"So how do you escape from a planet?"

Sam opened her mouth-and hesitated.

"If you can come up with an idea, I'll be delighted to listen." Dar's eyes glinted.

Sam shut her mouth with an angry snap. "Get going! All you have to do is get going fast enough! Escape velocity!"

"Great idea! How do I do it? Run real fast? Flap my arms?"

"Spare me the sarcasm! You hijack a spaceship, of course!"

"We have thought of it," Dar mused. "Of course, there's only one spaceship per month. You came in on it, so you know: Where does it go?"

"Well, it's a starship, so it can't land. It just goes into orbit. Around the ... uh ..."

"Moon." Dar nodded. "And a shuttle brings you down to the moon's surface, and you have to go into the terminal there through a boarding tube, because you don't have a spacesuit. And there're hidden video pickups in the shuttle, and hidden video pickups all through the terminal, so the starship's crew can make sure there aren't any escaping prisoners waiting to try to take over the shuttle."

"Hidden video pickups? What makes you think that?"

"Shacklar. He told us about them, just before he sent the guards home."

"Oh." Sam chewed it oven "What would they do if they did see some prisoners waiting to take over the shuttle?"

"Bleed off the air and turn off the heaters. It's a vacuum up there, you know. And the whole terminal's remote-controlled, by the starship; there isn't even a station master you can clobber and steal keys from."

Sam shuddered.

"Don't worry," Dar soothed. "We couldn't get up there, anyway."

Sam looked up. "Why not?"

Dar spread his hands. "How did you get down here?"

"The base sent up a ferry to bring us down."

Dar nodded. "Didn't you wonder why it wasn't there waiting for you when you arrived?"

"I did think it was rather inconsiderate," Sam said slowly, "but spaceline travel isn't what it used to be."

"Decadent," Dar agreed. "Did you notice when the ferry did come up?"

"Now that you mention it ... after the starship left."

Dar nodded. "Just before it blasted out of orbit, the starship sent down a pulse that unlocked the ferry's engines-for twenty-four hours."

"That's long enough. If you really had any gumption, you could take over the ferry after it lands, go back up to the moon, and wait a few months for the next starship."

"Great! We could bring sandwiches, and have a picnic-a lot of sandwiches; they don't store any rations up there, so we'd need a few months' worth. They'd get a little stale, you know? Besides, the ferry's engines automatically relock after one round trip. But the real problem is air"

"I could breathe in that terminal."

"You wouldn't have if you'd stayed around for a day. The starship brings in a twenty-four-hour air supply when it comes. They send an advance crew to come in, turn it on, and wait for pressure before they call down the shuttle." Dar gazed up at the sky. "No, I don't think I'd like waiting for a ship up there, for a month. Breathing CO2 gets to you, after a while."

"It's a gas," Sam said in a dry icy tone. "I take it Shacklar set up this darling little system when he came?"

"No, it was always here. I wouldn't be surprised if it were standard for prison planets. So, by the time Shacklar'd managed to reach the surface of Wolmar, he knew there wasn't really any need for guards."

"Except to keep you from killing each other! How many convicts were here for cold-blooded murder?"

"Not too many, really; most of the murderers were hot-blooded." He shuddered at the memory. "Very. But there were a handful of reptiles- and three of them were power-hungry, too."

"Why?" Sam looked up, frowning. "I mean, how much power could they get? Nothing that counts, if they couldn't leave the planet."

"If you'll pardon my saying so, that's a very provincial view. I mean, there's a whole planet here."

"But no money."

"Well, not real money, no. But I didn't say they were out to get rich; 1 said they were out for power."

"Power over a mud puddle? A handful of soldiers? What good is that?"

"Thanks for rubbing my nose in it," Dar snapped.

"Oh! I'm sorry." Sam's eyes widened hugely. "I just turn off other people's feelings, sometimes. I get carried away with what I'm saying."

"Don't we all?" Dar smiled bleakly, sawing his temper back. "I suppose that's how the lust for power begins."

"How-by ignoring other people's feelings?"

Dar nodded. "Only worrying about how you feel. I suppose if you're the boss, you feel safer, and that's all that really matters."

"Not the bosses I've met. They're always worrying about who's going to try to kick them out and take over-and I'm just talking about bureaucrats!" She looked up at Dar. "Would you believe it-some of them actually hire bodyguards?"

"Sure, I'd believe it! After living on a prison planet without guards."

"Oh. Your fellow prisoners were worse than the gorillas?"

"Much worse," Dar confirmed. "I mean, with the guards at least you knew who to watch out for-they wore uniforms. But with your friendly fellow prisoners, you never knew from one moment to the next who was going to try to slip a knife between your ribs."

"They let you have knives?"

Dar shrugged impatiently. "The Wolmen could chip flints; so could we. Who was going to stop us, with the guards gone? No, they loaded onto the ferry and lifted off; Shacklar stepped into Government House and locked himself in behind concrete and steel with triple locks and arm-thick bolts . . . and the monsters came out of the woodwork. Anybody who had a grudge hunted down his favorite enemy, and started slicing. Or got sliced up himself."

"Immoral!" Sam muttered. "How could he bring himself to do such a thing!"

Dar shrugged. "Had to be hard, I guess. Lord knows we had enough hard cases walking around. When they saw blood flowing, they started banding together to guard each other's backs. And the first thing you knew, there were little gangs roaming around, looking for people to rough up and valuables to steal."

Sam snorted. "What kind of valuables could you have had?"

"Food would do, at that point. Distribution had broken down. Why should the work-gangs work, without the guards to make them?

Finally, we mobbed the warehouse and broke in- and ruined more food than we ate." He shuddered at the memory. "They started knife fights over ham hocks! That was about when I started looking for a hole to crawl into."

"Your general has no more ethics than a shark!" Sam blazed. "How could he just sit there and let it happen?"

"I expect he had a pretty good idea about how it would all come out."

"How could he? With chaos like that, it was completely unpredictable!"

"Well, not really. ..."

"What're you talking about? You could've all killed each other off!"

"That's predictable, isn't it? But there wasn't too much chance of it, I guess. There were too many of us-half a million. That's a full society; and anarchy's an unstable condition. When the little gangs began to realize they couldn't be sure of beating the next little gang they were trying to steal from, they made a truce instead, and merged into a bigger gang that could be sure of winning a fight, because it was the biggest gang around."

"So other little gangs had to band together into bigger gangs too." Sam nodded. "And that meant the bigger gangs had to merge into small armies."

"Right. Only most of us didn't realize all that; we just knew there were three big gangs fighting it out, all of a sudden."

"The power-hungry boys you told me about?"

Dar nodded. "And they were pretty evenly balanced, too. So their battles didn't really decide anything; they just killed off sixty men.

Which meant you had to stay way clear of any of 'em, or they'd draft you as a replacement."

"So two of them made a truce and ganged up on the third?"

"No, the Wolmen ganged up on all of us, first."

"Oh." Sam looked surprised, then nodded slowly. "Makes sense, of course. I mean, why should they just sit back and wait for you to get yourselves organized?"

"Right. It made a lot more sense to hit us while we were still disorganized. And we'd stopped keeping sentries on the wall, and the Wolmen knew enough to hit us at night."

Sam shuddered. "Why weren't you all killed in your beds?"

"Because the Big Three did have sentries, to make sure none of the others tried a night attack. So all of a sudden, the sirens were howling, and everybody was running around yelling-and military conditioning took over"

"Military conditioning?" Sam frowned. "I thought you were convicts!"

"Yeah, but we were still soldiers. What'd you think-the Army provided a few battalions to fight off the Wolmen for us? We had to do our own fighting, with our own sergeants and lieutenants. The guards just stood back and made sure we didn't try to get any big ideas ... and handled the laser cannons."

"But how could they let you have weapons?"

Dar shrugged. "Bows and arrows, tops. That gave us a fair chance against the Wolmen. So when the sirens shrieked, we just automatically ran for the armory and grabbed our bows, and jumped any Wolman who got in our way. Then, when we had our weapons, we just naturally yelled, 'What do we do, Sarge?' I mean, he was there getting his weapons, too-if he was still alive."

"And most of them were?"

"What can I tell you? Rank has its privileges. Yeah, most of them were there, and they told us where to go."

"Sergeants usually do, I understand."

"Well, yes. But in this case, they just took us out to chop up anything that didn't wear a uniform-and look for a lieutenant to ask orders from. We pulled together into companies-and the lieutenants were already squawking into their wrist corns, demanding that Shacklar tell them what to do."

"Why would they do ... ?" Sam broke off, her eyes widening. "I just realized something: soldiers are basically bureaucrats. Nobody wants to take a chance on getting blamed."

"It is kind of drilled into you," Dar admitted. "And as I said, when the Wolmen came over the wall, habit took over It did for Shacklar, too, I guess. He started telling them what to do."

"Habit, my great toe! He'd been waiting for a chance like that- counting on it!"

"Looking for me to disagree with you? Anyway, he had the viewscreens, and he knew the tactics; so he started giving orders."

Dar shook his head in disbelief. "If you can call them orders!

'Lieutenant Walker, there's a band of Wolmen breaking through over on the left; I really think you should run over and arrange a little surprise for them.' 'Lieutenant Able, Sergeant Dorter's squad is outnumbered two to one over on your company's right; would you send your reserves over to join him, please?'"

"Come off it! No general talks to his subordinates that way!"

Dar held up a palm. "So help me, he did it! I overheard Lieutenant Walker's communicator."

"You mean you were in that battle?"

"I had a choice?"

"But I thought you tried to find a hole to crawl into!"

"Sure. I didn't say I succeeded, did I?"

Sam turned away, glowering. "I still don't believe it. Why should he be so polite?"

"We figured it out later. In effect, he was telling us it was our war, and it was up to us to fight it; but he was willing to give us advice, if we wanted it."

"Good advice, I take it?"

"Oh, very good! We had the Wolmen pushed back against the wall in an hour Then Shacklar told the lieutenants to pull back and give them a chance to get away. They all answered, basically, 'The hell with that noise! We've got a chance to wipe out the bastards!' 'Indeed you do,'

Shacklar answered, 'and they all have brothers and cousins back home-six of them for every one of you. But if you do try to exterminate them-well, you'll manage it, but they'll kill two of your men for every one of theirs.' Well, the lieutenants allowed that he had a point, so they did what he said and pulled back; and the Wolmen, with great daring and ingenuity, managed to get back up over the wall and away."

"Then he told you to break out the laser cannon?"

"No, he'd sent the cannons home with the guards. Good thing, too; I'd hate to think what those three power-mongers would've done with them. But we did have hand-blasters, in the armories. Each of the power-mongers had managed to seize an armory as a power base as soon as he'd recruited a gang. They'd opened the doors and issued sidearms as soon as the sirens screamed. They weren't much good for the close fighting inside the wall; but, once the Wolmen were over the top and running, we got up on the parapet and started shooting after them, until the lieutenants yelled at us to stop wasting our charges.

The Wolmen were running, and they didn't stop until morning."

"A victory," Sam said dryly.

"A bigger one than you think-because as soon as the shooting was over the three would-be warlords showed up with their henchmen, bawling, 'All right, it's all over! 1im in your guns! Go home!'"

"They what?"