“Bring him here,” said Jim, imitating the breathy, hissing accents of the Throne World High-born. He was standing so that his back was to the rising moon, which had finally been joined by its smaller partner of the skies. Their combined light flooded over his shoulder and showed him clearly the face of the small long-haired soldier but left his own face in the darkness of deep shadow.
“Do you know who it is I have chosen to be your final leader?” Jim asked in a hard, deep-voiced tone when the young soldier was almost literally carried by the two Starkiens to stand before him.
The colonial soldier’s teeth chattered so badly he could not make a coherent answer. But he shook his head violently. Jim made a short sound of anger and contempt, deep in his throat.
“Never mind,” he said harshly. “You know who controls the area behind your section of the perimeter?”
“Yes…” The young soldier nodded his head eagerly.
“Go to him,” said Jim. “Tell him I’ve changed my plans. He’s to take over command of your people now, without waiting.”
Jim waited. The young soldier trembled.
“Do you understand me?” Jim shot at him.
The prisoner went into a violent convulsion of nodding.
“Good,” said Jim. “Adok, take him outside. I want a word with my adjutant before you go.”
Adok shepherded the prisoner out beyond the mesh fence. Jim turned and beckoned both Harn and the Governor to him. He pointed down at the camp.
“Now,” he said to the Governor, “point out to the adjutant the part of the perimeter lying outside the area that your cousin Cluth will be occupying.”
The Governor shrank a little from Jim, apparently infected by the fear of the prisoner, and stretched out a trembling forefinger to indicate to Harn the section Jim had mentioned. Harn asked a few questions to make certain of the location and then turned to Jim.
“You want me to take the prisoner back there?” he asked Jim.
“That’s right, Adjutant,” said Jim.
“Yes, sir,” said Harn, and went out through the mesh fence.
This time the trip took them nearer an hour of earthly time. The moment they returned, with word that they had set the prisoner to walking forward and heard him challenged and picked up by the soldiers of Cluth’s perimeter, Jim ordered them all out of the sentry post and back down the slope toward their vessel.
They went swiftly, at Jim’s orders. It was not until they were fully airborne that Jim relaxed. Then he ordered Adok, who was at the controls, to take the ship up and out to the farthest possible distance from which their night-vision screens could keep view on the camp. Adok obeyed. Some six or eight minutes later they settled into a circling patrol some fifteen thousand feet up and ten miles’ ground distance from the camp. As silently as a cloud itself, the reconnaissance vessel swung like a huge toy at the end of an invisible string better than ten miles long about the drowsy armed camp below.
Jim sat unmoving, gazing at the night-vision screen in the control area beyond Adok, up in the front of the ship. With him sat Harn, the Governor, and, for that matter, Adok himself, all gazing at the screen, but, with the exception of Jim, with no idea of what they were watching for.
For quite a while it seemed that their watch would produce nothing out of the ordinary. Reaching out, Jim worked the telescopic controls of the night screen, from time to time zooming in for a view of the streets and buildings. The night patrols were going their rounds without incident. Most of the buildings were dark. And so it continued.
Then, without warning, there was a little wink of light, hardly brighter than the blink of a flashlight, in what seemed the center of the Governor’s council-quarters building.
“I think that’s—” Jim was beginning, when Harn threw himself past him, literally tore the control out of Adok’s hands, and sent the small craft twisting away, fleeing at top speed from the scene they had just been watching.
Adok, trained soldier that he was, did not fight his superior officer except for a first instinctive grab at the controls as they were taken from him. He slipped out of the control seat and let Harn take his place.
Jim leaned forward and spoke in Harn’s ear.
“Antimatter?” Jim asked.
Harn nodded. A moment later the shock wave hit, and the little vessel went tumbling end over end through the night sky, like some insignificant insect swatted by the paw of some monster.
Harn, clinging to the controls, finally got the ship back on an even keel. Within, they were all of them battered to a certain extent. The little Governor was only half-conscious, and his nose was bleeding. Jim helped Adok to prop the little man up on his feet and buckle his seat harness around him. Ironically, not one of them had his harness buckled at the moment they had been struck by the shock wave.
“Is there any point in our going back?” Jim asked Harn. The adjutant shook his head. “There’ll be nothing to see,” he said. “Only a crater.”
“How much antimatter would you judge was involved in that?” Jim asked.
Harn shook his head.
“I’m no expert in amounts, sir,” he said. “The total unit is about as big as you can hold comfortably in one hand. But that’s for convenience. The effective element inside it may be no larger than a grain of sand, for all I know… Sir?”
“Yes?” said Jim.
“If I may ask, sir,” said Harn evenly, “what made you believe that there was antimatter down in that camp?”
“It was a guess, Adjutant,” said Jim somberly. “Based on a lot of factors—here and back on the Throne World.”
“It was a trap, then,” said Harn, without perceptible emotion in his voice. “A trap for me and my—I beg your pardon, sir—your Starkiens. We were meant to go in through the door they left open—that unguarded direct descent upon the main building. The whole Ten-unit would have been wiped out.”
He was silent.
“But, sir,” said Adok, looking first at him, then turning to Jim, “these colonials must’ve known that they’d be wiped out too?”
“What makes you think they’d know, Starkien?” said Harn. “There was no reason that whoever supplied them with that antimatter should have wanted them to know what they were handling.”
Adok subsided. After a few moments Harn spoke again to Jim.
“Sir?” he said. “Could I ask the commander what noyaux are?”
“Social groups, Adjutant,” said Jim. “Family groups whose chief occupation is badgering, insulting, and struggling with other family groups in every way short of actual fighting.”
“These”—Harn glanced for a moment at the Governor—“form noyaux ?”
“Their chief families do,” said Jim. “Ordinarily their bickering just gives them something to do, because subconsciously they don’t intend to harm each other, no matter how much they may believe consciously that they’re ready to fight at the drop of a hat. But the point is, the noyaux never trust each other. When that soldier of Notral’s perimeter guard was brought in and questioned, Cluth leaped at the conclusion that he had been betrayed by whomever from the Throne World gave him the antimatter. He made an effort to take it back from wherever it was being guarded, and some accident set it off. I hadn’t hoped for that so much as for a splitting up of the encampment, which would give us a chance to swoop down on Cluth’s party and take the antimatter back from him.”
“I see, sir,” said Harn. He said nothing for a second. “And now, sir?”
“Now,” said Jim grimly, “we head back to the Throne World as quickly as possible.”
“Sir!” acknowledged Harn.
He said no more after that, and both Jim and Adok sat without speaking. In the little vessel there was silence, until the Governor, recovering full consciousness, began to mourn his dead cousin, with mutterings of Cluth’s name, and stifled, low-voiced sobs.