The Battlemaster swung The vehicle in a hard right turn and took it off the level into a deep thicket of dry vegetation. With a crash the ATV rolled over, brambles scraping against the skin.

Bullets continued to peck away through the brush. The Secondary Form had been hit; two wounds in its side were leaking internal fluids. The Battlemaster assisted the Secondary Form out of the vehicle, and then both of them beat a retreat, continueing to the right through the dried-up brambles until they broke out into a hanging canyon where the vegetation thinned among boulders and bare patches of limestone.

The Secondary Form's wounds prevented it from taking aggressive actions. The Battlemaster gave it the gun. It would provide covering fire if needed.

They went on, pushing through the thickets in search of a path or thinner vegetation.

A few minutes later they caught the first glimpse of their attackers. Men in ragged uniforms of green were approaching the thicket from the slope above. They carried weapons.

The Battlemaster moved sideways, up the slopes of the canyon through a series of gulleys in the gravel.

Once above the approaching humans a vantage point was secured from which the humans could be watched as they investigated the ATV.

The humans looked up and around, guns ready, but they found no target. Through unaided eyes the Battlemaster was too far off to be seen.

On the other band, the Battlemaster could read the print on the ammunition packs on their belts. It could tell the color of their eyes at a thousand meters. It could determine that their weapons were rifled ballistic projectors. The Battlemaster was familiar with that class of device.

Now scouts went forward, tracking the passage of the Battlemaster and Secondary Form through the brambles to the point where they had turned aside and begun to climb.

The others had begun to reverse the ATV out of the thickets and back onto the level ground.

The Battlemaster moved again, circling back toward the higher ground of the plateau above the canyon, intending to get behind the humans busied about the vehicle.

Where had they come from? How many of them were there?

These were vital questions.

The Secondary Form was slowing down. Its wounds were serious; a period of rest and recuperation was required to heal the wounds and repair the damage to internal organs.

The Battlemaster cast about itself. Above their position gaped a cave; this was limestone country with typical erosion surfaces.

The Secondary Form was sent into the cave and left behind. The Battlemaster retraced its tracks, erasing most of the evidence of their passage. Then, hefting the gun, it went on, around behind the humans and through the ambush point and down a shallow valley.

To one side lay a boxed-in canyon, a pocket eroded from the limestone behind a barrier of some harder stuff.

The Battlemaster discerned movements within this canyon. It moved to gain a vantage point above the open space within.

Here extreme care had to be used to avoid detection by the humans. There were lookouts posted above on the tops of a rock spire at one side of the canyon entrance.

The Battlemaster reached a position within a cleft of rock. A nest of wild bees was nearby, and they reacted to the presence of the intruder with a few stings.

The intruder did not react to the stings and did not make any overtly hostile move toward the nest. The bees gave up after a while and went back to their daily round.

The Battlemaster ignored the stings, though the hostform jerked with each one. As the histamine reaction began the Battlemaster intervened to damp it down; the hostform could be required for peak activity at any moment.

After a while the other humans returned, mostly in a group accompanying the ATV that had been rescued from the brambles.

Others appeared from the caves and formed a group around the ATV. Some began to disassemble it.

The fuel cells were removed and examined.

Exercising extreme care, the Battlemaster worked its way back up the slopes behind the box canyon and eventually returned to the narrow cave where the Secondary Form was hiding.

All was undisturbed. The Secondary Form had healed its wounds and begun the repair of the internal organs. However, both hostforms were hungry and food was required.

The Battlemaster hunted through the thickets and discovered a rabbit, which it ran down and killed. It gave the rabbit to the Secondary Form and went on until it had found a couple of sluggish lizards. These it ate quickly, stripping off the skins and jerking the flesh down the gullet.

To supplement this the Battlemaster tried various plants growing wild. Many had defensive alkaloids, but from sorrel and wild parsley it took several sprigs for their essential vitamins.

Quite rapidly the food replenished the Battlemaster's strength.

With the Secondary Form following close behind it began to move back toward the box canyon where the humans were encamped.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

THEY FINALLY TRACKED HER DOWN TO A SMALL TOWN IN North Trios, in the Banbury Valley.

It was a plain little house, a white rancher on a two-acre plot. When she came to the door she seemed surprised by all the attention.

An ominous Shark gunship hovered overhead on thudding rotors. Police vehicles were stretched along the street.

She was wearing a simple blue dress and no shoes. There was an open bottle of wine on the table.

She'd been writing something; a screen glittered with amber text.

Then, as Chang's men charged in, she looked Luisa in the eye and said, "I suppose it was inevitable that you'd find me."

"We've had a planetwide search for the past forty-eight hours, sister."

The silver star on Luisa Chang's lapel seemed to fascinate her. Luisa waited on the doorstep while the security team ran through the place.

"You'd better come in, I suppose," Caroline Reese said after a moment.

Chang followed her in. A minicam team was taping everything for Scopus Central; everything had to be by the book.

"I tried to tell someone, you must know that."

"Why did you run?" Chang said.

Caroline Reese shrugged She was floating; it was almost as if what they were talking about involved someone else, faraway, like a distant relative.

Chang felt her irritation rising fast.

"Does it matter?" Reese said.

Chang slammed a fist on the table; the bottle jumped and fell over and rolled off but did not break.

"Yes, damn you!" she roared. "It matters a great deal. Millions of lives are at stake, maybe billions."

Stupid, sullen resentment flared in Caroline's eyes.

"Nothing at stake in my life, is there? I'm fucked any way you look at it, right?"

Chang compressed her lips to keep the anger bottled up. "Damn right. Your consideration for the rest of the human race will be taken into account at your trial." Her voice was cold.

Reese flushed, heaved her shoulders awkwardly.

"I tried, I really did. I'm not very brave, I'm just an ordinary person. I mean I just couldn't handle it.

Anyway I warned you, I went there, but they didn't believe me. They thought I was crazy."

"And you ran away."

"I couldn't go back, I couldn't go back there and I knew you would want me to and I couldn't face it."

"You ran. . ."

"You knew enough, you knew. .

Chang stood up. The security team was expressionless, hands on weapons.

"We still haven't found the damn thing. It could be anywhere."

Caroline looked up with hope in her eyes.

"Then it wasn't so dangerous after all."

"It's dangerous all right, it's just biding. We don't know why and we don't know where."

"You can't be very good at searching for it, then, can you?"

Chang's temper was close to breaking. They'd lost days searching for this damn woman.

"Arrest her," Chang snapped.

"To the base, Colonel?"

"No, to CKC, the consulate roofport. She'll be going to Cluster Command after we get a mindprobe completed."

From Banbury Valley they flew north and east aboard the Shark, a thundering colossus of black armor-plated weaponry. Chang bad given up the old Skua for the moment because of the need for speed and possible offensive capability. The Shark had plenty of both.

Before they got within sight of CK City, though, Chang had a call from Rugesh Pradesh, chief detective of the CKCPD.

Rudesh got off on the wrong foot with an alarming quickness.

"Colonel Chang, I believe you have a prisoner of ours," he began.

"Correction," snapped Luisa. "The prisoner is an ITAA prisoner on her way to ITAA interrogation."

"I'm sorry, Colonel, but you have possession of one Reese, Caroline Susan, biological age thirty-six, born in North Trias."

"I do."

"Then I have to tell you she's wanted here for questioning in connection with the murder of a professor at Cowdray University.,'

"I know about your investigation and I assure you that you'll get your crack at her, but not for a few months. She's on her way to Sector Fleet Command, as soon as we complete the psych test and clear her ID."

"You can't take her offplanet! What the hell you think you're doing, Colonel? She's wanted in a murder case."

"This is Directive 115, Mr. Pradesh. Local jurisdiction is superseded."

"Look, don't try and give me that cockamamie garbage. That may be good enough for the yokels down there in Doisy, but not in my city, you understand me, Colonel?"

Chang shook her head. "I don't know, Mr. Pradesh, I don't write the rules. Why don't you read the directive; I know you were sent a copy."

"All that stuff about alien lifeforms? You must be crazy. If you think we can stop a big city's legal business over some kind of lettuce from space, you have to be out of your mind."

"Lettuce! What is this lettuce?" Luisa shrieked.

"Well, whatever it is I don't care, you aren't removing any murder suspects from anywhere within my authority, you got that?"

"What are you telling me, Chief, you intend to fire on me when I land at the consulate?"

"We will have to keep all options open."

"Chief, I'm coming in aboard a Shark-class gunship. You got any, idea what a Shark can do if you get it mad?"

"We're not helpless, you know."

"Yeah, but you've got a big city to protect. You have a shoot-out with a Shark over your city and it'll be a lot smaller city afterward. When they've finished with you you'll be in an ITAA prison for two hundred years. This is Directive 115; I am ordered to send this woman to Admiral Heidheim aboard the Empress Wu immediately. Don't interfere, you'll get your chance to talk to her later."

"I can stop you on the ground," growled Pradesh.

"And I will drop the 624 OSF on the Air&Space complex forthwith and there will be a lot of casualties. You want that on your head then go ahead, do something stupid."

"Dammit, you don't have the authority to pull this shit and get away with it."

"Look, Pradesh, if you can't read the directive then you go ahead and try and stop me. If I'm wrong and you're right, you're still going to get lifted for the casualties. So either way you lose if you do that.

You can't lose if you just stay out of it."

Chief Pradesh considered this with a grumpy face. Finally he heaved a sigh.