^ Barton and Limila, Ren and Lisa, Mark and Elys- there were more in me cabal by now, but six were as many as could meet in public without drawing attention.

They took a central table, because the guards got nosy about groups that retired to the far corners. They had two co^ersations going: Barton giving his pitch to Bearpaw

495.

and Gyril, and Limila to the two women, all looking quite natural for low-voiced talk.

At the end of it, Bearpaw nodded. You're right; we have to break Ferenc loose now. If Soong blew the syn- chronous orbit, we could spiral into the planet or drift away with no place else to go."

"It's going to be tougher than it would have been at first," said Gyril, "before we had the checkpoint guards."

"Yeh, and Ferenc admits he goofed, there," Barton said. "But that's all down the spout; forget it. Now, is the gear ready, Bearpaw? And your stuff. Mark?"

They talked, and Barton decided he was as satisfied with the planning as he was going to be. He really thought Lisa Teragni should be in on the action if she wanted to, but all three women wanted in, and Elys purely wasn't up to it. Limila would have been, if not for the pregnancy, but she was slowed down, now. So with Bearpaw strong that Lisa shouldn't risk herself, Barton couldn't single her out from the three, as the one who was suitable.

Finally, after drinking too much coffee as an excuse to linger at table, the group adjourned. Bearpaw and Gyril were to alert the rest of the conspirators. And everything was set to move at noon of the next ship's-day, rigb.t at watch-change.

With a standard projectile weapon stuck in his belt, in case his sleep-gun ran out of charge. Barton walked a little ahead of Bearpaw. He didn't know where everybody else had got their armaments, but his had survived two searches of quarters, by Soong's guard-people. He hadn't been in the Army for nothing.

He was a little high on the antidote pul for the aerosol sleep-gas Gyril had come up with, and he hoped he could remember the beep-code their hand-talkies had been Changed to use. Vaguely he recalled that the sets worked by induction, along the power and signal conduits that spider-webbed the ship. So they might hit blind spots, but mostly they could communicate between themselves and the opposition wouldn't catch on.

He wished to hell he had his Shield, because nobody seemed to know whether the other side was using sleep- guns.

Barton dropped his first goon before the man could get a shot off. The second was female, and either she WP^,

4&6 .j

faster or the sleep-gun was losing charge, because she spanged one slug off the bulkhead beside him, a lot closer than Barton liked, before she fell.

Things seemed to move awfully fast; maybe it was Cyril's pill. They passed two checkpoints where the guards lay sprawled fiat, and Barton smelled the sleep-gas there.

Then someone shot at him, and he shot back and nothing happened, and from behind him, Bearpaw's gun gave a crashing report that made Barton's ears ring. The man ahead, slumping back against the bulkhead, clutched his right shoulder and let bis gun drop. Barton pulled out his slug-gun.

That was at one end of the corridor where Ferenc Szabo was trapped. Bearpaw worked his code-beeper. At the far end of the corridor, two goons. As Barton upended one of them with a deck ricochet to the lowet legs, a door came open. Looking around it, using it for a shield, Ferenc Szabo put the other foe down with a sleep-gun. To Barton, it seemed that the man certainly took his time

about it.

From behind, now, some people came running, but they were friendly troops who went past, to secure the other end of the corridor before any more of Soong's

partisans showed up.

Who got there first, though, were DabU and Tiriis.

AWOL from the nursery.

Barton could have used a quick council of war, but there didn't seem to be time for it. Ferenc waved thanks to him and Bearpaw as they walked to greet him, then turned, frowning a little, to watch the two Others ap- proach. Aside, be said, "Let's wait and see what they have to say, shall we?" Barton nodded.

Nearing the men, Tiriis raised an arm. "No more fight,"

she said. "No kill No need for fight."

"I'll decide that, I think," Ferenc said, "but go ahead, anyway. What's your point?" Either the business in the vicinity of Opal had built Barton's resistance to the Others' mental hanky-panky, or they weren't trying, now.

He couldn't feel a hint of push.

"We tried Soong," said Tiriis. "Was mistake."

"Yes, he was." That was Bearpaw. "At all times."

Ferenc shushed him. "Go on. What is it you want now?"

"^o want," Tiriis said. "No need. Just no fight more."

497.

Ferenc shook his head. "It takes two to stop a fight.

What does Soong say? Or his storm-troopers? Do you speak for them, too?"

For the first time, Dahil spoke. His bad arm still didn't look too useful, but if he was holding a grudge, it didn't show. "Soong mistake; Soong nothing. Say nothing. You want, we stop Soong people. No need fight."

Well, it go along and it go along, Barton thought, but the way it wound up was, no fight. It hadn't all been fun and games, by any means. Three humans were dead, two of Soong's and one of Ferenc's; Comm-Chief Rigan, that one was. More had been wounded, and were hurting.

But now maybe all that stuff was over and done with.

The aftermath seemed like anticlimax-but. Barton re- flected, that's the way it went sometimes, with wars. Soong went back into seclusion in his surrogate-quarters, not even guarded now, and Ferenc actually had his luxury items transferred there, as much as was feasible. Barton suspected that Ferenc would have let Soong have cap- tain's digs back, except that the screen circuits there, no longer disconnected at Comm, were awfully handy for command purposes. The F.T.L. transmitter was working again, too, but Ferenc wasn't ready to use it yet. '

The Others, near as Barton could tell, were sincerely horrified at the carnage they'd wrought. The deaths were final, but Dahil and Tiriis sat by the wounded and "thought on them," and recoveries proceeded faster than Barton would have believed. He found it impossible to keep feeling hostile toward enemies who wouldn't act like enemies. Well, if he had it figured right, the enmity part was all a big circumstantial mistake, anyway.

If he didn't, of course, then it was a whole new ball game.

Things had run a little close, there, but Ferenc Szabo at the primary pilot's console warped the ship's path into synchronous orbit around the planet ahead. The indica- tors looked right to Barton, but Ferenc watched for a time and made a couple more twiddling adjustments, be- fore he took a deep breath and cut the drive. Thu ship's hum dropped to a new level, barely audible.

Barton, sitting beside him and keeping his hands off any controls, bad been watching the world that now,

498.

somehow, was below them rather than "out there." He'd watched Ferenc, too, and while Barton figured he could have achieved orbit here if he'd had to do it, be was just as glad it hadn't been his turn this time.

The planet looked good. Barton took Ferenc's word that the axial tilt was small, meaning mild seasons, and that there was a good wide belt of temperate climate in each hemisphere. Cloud cover was considerably less than Earth's, more than Tilara's or Sisshain's. Land-to-water ratio was greater than Earth's, but the land was broken up into smaller, isolated masses. From this high. Barton couldn't tell about mountains or such.

Somebody, entering, broke Barton's train of thought.

The man was bringing coffee that Ferenc had asked for.

It was one of Soong's ex-goons; disarmed, those people were back at the nothing-iobs they'd held before Soong recruited them as bully-boys. Well, thought Barton, on a ship this size, somebody has to do that stuff, and nobody with any brains will sign on for it, so there we are. He thanked the fellow for the coffee when he was handed a

cup,

Ferenc hadn't said anything for a while; Barton turned his head to see the commander watching him, and said, "Something?"

"Yes. I've punched up a draft of the message I intend to send Base. Here's a readout. See what you think."

Barton took the flimsy, and read it, out loud: