For Texas and Zed

to remember the times. Some stood out. Others faded into the sweet, sensual memory of the totality of those long weeks of it there on the flagship. And Emily. Of all the three, she was the best. She was a Texas girl, all of Texas, all of life and sweetness and love and tenderness and beauty, the girl he would marry, someday, the girl he would have married sooner had he not lost his head and kidnapped an Empire farlcat.

Emily alone was more than most Texicans his age could hope for and when you added in Gwyn there was no reason for him to suffer, because he'd had more than his share of women. So he counted his blessings and wondered about women and used his memories to ease his desperate homesickness.

T.E.S.Crucis was an antiquated Middleguard with some of her communications and battle gear removed to house dozens of trainees and the extra weapons on which they practiced. She was a leaking old hull and the Texican was often rousted from his bunk, hustled to the locks, suited in L.S.A. and shoved out and away to crawl awkwardly over the rusting hull to patch weaknesses. He got all thegood details like that, mostly because he was the outworlder and possibly because he did them uncomplainingly. He was good with a space welder and did the job neatly so that theCrucis leaked less and less because the job was done right.

They were out in Vegan space, shooting at drones, when the main seam gave over the power compartment, stressed by the weight and mass of the generator, let space in and did in three power men before the compartment could be evacuated and sealed off.

Dead in space, theCrucis reflected the glitter of Vega as Lex, pressed into service as usual, crawled the curves, clanking soundlessly, except in the atmosphere of the L.S.A., to see a serious breach.

'Sir,' he sent to the officer on the other end of his communicator, 'it's a big one this time. I'll need help.'

'Damn, Texas, can't you handle it?'

'Take a look, sir.' He put his scanner on it and let the officer take a look. He heard a gasp. As the scanner moved, the seam opened wider, moving along the vertical axis of the hull. If it opened much wider it would rip into the crew area, venting a good deal of the ship's air into space and closing off a full quarter of the ship.

'A plate of extra patching metal and a magnetic clamp, too,' Lex said, beginning to move already, taking his welder to the hairline crack which moved even as he began to throw a temporary weld onto it. 'And, sir, I'd hurry if I were you.'

They sent out an Empire Sub-Chief, not trusting the job, which had suddenly become critical, to a trainee. Sub-Chief Blant Jakkes stood five foot ten and, as did most Empireites, rather hated the big Texican, not because he knew Lex well enough for hatred, but mainly because Lex was an outsider and different and bigger and faster and decidedly more handsome. The Sub-Chief was a career man who had done ten toward his retirement at the end of thirty and he was a member of the training cadre of the Crucis because he'd shown, in a couple of duels with the Cassiopeians, that he was one hell of a weapons man. He was also a good teacher and, even if he did resent Lex, he had to admit that the Texican was also one hell of a good weapons man. That didn't make it right to have an alien on one of the Emperor's fleet ships, but the Texican did know his way around a beam control panel.

Blant Jakkes came crawling out, attaching and releasing his lifeline, carrying a plate of patching metal and a clamp to look down on the breach, which was still creeping forward in spite of Lex's efforts, with some concern.

'Right,' Lex said, opening the communicator with his tongue. 'We need the clamp here and there.' He pointed with the welder, making marks on the hull. There was no time for Sub-Chief Jakkes to remind the trainee that he'd give the orders. He set his lifeline and put one contact of the clamp at the indicated near spot and crawled abeam to set the other. He felt the hull jerk under him and looked back, startled, to see that the seam had opened all the way to the joint of the inner-support bulkhead and he cursed the old single-hull construction, wishing that he were back with the battle fleet, where all ships had double hulls.

'Move,' Lex yelled. 'Set that contact.'

Jakkes moved and his movement violated Newton's third law of motion to the point of sending the Sub-Chief spinning off the hull to jerk to a stop at the end of his fifteen-foot lifeline. The unconnected contact of the magnetic clamp was jerked from his hand, jiggled, hung from the connector free. The seam, stressed hard from below, tried to rip through the bulkhead fastenings and Lex moved as fast as he could, ignoring the struggling Sub-Chief as Jakkes pulled himself down hand over hand trying to make contact with the hull, not watching his lifeline as it coiled and floated to let two loops fall into the opened seam.

Lex placed the second contact and, looking over his shoulder with some effort, saw that there were seconds to spare before the bulkhead fastenings went and activated the coil of the clamp. As the clamp contracted, there was resistance and the movement of the opened seam was jerky and slow and then, with a sudden snap, the seam closed, cutting Jakkes' lifeline in two places to leave him holding a line with no anchor, floating five full feet away from the hull. Although they were dead in space, there was some residual forward movement of the ship, Jakkes keeping pace, trying desperately to remember from long-forgotten training which movement to make to cause a reaction which would drift him toward the hull. He made exactly the opposite motion, a sudden jerk, and began to swim slowly outward. The situation was serious, because the ship was dead, damage having been done in the power compartment by explosive decompression. Jakkes knew that he was a dead man, because his L.S.A. communicator was of limited range and before the ship could be brought under power for a search he'd be the tiniest mote on a big black emptiness and he had enough air for, say, three hours.

'Texas,' he yelled, his voice not concealing his fear, but far short of panic.

Lex looked up, sized up the situation immediately. A man who can fly an airors inches off the deck can judge distances. He saw that Jakkes was already too far out to be reached from his own lifeline and that there was only one chance. Extending out from the rear hull was a thin weapons pod, tipped by spidery direction-finding equipment. The tip of the framework was just under fifteen feet from the hull. Lex loosed his anchor, crawled swiftly aft, loosed the anchor again and, without thinking of what would happen if he missed, he tossed the anchor carefully, accurately, toward the very tip of the spider and it hit, held. His range of activity extended fifteen feet beyond the hull, he launched himself, swam slowly in weightlessness, caught the drifting Sub-Chief in a bear hug. After that it was just a matter of pulling themselves in, like toothfish from the western sea caught on a line from theCrucis .

Jakkes was shaken. Lex, calm, went back to his work; and the clamp holding, the matter was a simple patch and weld job and when he finished, with Jakkes recovering enough to help in the last stages, the hull was secure, stronger, in that area, than it had been.

In the lock Jakkes was still shaking, but he managed to hide his trembling hands. Lex was cool.

'Do you know what would have happened if you'd missed?' Jakkes asked.

'I didn't miss.'

'You'd have been out there with me.'

'Well, we would have both had company.'

Jakkes was looking at the outlander as he'd never looked at him before. There were no lines on the face, although the skin was tanned and weathered. Hell, he was just a boy.

During target practice, he watched Lex in action and was impressed anew. He yelled as much as ever and showed no sign of having changed his Empire hatred of an alien, but toward the end of the week, after Lex bad shown exceptional skill with the newest beam weapons control board, he sought out the Texican in trainee quarters and sat down next to him. 'How old are you, Texas?'

Lex didn't figure it was any of the Sub-Chiefs business, and if it were, he could find it out on Lex's records, but he was feeling a little blue. He'd been thinking of what a party would be coming off if he were home.

'Today is my birthday, sir. I'm eighteen.'

Jakkes saw a faraway look in the Texican's eyes and he was moved in spite of himself. 'Hell, that means you're old enough to drink, doesn't it?' Lex grinned. 'I've been that old for a long time.' Down in the crew's lounge they looked hard at Jakkes and the trainee, but no one said anything as Jakkes took a bottle from the stock and two glasses and motioned Lex to sit.

Chapter Five

The roots of the war extended so deeply into history that only scholars could trace them backward to the time on old Earth when the race was divided into two philosophically opposed camps seeking the same goals, food, freedom of action, comfort, progress for a mere few billion people of various languages, skin coloring and