"And it's for always?"
"Unless you want to break the engagement," he said, amused.
"I wouldn't do that!" she said quickly. "Oh, I wouldn't do that! But in the b-books I've read—" She stammered a little. "S-sometimes they called each other—each other darling and they kissed each other. I wondered—"
He felt a little wrench at his heart. But he put his arm about her shoulders and bent over her upturned face. A moment later he said rather huskily, "Darling!"
The odd thing was that he meant it.
The litter raced on through the jungle. Insect-shaped Pasiki trotted swiftly. Torches raced ahead along with a high-pitched tumult which warned all the creatures of the wilderness to clear the way. A wavering thread of star-speckled sky wound overhead. Small articulated figures with shell-skins on which the starlight glittered ran up and relieved the bearers of the litter and it went on without a pause. A roaring in the dense forest fell behind. The two in the litter rode quietly, side by side.
A long time later Jan sighed a little, looking wide-eyed at the stars. "I like being engaged. It's nice!"
"And how many hours ago was it that you had a blaster at the back of my neck?" asked Stannard drily. "In fact, if you remember, you pulled the trigger."
Jan said ruefully, "Wasn't I silly, darling? I was too stupid for words!"
But Stannard reflected that he wasn't at all sure.
6: Counter Attack
They followed almost a ritual in their flight. The trails of the Pasiki were numerous and well traveled, with many branchings. But in three days and nights of journeying not one dwelling and certainly no village or city of the stickmen became visible. Before nightfall, each night, Stannard summoned the special Pasiki who invariably trotted beside the litter and as invariably was capable of human speech.
"We will want bearers to carry us through the night," he commanded. "Send messengers that they meet us."
"Yes, master!" chirruped the stickman as if in ecstasy. "Much gladness for Pasiki to serve man master!"
Then glistening-skinned figures darted on ahead and were lost to sight in the winding jungle trail. And presently there was a restless, glittering small horde of Pasiki waiting and the bearers who had brought the litter so far surrendered it and the new bearers went on.
When night fell there were torches flaring before, and the shrill clamor to drive away beasts. Stannard and Jan continued to move away from the neighborhood of the other humans present on the planet.
Then, when dawn showed greenish in the east, Stannard or Jan called again to the new runner beside the litter and commanded a message to be sent ahead to command yet other, fresher bearers for the litter. And presently there was another shifting mass of shiny insect-like creatures waiting to relieve this group.
Jan pointed out sagely that it was not only merciful but wise, because no bearers grew exhausted, and greater speed was possible. Three times already close pursuit by Brent or his fellows had failed because she commanded fresh bearers to carry her on while the men ceased to think of their slaves as requiring even the consideration of lower animals. Brent once had driven a party of worn-out Pasiki until half of them died of exhaustion. But they did not revolt.
"On the other hand," said Stannard grimly, "I doubt that they feel grateful to us for acting differently."
He did not like the Pasiki. Their abasement, their servility, their shrill cries of adulation—when he knew that they hated him and all his kind—alone would have made him dislike them. But he could not help despising them for the fact that they had kept their race alive, as slaves, rather than die as free creatures. It was that personal dislike which made him able to make use of them as he needed.
Riding in the litter was wearing. For the first twenty-four hours they went on without a pause. Their route was roughly due north. The second twenty-four they alighted from time to time to stretch their legs and to eat. They began to veer eastward.
In between they talked, and Stannard absorbed from Jan every item of information she possessed about the planet and its products and its people and its geography. At night, Jan dozed in the half-reclining seat with her head on Stannard's shoulder, while he watched.
And then he dozed as well as he could while she stayed awake. He made sure that they traveled close to the shore of a great bay she had sketched on a map she drew for him. Once he waked to find her holding his head tenderly in her arms while she smiled down at him.
He flushed and she said defensively, "We're engaged, aren't we?"
She had acquired an absolute unquestioning confidence in him. When his plans matured and he began to demand metal objects from the Pasiki, she phrased the commands for him so they would be best understood.
Once he took a copper pan and cut an elaborate form from it with the heat unit in his belt. He commanded that fifty duplicates of the arbitrary form be made and sent after them. Then he made other and smaller items—bits of some cryptic device that no Pasiki could understand but which they could make the separate parts for.
He demanded samples of Pasiki iron pots and chose a special shape and size and commanded fifty specimens to be sent after him. And Pasiki, in the hidden cities and workshops which they prayed no human would ever enter, labored to produce the parts required.
On the fourth day—they had passed around the inland end of the bay they guided themselves by—he demanded specific news of those who might have pursued. The running leader beside the litter told him, skipping as if with joy at the telling, that Brent had returned to his own palace in great rage and that two other men had essayed pursuit—not for revenge upon Stannard but for possession of Jan—but had given up the effort after one day's journey on learning that the two fugitives traveled day and night.
On the fifth day Stannard called a halt to journeying. Their flight had been around the head of the great bay and down its eastern shore until they were almost opposite their starting point. But they were nearly a thousand miles by land travel from anyone who could wish to injure them, and the Pasiki would warn them of any planned expedition against them.
Stannard chose a home site overlooking the waters of the bay whose farther shore was below the horizon. He commanded a cottage to be built. No palace but a tiny place of two rooms, barely thirty feet from end to end.
All this, he knew, the Pasiki would duly tell to the other men a thousand miles away by land. But Stannard was very particular about the roof of his house. It was round and flat and pointed at both ends, and very strongly built. The house had an awning before it, under which he and Jan dined in state, and there was a flagstaff on which a flag would doubtless be flown at some future date.
When the house was finished—and he had had the roof made completely strong and water-tight—he began the assembling of the devices whose component parts he had commanded to be made. He assembled them in secret with none of the Pasiki able to examine any one.
As he finished them, he welded their covers tight with the heat-unit from his belt. Jan gravely kept herself informed of all the telepathic information their Pasiki could give them of the doings of the men they had left behind.
Stannard had not expected action so soon but it was only twelve days after Jan's first encounter with Stannard, only fifteen after his arrival on Pasik, that important information arrived. Jan went wide-eyed to Stannard. A spaceship was expected.
The sheds in which dhassa nuts—a source of organic oils used in perfume synthesis—were stored against the coming of the trading ship were nearly full. The landing field which served as a spaceport had been ordered cleared of new growth. The one ship trading to Pasik was expected to land within days.