Free to rise at last, Arran looked round him. His eldest brother lay quiet, slumped upon his tailbone against the upcurved openwork of the portside wall, his pale face asheen with clotted blood. Suppressing panic and an urge to void himself, Arran knelt beside him, saw that all this gore stemmed from but one small gash above Robret's left eyebrow. Head wounds, Arran knew from his own experience of them, were like that. Robret was unconscious but unclammy, breathing deep and steady. To the boy's unknowing touch, he seemed not otherwise injured. Glancing over his shoulder to assure himself that the draywherry*s course continued straight and level (they had left the mountains and were at this moment passing over a high, empty plain where an ambush would have been impossible), he limped aftward in search of his other brother.
"Donol!"
In answer came a groan. "Here I am, Arran. How is Robret?"
I>onol was where Arran had last seen him, in one of several passenger seats toward the rear of the compartment. From his tone and expression, it appeared that his dignity alone had suffered the worst injuries. As he spoke, he fumbled with impatience at the belt which had held him to
the chair throughout the draywherry's unconventional maneuvers.
"Safety belting is a mixed blessing, brother," Donol observed with a lopsided ^n, "this thing kept me from bouncing round like a bean in a box," he paused, shamefaced, "but it hit me hard, and, uh ... emptied me as well.*'
Too well could Arran see his brother spoke the truth. The chair, his legs, and a deal of the decking were splattered. The sweet-sour stench cut into Arran's consciousness, and, in the aftermath of fear and shock, he had a difficult time for a moment not following his brother's recent example.
"By the Ceo, an unlooked-for adventure!" With many a grunt and groan, Robret, brushing flakes of drying blood from his face, climbed to his feet. He gave a swift glance at the lights and indicators upon the pedestal, felt about his person for additional injuries, and looked out through the fabric of the draywherry to ascertain whether all was as well as it might be. He turned his attention to his brothers. "You are a nice mess, Donol. Makes me want to do the same myself. What do you suppose that was all about?"
With difficulty, Arran kept his peace. If by process of reasoning Robret and Donol arrived at the conclusion which his own mind had leapt to in the first wild instant after the explosion, perhaps there was something in it.
"I would not care to guess," Donol answered without answering, adding a word which Arran had once been paddled by his father for using in Mistress Lia's presence. Echoing the noises his brother had made, Donol held his arms stiff, away from his bespattered body, and walked in an odd manner. Perhaps he had let go at both ends. Arran was not contemptuous, but wondering and grateful that the same embarrassment had not befallen him. A simple sanitary facility lay aft. The middle Islay brother made his awkward way in that direction now. "I was not paying attention," Donol tossed back over his shoulder as he shut the door behind him, "but thinking, instead, upon an error I had found this morning in the accounts."
Robret winked at Arran. "How like him. We have some excitement such as Skye has not seen in decades, and all he thinks about are the accounts."
"I heard that!" The voice came muffled from the small
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Compartment Donol had just entered. "With father and stepmother gone, younger brother sick abed, and the elder fluttery-jittery over a pertpretty face, somebody must!"
Robret smiled, raising his voice. "Aye, there is justice in that."
Arran seated himself in one of the chairs. "Is that what it was?"
His brother glanced down at him. "What?"
"You think it might have been woodsrunners? Because if you do—"
"I cannot think, Arran, with nothing to think about. Not with this head upon me." Robret put a hand to his brow, for the first time showing signs of being in real pain. Perhaps, thought Arran, the shock was wearing off. "I do not know what it was, little brother, and, for the single fact we own, neither do you." His expression changed. He pulled his hand from his battered face and clenched it into a fist. "But by the Ceo, I swear I shall find out!"
Outside, it had begun to grow dark.
In the remaining hours the wherry required to limp into Alysabethport at reduced speed, the brothers learned more of what had happened to them, but not enough to justify conclusions. In places the heavy mesh of the vessel had been rent—broken wire-ends reminded the boy of his unruly hair when he awoke—despite her protective §-fields. Strewn through the compartment they found dirt, soil-covered roots, broken rock from the roadcut, and surmised that some kind of expanding §-field, perhaps even chemenergic explosives, had been used in an attempt to bury them under a mountain of sundered earth.
Peering through the broken fabric at a single star winking back from the overcast, Arran hefted one such fragment, tossing it from palm to palm while keeping an eye upon the greenway. He had ridden to the port upon excursions meant to keep the road from becoming overgrown, but had never traveled this way after dark. Bereft of light from the moonring, the night absorbed the beam of the emergency headlamp his brothers had rigged in the bow long before it could shed light upon much of the surface ahead. Robret and Donol labored over the shattered remains of the
draywherry*s antique comlaser, although the arcane ceremony they attempted proved more funeral than resurrection. The object in Arran*s hand had pierced the cabinet from end to end, lodging beneath its skin which it had dented outward from inside.
"It is no use!" Donol confessed at last.
Robret rose stiflf-legged from where he had knelt for an hour beside the dismantled apparatus, dusted his hands off against one another, and nodded. "As I thought," he agreed with his brother, "the poor abused, elderly thing was never meant to be repaired at all, but, in the unlikely event of its failure, to be replaced by a fresh replica from the spreighformer."
Sitting full upon the deck, Donol stretched his long, thin legs before him and massaged his knees before he attempted, with a certain prudence, to imitate his brother and stand up. "Aye, that was time wasted, was it not?"
Robret took in the view Arran had from behind the pedestal. "Scarcely," he laughed. "Fiddling with it passed many a weary and vexatious hour for us upon this altogether too-protracted journey, which we might otherwise have occupied chewing our fingernails to the armpit. And here, in consequence—" In triumph, he pointed through the damaged hull toward a series of bright lights which had, without warning, appeared in the darkness before them. "—is Alysabethport, long before we might have looked for it."
The planet's one interstellar landing place lacked the glamor which anyone unfamiliar with the realities of thirty-first century life might have awaited, consisting, as it did, of no more than a collection of large, upright plastic cylinders and horizontal half cylinders, Reaming like abandoned bones, stark white, upon the high, dry, equatorial plain. Here and there gleamed the odd colored light. Most of Alysabethport's lumitory embellishment, however, was intended to be visible only from above. The oscillating receptor of an t//5/c-automated instrument broke the simple lines of one building. Another sprouted thermocouples and a cluster of firefighting nozzles directed toward the landing-point. For most of the year, no human attention was required for maintenance of the place, which was well, for the pop-
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ulation upon Skye was sparse and only a few possessed the requisite skills.
The draywherry had begun slowing her already balky pace even as Robret spied the starport. Ulsic systems had drawbacks, one being that the damaged vehicle's program called for speed reductions in percentages of the maximum of which she was capable. Despite the fact they were traveling at half speed, the machine reduced that by half, the resultant by another half, and so forth, until, although they were still several klommes from the port buildings, they might have walked faster than the draywherry carried them.
"Robret! Donol! Look!" Arran it was who first saw unmistakable signs that
a great star-sailing ship had arrived in the system. In the quiet backwater which was Skye (the youngest of the Islays might have substituted "moribund," had he but known the word), few such wondrous occurrences had come to pass during his short life. The last time he had been too sick to care, let alone come see. Now he pointed with excitement to a feature of the miniature man-deserted village which was not cylindrical. A huge five-cornered platform of the same cast plastic as the buildings, perhaps five hundred paces in extent, had been laid out at the precise location of the planet's equator, and (as Arran well knew) the point highest in altitude which that imaginary demarcation crossed. More than anything else, this point had determined placement of the Holdings, situated northward in the planet's more comfortable and productive temperate zone. Countersunk in the center of the pentagram, a great shackle the thickness of a man's waist sent chrome-titanium roots half a klomme into the plateau's bedrock.
Unused 229 ordinary days of the 230-day Skyan year (Arran's age, those of his brothers, and the dates of other events including many important to the natives were reckoned not in Skyan years, but by a standard interval decreed by the Hanoverian Monopolity), now it tethered an alien, upright object, larger than the draywherry, hexagonal in section, taller than it was wide, and windowed from the middle upward.
This peculiar object, however, was not what had caught
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the young boy's attention. From the roof-point of the object upward, fkr as the eye could see, stretched a fine, brilliant line of fire. The evening overcast was thin. Arran believed he could discern an ending to that fiery cabelle which represented more than an ultimate dwindling of perspective. A faint knob seemed visible to him at its uppermost reach, although this may have been an artifact of enthusiastic self-deception. To be certain, he understood that his older, wiser, less-imaginative (and, in his opinion, vastly duller) brothers would deny him any satisfaction of it, as well they might. The knob, if knob there be, would be sailing, ever above the same spot upon the planet's surface, some 35,680 klommes aloft, upon Skye's equatorial plane. Without a doubt the object he believed he saw might be as much as several klommes across (he had handmade two models of such things and knew the specifications well), lit full and well by a glare of sunlight undiminished by the damp, thick atmosphere of Skye.
Still, at this distance it might be too small to make out with the unassisted eye. Nonetheless, Arran thought he could. Whether or not he was correct, he understood how the odd, windowed object resting upon the center of the great pentagram (about its doorway he could, without any question, discern half a dozen human figures as, at her infuriating pace, the draywherry drew nearer) had been lowered with laborious pain upon that bright-blazed cabelle from synchronous orbit all the way down to Alysabethport.
A "lubberlift" he knew the thing was named, although the hardiest star-sailors used it (and in point of fact, were always the first to test it at each orbitfall), right along with dirt-kissing passengers grateful to be shut of it after a nervous and protracted voyage to the ground. The annihilation-powered steam-launches that starships carried were too expensive of operation to be grounded, save in the direst emergency, and the keel had yet to be laid of a starsailing ship which could reach the surface of a full-sized world in any but the tiniest charred and tattered pieces.
Vibrating now with the damage done her, the draywherry drew up beside the landing pentagram and halted. Cleaned up as best they could manage, Robret and Donol lowered
the hatch-ladder and descended to the ground, waiting for Arran to catch up. They strode across the pentagram, their boots making gritting noises up>on the smooth, hard, dusty surface, toward those who had arrived by lubbedift. They were met halfway by their father.
Chapter VIII:
ROBRET 'THE'' ISLAY
Watching his sons descend the hatch-ladder of the damaged wherry and scuttle from beneath the low-hovering machine with every manifestation of good health, the senior Robret Islay relaxed his grip upon the yoke of the worn kinergic thrustible which was at all times strapped to his right forearm.
Inset upon the weapon's axis, over the back of his hand, a minuscule pilot lamp which informed him that the sighting laser stood ready winked out. Another warning pilot, indicative of the weapon's potential kinergic capabilities, would have burned with equal brightness had he squeezed the flat kidney-shaped yoke where it crossed his palm, eliminating safety circuitry and bringing the laser into play. He had not had reason to see it alight this day. He knew now that he might yet.
At the moment, however, seeing his sons safe, more important matters occupied his mind. Above all what he must remember not to say was "You are late," or ask them why. They would tell him. Young Robret was a grown man, hard though it was to think of him as such, late marrying, like his father. He, his father, must grant him the adult courtesy of assuming a good reason existed for the delay. It was his great fortune, as far as Robret ^5 was concerned, that the courtesy was appropriate.
Movement flickered in the comer of his eye. This annoyed the warrior in him, in especial contrast to the respect he felt for his eldest son's judgment. He had spoken to the hopeless
twit responsible with as much sharpness as was decent, if not altogether *droomly. Yet already the Drector-Honorary Nasai-Ulness' pair of Oplytes—cut-rate models to begin with, and in false economy purchased past their prime—were fanning out upon either side, attempting in an obvious and artless way to flank the draywherry.
Ceo, he swore to himself, he had not wanted their overdressed, stupid owners along, let alone these useless, dangerous, disgusting creatures! Yet the Drector-Honorary and Lady Witsable Nasai-Ulness were "dear, dear chums" of Alysabeth's, old and honored friends—and intimate business associates—of her father's as well. It was said they were quite popular in the Hanoverian 'Droom, although for what reason he himself could never guess. The Nasai-Ulness struck him as at best a halfwit and genetic cull. The idiot fellow's wife was worse, if anything. He had encountered camp-followers with better manners, breeding, and taste than this so-called Lady could lay claim to.
Ah, well, of all individuals whose acquaintance he could boast, who was he to judge manners and breeding in another? He himself lacked those qualities of rej&nement which might have made him better, or at least more civilized, company, and to which Alysabeth, reared as she had been upon the capital world, was accustomed. He must strive to accommodate himself as much as was tolerable to the wishes of his young and painfully lovely bride.
At least the Nasai-Ulness knew better (or, as appeared more likely, was too much the craven) than to play at soldiering himself. Keeping a tactical eye upon that one— intoxicated as he always seemed to be, upon occasion waving weaponry about, as well as upon his ill-trained animals— would have constituted one temptation too many for the Islay's trigger-thumb.
Indeed, it had been for purposes of despatching the two Oplytes, if need arose, as much as for any imagined threat from the draywherry, that he had warmed his thrustible. Oplytes were unpredictable, never, nor at any price, possessed of overmuch intelligence. This far gone into the senescence which swept over them like a sudden storm, they could be as dangerous to those they purported to protect as to whatever they protected them from. Out of long habit and
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bitter experience, the Islay preferred defending those he loved, or was responsible for, himself. He would not, in good grace, have accepted even human bodyguards, and he had taught his sons this preference, as well.
Hovering at an angled edge of the landing pentagram, the draywherry had a bedraggled, sheepish look about her, as if she knew she had failed in her responsibilities. For one thing, she no longer rested level upon her §-pressors, but listed toward the starboard bow, as if she somehow shared the Nasai-Ulness' inebriation. Her wire-woven fuselage was in places rent, as he had earlier observed, by terrible energies. How it could be, and yet his sons be still alive and hale, he did not know, although, as soon as possible, he meant to f
ind it out.
And something else . . . yes, that was it: she was the wrong color! For a moment the warrior's eyes crinkled in his weathered face as he realized Old Henry Redshirt had kept his promise—or had it been a threat?—to decorate the homely vessel by some means he had latterly devised. The golden color must be something subtle and active, for, as he approached the machine, the Islay could see it had flowed over onto the damaged portions, giving a contradictory impression of splendid disarray.
"Father!" Robret fils approached wearing a crooked grin, young enough in outlook to be pleased by whatever misadventure he and his brothers had survived. As etiquette required, he locked his left forearm along that of his father, avoiding a potential clash between the thrustible his father wore and that which he did not, but might have. The elder Islay recalled a conversation he had overheard in the capital, among amateur scholars and antiquarians, to the effect that this greeting-gesture had, upon a time, been performed with the right arm, indicating that the hand was empty and the greeter unarmed and harmless. Odd people, ancestors. What value lay in the friendly regard of a harmless individual?
Now, at last, he could wave these thrusted Oplytes aside. Others aboard the lubberlift had seen the boys descend and were venturing from within the hexagonal conveyance. He hoped they would have the sense to give him a moment with his sons. Accepting the gesture of greeting, whatever its
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origin, he added to it, clapping his eldest son and heir upon the shoulder. He noticed that the boy winced, as if bruised.
"Father!" Hardly had the Islay opened his mouth to ask about Robret's injury, when he was greeted with the same most-welcome word by his youngest. Arran hurtled toward him. How good it was to see the boy up and about after his illness! But first came an awkward moment. Arran was twelve, perhaps too young for warriors' forearm clasps, perhaps too old for a father's—
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