For Texas and Zed

'I know. Things are different. The war—'

'No excuse,' he said. 'Riddent—'

'Yes?'

'Just Riddent. It has a good sound.'

She moved to lean against him as they sat in the sand. They heard the rote of the waves, the far-reaching combers, the whistle of a predatory nighter. There was a sense of peace there on their deserted beach, until a squadron on training bunked low into atmosphere, chasing dummy missiles. The streak of fire was death, a missile past the last line of defense. They had seconds to live and they watched as the streak came in like a runaway meteor and two fast destroyers chased futilely and the missile splashed out there, just this side of the horizon.

A shiver went through her and he put his arms around her.

'It was only practice,' he said. 'They set up impossible situations, making it as bad as bad, as difficult as possible. We'll catch the real ones.'

Her skin felt cool. She did not stop shivering.

Above them, the two destroyers climbed and blinked out of existence, to go back to the squadron for a reaming out for having missed.

'I wish you hadn't stopped.'

'You don't mean that,' he said.

'Yes, I do. I don't want to die not knowing—'

'Riddent, Riddent.'

'I will I know it. I feel it. I know that you'll be killed and I'll be killed and Texas will be killed—'

'Now you stop it.'

But she was weeping. He held her close and felt utterly helpless and then, with his eyes milky with tears, he kissed her wet cheek and turned her lips up to him and after that there was an irresistible force which pushed, propelled them and when it was sweetly over she wept again, but not from sadness.

'Wasn't that a clever way to trap you into marriage?' she asked.

His shout, his whoop, jarred her, causing her to pull back, holding her outraged ear. Then he was dancing around her, a nude, mad young man, until she giggled and said, 'Damned fool,' and rose to join him in his mad dance on the hard-packed sands near the pounding surf until, with another whoop, he picked her up and swung her around in his arms and then, panting, held her at arm's length. 'You mean it?'

'You know I do, silly.'

He bounced sonic booms on the way home and sang of his joy in a loud, untuned voice and then woke up Murichon, who had slept six hours of the past twenty-four, to shout, 'She said yes, Dad, she said yes.'

They spent three nights in a cozy cottage on the northern ice. There, there was no war, no threat. There were only endless hours of togetherness and happy, giddy experimentation and a growing wonderm Lex that he should have been fortunate enough to court and win Riddent. He would awaken in the middle of the night and feel her body warmth next to him, her amazing softness, and he couldn't believe that she was his, that he had his own wife in his own bed and that his feelings were not unwelcome and that, his hand doing things, she responded and woke and said, 'Glutton,' and then added her gluttony to his for a sleepless hour before, moist and sweetly warm, she slept atop him.

Naturally, now that he had a reason for wanting to stay at headquarters, he was transferred. Saying goodbye was the hardest thing he'd ever done. It made his first departure from Texas, into Empire servitude, seem distant and not at all serious. She was weeping when he boarded the shuttle to join Arden Wal's battle group and he remembered the things she'd said there on the beach when the practice missile got away and went splashing down into the sea. On the way out he decided, for sure, that he didn't want to die and, above all, he didn't want her to die. Then he started to think of ways he could assure prevention of either.

'You're crazy,' Billy Bob, Captain, said when Lex told him that he wasn't about to die and that he wasn't about to take on the Empire fleet face to face outnumbered and outgunned. It was the duel with the Cassie all over again, Texas waiting to fight the Empire with the Empire's rules.

'He's crazy,' Billy Bob told General Wal, when Lex demanded and got an appointment, with Captains Billy Bob, Jakkes and Form in attendance. 'But I like the idea.'

'It is crazy,' Wal told them, after he'd heard the proposal.

'It just might work,' Blant Jakkes said.

'The crazy bastard kept us alive when that Cassie had us cold,' Form said. 'Let's give it a try, General.'

'We'll have to file for permission,' Wal said. 'There are regulations—'

'If you always followed regulations, sir, you'd be dead now,' Lex said. 'Executed by your own people. At least we don't have the death penalty on Texas.'

'I could have been in charge of a sector,' Wal said, rolling his eyes and grinning, 'but I had to meet a crazy Texican.'

The main force of the Empire fleet was grouping near an isolated red giant inside the periphery. Outlying zones were thickly patrolled by Vandys. A blink-stat message couldn't be smuggled through the dense lines, much less a vessel. But, to the rear, there was an entire Empire group which acted as security against a sneak attack by a suicide force of Texicans. At least that was Empire thinking. Lex had done his own thinking and he had convinced a cadre of fellow officers, up to and including Arden Wal, that his thinking was good. Wal, knowing the terrible force represented by the gathering Empire battle fleet, was fearful for Texas. And he found, in those first few months on the out-planet, that Texas was all that Lex had described, that his new freedom was more precious to him than he could ever have imagined. An alien, former officer in the force of the enemy, he had proved himself in the first battle of Texas and had been accepted as one of Texas' own. Nothing in his life had ever given him as much pride as the insignia of General in the fleet of the Planet Texas, and he was prepared to take some risk to preserve his new liberty, his pride, his peace of mind. Thus, he was a willing accomplice in a wild plan dreamed up by a young Texican just past his legal majority.

At first, the plan seemed to be designed to allow young Texicans a holiday from the fleet. A growing group of men began to take liberty from the battle group commanded by Wal, assemble on the empty sands of the big sandy country and do what young Texicans had been doing for generations, ride airorses. This in itself did nothing to arouse the suspicion of the high brass, who were too involved in the speculation regarding just when the Empire would choose to strike to notice that the airorses riding on the desert weren't of the usual sort. Those who took note of the weekly gatherings of the young in the desert grinned, remembering when they, too, were young and life seemed to be lent a rosy color merely by the act of mounting an airors. Nor did the presence of repair vans from the Blink Space Works arouse any undue interest. Kids were always tinkering with their mechanical steeds and now that they were all in the services, drawing a man's pay in good Texas credits, they had the money to waste on new doodads for their airorses.

Lex and his co-conspirators took some pains to hide the extensive alteration sheds which were built in the shadows of the dunes and camouflaged with desert growth.

They assembled in groups of hundreds at a time, one hundred on one day, a hundred on the next, as the program accelerated and then there was some grumpy grumbling from the brass, because it seemed that certain battle group commanders were too lenient in allowing their men planet leave. There were ships of the line on duty with a skeleton crew. Only the continued inactivity of the Empire fleet saved some high officers from be called on the carpet.

When two thousand young Texicans left their posts on the fleet ships at the same time, grouped in the desert and began to perform a ballet of precision flying, Murichon Burns was called into President Resall's office to explain why so many fleeters were off duty at once. By then it was too late. Murichon took an official arc into the sands to find deserted sheds, traces of activity which demanded some explanation, and several airorses with alterations which sent a cold chill of fear through his heart before his anger rose up and sent him hurtling toward the station of Arden Wal's battle group in a new destroyer to find that the ships were, true, on station, but that on each ship there were just enough men to keep the machinery running.

Two thousand of Texas' finest, ranging in age from fifteen to the early twenties, were in space. And they were in space on airorses. When the news broke, the planet held its breath.

In council, the old men of Texas looked to Murichon, for it had become known, after a hasty investigation, that his son was the ringleader.