Hishtoo. But I am provided a communicator; I can call you at any time."

Barton looked at the device and flipped its largest switch. The screen flickered, lit, and showed Myra Hake.

She said, "Yes, Barton? I thought this was Eeshta's channel."

"It is. Just checking. See you pretty soon." He cut the circuit. "Okay, Eeshta-but call me any time you need to-you hear?" Eeshta nodded. Barton put his arm around the small shoulders, squeezing hard for a mo- ment before he released his grip.

Sholur entered. "It is that now you go to your ship.^

"Yes," said Barton. "That we do not delay." He and Limila, Gerain and livajj gathered their accessories and followed Sholur-not to ground level but a staging area on their own level, where an aircar waited. A white- robed Demu sat at the controls The four entered.

"It is that I may not leave here," said Sholur, "but that this one knows where you go now. And it is that if Eeshta says you would talk with me, I come to do, so, as soon as I may."

"Sholur, it is that I thank you for your help. But that I do not understand entirely why that help comes so freely."

For a moment Sholur did not speak. Then, "Barton, whom I find where you are not to be-it is that perhaps you may succeed where the Keepers of the Heritage do not." Sholur turned away, and the aircar left the great ship.

At first the flight path was level; then it dropped to follow the contour of the mountain. Interested, Barton looked down to see if he could locate landmarks of the previous day's trek. He caught a glimpse of the slant- ing ridge and the talus slope at its head, and then the aircar swooped at treetop level and landed beside Ship One. The group disembarked; Barton turned back.

"It is that you fly with skill," he said to the pilot.

The Demu looked at him, then spoke. "It is that Sholur, Keeper of the Heritage, tells me to bring you here in safety. It is that if he did not, you are dead among the stones of the mountain-and I with you, gladly." The aircar lifted.

His laugh. Barton realized, was shaky; it didn't quite

328.

make it. "Well, the troops don't always agree with the generals, do they? Let's get the hell into the ship."

Barton called the conference in the galley, with view- screen and alarms on relay from Control. He opened a beer and sat.

A sound like thunder made the ship vibrate. 'There goes Sholur's envoy to Demmon, to call off the war," be said.

"But can it get there before the other?" asked Limila.

"Doesn't matter- The messenger on the first ship was only that. This time he sent his personal number-two fella. You can tell he's Number Two by the white edges on his gold burnoose.

"Sholur's something on the order of a priest-king; what he says, goes. We won't have any trouble-or not much.

Now let's all bring each other up to date. Abdul?'*

"Nothing significant has occurred here since we last spoke. But 1 have a question. Now that our' drive is operable, do you plan to rendezvous with the fleet?"

"No, we'll wait here, for Tarleton. He should run into the relay beams pretty soon, from Thirteen and Thirty-four, so he'll know what the score is. I'd like to see his face when he finds out the fleet has an educa- tional mission on its hands instead of a war to fight. Af- ter the first jolt I expect he'll be a happy mani"

"I should think so," said ^Myra Hake. Then, "Bar- ton? Is it true that most of the Demu who try to 'become'

kill themselves when they come out of shock?"

"The attrition rate is something awful-nearly ninety percent. Sholur says the percentage is improving, that someday the Demu will be able to face the truth without mass suicides. But the Keepers think in terms of thou- sands of years-and we can't wait that long to have the raiding stopped.

"It's ironic, really. The Demu outgun us-even the combined fleets-so badly I hate to think about it. But the poor hard-shelled bastards are hopelessly vulnerable to one simple thing-the truth."

"Look, Barton," said Alene Grover. "Maybe every- body else gets it-you've talked all around it-but I'm still in the dark. What's your gimmick?"

"Abdul hasn't told you?"

"I have told no one," said Abdul Muhammed. "The information I sent out was locked and coded, as you in-

329.

structed, to Tarieton's private cipher. I couldn't decode that tape myself." f

"So except for those of us who were in there, you're the only one who knows?"

"And soon, of course, Tarleton."

"Right. Well, this info is Top Sphinx-it has to be, be- cause it could destroy the Demu as a race and a lot of people would like to do Just that. But I think everybody on this ship has earned the right to know it. Just remem- ber-not only you don't tell it, you don't even admit you heard it. Okay?

"All right. I took some pictures in there. ~Look at them, Alene-Myra, Cheng." He handed them out. "See the big fellas, with the extra arms and legs? -Well, they were the Great Race, and that ship was theirs. The Demu just copied it, partially."

"You can be sure of that?" said Abdul.

"The seats in the control room are built for people with four legs. Good enough?" Abdul nodded, and Bar- ton continued. "It must be hell to have to live in the shadow of something like that. The Demu chose not to.

Instead, they wiped the Great Race out of the official version of Demu history. Then they overreacted, and began teaching their young that the Demu are the only true people, that all other races are merely animals."

"This Great Race-" said Alene. "What happened to it?"

"Even the Keepers don't know that one. There was a war, against somebody or something. During it, the Great Race cleared the lower Arm of habitable planets.

Then they just... disappeared."

"I still don't see the problem," Alene said. "Okay- so a long time ago there was somebody a lot bigger. So what?" t

"Not just bigger, Alene-look at the pictures. The Demu you see there aren't the same as the ones we know.

Maybe they weren't even iptelligent, originally-maybe the Great Race changed them genetically. If that's true, all this surgical changing of other races began as imitation-as playing at being the Great Race them- selves.

"But that's not all of it. If you look closely, you cao't miss it. To the Great Race, the Demu were not only animals-they were pets!

330.

I.

"That is the knowledge that kills ninety percent of the Demu who face it."

"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!" said Alene Grover.

His ninth day on Sisshain, Barton was standing watch alone when Ship Thirteen relayed a call from Tarleton. The picture was fuzzy but the voice came through clearly.

"Hello, Bartoni I've -studied all the material you seat up. You win a pretty good war, don't you?" The big man laughed. "Well, I don't mind if your name beats mine out, in the history books."

"Mine's easier to spell," said Barton, deadpan. "Hey, you sure got here pretty soon."