There were signs along the road that said how far it was to one place and another. One of the names, Forton, was in larger letters than the rest. I hesitated for a long moment, caught between the sudden desire to become a turtle and the thought of continuing as a tiger. You know, turtles on old, Earth sometimes lived for a hundred years or more — tigers nowhere near that long. But after a moment I kicked Ninc and continued along the road. What I wanted was a town large enough for me to find out answers without being obvious and a place large enough to get lost in easily if that turned out to be necessary. I’ve seen days when I was glad I knew of places to get lost in.
In the late afternoon, when the sun was beginning to sink through its last fast fifth and the cool air was starting to turn colder, one last strange thing happened. I was, by that time, in hills again, though less rugged ones with slopes that had been at least partly cleared. It was then that I saw the scoutship high in the sky. The dying sun colored it a deep red. The only thing I could think of was that something had gone wrong and they had come back to pick us up.
I reached down into my saddle bag and brought out my contact signal. The scoutship swung up in the sky in a movement that would drop the stomach out of any- body aboard. It was the sort of movement you would expect from a very bad pilot, or one who was very good, like George Fuhonin. I triggered the signal, not really feeling sorry.
The ship swung around until it was coming back on a path practically over my head. Then it went into a slip and started bucking so hard that I knew for certain that this wasn’t hot piloting at all, but simply plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn’t one of ours. It wasn’t radically different, but the lines were just varied enough that I knew it wasn’t ours.
My heart stopped turning flips and I realized that I was aching all over again. Maybe the gravity was heavier here after all. I shouldn’t have expected it to be George. I knew as well as anybody that they just didn’t come back for you until the month was up.
But this was one more question. Where did the ship come from? Certainly not from here. Even if you have the knowledge — and we wouldn’t have given it to any Mudeater — a scoutship is something that takes an advanced technology to build.
A few minutes later, still wondering, I came across a campsite almost identical to the one I’d seen earlier in the day, down to the well and the high-walled log pen. There were several people already in the process of making camp for the night and it looked so tempting that I couldn’t resist. There were a number of sites on the slope and a little road led between them. So I turned off the main road. I originally picked a spot near the log struchire, but it stankhorribly there and so I moved.
I set up camp and ate my dinner. Before I was done, the wagon driven by the old man who had waved hello to me swung into the camp. There was a tent about thirty feet from me with three young children and their parents. The kids stared at me and the bubble tent and one of them looked ready to talk to me, but their father came out, shot me a look sitting there drinking my soup, and hauled them away.
After dinner a joint fire was started up by the old man’s wagon and people gathered around it. I was attracted by the singing. It wasn’t good but it sounded homey. Everybody in camp was there, so I thought it was all right for me to come, too. The kids from the next camp were given places in front and their mother, poor helpless thing, was given a stump to sit on. I just stayed in the background and drew no attention to myself.
In a little while, the kids’ father decided it was tithe for their mother to take them back and put them to bed, but the kids didn’t want to go. The old white-haired man then proposed that he tell a story, after which the children would go with their mother. In the old man’s odd accent, as I sat there in the light of the campfire beyond the circle of people, the story seemed just right.
He said, “This story be told to me by my grandmother and it be told to her by her grandmother before her. Now I tell it to you and when you be old, you may tell it, too.”
It was about a nice little girl whose stepmother had iron teeth and unpleasant intentions. The little girl had a handkerchief, a pearl and a comb that she had inherited from her dear dead mother, and her own good heart. As it turned out, these were just enough to find her a better home with a prince, and all were happy except the stepmother, who missed her lunch.
The old man had just finished and the kids were reluctantly allowing themselves to be taken off to bed when there was a commotion on the road at the edge of camp. I turned to look, but my eyes had grown used to the light of the fire and I couldn’t see far into the darkness.
A voice there said, “I be damned if I’ll take another day like this one, Horst. We should have been here two hours ago. It be your fault, and that be truth.”
Horst said, “You signed on for good and bad. If you want to keep your teeth, you’ll quit your bitching and shut up!”
I had a good idea then what the pen was used for. I decided that it was time for me to leave the campfire, too. I got up and eased away as Horst and his men herded their animals past the fire toward the stockade. I cut back to where I had Ninc parked for the night. I threw my bedroll out of the bubble tent and knocked the tent down.
There seemed to be just one thing to do, everything considered. That was to get out of there as fast as possible.
I never got the chance.
I was just heaving the saddle up on Ninc when I felt a hand onmy shoulder and I swung around.
“Well, well. Horst, look who we have here,” he called. It was the one who had made the joke about me being beneath the notice of a Losel. He was the only one there, but with that call the others would be up fast.
I brought the saddle around as hard as I could and then up, and he fell down. He got up again, though, so I dropped the saddle and reached for my gun under my coat. The saddle bounced off him and he went down again, but somebody caught me from behind and pinned my arms to my sides.
I opened my mouth to scream — I have a good scream — but a rough, smelly hand clamped down over it before I had a chance to get more than a lungful of air. I bit down hard-5,000 lbs. per square inch, or some such figure, in a good hard bite — but he didn’t let go. I started to kick, but it did me no good. One arm around me, right hand over my mouth, Horst dragged me off, my feet trailing behind.
When we were behind the pen and out of earshot of the fire, he stopped dragging me and dropped me in a heap. “Make any noise,” he said, “and I’ll hurt you.”
That was a silly way to put it, but somehow it said more than if he’d threatened to break my arm or my head. It left him a latitude of things to do if he pleased. There was enough moonlight for him to see by and he examined his hand.
“I ought to club you anyway,” he said. “There be no blood, at least.”
The one I’d dropped the saddle on came up then, shaking his head to clear it. He’d been hurt the second time and had gone down hard. When he saw me, he brought his booted foot back to kick me. Horst gave me a shove that laid me out fiat and grabbed the other one.
“No,” he said. “You go look through the kid’s stuff and see how much of it we can use and bring it all back with the horse.”
The other one didn’t move. He just stood glaring. The last three men were putting the animals in the pen, so it was a private moment.
“Get going, Jack,” Horst said in a menacing tone and finally Jack turned away. It seemed to me somehow that Horst wasn’t objecting so much to me being kicked, but was rather establishing who it was that did the kicking around here.