For Texas and Zed

back in '65?' Lex nodded. He remembered it well from hearing the stories, but he'd been born too late to volunteer for the rescue force. 'And how the whole nation turns out when a man is missing in the desert or somewhere?'

'Yes, but this is different,' Lex said.

'Only in degree,' Andy Gar said, while the Ranger General fidgeted. 'You're still a Texican and we Texicans stick together. There ain't no one here gonna try to force you to go into the Empire and turn yourself in to a pack of faggots. Under ordinary circumstances, our answer to the Empire ultimatum would have been something like what old Jack Bridges told his wife when he was determined on going out into the outback prospecting for iron.' Lex chuckled. Jack Bridges, an almost legendary figure, had reputedly told his wife, who protested his leaving her and her two children, to perform an anatomical impossibility involving basic breeding functions. 'But,' Gar went on, 'we got us a problem, son. We're all alone out here and there ain't too many of us and we'd like to have enough people on this world to fix it up right, not too many, but just enough. Because we're short on a lot of things we have to limit the population so that there's just about one Texican for every thousand square miles of land. We need metals. You know from your schooling that Texas is a light planet. That's good in a way, because if she had a metal core like some she'd have a gravity which would be so strong it would be all we could do to crawl. Now we've got a couple of ways to get metals. We can sneak into the worlds on the periphery and poach them from Empire or Cassiopeian territory. We've done it in the past and so far we've not lost a man. But sooner or later we're going to get caught. Some prospector is going to be careless and he'll come home with an Empire or a Cassiopeian Vandy on his tail and then we'll be in it when we don't want to be. All the Republic of Texas wants is to be left alone to do things the way our fathers did them, maybe just a bit better. We want no part of the war inside the galaxy. But we've got some things that each of the warring sides would risk ten battle fleets for. Meat, for example. They're eating manufactured protein on the ships of the line and the home front doesn't even get that most of the time. Let an Empireite or a Cassiopeian see Texas and we'll be calling out the Guard and I don't have to tell you that even a Texican can be outgunned and outmanned when the odds are a million to one and the other side has unlimited metals and arms. The other way we can get metals is to trade, and we're right on the verge of making a successful deal for enough metals to keep Texas going for fifty years. We've spent ten years working out the details, breeding a surplus of meacrs, so you can see why some folks are a little upset about the turn of events.'

'I'll go,' Lex said.

'Hold your horses,' Murichon said. 'Hear it all.'

'We've had our lawyers working over Empire law-books,' the President said. 'It seems that they've got more laws than they know what to do with. The penalty for kidnapping is a severe one, but it hasn't been enforced for a hundred or so years, because in spite of the war they've got so many people that when they lose one or two they don't even notice, unless the victim is someone of importance. There's not been a kidnapping prosecution on Earth for 2 hundred years and there are no penalties for rape—at least they're not enforced. So we're not sure just what they'd do to you. There's an old law on the books calling for life under supervision, working the mining planets, for kidnapping, so that seems to be the worst that could happen. On the other hand, we've told them and we're waiting for an answer, that you're the son of a rather important man who'd take a dim view of his son being sentenced to labor for life. We told them flat out that one Texican is worth all the metals they could dig in a thousand years, and we're hoping that they'll make an offer. Here's what we're thinking. If they'll offer a light punishment, and if you're willing to go out there for Texas, then we'll think it over. Fair enough?'

'Fair enough,' Lex said. 'I was the one done it. I ought to pay for it. Texas is more important than one man.'

'Texas is one man,' Andy Gar said. 'One man repeated. Each individual as important as the whole.' He drank. 'So we're not going to pressure you, boy. The choice is yours.'

Chapter Three

When Billy Bob heard about it, he came over from New Galveston on theClean Machine , suspended her on nul-grav just over where Lex was lying on the sun deck in his skivvies, and poured a cold brew down Lex's bare chest, causing him to leap almost as high as theMachine and come down, waked from a nightmare about being holed up in a mining shaft for eternity, with his hand chopping the air with a force which would have decapitated a man had it struck home. Billy Bob almost fell off his airors laughing and Lex had to chuckle along, after the anger faded.

They were waiting for the word from the communications ship out in the galaxy. It was taking a helluva long time and the wait was getting on Lex's nerves. It was a nice day, just before a rain with the coolness moving in from the big weathermaking ice country to the north. Lex flewZelda out of the garage, after making feeble excuses against showing the Lady Gwyn to Billy Bob. Actually, the Lady stayed close to her room and Lex wasn't about to disturb that sleeping farl. He told Billy Bob that Gwyn was so shook about being shipped back to the Empire, losing the chance to be the wife of Lex Burns, that she was moody and her eyes were red from crying. So they went out into the desert and shot sonic booms at mountainsides and then went sanrab hunting.

Sanrab hunting was trickier than herding winglings, for the little rodent-like things were capable of turning three-sixty on a dime and it was hot, sweaty and not undangerous work to zoom low enough to lean down and make a grab with the bare hand for a sanrab's long tail while guiding the airors inches off the uneven surface with thought and knees and intuition. They caught two each and released the females and took the bucks home to the cook robot and then ate one each while in the front of the Burns house the official vehicles came and went and the air of something imminent, something bad, got thicker and thicker.

When Lex was called to the conference room he left Billy Bob behind and joined his father, the President and the same Ranger General, plus a few odd and assorted government officials and the Admiral of Texas' fleet. As a past President, it was not unusual for Murichon to have such notables in his house, and Andy Gar was a frequent caller, not only for business. Old Andy drove his own arc, saying that the Republic needed all able-bodied men in good jobs, not driving a President's car. He sat there among the others, a little older, a bit more weathered, dressed as they were dressed, in range clothes, and chewed some good Bojack tobacco,

'I reckon it's time, huh?' Lex asked, when he saw his father's grim face.

'We heard from His Majesty, or whatever he calls himself,' Murichon said. He looked helplessly toward Andy Gar.

'Son,' Gar said, 'that gal must be something in bed.'

Lex flushed and shifted his feet.

'His Bigness sets great store in her. He's rejected the deal we made with the First Leader on Polaris.'

'Damn,' Lex said, feeling lower than a belly-crawling reptile.

'He's put up some new terms,' Gar said. 'He said that we were unreasonable to refuse to agree to the Empire law which says Empire hulls have to be used in interplanetary trade with any outsiders.'

'You're not going to let them come to Texas,' Lex said. It wasn't a question.

'No, he suggested a compromise. Meet us halfway, he said. Out in the rim somewhere the cargoes would be lifted from Texas hulls to Empire hulls. We pick the place. We told him we didn't trust the Empire as far as we could sling a farl by the tail and the transfer would be on our terms and he said he'd agree to all that as long as we let Empire hulls carry the meat into Empire center to save him from the displeasure of the Guilds. We said, OK, fine. We'll do it, but we don't turn over the man you want under those conditions. He said, well, the deal is off.'

The Ranger General cleared his throat and started to speak. Gar motioned him into silence. 'Then we talked about your potential punishment and the best we could do is this. They'll try you in a regular court, but instead of going to the work planets, you'll serve a hitch, whatever the sentence is, in the Empire battle fleet. That's the best we could do.'

'I guess it'll have to do,' Lex said. 'When do I leave?'

'The meat fleet won't be ready for a couple of weeks,' Murichon said. 'But the choice is still yours.

Make up your mind and keep it solid, because once we start slaughtering and freezing meacrs it'll be too late to change your mind.'

'I won't change it,' Lex said.

'Boy,' Andy Gar said, 'we don't know all about it, because we've discouraged any contact with the Empire, but what we know isn't good. The Empire's fighting fleets impress their men and since no one really wants to fight, except the leaders, maybe, the discipline is rough. There's not much real danger, apparently, because this war between the Empire and the Cassiopeians has been going on so long that it's become a sort of ritual. The last time a real clash came was about twenty years ago, at a place called Wolfs Star. That's good and it's bad. That means