shoulder of a towering peak. A waterfall tumbled from the cliff above into a little lake at its foot, and from there a mountain stream wandered across the mesa to leap over the edge of another cliff a mile away. Trees grew along one side of the stream and up to the foot of the cliff, and among these trees the village was hidden from the eyes of roving pilots.
Hide! Hide! Hide! A world in hiding! It seemed difficult to imagine that anyone had ever walked freely in the sunlight on the surface of Poloda without being ready to dodge beneath a tree, or into a hole in the ground; and I wondered if my world would ever come to that. It didn't seem possible; but for thousands of years, up until a hundred years ago, no inhabitant of Poloda would have thought it possible here.
In the village were a hundred people, forty women, fifty men, and ten children, poor, scrawny little things, with spindly arms and legs and enormous bellies, the result of stuffing, themselves with grasses and twigs and leaves to assuage the pangs of hunger. When the villagers saw my escort coming in with me they ran forward hungrily, but when they recognized my blue uniform they stopped.
'He is our friend and guest,' said the chief. 'He has killed many Kapars, and he has given us guns and ammunition to kill more.' And he showed them the weapons and the ammunition belts.
They crowded around me then and, like the twelve men, asked innumerable questions. They dwelt much upon the food we had in Unis, and were surprised to know that we had plenty to eat, for they thought that the Kapars must have devastated Unis as they had Punos.
The little children came timidly and felt of me. To them I was a man from another world. To me they were the indictment of a hideous regime.
The hunting party whose activities I had interrupted had brought in a couple of small rodents and a little bird. The women built a fire and put a large pot on it, in which there wvas a little water. Then they took the feathers off the bird and skinned the rodents, and threw them in without cleaning them. To this they added herbs and roots and handfuls of grass.
'The skins will make a little soup for the children for breakfast,' an old woman explained to me as she laid them carefully aside.
They stirred the horrible mess with a piece of a small branch of a tree, and when it boiled the children clustered around to sniff the steam as it arose; and the adults formed a circle and stared at the pot hungrily.
I had never seen starving people before, and I prayed to God that I might never see any again unless I had the means wherewith to fill their bellies; and as I watched them I did not wonder that they ate Kapars, and I marvelled at the kindliness and strength of will that kept them from eating me. When those mothers looked at me I could imagine that they were thinking of me in terms of steaks and chops which they must forego although their children were starving.
In a community in which there were forty adult women there were only ten children, but I wondered how there could be any, infant mortality must certainly be high among a starving people. I could imagine that I was looking at the remnant of a race that would soon be extinct, and I thought that there must be something wrong with all the religions in the universe that such a thing could happen to these people while the Kapars lived and bred.
When they thought the mess in the pot was sufficiently cooked, little cups of clay, crudely burnt, were passed out, and the chief carefully measured out the contents of the pot with a large wooden ladle. When he came to me, I shook my head; and he looked offended.
'Is our fare too mean for you?' he asked.
'It is not that,' I said. 'I am well fed, and tomorrow I shall eat again. Here are starving men, and starving women, and, above all, starving children.'
'Forgive me,' he said. 'You are a very kind man. The children shall have your share.' Then he dipped out other cupful and divided it among the ten children, scarcely a mouthful apiece; but they were so grateful that once again the tears came to my eyes. I must be getting to be a regular softy; but before I came to Poloda I had never seen such sadness, such courage, such fortitude, or such suffering, as I have upon this poor war-torn planet.
Chapter Ten
NEXT MORNING THE WHOLE VILLAGE accompanied me down the cation to see me take off for Orvis. Three men went far in advance and when he got down into the cation one of them came running back to meet us. I could see that he was very much excited, and he was motioning to us to be silent.
'There is a Kapar at your ship,' he said, in a whisper.
'Let me go ahead,' I said to the chief. 'There will probably be shooting.'
'We should have brought the guns,' he said. 'Why did I not think of that?' And he sent three men scurrying back to get them.
I walked down the caсon until I came to the other two men who had gone ahead. They were hiding behind bushes and they motioned me to take cover, but I had no time for that; and instead I ran forward, and when I came in sight of the ship a man was just climbing up onto the wing. He was a Kapar all right, and I started firing as I ran toward him. I missed him, and he wheeled about and held both hands above his head in sign of surrender.
I kept him covered as I walked toward him, but as I got nearer I saw that he was unarmed.
'What are you doing there, Kapar?' I demanded.
He came toward me, his hands still above his head. 'For the honour and glory of Unis,' he said. 'I am no Kapar.' He removed his grey helmet, revealing a head of blond hair. But I had been told that there were some blond Kapars, and I was not to be taken in by any ruse.
'You'll have to do better than that,' I said. 'If you are a Unisan, you can prove it more convincingly than by showing a head of blond hair. Who are you, and from what city do you come?'
'I am Balzo Jan,' he said, 'and I come from the city of Orvis .'
Now Balzo Jan was the brother that Balzo Maro had said was shot down in battle. This might be he, but I was still unconvinced.
'How did you get here?' I demanded.
'I was shot down in battle about two hundred miles from here,' he said. 'We made a good landing and some Kapars who saw that we were evidently not killed came down to finish us off. There were four of them and three of us. We got all four of them, but not before my two companions were killed. Knowing that I was somewhere in Epris, and therefore in Kapar-dominated country, I took the uniform of one of the Kapars as a disguise.'
'Why didn't you take his gun and ammunition, too?'
'Because we had all exhausted all our ammunition,' he replied, 'and guns without ammunition are only an extra burden to carry. I had killed the last Kapar with my last bullet.'
'You may be all right,' I said, 'but I don't know. Can you tell me the name of some of your sister's friends?'
'Certainly,' he said. 'Her best friends are Harkas Yamoda and Harkas Don, daughter and son of Harkas Yen.'
'I guess you're all right,' I said. 'There are a couple of blue uniforms in the after cockpit. Get into one of them at once, and then we'll go to work on the motor.'
'Look,' he cried, pointing beyond me, 'some men are coming. They are going to attack us.'
I turned to see my friendly hosts creeping toward us with shafts fitted to their bows.
'It is all right,' I shouted to them, 'this is a friend.'
'If he is a friend of yours, then you must be a Kapar,' replied the chief.
'He is no Kapar,' I insisted; and then I turned and shouted to Balzo Jan to get into a blue uniform at once.
'Perhaps you have deceived us,' shouted the chief. 'How do we know that you are not a Kapar, after all?'
'Our children are hungry,' screamed a woman farther back up the caсon. 'Our children are hungry, we are hungry, and here are two Kapars.'
It was commencing to look very serious. The men were creeping closer; they would soon be within bow range. I had put my pistol back into its holster after I had been convinced that Balzo Jan was no impostor, and I did
