The Reaches

remained of the reel of monocrystal line they'd left on mirrorside after the Umber was complete. They couldn't fit her with a collective: they didn't have a test facility in which to check alignments and power delivery, so that a single control could change speed and attitude in a unified fashion. Flying the Halys now was like walking three dogs on separate leashes-through a roomful of cats.

'He's got it!' Stampfer shouted, clapping his big hands together in enthusiasm. 'I didn't think-'

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. Lightbody read his Bible with his back to the launch. Jeude squatted beside him. His eyes drifted toward the book, but every time they did, he set his mouth firmly and looked away.

Cased microchips stood in neat piles just within the edge of the undamaged forest. The only Molt present was Guillermo. The aliens had shifted the cargo through the Mirror more than an hour before the Venerians finished rerigging the Halys. K'Jax immediately gathered both Clan Deel and the newcomers from Umber and whisked them away.

He claimed he was doing that because the spaceship's liftoff would call Feds to the site. That might well be true, but Gregg suspected K'Jax wanted to absorb the new immigrants beyond human interference. Absorb them, and assert his own dominance.

The Feds had eased K'Jax' difficulties. The cutter's weapon had caught Ch'Kan, last of her people to run for the Mirror and safety.

Gregg's momentary shiver of hatred for K'Jax wasn't fair, wasn't even sane. The clan chief hadn't created the situation from which he was profiting. He was simply a politician handed an opportunity. A single strong clan under a leader with experience of Benison's conditions was to the benefit of all the race. .

With the exception of one or two of the newcomers who would balk, and who would become examples for the rest.

Gregg stroked the fore-end of his rifle. His feelings were quite insane; but it was just as well that K'Jax, a faithful ally, was nowhere around just now.

The Halys rose slowly. Her nozzles were toed outward, because if they'd been aligned truly parallel Piet would have had insufficient lateral stability. Half the attitude jets had been destroyed or plugged when the plasma bolt hit. Manually-controlled thrusters were as much as one man could hope to handle anyway.

As much or more.

The Halys reached the cloud base and disappeared. The throb of the thrusters faded more slowly.

A patch of cloud glowed for some moments. Lightning licked within the overcast. The charged exhaust had created imbalances that nature sought to rectify.

Gregg looked at his command: a Molt and five humans, himself included. Four firearms if you counted Guillermo's pistol, and four cutting bars.

None of the personnel in perfect condition, and Gregg able to move only by walking slowly. If he'd been physically able to survive the shock of takeoff, he'd have been in the Halys with Piet; but he couldn't.

'Mr. Dole,' he said crisply. 'You, Lightbody and Jeude position yourselves at the edge of the clearing there.'

Between the Halys' exhaust on landing and takeoff, and the plasma bolts the Feds had directed at her from orbit, fires had burned an irregular swatch a hundred meters by three hundred into the forest. Large trees spiked up as blackened trunks, but in general you could see across the area. Gregg pointed to the center of one long side.

'Stampfer, Guillermo and I will wait across the clearing,' he continued. 'That way we'll have any intruders in a cross fire.'

Jeude glanced at the party's equipment. 'Some cross fire,' he muttered.

Gregg smiled tightly. He hefted the heavy rifle Jeude himself had brought back from Umber City. 'I'd prefer to have a flashgun, Mr. Jeude,' he said. 'But if the need arises, I'll endeavor to give a good account of myself with what's available. As shall we all, I'm confident.'

The smile disappeared; his face looked human again. 'Let's go,' he said as he turned.

He heard Dole murmur as the parties separated, 'If it's him with a sharp stick and the Feds with plasma guns, Jeude, I know where my money lies.'

51

Benison

'They're coming!' Stampfer said. He clicked his channel selector across the detents, making sure that the increasing crackle of static blanketed the RF spectrum. 'Mr. Gregg, they're coming! I can hear the thrusters!'

'Mr. Dole,' Gregg said, speaking loudly on intercom mode, though he knew that wouldn't really help carry his voice over the hash of plasma exhaust. 'Don't show yourselves until we're sure this is friendly.'

He cut off the helmet radio and looked at Stampfer-Guillermo wasn't going to run out into the middle of the clearing waving his arms. 'Us too,' he said. 'We don't know it's Piet. We don't even know it's a spaceship.'

'Aw, sir,' the gunner said. The thrusters were a growing rumble rather than just white noise on the radio. 'It couldn't be anybody else!'

He craned his neck skyward.

The vessel overflew the clearing at a thousand meters. Its speed was in the high subsonic range. It was a ship's boat. From the hull's metallic glint it was of Terran manufacture.

Perversely, Gregg's first reaction was an urge to smirk knowingly at Stampfer, who had been so sure the news had to be good. Next he wondered what they could do about it. . and the answer was probably nothing, though he'd see.

'It may be a boat they've captured, like the Halys,' Gregg said aloud.

'The larger settlements on Benison usually have a cutter available,' Guillermo said. 'This craft comes from the direction of Fianna, which is the nearest settlement.'

'Or it could be from orbit,' said Stampfer, as gloomy now as he had been enthusiastic a moment before. 'The Fed warship that drove them away before-Dulcie may not be the only one that came back and waited for something to happen.'

The sound of the thruster had died away to a shadow of itself. Now it rose again, the sharper pulses syncopating the dying echoes of the previous pass. The boat was coming back.

'I doubt a warship from the Earth Convoy has been wasting the past week and a half in orbit here, Mr. Stampfer,' Gregg snapped. He wasn't so much frightened as completely at a loss for anything to do. The local Feds had noticed Piet's liftoff. They'd sent a cutter to scout the location.

The boat roared over the clearing again, this time within a hundred meters of the ground. It had slowed considerably, but not even Gregg could have hit the vessel in the instant it was visible overhead. A rifle bullet wouldn't have done any damage to a spacegoing hull, but the Feds might be concerned about laser bolts.

If only he hadn't lost the flashgun. .

'Stampfer and Guillermo,' Gregg said. 'Go directly across the clearing to Mr. Dole's force and inform him that all of you are to run for the Mirror immediately. Go!'

Neither of them moved. 'Hey,' said Stampfer. 'We can still fight.'

'God's blood, you fool, there won't be a fight!' Gregg shouted. 'They'll come over on the deck and fry us with their exhaust. Go!'

Stampfer looked at the Molt, then back at Gregg.

'His injury won't permit him to run,' Guillermo said to the gunner.

'We'll help him,' Stampfer said. He forcibly wrapped Gregg's left arm across his shoulders.

'No, there's not enough-' Gregg began, and then it truly was too late. The boat was coming back, very fast and traveling parallel with the clearing's long axis. The pilot wanted to get the maximum effect now that he'd