they came onto the crumbling concrete of the takeoff Kimber had instructions for the Laurel Wearer.

“We’re going to take a ’copter,” he explained-bored- as if he were discussing a dull report. “and, once we do that, we shall have no more use for you, understand? It remains entirely up to you in what condition you shall be left behind—”

“And you can tell Lossler from me,” the words came slowly, ground out one by one between teeth set close together, “that he is not going to get away with this!”

“Only we are getting away with it, aren’t we? Now step right ahead-we are all friends-in case there is a guard on duty. You shall see us off and we will trouble you no more.

“But why?” protested the other. “What did you want here?”

“What did we want? That is a minor problem and you shall have all the rest of the night to solve it-if you can. Now, where’s the guard?”

When the man made no answer Kimber’s hand moved and brought a gasp of pain from the captive.

“Where- is-the-guard?” repeated the pilot, his patience iced by frigid promise of worse things to come.

“Three guards-gate and patrol—” came the gritted return.

“Excellent. Try to answer more promptly next time. You shall escort us through the gate. We are being sent by you on a special mission.”

Just as Dard saw the black and white coat at the entrance the command snapped out:

“Halt!”

Kimber obediently brought their procession of three to a stop.

“Speak your piece,” he whispered.

“Pax, brother.”

Dard was alert-waiting for some warning to that sentry. But Kimber must have taken precautions, for the voice of the Laurel Wearer sounded natural.

“Laurel Wearer Dawson on special business of the Company—”

The guard saluted. “Pass, Noble Dawson!”

Dard closed in on the heels of Kimber and Dawson with all the military bearing he could muster. He held the pose until they were passing along the row of idle ’copters. Then Kimber spoke to his fellow conspirator.

“There’s the little matter of fuel. Climb into that baby and check the reading on the top dial in the row directly before the control stick. If it registers between forty and sixty-sing out. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to try the next.”

Dard crawled into the seat and found the light button. Between-between forty and sixty! White figures danced crazily until he forced his nerves under control. “Fifty- three,” he called out softly.

What Kimber intended to do with Dawson Dard never learned. For, at the moment, the Laurel Wearer gave a sudden heave, throwing himself down and trying to drag the pilot with him. At the same time he shouted, and that cry must have carried not only across the field, but into the Temple as well.

Dard hurled himself at the door of the ’copter. But before he could get out he saw an arm rise and fall in a deadly blow. A second scream for help was cut off in the middle and the pilot jumped for the machine. Dard found himself face down while the pilot scrambled over him to the controls. The ’copter lurched, the open door banging until Kimber was able to pull it to. They were airborne, and not a moment too soon as the whip crack of a shot testified.

The boy pulled up on the seat, trying to see behind them. Was that another ’copter rising? Or would they have more of a start before pursuit would be on their tail?

“Couldn’t expect our luck to last forever,” Kimber murmured. “How about it, kid? Do they have anything up yet? Evasive action right now would be tough.”

There was an ominous wink of red light now in the sky.

“Some one’s coming up-wing lights showing.”

“Wing lights, eh? Well, well, well. aren’t we both the forgetful boys though.” Kimber’s hand went out to snap down a small lever.

From the corner of his eye Dard saw their own tell-tale wing-tip gleams disappear. But the pursuer made no move to shut his off-or else he did not care if he betrayed his position.

“I have now only one question,” the pilot continued half to himself. “Who is Lossler and why did our dear friend back there expect trouble from him? A split within the ranks of Pax-it smells like that. Too bad we didn’t know about this Lossler complication sooner.”

“Would such a split make any difference in your plans?”

“No, but we could have had a lot more fun these past few months. And playing one group against the other might have paid off. Like tonight-this Lossler may take the blame for us, and no one will come nosing around the Cleft for the crucial time we have left here. What the-!”

Kimber’s body strained forward, he was suddenly intent upon the dials before him. Then he reached out to rap smartly on the very indicator he had told Dard to check before they had taken the ’copter. The needle behind the cracked glass remained as stationary its if it were painted across the numbers it half obscured. A line drew Kimber’s brows together. Again he struck the glass, trying to jar loose the needle. Then he settled back in the seat.

“Dear me,” he might have been remarking on the brightness of the night, “now we do have a problem. How much fuel? Is the tank full part full, or deuced near empty? I thought this was all a little too smooth. Now we may have to—”

The smooth purr of the motor caught in a cough, and then picked up beat again. But Kimber shrugged resignedly.

“It is now not a question of ’may have to,’ that cough was a promise that we are going to walk. How about our friend behind?”

“Coming strong,” Dard was forced to admit.

“Which makes the situation very jolly indeed. We could do with less of this blasted moonlight! A few clouds hanging about would help.”

The engine chose that moment to cough again and this time the pickup was delayed longer than before

“Three or four drops more, maybe. Better set her down before we have to pancake. Now where’re a lot of nice dark shadows? Ha-trees! And there’s only one ’copter behind us-sure?”

“Sure.” Dard verified that point before he answered.

“So, we have to do it the hard way. Here we go, m’lad.”

The ’copter came down a field away from the road they had followed, landing heavily in a sizable drift. On the other side of a low wall was a clump of trees. And-Dard was pretty sure-he had sighted the outline of a house beyond.

They scrambled out and jumped the wall, struggling out off the soft snow into the grove. From behind came the sound of the other ’copter. Those in it must have sighted the machine on the ground at once, they were heading unerringly toward it.

“There’s a house that way,” Dard panted as Kimber plowed ahead with the determination of breaking beyond the thin screen of trees.

“Any chance of finding some transportation there?”

“None of the landsmen have surface cars any more. Folley had a double A rating, and Lotta said his application for one was turned down twice. Horses-maybe…”

Kimber expelled a snort. “Horses, yet” he addressed the night. “And me not knowing which end of the animal is which!”

“We’d get away faster mounted,” Dard sputtered as he slipped on a piece of iced crust and fell into the spiky embrace of a bush. “They’ll probably put hounds on us-we’re so near to town.

Kimber’s pace slowed. “I’d forgotten those pleasures of civilization” he observed. “Do they use dogs a lot in tracking?”

“Depends on how important the tracked are.”

“And we’re probably number one on their list of public enemies now. Yes, nothing like being worthy of dogs and no meat to throw behind us! All right, let’s descend upon this house and see how many horses or reasonable facsimile of same we can find.”

But when they reached the end of the grove they stopped. Lights showed in three house windows and they reached far enough across the snow-crusted road to reveal a ’copter there. Kimber laughed without any amusement at all.

“That bird by the machine is waving a rifle.”

“Wait!” Dard caught at the pilot as Kimber started out of fine brush.

Yes, he had been right-there was another ’copter coming! He felt Kimber tense in his hold.

“If they have any brains at all,” the pilot whispered, “they’ll box us up! We’ve got to get out.”

But Dard held him fast.

“You’re trying for the road,” the boy objected.

“Of course! We daren’t get lost now-and that is our only guide back. Or do you know this country well enough to go skating off into the midst of nowhere?”

Dard kept his hold on the other. “I know something- that this is the only road leading to the mountains, yes. But we can’t take it unless…”

He took his hands from Kimber and pulled up the edge of the jacket he wore-the black jacket trimmed in white. With numb fingers he pulled buttons roughly out of holes and stripped off the too large garment. He had been right! The black fabric was completely lined with the same white which made the deep cuffs and the throat-fretting stand-up collar. And the breeches were white, too. With frantic haste he thrust sleeves wrongside out. Kimber watched him until he caught on and a minute later the pilot was reversing his own coat. White against white-if they kept in the ditches-if dogs were not brought-they still had a thin chance of escaping notice. They half fell, half plunged into the ditch beside the road just as a second ’copter came to earth. Dard counted at least six men fanning out in a circle from it, beginning a stealthy prowl into the grove they had left. Neither of the fugitives waited longer, but, half crouched, scurried along between the dry brush which partly filled the ditch and the ragged hedges walling the fields. The skin between Dard’s shoulder blades crawled as he expected momentarily to feel the deadly impact of a bullet. Tonight death was a closer companion than the pilot whose boots kicked snow into his sweating face.

Some time later they reached the curve of a farm lane and dared to venture out in the open to skim across it. The cold pinched at them now. As warm as the uniform had seemed when they rode in the heated ’copter cabin, it was little defense against the chill cut of the wind which powdered them with scooped-up puffs of snow. Dard watched the moon anxiously. No clouds to dim that. But clouds meant storm-and they dared not be caught in the open by a storm.

Kimber settled down to a lope which Dard found easy to match. How far they now were from the Cleft he had no way of knowing. And how long was it going to take them to get back? Did Kimber know the trail after they had to turn off the road? He himself might be able to find the path which led from the farm. But where was the farm?

“How far was your farm from that town?”

“About ten miles. But with all this snow—” Dard’s breath made a white cloud about his head.

“Yes- the snow. And maybe more of it later. Look here, kid, this is the important part. We haven’t too much time—”

“They may wait until morning to trail us. And if they bring dogs—”

“I don’t mean that!” It appeared to Dard that Kimber waved away the idea of pursuit as if that did not matter.

“This is what counts. The course the Voice set for us-I asked before we left how long it was good for. The answer was five days and two hours. Now I figure we have about five days and forty-five minutes. We have to blast off within that time or try a second visit to the Voice. Frankly, I think that would be hopeless.”

“Five days and forty-five minutes,” Dard echoed. “But, even if we have luck all the way it might take two-three days to reach the Cleft. And we haven’t supplies—”

“Let us hope Kordov has kept things moving there,” was Kimber’s only comment. “And waiting here now isn’t add- hag to our time. Come on.”

Twice through the hours which followed they took to cover as ’copters went over. The machines ranged with an angry intentness in a circle and it hardly seemed possible that the fugitives could escape notice. But maybe it was their white clothing which kept them invisible.

The sun was up when Dard caught at the end of a rime-eaten post projecting from the snow, swinging around to face the track it marked.

“Our farm lane,” he bit off the words with economy as he rocked on his feet. To have made it this far-so soon. The ’copter must have taken them a good distance from town before it failed.

“Sure it is your place?”

Dard nodded, wasting no breath.

“Hmm.” Kimber studied the unbroken white. “Prints on that are going to show up as well as ink. But no help for it.”

“I wonder. The place was burnt-no supplies to be found there.”

“Got a better suggestion?” Kimber’s face was drawn and gaunt now.

“Folley’s.”

“But I thought—”

“Folley’s dead, He ran the place with three work slaves. His son was tapped as a Peaceman recruit a month ago. Suppose we were to smarten up and just tramp in, Say that our ’copter broke down in the hills and we walked in to get help—”

Kimber’s eyes snapped alive. “And that does happen to these lame brains often enough. How many might be at the farm?”

“Folley’s second wife, his daughter, the work slaves. I don’t think he got an overseer after his son left.”

“And they’d be only too willing to help Peacemen in distress! But they’ll know you—”

“I’ve never seen Folley’s wife-we didn’t visit. And Lotta-well, she let me go before. But it’s a better chance than trying to get into the mountains from here.”

They tramped on, in the open now. And, at the end of Folley’s lane, they reversed their jackets, shaking off what they could of the snow. They were still disheveled but a ’copter failure should account for that.

“After all,” Kimber pointed out as they climbed the slight rise to the ugly farmhouse, “Peacemen don’t explain to landsmen. If we ask questions and don’t volunteer much we’ll only be acting in character. It all depends on whether they’ve heard about the chase—”

Smoke arose from the chimney and Dard did not miss the betraying twitch at one of the curtains in a window facing the lane. The arrival was known. Lotta-everything depended now upon Lotta. He shot a glance at Kimber. All the good humor and amusement were wiped from that dark face. This was a tough-very tough muscle-boy, a typical Peaceman who would have no nonsense from a landsman.

The door on the porch which ran the side length of the house opened before they had taken two steps along the cleaned boards. A woman waited for them, her hands tugging smooth a food-spattered apron, an uneasy half-smirk spreading her lips to display a missing front tooth.

“Pax, noble sirs-Pax.” Her voice was as fat and oily as her body and sounded more assured than her expression.

Kimber sketched a version of the official salute and rapped out an answering “Pax—” in an authority-heavy tone.

“This is- ?”

Grotesquely she bobbed in an attempt at a curtsey. “The farm of Hew Folley, noble sir.”

“And where is this Folley?” Kimber asked as if he expected the missing landsman to spring up before him.

“He is dead, sir. Murdered by outlaws. I thought that was why- But come in, noble sirs, come in—” She waddled back a step leaving the entrance to the kitchen open.

The rich smell of food caught at Dard’s throat, until, for a second, he was almost nauseated. There were thick dishes on the stained table, and congealed grease, a fragment of bread, a half cup of herb tea, marked the remains of a late breakfast.

Without answering the woman’s half-question Kimber seated himself on the nearest chair and with an outstretched arm swept the used dishes from before him. Dard dropped down opposite to the pilot, thankful for the support the hard wooden seat gave his trembling body.

“You have food, woman?” Kimber demanded. “Get it. We have been walking over this forsaken country for hours. Is there a messenger here we can send into town? Our ’copter is down and we must have the repair crew.”

She was busy at the stove, breaking eggs, real eggs into a greasy skillet.

“Food, yes, noble sirs. But a messenger-since my man is dead I have only the slaves, and they are under lock and key. There is no one to send.”

“You have no son?” Kimber helped himself to a piece of bread.

Her nervous smirk stretched to a smile. “Yes, noble sir, I have a son. But only this month he was chosen by the House of the Olive Branch. He is now in training for your own service, noble sir.”

If she expected this information to unbend her visitors and soften their manners she was disappointed for Kimber merely raised his eyebrows before he continued:

“We can’t walk to town ourselves, woman. Have you no one at all you can send?”

“There is Lotta.” She went to the door and called the girl’s name harshly. “With Hew gone she must see to the cows. But it is a long walk to town, noble sir.”

“Then ride-or how do you get there when you go woman?” Kimber slid three eggs onto his plate and pushed the still laden platter over to Dard, who, a little dazed by the sight of such a wealth of food, made haste to help himself before it vanished.

“There is the colt. She might ride,” the woman agreed reluctantly.

“Then let her get to it. I don’t intend to sit out the whole of this day waiting for help. The sooner she goes, the better!”

“You want me?”

Dard knew that voice. For a long moment he dared not look up. But that inner compulsion which made him always face danger squarely raised his eyes to meet those of the girl standing in the half-open door. His fingers curled around the handle of the fork and bent it a trifle. But Lotta’s stolid expression did not change and he could only hope that his own face was as blank.

“You want me?” she repeated.

The woman nodded at the two Peacemen. “These gentlemen-their ’copter broke down. They want you should take a message to town for them. Git the colt out and ride.”

“All right.” The girl tramped out and slammed the door behind her.

7: BATTLE AT THE BARRIER

DARD CHEWED mechanically on food which now had no savor. As Kimber forked a thick slice of ham he spoke to the pilot:

“Shall I give the girl instructions, sir?”

Kimber swallowed. “Very well. Be sure she gets it straight. I don’t propose to sit around here waiting for a couple of days. Let her tell the repair master they may find us at the ’copter. We’ll go back there after we thaw out. But get her started right away-the sooner she leaves the sooner they will come for us.”

Dard went out into the farmyard. Lotta was saddling a horse. As his boots squeaked on the snow she looped up.

“Where’s Dessie? Wotta you done with her?”

“She’s safe.”

Lotta studied his face before she nodded. “That’s the truth, ain’t it? You really want I should go to town? Why? You ain’t no Peaceman—”

“No. And the more you can delay your trip in, the better. But Lotta—” he had to give her some protection. If later she were suspected of aiding their escape her fate would not be pleasant. “When you get in and report at the Temple, tell them you are suspicious of us. We’ll be gone from here by then.”

With her chin she pointed to the house. “Don’t you trust her none. She ain’t my ma-Folley wasn’t really my pa, neither. My pa was kin and Folley, he wanted the land pa left so they took me in. Don’t you trust her none at all- she’s worse’n Folley was. I’ll ride slow goin’ in, and I’ll do like you say when I git there. Lissen here, Dard, you sure Dessie’s gonna be all right?”

“She is if we can get back to her. She’ll have a chance to live the way she ought to—”

The small eyes in the girl’s pasty face were shrewd. “And that’s a promise! You git outta here and take her too. I’ll make up a good story for ’em. I ain’t,” she suddenly smiled at him, “I ain’t near as dumb as I look, Dard Nordis, even if I ain’t one of your kind!”

She scrambled awkwardly into the saddle and slapped the ends of the reins so that the horse broke into a trot.

Dard went back to the house and sat down at the table with a better appetite. Kimber broke off man-sized bites of apple tart, and between them he addressed his junior.

“Now that it’s day, I’ve been thinking that we may be able to check the bus over ourselves. You, woman,” he said to their unwilling hostess, “can you direct them on to join us if we don’t return?”

Dard pressured Kimber’s foot with the toe of his boot in warning. And received a return nudge of acknowledgement.

“Which way you goin’?” she asked. Dard thought that some of her deference was gone. Was she beginning to suspect that she was not really entertaining two of the new lords of the land?

“North. We’ll leave a trail, have to back track on your own. Suppose you put us up some grub so we’ll have something at noon. And just send the repair crew along.”

“Yes, noble sirs.”

But that acknowledgement was almost grudging and she was spending a long time putting aside some pieces of cold meat and bread. Or did his jumpy nerves make him imagine that, wondered Dard.

A half hour later they left the house. They kept to the lane and then to the road leading north until a grove cut off their path from any watcher. It was then that Kimber faced west.

“Where now?”

“There’s a trail farther on that doubles back up into the hills,” Dard informed him. “It cuts across the old woods road near that tree where I met Sach.”

“Good. I leave the guide duty up to you. But let’s move! That girl may make a quick trip in—”

“She’ll delay all she can. She knows—”

Kimber’s lips shaped a soundless whistle. “That will help - if she is working for us.”

“I told her that it meant saving Dessie. Dessie’s the only one she cares about.”

The warmth, good food, and short rest they had had at Folley’s gave them heart and strength for the trail ahead. After two false tries Dard found the woods road. Along it there was an earlier trail breaking the snow, made by Lotta, he guessed.

Kimber set an easy pace, knowing the grueling miles which still lay ahead. They took a lengthy rest at the rude lean-to by the message tree. The woods were unnaturally still and the sun reflected from patches of snow, making them squint against the glare.

From the message tree on; it was a matter of following the traces he himself had helped to make. Luckily, Dard congratulated himself, there had been no more snow and the broken path was easy to follow. But both were tired and slowed against their will as they slogged their way toward the heights which held the cave. There they could rest, Dard promised his aching body. They paused to eat, to breathe, and then on and on and on. Dard lost all track of time, it was a business of following in a robot fashion those other marks in the snow.

They had reached the lower slopes of the rise which would take them to the cave when he leaned against a tree. Kimber’s face, stark and drawn, all the easy good humor pounded out of it by fatigue, was in outline against a snowbank.

It was in that moment of silence that Dard caught the distant sound-very faint, borne to them by some freak of air current-the bay of a hunting dog running a fresh and uncomplicated trail. Kimber’s head jerked up. Dard ran his tongue around a dry mouth. That cave up there with its narrow entrance! He wasted no breath on explanation, instead he began doggedly to climb.

But- there was something wrong about the stone before them. Maybe his eyes-snow blindness-Dard shook his head, trying to clear them. But that different look remained. So that he was partly expecting what he found when he reached the crest. Sick, shaken to the point of nausea, he stared at the closed door of the cave-closed with rocks and something else-and then he reeled retching to the other side of the hill top.

He was scrubbing out his mouth with a handful of snow when Kimber joined him.

“So, now we know about Sach—”

Dard raised sick eyes. The pilot’s mouth was stone-hard.

“Left him there like that as a threat,” muttered Kimber, “and a warning. They must have discovered that this was one of our regular posts.”

“How could any one do that?”

“Listen, son, somebody starts out with an idea-maybe in the beginning a good one. Renzi wasn’t a crook, he was basically a decent man. I heard his early speeches and I’m willing to agree that much he said was true. But he had no-well, ’charity’ is the best word for it. He wanted to force his pattern for living on everyone else, for their own good, of course. Because he was great and sincere in his own way he gained a following of honest people. They were sick of war and they were terribly shocked by the Big Burn, they could readily believe that science had led to evil. The Free Scientists were too independent-they made closed guilds of their teams. There was a separation between thinking and feeling. And feeling is easier to us than thinking. So Renzi appealed to feeling, and against the aloofness of science he won. He was joined by other fanatics, and by those who want power no matter how it comes into their hands. Then there has always been some human beings who enjoy that sort of thing-what we just saw over there. They’re lower than animals because animals don’t torture their own kind for pleasure. Fanatics, power lovers, sadists-let them get a tight hold on the government and there is no room for decency. The best this world can hope for now is a break in their ranks, an inner struggle for control.

“This type of fight against freedom of thought and tolerance has happened before. Centuries ago there was the Inquisition in the name of religion. And during the twentieth century the dictators did the same under political systems of one kind or another. Fanatic belief in an idea-a conviction that an idea or a nation is greater than the individual man-it has scrounged us again and again. Utter power over his fellow men changes a man, rots him through and through. When we are able to breed men who want no influence over each other-who are content to strive equally for a common goal-then we’ll pull ourselves above that-"He gestured to that pitiful thing now hidden from their eyes. “The Free Scientists came close to reaching that point. Which is why Renzi and his kind both hated and feared them. But they were only a handful-drops lost in a sea. And they went under as have others before them who have followed the same vision. Nothing worse can he done to man than what he has done to himself. But listen to this—”

Kimber’s head was high, he was watching that peak which guarded the distant Cleft. Now he repeated slowly:

“’Frontiers of any type, physical or mental, are but a challenge to our breed. Nothing can stop the questing of men, not even Man. If we will it, not only the wonders of space, hut the very stars are ours!’ ”

“The stars are ours!” echoed Dard. “Who said that?”

“Techneer Vidor Chang, one of our martyrs. He helped to bring the star ship here, ventured out on the first fuel research and- But his words remain ours.

“That’s what we’ve geared our lives to, we outlaws. It doesn’t matter what a man was in the past-Free Scientist, techneer, laborer, farmer, soldier-we’re all one because we believe in freedom for the individual, in the rights of man to grow and develop as far as he can. And we are daring to search for a place where we can put those beliefs into practice. The earth denied us-we must seek the stars.”

Kimber started down slope. Dard caught up to point out the ruse which he had used with Dessie and which might now baffle the hounds. They found a higher ledge and made a more perilous dive, so that Dard landed on pine boughs and spilled to the earth with a jolt which drove the breath out of his lungs until Kimber pounded air back into him.

To his surprise the pilot did not keep to cover now. The night was falling fast and they could not hold their present pace without rest. But Kimber plunged on until they came to the open space flanking the river. There the pilot brought out the same flat disc with which he had cut their way out of the temple barrier, and hurled it out into the open.

A column of green fire shot from it up into the night, standing steady for at least five minutes. In the dusk it made a good show, turning the surrounding snow and the faces of the fugitives verdant as it burned.

“Now we wait,” Kimber’s voice held a faint shadow of the old humor. “The boys will be down to pick us up before Pax can connect,”

But waiting was not so simple when each minute meant the difference between life and death. They swallowed the last of the food and bedded down between two fallen trees at the edge of the clearing. The flame died down, but a core of green glow would continue to shine for several hours, Kimber said.

A wind was rising. And its wails through the trees did not drown out the distant yapping of the hounds. Dard fingered his stun gun-two charges for him, one in Kimber’s weapon. Little enough with which to meet what panted on their trail. The trailers would be armed with rifles.

Kimber stirred and then scuttled on hands and feet out from their shelter. From the night sky a dark shape came down-a ’copter. But the pilot summoned Dard to meet with it. A door opened and he was shoved into the machine by his companion. Then as they were air borne Dard rested his head against a cushion, only half hearing the excited questions and answers of the others.

When he awoke the whole wild adventure of the past forty-eight hours might only have been a dream, for he was back on the same cot where he had rested before. Only now Kimber was not with him. Dard lay there, trying to separate dream from reality. Then a clang which could only have been an alarm brought him up. With clumsy hands he pulled on the clothes lying in a heap on the floor and opened the door to peer out into the corridor.

Two men, pushing before them a small cart, crossed its lower end, The cart wheel caught on the edge of a doorway and both men cursed as they worked swiftly to pry it loose. Dard padded in that direction, but before he could join them they were gone. He followed as they broke into a trot and started down a ramp leading into the heart of the mountain.

This brought them to a large cave which was a scene of complete confusion. Dard hesitated, trying to pick out of the busy throng some familiar face. There were two parties at work. One was carrying and wheeling boxes and containers out into the narrow valley where the star ship was berthed. And in this group women toiled with the men. The second party, which had been joined by the men with the cart, was wholly masculine and all armed.

“Hey, you!”

Dard realized that he was being hailed by a black- bearded man using a rifle as a baton to direct the movements of the armed force. He went over there, only to have a rifle thrust into his hands and to be urged into line with the men taking a tunnel to the right. They were bound for a defense point, he decided, but no one explained.

The answer came soon enough with a crackle of rifle fire. What had once been the narrow throat-valley leading into the Cleft proper had been choked up by a fall of tumbled rock and earth cemented by snow, broken in places by the protruding crown or roots of a small tree. Up this dam men were crawling, dragging after them an assortment of weapons, from ordinary rifles and stun guns to a tube and box arrangement totally strange to Dard.

He counted at least ten defenders who were now ensconced in hollows along the rim of the barrier. Now and again one of these fired, the sound being echoed by the rock walls to twice its normal volume. Dard clambered over the slide, cautiously testing his footing, until he reached the nearest of the snipers’ hollows. The man glanced up as a rolling clod announced his arrival.

“Get your fool head down, kid!” he snapped. “They’re still trying the ’copter game. You’d think that they’d have learned by nowl”

Dard wormed his way along until he rubbed shoulders with the defender and could look down into the weird battlefield. He tried to piece out from the wreckage there what had been happening in the hours since he and Kimber had returned.

Two burnt-out skeletons of ’copters were crumpled among rocks. From one of them thin wisps of vapor still spiraled. And there were four bodies wearing black and white Pax livery. But as far as Dard could see there was nothing alive down there now.

“Yeah. They’ve all taken t’ cover. Trying to think up some trick that’ll get us away from here. It’ll take time for ’em to get any big guns back in these hills. And they don’t have time. Before they can shake us loose the ship’s going to blast off!”

“The ship’s going to blast off!” So that was it! He was now one of an expendable rear guard, left to hold the fort while the star ship won free. Dard studied the rifle he held, with eyes which did not see either the metal of barrel or wood of stock.

Well, he told himself savagely, wasn’t this just what he knew was going to happen-ever since that moment when Kimber had admitted with his silence that all those in the Cleft would not go out into space?

“Hey!” a hand joggling his elbow snapped his attention back to the job at hand. “See-down there—”

He followed the line set by that dirty finger. Something moved around the wreckage of the ’copter farthest from the barrier-a black tube. Dard frowned as he studied its out- line. The tube was being slued around to face the barrier. That was no rifle-too large. It was no form of gun he had seen before.

“Santee! Hey, Santee!” his companion shouted. “They’re bringing up a burper!”

A man scrambled up and Dard was shoved painfully against a tree branch as the black beard took his place.

“You’re right-damn it! I didn’t think they had any of those left! Well, we’ve got to stay as long as we can. I’ll pass the word to the boys. In the meantime try a little ricochet work. Might pick off one or two of that beauty’s crew. If we’re lucky. Which I’m beginning to think now we certainly ain’t!”

He crawled out of the hollow and Dard got thankfully back into station. His companion patted down a ridge of dirt on which to rest the barrel of his rifle. Dard saw that he was aiming, not at the ugly black muzzle of the burper, but at the rock wail behind the gun. So-that was what Santee meant by ricochet work! Fire at the rock wall and hope that the bullets would be deflected back against the men serving the burper. Neat-if it could be done. Dard lined the sights of his own weapon to cover what he hoped was the proper point. Others had the same idea. The shots came in a ragged volley. And the trick worked, for with a scream a man reeled out and fell.

“Why don’t they use that green gas?” asked Dard, remembering his own introduction to the fighting methods of the Cleft dwellers.

“How do you think we crashed those ’copters, kid? And the boys got a couple more machines the same way out by the river. Only something went wrong when they triggered the blast to seal off the valley this way. And the gas gun- with a couple of very good guys-came down with this-underneath.

For a space the burper did not move. Perhaps the defenders had wiped out its crew with the ricochet volley. Just as they were beginning to hope that this was so, the black muzzle, moving with the ponderous slowness of some big animal, eased back into concealment. Dard’s partner watched this maneuver sourly.

“Cookin’ up something else now. They must have had a guy with brains come in to run things. And if that’s so, we’re not going to have it so good. Yahh!” His voice arose sharply.

But Dard needed no warning. He, too, had seen that black sphere rising in a lazy course straight at the barrier.

“Head down, kid! Head ”

Dard burrowed into the side of the hollow, his face scratching across the frozen dirt, his hunched shoulders and arms protecting his head. The explosion rocked the ground and was followed by a scream and several moans. Dazed, the boy shook himself free of loose earth and snow.

To the left there was a sizeable gap in the barrier. With a white patch halfway down-not snow but a hand buried to the wrist in the slide the explosion had ripped down.

“Dan- and Red-and Loften got it. Nice bag for Pax,” his fellow sniper muttered. “Now was that just a lucky shot -or do they have our range?”

The forces of Pax had the range. A second ragged tear was sliced across the rock and earth dam. Before the stones stopped rattling down, Dard was shaken out of his crouch roughly.

“If you ain’t dead, kid, come on! Santee’s passed the word to fall back, to the next turn of the canyon. On the double, because we’re going to blow again, and if you get caught on this side-it’s your skin!”

Dard tumbled down the barrier behind his guide, falling once and scraping both sleeve and skin from his forearm in the process. Seconds later eight defenders, their sides heaving, their dirty faces haunted and drawn, gathered around Santee and were waved on down the canyon. Santee himself stood counting off seconds aloud. At “ten” he plunged his hand down on the black box beside him.

There was a dull rumble, less noise than the burper shots had made. Dard watched in a sort of fascinated horror as the whole opposite cliff moved majestically outward into space before it crashed down to make a second and taller wall. The stones and earth had not ceased to roll before Santee was leading his force up it to dig in and face the enemy. Once more Dard lay in wait with a rifle, this time alone.

The burper sounded regularly, systematically pounding down the first barrier. But, save for that, there was no sign of Pax activity. And how long would it be before they brought the burper up to this assault? Then would the few left retreat again and blow down another section of the mountain?

There was a flicker of movement down at the first barrier, and it was answered by a shot from the defense. A second later more shots, all down by the battered dam. Dard guessed what had happened, wounded and left behind, one of the Cleft dwellers was firing his last round to delay the victors. The flurry of fire was only a prelude to what they were waiting to see-the black snub nose of the burper rising above the rubble.

8. COLD SLEEP

UNABLE TO SEE the burper’s crew the defenders had only the narrowest and most impossible mark to shoot at-the gun’s muzzle. Perhaps that action was only to occupy their minds, by concentrating on that menace, by seeing or thinking of nothing else, they could, each and everyone, forget for a space that the ship they fought for could only take a numbered few-that when it blasted off, some of the Cleft would still be here.

Dessie! Dard twisted in the hole he had hollowed with his body. Surely Dessie would be aboard. There were so few children-so few women-Dessie would be an asset!

He tried to think only of a shadow he thought he saw move then. Or a shadow he wanted to believe had moved as he snapped a shot at it. When this battle had begun, or rather when he had come on the scene-it had been mid- morning. Once during the day he had choked down some dry food which had been passed along, taking sips from a shared canteen. Now the dusk of evening lengthened the patches of gloom. Under the cover of the dark the burper would rumble up to them, to gnaw away at this second barrier. And the defenders would withdraw-to delay and delay.

But maybe the end of that battle would not wait upon nightfall after all. The familiar sound of blades beating the air was a warning which reached them before they saw the ’copter skimming up, its undercarriage scraping the top of their first wall.

Dard watched it resignedly, too apathetic to duck when its occupants hurled grenades. He crouched unmoving as the machine climbed for altitude. The explosion caught him in his hollow a second later. There was the sense of being torn out of hiding, of being flung free. Then he was on his hands and knees, creeping through a strangely silent world of rolling stones and sliding earth.

Some feet away a man struggled to free his legs from a mound of earth. He clawed at his covering with a single hand, the other, welling red, lay at a queer twisted angle. Dard crept over and the man stared at him wildly, mouthing words Dard could not hear through the buzzing which filled his head. He dug with torn fingers into the mass which held the other prisoner.

Another figure loomed over them and Dard was shoved aside. The huge Santee knelt, scooping away soil and rock, until together they were able to pull the injured man free. Dard, his shaking head still ringing with noise of its own, helped to lift the limp body and carry it back into the inner valley of the star ship. Santee stumbled and brought all three of them down. Dard got to his knees and turned his head carefully to blink at what he saw behind him.

Those in the ’copter had not ripped apart the barrier as they had planned. The grenades had jarred some hidden fault bringing down more tons of soil and rocks. Anyone viewing that spot now would never believe that there had once been an opening there.

Of the defenders who had held that barricade only the three of them remained-he, Santee, and the wounded man they had dragged with them.

Dard wondered if he had been deafened by the explosion. The roaring in his head, which affected his balance when he tried to walk, had no connection with normal sound and he could hear nothing Santee was saying. He ran his hands aimlessly across his bruised and aching ribs, content to remain where he was.

But the enemy was not satisfied to leave them alone. Spurts of dust stung up from the rock wall. Dard stared at them a second or two before Santee’s heavy fist sent him sprawling, and he realized that the three of them were cut off in a pocket while snipers in the ’copter tried to pick them off. This was the end-but to think that brought him no sensation of fear. It was enough to just lie still and wait.

He brought his hands up to support his buzzing head. Then someone tugged roughly at his belt, rolling him over. Dard opened his eyes to see Santee taking the stun gun from him. Out of that thick mat of black hair which masked most of the man’s face his teeth showed in a white snarl of rage.

But there were only two charges in the stun gun. Maybe he was able to say that aloud, for Santee glanced at him and then examined the clip. Two shots from a stun gun wasn’t going to bring down a ’copter. The humor of that pricked him and he laughed quietly to himself. A stun gun against a ’copter!

Santee was up on his knees behind the rock he had chosen for protection, his head straining back on his thick neck as he watched the movements of the ’copter.

What happened next might have astonished Dard earlier, but now he was past all amazement. The ’copter, making a wide turn, smashed into some invisible barrier in the air. Through the twilight they saw it literally bounce back, as if some giant hand had slapped at an annoying insect. Then, broken as the insect would have been, it came tumbling down. Two of its passengers jumped and floated gracefully through the air, supported by some means Dard could not identify. Santee scrambled to his feet and took careful aim with the stun gun.

He picked off the nearer. But a second shot missed the other. And the big man ducked only just in time to escape the return fire of the enemy. Making contact with the ground the Peaceman dodged behind the crumpled fuselage of the ’copter. Why didn’t he just walk across and finish them off, Dard speculated fretfully? Why draw out the process? It was getting darker-darker. He pawed at his eyes, was his sight as well as his hearing going to fail him?

But, no, he could still see Santee who had gone down on his belly and was now wriggling around the rocks, proceeding worm-fashion along a finger of the slide toward the ’copter. Though how he expected to attack the man hidden there-with his bare hands and an empty stun gun-against a rifle!

Dard’s detachment persisted. He watched the action in which he was not involved critically. Wanting to see how it would end he pulled himself up to follow Santee’s slow progress. When the crawler disappeared from his range of vision Dard was irritated. Suppose the man waiting over there was to believe that they were trying to escape down valley-wouldn’t all his attention be for that direction- not at Santee?

Dard felt about him in the gloom, hunting stones of a suitable size, weighing and discarding until he held one larger than both his fists. Two more he lined up before him. With all the strength he could muster he sent the first and largest hurtling down the valley. A flash of fire answered its landing.

The second and third rock followed at intervals. Each time he saw the mark of answering shots. His hearing was coming back-he caught the faint echo of the last one. New stones were found and sent after the others-to keep up the illusion of escape. But now there was no shot to reply. Had Santee reached that sniper?

The boy sprawled back against the wall of the cleft and waited, for what he did not altogether know. Santee’s return? Or the star ship’s blast off? Had they brought time enough for the frenzied workers back there? Was tonight going to see Kimber setting that course they had won from the Voice, piloting the ship out into space before he, too, went under the influence of Lars’ drug and began the sleep from which there might be no awakening? But if the voyagers did awaken! Dard drew a deep breath and for a moment he forgot everything-his own aching, punished body, the rocky trap which enclosed him, the lack of future-he forgot all these in a dream of what might lie beyond the sky which he now searched for the first wink of starlight. Another world-another sun-a fresh start!

He started as a shape loomed out of the dark to cut off the sight of that star he had just discovered. Fingers clawed painfully into his shoulders bringing him up to his feet. Then, mainly by Santee’s brute force of body and will, they picked up the rescued man and started in a drunken stagger back into the valley. Dard forgot his dream, he needed all his strength to keep his feet, to go as Santee drove him.

They made a half-turn to avoid a boulder and came to a stop as lights blinded them. The ship was surrounded by a circle of blazing flares. The fury of industry which had boiled about it during the loading had stemmed to a mere trickle. Dard could see no women at all and most of the men were gone also. The few who remained in sight were passing boxes up a ramp. Soon that would be done, and then those down there would enter that silvery shape. The hatch would close, the ship would rise on fire.

Muted by the pain in his head he heard the booming shout of a deep voice. Below, the loaders stopped work. Grouped together they faced the survivors of the barrier battle. Santee called again, and that group broke apart as the men ran up to them.

Dard sat down beside the injured man, his legs giving way under him. With detachment he watched the coming of that other party. One man had his shirt badly torn across the shoulder-would he land on another world across the void of space with that tatter still fluttering? The problem had some interest.

Now a circle of legs walled the boy in, boots spurted snow in his face. He was brought to his feet, arms about his shoulders, led along to the ship. But that wasn’t right, he thought mistily. Kimber had said not room enough-he was one of the expendables-

But he could find no words to argue with those who helped him along, not even when he was pushed up that ramp into the ship. Kordov stood in the hatch door waving them ahead with an imperious arm. Then Dard found himself in a tiny room and a cup of milky liquid was thrust against his lips and held there until he docilely swallowed its contents to the last tasteless drop. When that was in him he was lowered onto a folding seat pulled down from the starkly bare metal wall and left to hold his spinning head in his hands.

“Yeah- the force field’s still holdin’—”

“Won’t be able to plow through that last slide, eh?”

“Not with anything they’ve got now.”

Words, a lot of words, passing back and forth across him. Sometimes for a second or two they made good sense, then meaning faded again.

“Can pretty well take your own time now—” Was that rumble from Santee?

And that quick, crisp voice cutting in, “What about the kid?”

“Him? He’s some scrapper. Got a head on him, too. Just shaken up a lot when that last blowup hit us, but he’s still in one piece.”

Kimber! That had been Kimber asking about him. But Dard hadn’t strength left to raise his head and look for the pilot.

“We’ll patch up Tremont first and send him under. You two will have to wait a while. Give them the soup and that first powder, Lui—”

Again Dard was given a drink-this time of hot steamy stuff which carried the flavor of rich meat. After it there was a capsule to be swallowed.

Bruises and aches-when he moved his body he was just one huge ache. But he straightened up and tried to take an interest in his surroundings. Santee, his shirt a few rags about his thick hairy shoulders and arms, squatted on another pull-down seat directly across from Dard. Along the passage outside there was a constant coming and going. Scraps of conversation reached them, most of which he did not understand.

“Feelin’ better, kid?” the big man asked.

Dard answered that muffled question with a nod and then wished that he hadn’t moved his head. “Are we going along?” he shaped the words with difficulty Santee’s beard wagged as he roared with laughter. “Like to see ’em throw us off ship now! What made you think we weren’t, kid?”

“No room- Kimber said.”

Laughter faded from the eyes of the man opposite him.

“Might not have been, kid. Only a lot of good men died back there puttin’ such a plug in the valley that these buggers aren’t goin’ to git in ’til too late. Since the warp’s still workin’, flyin’ won’t bring ’em neither. So we ain’t needed out there no more. An’ maybe some good fightin’ men will be needed where this old girl’s headed. So in we come, an’ they’re gonna pack us away with the rest of the cargo. Ain’t that so, Doc?” he ended by demanding of the tall young man who had just entered.

The newcomer’s parrot crest of blond hair stood up from his scalp in a twist like the stem of a pear and his wide eyes glowed with enthusiasm.

“You’re young Nordis, aren’t you?” he demanded of Dard, ignoring Santee. “I wish I could have known your brother! He-what he did-! I wouldn’t have believed such results possible if I hadn’t seen the formula! Hibernation and freezing-his formula combined with Tas’s biological experiments! Why, we’ve even put three of Hammond’s calves under-what grass they’ll graze on before they die! And it’s all due to Lars Nordis!”

Dard was too tired to show much interest in that. He wanted to go to sleep to forget everything and everybody.

"To sleep, perchance to dream"- the old words shaped pat- terns for him. Only-not to dream would be better now. Did one dream in space-and what queer dreams haunted men lying in slumber between worlds? Dard mentally shook himself-there was something important-something he had to ask before he dared let sleep come.

“Where’s Dessie?”

“Nordis’ little girl? She’s with my daughter-and my wife-they’re already under.”

“Under what?”

“In cold sleep. Most of the gang are now. Just a few of us still loading. Then Kimber, Kordov and I. We’ll ride out until Kimber is sure of the course before we stow away. All the rest of you—”

“Will be packed away before the take-off. Saves wear and tear on bodies and nerves under acceleration,” cut in Kimher from the doorway. He nodded over the medico’s shoulder at Dard. “Glad to have you aboard, kid. Promise you- no forced landings on this voyage. You’re to be sealed up in crew’s quarters-so you’ll wake early to see the new world!” And with that he was gone again.

Maybe it was the capsule acting now, maybe it was just that last reassurance from a man he had come to trust wholeheartedly, but Dard was warm and relaxed. To wake and see a new world!

Santee went away with Lui Skort, and Dard was alone. The noise in the corridor died away. At last he heard a warning bell. And a moment later the pound of heavy feet in a hurry roused him. The haste of that spoke of trouble, and with the support of the wall he got up to look out. Kimber was coming down a spiral stairway, the center core of the ship. In his hand was one of the snubnosed ray guns Sach had had. He passed Dard without a word.

Bracing his hands against the wall of the corridor, Dard shuffled along in his wake. Then he was peering out of an airlock to see the pilot squatting on the ramp. It was black night out-most of the flares had gone out.

Dard listened. He could hear at intervals the blast of the burper. The Peacemen were still doggedly attacking the cleft barrier. But what had Kimber come to guard and why? Have some important possessions been left in the caverns. Dard slumped against the lock and watched lights spark to life in the mouth of the tunnel. A man came out running, covering the ground to the foot of the ship’s ramp in ground-eating leaps. He dashed by Kimber, and Dard had just time enough to get back as Santee burst in.

“Get going!” The big man bore him along to the corridor and Kimber joined them. He touched some control and the hatch-lock was sealed.

Santee, panting, grinned. “Nice neat job, if I do say so myself,” he reported. “The space warp’s off an’ the final charge is set for forty minutes from now. We’ll blast before that?”

“Yes. Better get along both of you. Lui’s waiting and we don’t want to scrape a couple of acceleration cases off the floor later,” returned Kimber.

With the aid of the other two Dard pulled his tired body up the stair, past various landing stages where sealed doors fronted them. Kordov’s broad face appeared at last, surveying them anxiously, and it was he who lifted Dard up the last three steps. Kimber left them-climbing on through an opening above into the control chamber. He did not glance back or say any goodbyes.

“In here- ” Kordov thrust them ahead of him.

Dard, brought face to face with what that cabin contained, knew a sudden repulsion. Those boxes, shelved in a metal rack they too closely resembled coffins! And the rack was full except for the bottommost box which awaited open on the floor.

Kordov pointed to it. “That’s for you, Santee-built for a big boy. You’re lighter, Dard. We’ll fit you in on top over on the other side.”

A second rack stood against the farther wall with four more of the coffins ready and waiting. Dard shivered, but it was not only imagination-disturbed nerves which roughened his skin, there was a chill in the air-coming from the open boxes.

Kordov explained. “You go to sleep and then you freeze.”

Santee chuckled. “Just so you thaw us out again, Tas. I ain’t aimin’ to spend the rest of my life an icicle, so you brainy boys can prove somethin’ or other. Now what do we do climb in?”

“Strip first,” ordered the First Scientist. “And then you get a couple of shots.”

He pulled along a small rolling tray-table on which were laid a series of hypodermics. Carefully he selected two, one filled with a red brown liquid, the other with a colorless substance.

As Dard fumbled at the fastenings of the torn uniform he still wore, Santee asked a question for them both.

“An’ how do we wake up when the right time comes?

Got any alarms set in these contraptions?”

Those three—” Kordov indicated the three lower coffins on the far rack, “are especially fitted. Arranged to waken those inside, Kimber, Lui, and me, when the ship signals that it has reached the end of the course set, which will be when the instruments raise a sun enough like Sol to nourish earth-type planets. We feed that into her robot controls once we are free in space. During the voyage she may vary the pattern-to make evasion of meteors or for other reasons. But she will always come back on the set course, If we are close to a solar system when we are awakened, and Kimber has done everything possible to assure that, then we shall arouse any others needed to bring the ship down. Most of you won’t be awakened until after we land-there isn’t enough room.”

Kordov shrugged, “Who knows? No man has yet pioneered into the galaxy. It may be for generations.”

Santee rolled his discarded clothing into a ball and waited stoically for Kordov to give him the shots. Then with a wave of one big fist he climbed into the coffin and lay down. Kordov made adjustments at either end. Icy air welled up in a freezing puff. Santee’s eyes closed as the First Scientist moved the lid into place before setting the three dials on the side Their pointers swung until the needles came to rest at the far end. Kordov pushed the box back onto the rack.

“Now for you,” he turned to Dard.

The top box lowered itself on two long arms from the top of the other rack. Dard discarded his last piece of clothing with a vast reluctance. Sure, he could understand the theory of this-what his brother had worked out for them. But the reality-to be frozen within a box-to go sightlessly, helplessly into the void-perhaps never to awake! “With his teeth set hard he fought back the panic those thoughts churned up in him. And he was fighting so hard that the prick of the first injection came as a shock. He started, only to have Kordov’s hand close as a vise upon his upper arm and hold him steady for the second.

“That’s all—in with you now, son. See you in another world.”

Kordov was laughing, but Dard’s weak answering smile as he settled himself in the coffin had no humor in it. Because Kordov could be so very right. The cover was going on, he had an insane desire to scream out that he wasn’t going to be shut in this way-that he wanted out, not only of the box, but of the whole crazy venture. But the lid was on now. It was cold—so cold—dark-cold. This was space as man had always believed it would be—cold and dark-eternal cold and dark—without end.