"Know him well?"

"No, sir. No one did. He's SurTac."

The specials, the Surface Tactical operatives, were remote from the regul military, in all ways remote; peculiar rank, peculiar authorities, the habit of independence and irreverence for protocol. Koch shook his head, frowned, wondering if that was, even years ago, sufficient explanation for Sten Duncan. Governor Stavros, back in Kesrith zones, had trusted this wildness, enough to hand Duncan two mri prisoners and their captured navigational records. It had paid the dividend Stavros had reckoned; they were here, at the mri home world; and Duncan, with the mri contacts no one had ever been able to establish, came suing for peace. . . .

Then shot a regul in the same interview, bai Sharn, commander of Shirug, Shirug, lieutenant to humanity's highest placed ally among regul, and all plans were off. lieutenant to humanity's highest placed ally among regul, and all plans were off.

I have done an execution, have done an execution, Duncan had said. Duncan had said. The regul know what I am. They will not be surprised. The regul know what I am. They will not be surprised. You You know this. I can give you peace with Kutath now. know this. I can give you peace with Kutath now.

Mri arrogance. Duncan had been acutely uncomfortable, asked for a moment to drop the veil with which he covered his face.

"You worked with the man," Koch said, regarding Galey steadily. "You had time to exchange a few words with him in getting him back to Kutath. Impressions? Do you know him at all now?"

"Yes," Galey said. "It's what he was, back on Kesrith. Only it wasn't wasn't all the same. Now and again it's there, the way he was; and then . . . not. But "

"But you think you know him. You . . . were in the desert together back at Kesrith, recovered the records out of that shrine . . . had a little regul trouble then on the way back, all true?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hate the regul?"

"No love for them, sir."

"Hate the mri?"

"No love there either, sir."

"And SurTac Duncan?"

"Friend, sir."

Koch nodded slowly. "You know the pack he was given has a tracer."

"I don't think that will last long."

"You warned him?"

"No, sir, didn't know. But he's not anxious to have us find the mri at all; I don't think he'll let it happen."

"Maybe he won't. But then maybe his mri don't want him speaking for them. Maybe he told the truth and maybe he didn't. There are weapons on that world worth reckoning with."

"Wouldn't know, sir."

"Your first run down there, you took damage."

"Some. Shaken about. What I hear, it's old stuff. I didn't see anything to say different; no fields, no life, no ships. Nothing, either time. Only ruins. That's what I hear it was."

"Less than that down there now."

"Yes, sir."

A dying world, cities decayed and empty, machines drawing solar power to live; armaments returning fire with mechanical lack of pa.s.sion; and the mri themselves. . . .

Rock and sand, Duncan had said, Duncan had said, dune and flats. The mri will not be easy to find. dune and flats. The mri will not be easy to find.

If it's true, Koch thought. Koch thought. If there are no ships in their control, and if all cities are machine life only. If there are no ships in their control, and if all cities are machine life only.

"You think they pose no threat to us," Koch said.

"Wouldn't know that either, sir."

There was Reeling of cold at Koch's gut. It lived there, sometimes small, sometimes when he thought of the voyage behind them larger. It grew when he thought of the hundred twenty-odd worlds at their backs, a swath which marked the trail mri had followed out from Kutath to Kesrith, a trail eons old at the beginning and recent at the farther end, in human s.p.a.ce, where the mri had been ma.s.sacred. Before that, along that strip all worlds were scoured of life . . . more than desert; dead.

Mri hired themselves for mercenaries. Presumably they had done so more than once, until the regul turned on them and ended them.

Ended a progress across the galaxy which left no life in its wake, a hundred twenty-odd systems which by all statistical process should have held life, which might have supported intelligent species.

Void, if they had ever been there . . . gone, without memory, even to know what they had been, why the mri had pa.s.sed there, or what they had sought in pa.s.sing.

Only Kesrith survived, trail's end.

I have done an execution, have done an execution, Duncan had said, black-robed, mri to the heart of him. And; Duncan had said, black-robed, mri to the heart of him. And; The regul know what I am. The regul know what I am.

"Bai Sharn," Koch said, "is being transported back to her ship. There is is no regul authority with us now; the rest are only younglings. They can probably handle no regul authority with us now; the rest are only younglings. They can probably handle Shirug Shirug competently enough, but nothing more, without some adult to direct them. That puts things wholly into our laps. competently enough, but nothing more, without some adult to direct them. That puts things wholly into our laps. We We deal with the mri, if Duncan can get their holy she'pan to come in and talk peace. deal with the mri, if Duncan can get their holy she'pan to come in and talk peace. We We run operations up here. And if we misread signals, we don't get any second chance. If we get ourselves ambushed, if we die here then the next thing human s.p.a.ce run operations up here. And if we misread signals, we don't get any second chance. If we get ourselves ambushed, if we die here then the next thing human s.p.a.ce and and regul may know is more mri arriving, to take up the track the others left at Kesrith, and this time, this time with a grudge. The thing we've seen . . . regul may know is more mri arriving, to take up the track the others left at Kesrith, and this time, this time with a grudge. The thing we've seen . . . continued. continued. Is that understood, out among the crew?" Is that understood, out among the crew?"

"Yes, sir," Galey said hoa.r.s.ely. "Don't know whether they know about the regul, but the other, yes, it's something I think everybody reckons."

"You don't want to make a mistake in judgment, do you? You don't want to make a mistake on the side of friendship and botch a report You wouldn't hold back information you could get out of SurTac Duncan. You understand how high the stakes are ... and what an error could do down there."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sending Flower Flower and the science staff back down. Dr. Luiz and Boaz are friends of his. He'll talk with them, trust them, as far as he likely trusts any human now. I have need of someone else, potentially. What we want is a subst.i.tute for a SurTac, someone who can operate in that kind of terrain." He watched the apprehension grow, and a twinge of pity came on him. "Our options are limited. We have pilots we could better risk. You're rated for and the science staff back down. Dr. Luiz and Boaz are friends of his. He'll talk with them, trust them, as far as he likely trusts any human now. I have need of someone else, potentially. What we want is a subst.i.tute for a SurTac, someone who can operate in that kind of terrain." He watched the apprehension grow, and a twinge of pity came on him. "Our options are limited. We have pilots we could better risk. You're rated for Santiago, Santiago, and you know your value . . . don't have to tell you that. But it's not a matter of skill in that department. It's the land, and a sense of things you understand what I'm saying." and you know your value . . . don't have to tell you that. But it's not a matter of skill in that department. It's the land, and a sense of things you understand what I'm saying."

"Sir-"

"I want you first of all reserved. reserved. Just prep. We keep our options open. Maybe things will work out with mri contact. If not . . . you have a good rapport with the civs, don't you?" Just prep. We keep our options open. Maybe things will work out with mri contact. If not . . . you have a good rapport with the civs, don't you?"

"I've been in and out of the ship more than most, maybe."

"They know you."

"Yes, sir."

"In some things down there, that could be valuable; and you've been in the desert."

"Yes, sir," the answer came faintly.

"I want you available, whenever and wherever SurTac Dun-can comes into contact with us; I want you available if he doesn't. Willing?"

"Yes, sir."

"You'll have some semblance of an office, whatever scan materials we come up with, original and interpreted. Whatever you think you need." Koch delayed a moment more, pursed his lips in thought. "It took Duncan some few days to get from the mri to groundbase; allow ten, eleven days. That's the margin. Understood?"

It was; it very much was, Koch reckoned. He had a sour taste in his mouth for the necessity.

One covered all the possibilities.

A private office; that was status. Someone had put a card on the door, the temporary sort; lt comdh james b galey, beoon & operations Galey keyed open the lock, turned on the light, finding a bare efficiency setup, barren walls, down to the rivets; and a desk and a comp terminal. He settled in behind the desk, shifted uncomfortably in the unfamiliar chair, keyed in library.

orders; the machine interrupted him with its own program. He signaled acceptance. select compatible crew of three AND RESERVE CREW, GROUND OPERATIONS, REPORT CHOICE ADM SOONEST. AND RESERVE CREW, GROUND OPERATIONS, REPORT CHOICE ADM SOONEST.

He leaned back, hands sweating. He little liked the prospect of taking himself down there; the matter of selecting others for a high-risk operation was even less to his taste.

He' made up a demanding qualifications list and started search through personnel. Comp denied having any personnel with drylands experience. He erased that requirement and started through the others, erased yet another requirement and ran it again, with the sense of desperation he began to understand Koch shared.

They were Haveners on this mission, and for all the several world-patches on his sleeve, won on this ship, there was nothing they had met like this save Kesrith itself; there was no time at which they had relied on themselves and not on their machines. Saber Saber had not been chosen for this mission; it had gone because it was available. As for experience with mri none of them had had that, save at long range. had not been chosen for this mission; it had gone because it was available. As for experience with mri none of them had had that, save at long range.

Devastation from orbit; that had been their function until now. Now there was the barest hope this would not be the case. He was not given to personal enthusiasm in his a.s.signments; but this one a means of avoiding slaughter that possibility occurred to him.

Or the possibility of being die one to call down holocaust; that was the other face of the matter.

He did not sleep well. He sat by day and pored over what data they could give him, the scan their orbiting eyes could gather, the monotone reports of comp that no contact had been made.

Flower descended to the surface. Data returned from that source. Day by day, there was no reply from Duncan, no sighting of mri. descended to the surface. Data returned from that source. Day by day, there was no reply from Duncan, no sighting of mri.

He received word from the admiral's office; selections ratified. shibo, kadahin, lane; matjst mission. harris, north, bright, magee; backup. proceed.

The days crawled past, measured in the piecing of maps and vexing lapses in ground-s.p.a.ce communication as NaYin's storms crept like plague across its sickly face. He took what information mapping department would give him, prowled Supply, thinking.

The office became papered with charts, a composite of the world, overlaid in plastics, red-inked at those sites identified in scan, mri cities, potential targets.

He talked with the crew, gave them warning. There was still the chance that the whole project would be scrubbed, that by some miracle Flower Flower would call up contact, declaring peace a reality, the matter solved, the mri willing to deal. would call up contact, declaring peace a reality, the matter solved, the mri willing to deal.

The hope ebbed, hourly.

Chapter Two.

Windshift had begun, that which each evening attended the cooling of the land, and Hlil tucked his black robes the more closely about him as he rested on his heels, scanning the dunes, taking breath after his long walking.

The tribe was not far now, tucked down just over the slope by the rim, where the land fell away in days' marches of terraces and cliffs, and the sea chasms gaped, empty in this last age of the world. Sencaste said that even that void would fill, ultimately, the sands off the high flats drifting as they did in sandfalls and curtains off the windy edges, to the far, hazy depths. Somewhere out there was the bottom of the world, where all motion stopped, forever; and that null-place grew, yearly, eating away at the world. The chasms girdled the earth; but they were finite, and there were no more mountains, for they had all worn away to nubs. It was a place, this site near the rims, where one could look into time, and back from it; it quieted the soul, reminded one of eternity, in this moment that one could not look into the skies without dreading some movement, or reckoning with alien presence.

The ruins of An-ehon lay just over the horizon to the north, to remind them of that power, which had made them fugitives in their own land, robbed of tents, of belongings, of every least thing but what they had worn the morning of the calamity. There was the bitterness of looking about the camp, and missing so many, so very many, so that at every turn, one would think of one of the lost as if that one were in camp, and then realize, and shiver. He was kel'en, of the warrior caste; death was his province, and it was permitted him to grieve, but he did not There was dull bewilderment in that part of him which ought by rights to be touched. In recent days he felt outnumbered by the dead, as if all the countless who had gone into the Dark in the slow ages of the sea's dying ought ratter to mourn the living. He did not comprehend the causes of things. Being kel'en, he neither read nor wrote, held nothing of the wisdom of sen-caste, which sat at the feet of a she'pan alien to this world and learned. He knew only the use of his weapons, and tke kel-law, those things which were proper for a kel'en to know.

It had become appropriate to know things beyond Kutath; he tried, at least The Kel was the caste which veiled, the Face that Looked Outward. That Outward had become more than the next rising of the land; it was outsiders and ships and a manner of fighting which the ages had made only memory on Kutath, and pride and the Holy the Kel defended forbade that he should flinch from facing it, since it came.

They had a kel'anth, the G.o.ds defend them! who had come out of that Dark; they had a she'pan who had taken them from the gentle she'pan who had Mothered the tribe before her. . . young and scarred with the kel-scars on her face; fit he thought, that the she'pan of this age should bear kel-marks, which testified she once had been of Kel-caste, had once attained skill with weapons. A she'pan of a colder, fiercer stamp, this Melein slntel; no Mother to play with the children of the Kath as their own Sochil had done, to spend more time with the gentle Kath than with Sen-caste, to love rather than to be wise. Melein was a chill wind, a breath out of the Dark; and as for her kel'anth, her warrior-leader. . . .

Him, Hlil almost hated, not for the dead in An-ehon, which might be just; but for the kel'anth he had killed to take the tribe. It was a selfish hate, and Hlil resisted it; such resentments demeaned Merai, who had lost challenge to this Niun sTnteL Merai had died, in fact because gentle Sochil had turned fierce when challenged; fear, perhaps; or a mother's bewildered rage, that a stranger-she'pan demanded her children of her, to lead them where she did not know. So Merai was dead; and Sochil, dead. Of Merai's kinship there was only his sister left; of his tribe there was a fugitive remnant; and the Honors which Merai had won in his life, a stranger possessed.

Even Hlil. . . this stranger had gained, for kel-law set the victor in the stead of the vanquished, to the last of his kin debts and blood debts and place debts. Hlil was second to Niun s'lntel as he had been second to Merai. He sat by this stranger in the Kel, tolerated proximity to the strange beast which was Niun's shadow, bore with the grief which haunted the kel'anth's acts . . . which could not, he was persuaded, be distraction for the slaughter of a People the kel'anth had not time to know but which more attended the disappearance of the kel'anth's other alien shadow, which walked on two feet That the kel'anth at least grieved ... it was a mortality which bridged one alienness between them, him and his new kel'anth. They shared something, at least; if not love . . . loss.

Hlil gathered up a sandy pebble from the crumbling ridge on which he rested, cast it at a tiny pattern in the sands downslope. It hit true, and a nest of spiny arms whipped up to enfold the suspected prey. Sand-star. He had suspected so. His hunting was not so desperate that he must bring that that to the women and children of Kath. It wriggled away, a disturbance through the sand, and he let it. A pair of serpents, a fat darter, a stone's weight of game; he had no cause to be ashamed of his day's effort, and there was a stand of pipe growing within the camp, so that they had no desperate need of moisture, certainly not the bitter fluid of the star. It nestled into safety next to some rocks, spread its arms wide again, a pattern of depressions in the sand. He did not torment it further; it was off the track so, and offered no threat Kel-law forbade excess. to the women and children of Kath. It wriggled away, a disturbance through the sand, and he let it. A pair of serpents, a fat darter, a stone's weight of game; he had no cause to be ashamed of his day's effort, and there was a stand of pipe growing within the camp, so that they had no desperate need of moisture, certainly not the bitter fluid of the star. It nestled into safety next to some rocks, spread its arms wide again, a pattern of depressions in the sand. He did not torment it further; it was off the track so, and offered no threat Kel-law forbade excess.

And in time, with the sun's lowering, kel'ein came. Hlil sat his place, sentinel to the homecoming path, and marked them in, as he had known by the fact this post was vacant, that none had come in before him. They saw him as they pa.s.sed, lifted hands in salute; he knew their names and put a knot in the cords at his belt for each knew them veiled as they were, by their manners and then; stature and simply by their way of walking, for they were his own from boyhood. Had there been one of higher rank than he that one would have come and relieved him of this post, to take up the tally; there was none, so he stayed, as they entered the perimeter of the secure area of the camp.

They came in groups as the sun touched the horizon, appearing like mirages out of the land, so well they judged their time, to meet at homecoming after hunting apart all day; black-robed, like drifting shadows, they pa.s.sed in the amber twilight, while the sun stained the rocks and touched the hazy depths of the sea basins, going down over the far, invisible rim as if it vanished in midair, drawing out shadows.

The knots filled one cord and another and another, until all the tale was told but two.

Hlil looked eastward, and of certainty, at the mid of sunfall, there came Ras. He need not have worried, he told himself. Has would not be careless, not she kel'e'en of the Kel's second highest rank. No reasoning with her, nothing but ordering her outright, and he could not, even if it were wise.

Ras s'Sochil Kov-Nelan. Merai's truesister.

Of that too, Niun had robbed him. They had been a trio, Hlil and Merai and Ras, in happier days; and he had dreamed dreams beyond his probabilities. He was skilled; that was his claim to place; he had Merai's friendship; and because of that he had been always near Ras. He had taught her, being older; had gamed with her and with Merai; had watched her every day of her life . . . and watched her harden since Merai's death. Her mother, Nelan, had been one of those who failed to come out of An-ehon; of that Ras said nothing. Ras laughed and spoke and moved, took meals with the Kel and went through all the motions of life; but she was not Ras as he had known her. She followed Niun s'lntel, as once, as a kath-child, she had followed him; where Niun walked, she was shadow; where he rested, she waited. It was a land of madness, a game lacking humor or sense; but they were all a little mad, who survived An-ehon and served the she'pan Melein.

Ras arrived, in her own time, paused on the path below the rocks began, wearily, to climb up to him. When she had done so, she sank down on the flat stone beside him, arms dropped loosely over her knees, her body heaving with her breaths.

"Did you hunt well?" he asked, although he knew what game she hunted.

"A couple of darters." It was not, for her, good. And it was a long walk that brought Ras back out of breath.

Kflil looked out, and in the darkening east, there were two dots on the horizon. The kel'anth and the beast, strung far apart "East," Has said beside him, finding breath to speak. "Always east, along the same track. He would have brought back no game at all, but the beast routs things out for him. He delays only to gather it, and he takes long steps, this kel'anth of ours."

"Ras," he objected.

"He knows I am there."

He gathered up another stone, rolled it between his fingers. Ras simply rested, catching her breath.

"Why?" he said finally. "Ras let him be. Anger serves no purpose; it dies unless you go on nursing it"

"And you do not"

"I am thekel'anth's second."

"So you were," she said, which was a heart-shot; and a moment later she looked on him with something like her old fondness. "You can be. I envy you."

"I have no love for him."

She accepted that offering in silence. Her fingers stole, as they would, to one of the many Honors which hung from her belts. Merai's death gift, that one, from Niun's hand.

"We cannot challenge him," she said. "Law forbids, if it were revenge for Merai; but there are other causes. Just causes."