Freedom from their conquerors lay in the Martians' grasp if Rolph could show them that the gods they worshipped were guns.!

THE TRIAL was secret, and the prisoner was held incommunicado. Menshrie, of the Martian Messenger, printed the Commission's press releases verbatim. Rewording them would have been in the spirit of lese majeste, and Menshrie was a cautious man. His disapproval, if any, of the lurid colors the press officer used to paint a portrait of Captain Jason Kenlan, was not evident in Menshrie's editorial comments. A segment of the population naturally agreed with the reports and therefore hated Kenlan with a bright white hate, which burned fiercely enough to include Jason's sons in its reflected glare. The sons quietly slipped away to the other side of the city and stayed out of sight. One grew a moustache as a hindrance to recognition. Their father was beyond their aid. It was their considered opinion that their mother was lucky to be five years dead.

They hanged Captain Kenlan in the late afternoon. Publicly. Thousands of citizens jammed the Marsville city park, and several hawkers wandered through the crowd selling nuts and candied quoie. There was little ceremony to the execution. The guards led Kenlan past a platoon of space marines who turned their backs on the officer. They dragged him up on the platform where the colonel ripped off his insignia. They gave him no opportunity to speak, but as the executioner fixed the noose in place, Jason cried out, "They are human, I tell you!" The lever was tripped before he could say more. The drop was too shallow for the light Martian gravity, and he strangled beneath a bat-flecked violet sky.

There was an atmosphere of festivity in Marsville on the night after the hanging. The city of eighty thousand had reaffirmed its faith in human dignity by executing a man who wanted to share "humanity" with a species of Martian wild life. By eight o'clock, a barfly minstrel had built a ballad around the hanging. The tune was old, but the words were new. Its mournful strains floated out into the night air in front of a space port saloon near the city's outer gate, where two shabbily dressed men loitered against the wall and listened.

"Kenlan was the son of the colonel;

Kenlan was the fourth planet's pride.

Kenlan got lost in the mountains,

And brought back a hairy brown bride.

Now the gallows were high and windy;

The steps were seven and six.

Yes, it's thirteen steps to heaven,

If you're in love with a..."

"Think it'll make the hit parade, Rolf ?" drawled one of the shabby men as he brushed ice crystals out of a bristling brown moustache.

Rolf Kenlan eyed his brother briefly, then glanced back at The gate. A staff car had just pulled away, carrying the old guard, while two fresh sentries entered the hut to spend their four-hour shift. Beyond the gate lay five miles of frigid tundra, and then the foothills, immersed in darkness.

Rolf waited for the guards to get inside, then spoke softly: "Okay, Lennie, let's go. Make like you're drunk."

ARM IN arm, they shuffled along the wall to the gate. Then they sat down in front of the shack and began tippling from a bottle of kwoyo and arguing noisily. When they heard a guard's footsteps on the floor of the hut, Lennie bent forward and made retching noises. The door opened and a gust of warm air fanned Rolf's neck.

"Hey! Not in front of the shack!" the guard bellowed. "You there! Get him away from here." He nudged Rolf's back with the toe of his boot.

"Yeh, yeh, sure," Rolf grunted. He staggered to his feet and began tugging at Lennie's arm. He lost his grip and sat down hard.

The guard came out cursing. "Blind lead blind," he growled as he jerked Lennie roughly erect and dragged him toward the shadows. Lennie was still belching sickeningly.

Rolf dragged himself up and stood swaying dizzily. He glanced through the glass door of the shack at the other guard who was pressing his face against a window to see where his companion had gone.

There was a dull thuk from the shadows, then the sound of a body falling. Lennie reappeared with a gun in one hand and a short length of pipe in the other. He tossed the gun to Rolf, who darted up the steps and burst inside, just as the guard turned away from the window with a bewildered expression.

"Turn around," Rolf growled.

The guard glanced at the gun, lifted his hands, and turned. "Y-you're the son of—"

Rolf clubbed him with the gun butt before he finished. The guard slumped across a table and rolled to the floor. Lennie came in dragging the other man.

"Anybody see us?" Rolf grunted. "Couple walked past. Didn't even look around."

"Good! Bust the locker open and get into a night suit. Then get the fur horses out of the stable. I'll pack up whatever we can take with us."

Lennie smashed the lock of a wooden chest with his pipe joint. "Ammo's in here," he grunted as he struggled into a heavy all-covering night suit and pulled the wind mask over his face. Then he went outside.

Rolf broke open a first-aid packet and gave each guard a shot of morphine to insure a lengthy sleep. Then he ripped a blanket from the cot, dumped it full of ammunition, chocolate and vitamin tablets. He rolled it into a pack, donned a night suit, and went outside to join his brother in the darkness.

Lennie was waiting in the shadows with a pair of mutant fur horses, saddled and shod with asbestos-packed shoes. Rolf tied the bundle behind his idle, then mounted the nervous steed. A last glance at the street told Lem that they were still unobserved.

"Let's don't forget that this was your idea," growled Lennie as they trotted through the gate and onto the frozen tundra.

"Go back if you want to," Rolf responded. "Nobody's making you come."

LENNIE grunted resignedly and fell silent for a time. The sky was misted by its usual thin cloud of ice crystals which dulled the ghost light of the twin moons to the faintest glimmer. Faintly, they could see the shadows of the foothills in the distance ahead, while behind them the lights of Marsville made an aura in the dusty sift of falling pin-head sleet. The lights were a threat, and the gathering darkness was a comforting cloak that drew slowly about them. This was the first time that either man had ventured beyond the walls of the city where they were born. The law confined the populace to Earth's only city on Mars, and it also kept Mars-creatures from entering.

"When'll they find the guards?" asked Lennie, who was younger and needed a certain amount of reassurance.

"Whenever the O. D. makes his tour, if he makes one. If he doesn't, we've got until they mount the next guard." Rolf spoke irritably, and tightened the straps of his wind mask against the icy air.

It was still cold on Mars, but warmer than it had been when man first came. Five centuries had passed since Dawson and Heide had set off the deuterium-helium fusion-cycle in the heavy water icecap, thereby furnishing the fourth planet with a denser atmosphere of oxygen and helium—a breathable atmosphere, and one which could hold heat.

"Lordy, Rolf!" Lennie muttered nervously. "It's hard to believe we're not ever coming back! I don't mind saying I'm scared. Y'reckon we'll ever find that place Dad was talking about —before they arrested him?"

"If we don't, we won't live long. Just shut up and watch over your shoulder. And let's ride a hundred yards apart in case they throw a searchlight out here."

Lennie reined his horse aside obediently. But the mount stumbled, and the rider cursed. He stopped to peer down at the ground. "Wait, Rolf !" he snapped. "Look! A fresh grave!"

Rolf hesitated in the dim moonlight, staring back at the newly frozen mound of earth. "That's what I thought," he grunted bitterly. "You guess whose it is?"

"Yeah," Lennie breathed. "Yeah. The androon gal Dad brought back from the mountains. The dirty so-and-so's said they let her go."

Rolf muttered a quoted phrase from one of the trial's news releases. "In accordance with the Commission's policy of mercy toward alien life forms, the androon female was set free..." He snorted a scornful curse and spurred his mount onward.

In a way, Rolf thought, the androon woman was their foster mother, although they'd never seen her. Jason had taken her to wife in a ceremony before an androon priest, while he was lost for a year in the mountains. He'd brought her back claiming that he'd found proof that her species was really human. So they hanged him under the bio-laws.

THE TWO riders trotted westward among the giant lichen patches. They kept abreast, but separated by shouting distance. Rolf hoped to reach the fringes of the quoie orchards before someone discovered the guards.

If they were caught, there was only one possible penalty: death. Only officers of the patrol could venture beyond the walls. And even patrolmen needed special orders—such as the reconnaissance mission which had first sent Jason into the hills. The only reason the Commission gave for such a harsh quarantine was a single word: "security".

Mars was still nearly unexplored except from the air. Marsville was a ten-mile square, and it was the entire world to its natives, who were five generations removed from Earth. It was an industrial city, mining its own ore, making its own steel. It had become nearly self-sufficient and, as soon as its economic independence was assured, it was to become the toolmaker to a Martian civilization which would expand outward from the Marsville nucleus. It was to become the hub of an empire. But until that time, its attentions were to remain focussed upon its own growth. Rolf's and Lennie's knowledge of the rest of the planet was purely academic. The hills ahead were only a mystery.

"Reckon we'll meet any androons?" Lennie called from the darkness.

"Shut up!" Rolf barked. "They might hear you."

Sound travelled far in the icy air across the frozen flatlands. Rolf stole a glance back at the city, but it was still drowsing peacefully in its glow-aura.

When they were a thousand yards from the quoie orchards, Lennie called out again—this time with fear in his voice: "Rolf! Look! A light! On the wall!"

Rolf reined up and stared back at the city. The pencil beam of a searchlight was stabbing out into the night. Slowly, it swept the area to the north of them, then darted southward. Rolf dismounted with a curse. "Get your horse down!" he shouted.

Then he tugged his own mount behind a waist-high clump of lichen and tried to force the animal's forelegs into a kneel. The mare remained stubbornly erect. The light was sweeping closer.

Despairingly, Rolf drew the stolen pistol and shot her between the eyes. He stepped back as she crumpled behind the lichen patch, then threw himself down out of sight as the searchlight swept over him.

LENNIE shouted something about his horse, then screamed as a burst of machine-gun fire chattered from the city. Rolf glanced up to see the beam rigidly stationary, attached to the spot where Lennie had dismounted. There was another burst of fire, and bright tracers arced across the tundra. Rolf heard the bullets whipping the earth a hundred to the south, and occasionally spanging off a rock in a whining ricochet. There was no sound from his brother.

"Lennie? You okay?"

There was no answer. The firing ceased, and the light began slowly sweeping the tundra again. Keeping behind the lichen clusters, Rolf crawled southward. Several times the light passed over him, and he flung himself full length on the turf. Then the light stopped once more near Lennie, and Rolf saw the prostrate fur horse with Lennie's legs pinned beneath it.

"Len! Are you all right?"

He heard a faint groan, and crawled closer. Hoofbeats were echoing in the distance. He paused to call again from just beyond the splash of brightness. "Lennie! Are you alive?"

This time he heard a weak answer: "Go on ...before they come....Belly shot. I can't go. Hurry… Rolf."

Rolf hesitated. Without a horse, he couldn't carry Lennie along. And the riders were coming out of the city. Even if he had a horse, he couldn't take care of an abdominal wound with a first-aid kit. Grimly, he realized Lennie would have to be left behind.

"So long, kid!" he called; then, crouching low, he began running toward the orchard, angling away from the road of brightness which the beam carved, leading the patrol riders toward the downed fugitive.

Rolf raced against fear, expecting the searchlight at any moment to shift half a degree and catch him in its beam. But, evidently, the patrolmen were not yet aware that there had been two riders. Soon they would find the extra horse, however, or notice that two were gone from the stables. And from that moment onward, Rolf's life would become an endless flight. The city was a prison and escapees were hunted down by air. The guards had the right to kill them summarily.

Rolf reached the orchard just as the clatter of hooves stopped beside his fallen brother. He darted among the furry-barked quoie trunks, then stopped to look back. The silhouettes of three horsemen were gathered around the wounded man in the searchlight's splash. One of the men pointed at the ground. Rolf strained his eyes for a better look. A gunshot came to his ears faintly, and the rider stopped pointing.

ROLF STIFFENED with horror. There was no question in his mind about Lennie's fate. Slowly he took out the pistol, braced it against the tree-trunk, then realized that there was no hope of hitting the man at such a distance. He pocketed the weapon and stood staring at the scene in frozen hate. Someday he would come back, he swore. Someday that man would die.

Then, as the riders began circling about in the area, he turned and drove deeper into the orchard's blackness. Tomorrow the chase would begin in earnest, and he hoped to be in the foothills before morning.

The first feeble rays of dawn, however, found him still in the orchard. In despair, he realized he had wandered onto a side path and had been plodding south instead of west. Soon the aircraft would rise from the city to begin their search. How could he escape them on foot?

Wearily he sat down on a dry stump to consider his plight and to gnaw at a bit of frozen chocolate from the pack. His stirring about roused a giant wool-bat which had spent the night roosting in one of the parabolic cups which constituted the foliage of the quoie trees. The creature came awake with a flutter, peered over the side of the cup, bared its needle-like fangs at the human, and departed with a series of shrill eee's and a whipping of gigantic wings. Rolf started up in fright, then settled back with a disgusted grunt to finish his breakfast.

The bats were harmless unless attacked. The sharp teeth were used to tear through the leathery insulating hide that covered the fruit of the quoie trees, and bats were normally vegetarians. The androons used them for food, and rode them for sport. The winged beasts were untrainable and useless for directed transportation, but they could provide a wild sky ride that ended only when the bat became exhausted and settled to earth. Rolf had seen them soaring above the mountains, looping and twisting in an attempt to unseat their androon passengers.

Directed transportation?

Rolf came to his feet suddenly and stared up at the semi-translucent quoie cups, frost-covered in the dawn. The early sun's rays colored them a dull orange, and here and there a dark hulk lay huddled in the heart of a cup. Other bats had nested for the night, but they were beginning to stir as the light grew brighter. What need did he have of a directed ride? One thing was certain: no bat would fly back to the city.

Quickly he gathered up the rope that had bound the pack, spotted a tree that contained a bat, and began shinnying up the furry trunk. The tree shook with his weight. The bat grinned at him from over the side, then took wing noisily, arousing several others. Rolf dropped to the ground with a curse. Snaring the creatures would be a job.

He stared blankly at the tree and waited for inspiration. It came. He stretched the rope out in a straight line on the ground, made a noose at one end, then unzipped his suit and removed the canteen from its warm nest next to his ribs. He began soaking a twelve-foot length of the rope, just aft of the noose. The water froze almost immediately. He built up a strong sheath of ice about it, then carried it to the nearest tree which contained a late sleeper. He tied one end about the trunk, then stood on tiptoe to rattle the noose against the lip of the nest. The ice made a stiff rod.

With a startled squeak, the bat awoke with a jerk that rocked the tree. It caught the rope in its teeth with an angry snap. Rolf threw his weight against the frozen pole, and it became suddenly flexible as the ice shattered. With a shriek to awaken the dead, the bat burst skyward and fought frenziedly at the end of the tether. But the loop was securely locked about its lower jaw, and the sharp teeth nailed it in place.

FOR A MOMENT, Rolf thought the beast would either break the rope or uproot the swaying quoie. The beating wings set up a wind that fanned his face and rocked the neighboring trees. Quickly, he began guiding the creature's struggles so that it wrapped the rope several additional times around the trunk. Then he loosened the knot and tied a loop about his waist. He had meant to transfer the snare to the bat's legs, as the androons did, but the monster's furious struggle made it impossible. He would have to chance the jaw sling.

With some misgivings, he began walking about the trunk to unwind the rope. After two turns, he was being dragged around it. Then he found himself spinning upward, crashing against tree trunks, and tearing through tough quoie foliage. He closed his eyes, clung to the rope, and tried to pull himself higher upon it. Then he was rocking and swaying in the icy wind. The bat swooped, soared and looped over the orchard as it tried to shed its unwanted cargo. Suddenly it climbed high, jerked its neck and folded its wings, tossing Rolf upward like a ball on a string.

He caught a glimpse of the bat's taloned feet slashing toward him, and he caught at them with his hands to protect his face. The claws knifed through the heavy padding of his night-suit, and he felt them dig into the muscles of his forearms. Howling with pain, he clutched the hairy ankles and held on. The jaw rope went slack. With horror, he watched the jaw noose loosen as the beast snapped at it, uttering shrill skreees of rage. The talons kept clawing at his forearms, but the thickness of the padded sleeves lessened their effect.

They were fluttering a hundred feet above the orchard when the noose fell free, and the rope dangled from Rolf's waist. In mid-air, the bat tried to bend double and slash the man with its fangs, but its jaw seemed to have come unhinged. As Rolf threw his boots up to kick, the bloody slavering mouth only beat against them weakly. But the battle was causing them to plummet earthward again.

A deafening thwoomp suddenly shocked Rolf's eardrums, and a dark pall of smoke opened up above them. The bat shrieked in wild terror as a fragment of shrapnel ripped a small hole in a membranous wing. The city had a pair of anti-aircraft guns, and the guards had evidently spotted the wild fight above the orchard.

Then Rolf was no longer holding on. The bat's talons tightened instinctively about his wrists as the creature dived like a fighter-rocket for lower altitude. Another burst of flak flared like a black umbrella with a heart of fire. A metallic fragment slashed the fabric of Rolf's suit. The bat pulled out of the dive and began skimming along the tree-tops, darting a zig-zag course for the hills and screaming rage against the black threats that bloomed from nowhere with the stink of cordite. Its talons flared open and shut, trying to rid itself of the unwanted weight, but Rolf had recovered his grip on the ankles.

HE DOUBLED his body into a ball, lest he be dashed to death in the treetops. With his knees, he pulled up enough of the trailing rope to catch it in his mouth. Letting go with one hand, he managed to loop it about one of the bat's ankles, and by shifting his grip, about the other. After a moment, his own fate was securely tied to the bat's.

And the bat was fluttering a hysterical course for the hills. The gunners were finding it difficult to cope with the sudden changes in direction. Rolf breathed premature relief as the beast swooped into a gulley and turned out of the city's sight behind a ridge, winging low over the rocks and lichen patches. But the gunners could still lob them over the hill, and they did—but with less accuracy.

He stole a glance backward and saw what he expected to see—aircraft. Three pinpoints in the sky were streaking westward—the city's only jet-planes. Because of their altitude, and their slight off-target heading, he knew they hadn't spotted him yet, but it would certainly be only a matter of minutes. The bat's rust-colored fur offered some camouflage, but they would see the black shadow darting up the hillsides, and dive in for the kill.

The bat drove deeper into the hills, taking a winding course through the valleys and keeping up a skree skree that seemed to become weaker by the moment. Rolf noticed that the sleeves of his suit were blood-drenched, and that some of the sticky fluid was not his own. A bit of shrapnel had found a home.

The planes were circling almost directly overhead, and losing altitude. Rolf noticed that his bat was heading for a low cliff of white rock where the mouths of three caverns yawned toward the sun. Several other of the beasts were sunning themselves on a ledge before the caves. Their nests?

One of the jets suddenly waggled its wings and dropped out of formation. It dived toward the other end of the valley, then banked sharply in a 180-degree turn. Rolf knew it had spotted him, and was coming in for a strafing run. The weakened and wounded bat was flapping its wings wearily, and barely managing to keep aloft as it struggled to reach the cliff caves which it apparently regarded as home. Rolf spurred it on with a couple of pistol shots near its breast. It skreeed weakly and summoned a last effort.

Like a shrieking arrow, the first jet streaked past, and Rolf pulled himself as close as possible against the bat's belly. A crash of machine-gun fire ripped a hundred-yard-long swath across the ground, and ricocheting tracers darted skyward. The pilot had overshot. But another jet was streaking up the valley.

THE BAT reached the ledge just as the first blast ploughed the earth, and the sound was answered by a growing chorus of shrill skrees from the cave. Rolf threw himself flat on the ledge as the caverns began belching forth a flood of frightened bodies with membranous wings. An army of bats streaked out like a herd of stampeding bison. The second jet pulled up sharply to avoid collision. The bats filled the air in a swirling, scurrying, bleating black cloud of confusion. The beast that had carried the fugitive lay dying on the ledge beside him. Rolf cut the rope and waited for the last startled creature to emerge. Then he slid into the mouth of a cave.

The strafing chatter continued intermittently. Evidently they had lost sight of him during the bat stampede. Rolf lay panting in the darkness, completely exhausted fro the night of fleeing, emotionally drained by the sight of his brother's and father's death at the hands of the city which had been home. Home? It had been the world.

Why had they hung Jason Kenlan? Because he had committed miscegenation? Rolf remembered the bewilderment on his father's face when they treated him like the worst sort of criminal, remembered his cry, "But they're human, I tell you!"

Before the commission had closed Jason's cell off from the world and held him incommunicado, Rolf had spent half an hour listening to a disjointed account of his father's year of wandering in the Martian wilderness. But the conversation had been punctuated with anxious expressions of worry about the androon woman, and with irrelevant anecdotes concerning life in the androon caverns, or "mines", as Jason had called them.

Nevertheless, Rolf had managed to hear some of the officer's ideas before the guards chased him away. Jason claimed to have discovered evidence that Mars had once been a satellite of Jupiter, that it had been peopled by a now-extinct race of intelligent non-humans, and that the androons had come from Earth while Cro-Magnon man still prowled the forests of Europe.

And that the androons were, in fact, descended from the Cro-Magnon tribes. He claimed that the "Bolsewi" had raided Earth in prehistoric times, captured a dozen pairs of humans, and rocketed them back to Mars for breeding purposes, using the offspring as slave labor.

Rolf and Lennie had quickly decided that their father was executed to close his mouth, rather than to punish him for violating the bio-laws, which would be void if the androons were proved human. Impulsively, and driven by bitterness, they had decided to escape the city and go in search of proof which would posthumously absolve Jason Kenlan of guilt. Jason claimed to have brought such proof, but he had presented it to the Commission in secret session, rather than announcing it directly to the people of Marsville who now would never see it.

OTHER scientists had proposed that Mars had once been the outer moon of Jupiter, while the king planet was still in a molten, fiery state. According to the theory, Mars had received more light and heat from the mother planet than it got from the sun. It had cooled more rapidly than the giant, and had developed the first life in the solar system. But after the fashion of all moons which revolve about fluid-surfaced planets, it drifted farther and farther away from the waning, cooling king. Some of its orbital energy was lost in the daily work of raising and lowering the Jovian tides. When the tides fell back with the moon's passing, the spring-tension of the mutual attraction diminished by a tiny amount, and Mars slipped another inch away from its master. When it reached the point where Sol's gravity met and exactly opposed that of Jove, Mars wavered, drifted free, then accelerated sunward. Keeping some of Jupiter's orbital velocity, it spiraled inward, dashing through the asteroids to gather up Phobos and Deimos. By missing the sun, of course, it was doomed to wheel forever in its own new orbit.

The scientists who held for such a theory pointed to the eccentricity of Mars' orbit and to the peculiar behavior of her moons, and to the known fact that Earth's own moon was gradually slipping away due to tidal influences. But such scientists were held in political disfavor.

Rolf, having heard what his father had to say, now suspected a political reason for this disfavor. If Mars life had indeed evolved while Mars was a satellite of Jupiter, then Mars' sudden change of orbit would be a disaster of the first magnitude to whatever beings originally inhabited it. The sudden shift in climate might drive them underground, wreck their civilization, and devastate their non-intelligent life-forms and food supply. Such a civilization, after painful rebuilding, might go searching for organisms who could better withstand the changed conditions. And what more likely place to look than upon Mars' new neighbor —Earth? The kidnapped life-forms could be taught to handle the heavier labor, while the natives kept themselves sheltered from the fiercer climate.

If the lost-satellite theory were shown to be true, it might lead to a belief that the androons were human.

But then, Rolf asked himself, why should the Commission care whether the creatures were originally born of Earth or of Mars? The city's tyranical quarantine had set a barrier about it anyway. Rolf knew no possible answer. Yet he believed that the Commission had killed his father to keep intact the assumption of the androons' inhumanity. And, in a sense, the Commission had killed his mother —by the ruling that women with children must spend thirty hours a week in factory labor, as well as caring for the family. Overwork had destroyed her health, taken her life. Of the family he had known since birth, Rolf alone remained—Rolf, and hatred.

HE THOUGHT of these things in a hazy way as he lay resting in the mouth of the cave. The jets had stopped strafing the area, but he could still hear their rushing hiss as they circled overhead. Sooner or later, Rolf knew, they would send helicopters to land and search the area for him. Unquestionably, they would search the caves. He must move on—somehow. There could be no rest until he was either safe or dead.

He turned around in the narrow passage-way, then stiffened. For an instant he thought that a bat had breathed in his face, but then, removing his mask, he felt a gentle draft that was warmer than the outer airs. The blackness was impenetrable. Fumbling, he found his flashlight and shone it back into the cave, but the tunnel made a turning fifty feet ahead, and he could not see beyond it.

Toward the bend the tunnel widened, and a pair of young bats blinked at him from a ledge. They slowly folded and unfolded their wings, which were still too feeble to bear them aloft. He crawled past them quickly, let the female return and object to his presence. The little beasts eyed him solemnly with little peep's of curiosity. He grinned and paused to scratch the silky neck of one of them. The bat nuzzled his hand affectionately.

"Your old lady oughta warn you against strangers," he told it. "I might be hungry."

The bat eeeked several times, and maneuvered its neck against Rolf's hand again. He chuckled, scratched it lightly, and moved on around the turn in the tunnel. The cavern widened still more and, by stooping slightly, he found that he could stand. But the passageway took a winding downward course that prevented his seeing what lay ahead. He thought grimly that he might be walking into doom; but it was better, at least, than what lay outside.

Instead of being smooth and waterworn, as were the caverns of Earth, the walls about him were rough, yet glazed over, as though the surface film had once been fused by a sudden and intense heat. Their appearance plus the strange relative warmth of the air troubled him with a vague uneasiness. He was perhaps the first human to tread the winding, sloping corridor, for the bulk of Mars was as yet unexplored. The Commission seemingly didn't want it explored. They wanted Marsville to be built up quickly as the central fortress of future empire. The difficulty of space transportation, its present limitations, meant that Marsville must grow without transfusions of men and tools from Earth. Time, equipment and manpower were scarce commodities which could not be wasted upon satisfying Marsological curiosity. Curiosity would have to wait for production.

SO SAID the Commission. But Rolf wondered if perhaps the Commission didn't know more about Mars than it admitted to the city's citizens, who, although being nominally free within its walls, were born within the Commission's jurisdiction, attended Commission-regulated schools, and read whatever news the Commission saw fit to release. News of Earth? Rolf knew vaguely that some sort of major political upheaval was in violent progress on the mother planet, but he knew little of its nature. The Commission kept reminding the citizens of Marsville that they were too far from Earth to bother worrying about it.

As he drove deeper into the cave, he began unzipping the bulky suit. It seemed to be growing steadily warmer, although the temperature was probably still below freezing.

Suddenly he stopped, stood rigidly in his tracks, and listened. A sound from behind him? At first he thought that he'd been mistaken. Then he heard it again—a faint rustling sound, as of someone brushing against the rocks. He doused the flashlight, traded it for his pistol, and pressed himself back against the icy wall, holding his breath and waiting. The sound stopped, then continued, drawing nearer.

It could only be an enemy, he thought. There were no androons this close to the city; at least, none had been observed. Quietly, he knelt in the darkness, meaning to shoot upward in case the prowler tripped over him. Then the rustling noise hurried toward him. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Eeeek eeek eeek .

A warm little mouth nuzzled his hand in the darkness, and a small wing brushed his leg. He cursed disgustedly and switched on the light. The bat-pup had followed him, dragging its wings along the floor. Its tiny talons caught in his suit and clung. It squeaked with tired pleasure as it sagged against his chest drowsily.

But it seemed interested in his hands, which were still dirty with dried blood. "Little vampire!" he grunted at it. But it seemed interested only in sniffing the scent. He remembered that some of it was bat blood then, and wondered if the creature which bore him to the caves was the pup's mother.

"Whoever she is, she'll have to come after you, doc," he murmured as he resumed the journey. He pried the pup's talons loose from his clothing, and lifted the furry bundle to his shoulder. It squeaked once, folded its wings, and promptly fell asleep.

It was peculiar, he thought, that they couldn't be domesticated. The young were friendly enough. So was a tiger kitten, however. But who said they couldn't be domesticated? The Commission said so, via the schools. And Rolf was prepared to place his complete mistrust in the Commission. The androons obviously hadn't domesticated the bats, but the androons were still in a stone age. He decided to keep the pup for a while, unless it grew hungry for a morsel of his arm.

Glancing at his watch, he estimated that he had gone at least a mile. But the cave showed no signs of tapering off or ending. Where were his pursuers? Surely they would guess his whereabouts and follow—or else seal the mouth of the cave with rocks. He shuddered as he thought of it, even though he hadn't intended to return. The steady air movement seemed to insist that there was another exit.

AN HOUR later he came to a wide place, and sat down upon a low rock to rest and to gnaw at a brick of bitter chocolate. He crumbled some of the bar and gave it to the pup, telling himself that it was an investment toward the day when he would be hungry enough to eat a bat. The pup seemed suspicious of the food, but devoured it nevertheless.

Rolf rubbed it between the ears. "Mighty big bead you got, doc," he murmured drowsily. "Either a lot of bone or a lot of brain." In ratio of skull-size to body-size, the bat was brainier than most monkeys. Rolf hadn't noticed it before because the creature's wings added to the apparent body size. Maybe, he thought, if Mars had a future, bats would be the up-and-coming species.

The chocolate was making him sleepy. He sat on the rock, willing himself to arise but remaining seated. The cave was soundless, save for the steady whisper of the air drift. He reminded himself that he'd had no sleep in forty hours. If they were coming, they would surely have caught him by this time—at the weary pace he'd been setting. Perhaps, he thought unhappily, they might really know what lay in the caverns and have decided to leave him with it.

He arose and placed his flashlight on a projecting corner of rock, aiming its beam back along the tunnel in the direction whence he had come. If a guard came around the corner and saw the light, Rolf hoped he'd shoot at it before realizing it wasn't in the fugitive's hand. Thus he would be awakened before he was seen. Then he stretched out in the blackest shadows for a nap. The rocks were rough, and the pup refused to be used for a pillow, but sleep demanded possession of him and cared little for comfort.

Sometime later, Doc's squeaking penetrated the sleep shroud and brought him half awake. He grumbled incoherently and tried to close his ears. Then the squeaks choked off. Rolf sighed contentedly.

A stick of dynamite suddenly exploded inside his skull. Bright tracers arced up out of a bright red fireball. Pain was an intermittent blip dancing on the sweep-line of consciousness. He sat up howling and clawing at his head. He caught a glimpse of a hand holding a large jagged rock.

The hand moved up, then down. A second jolt ended the pain.

There was flickering torchlight bathing the rough, moist ground. His head hung four feet high, face down, but there was no body beneath it. His chin was buried in a hairy, heavy-muscled back. Then he realized he was draped over someone's shoulder. The ground jogged up and down, and a pair of legs flashed in and out of view. The thighs were human, but from ankle to knee a thick shaggy pelt, enveloped them. The small horny feet were wrapped in bat-skin sandals.

An androon was carrying him. He heard voices and knew that there were three of them. He watched the ground moving beneath him. A red dot appeared, then receded behind them. Another appeared. Then another. He was fascinated by the rhythm of the red dots. But he soon discovered that his head was their source.

The blood filled him with slow anger, but he was too weak to fight. His legs were numb, and the bony shoulder shut off circulation in his thighs. With his head hung low, his skull was exploding with pressure.

'In petulant rage, he caught a mouthful of the androon's back, sank his teeth in it, and tore. The man-thing set up a slow wailing yell that rose in volume. The androon was afraid to drop him, lest the drop cause Rolf to tear out a patch of his back. He bent his knees, held on gingerly, and howled for help. Rolf bit deeper.

A pair of knuckles jabbed into his cheeks, one on either side. They drilled into his jaws and ground against something tender. He opened his mouth reflexively. The androon put him down. His legs buckled beneath him, and he sat on the hard stone floor.

Someone saved him from being kicked in the face by the androon he had bitten.

THE THREE of them stood over him, murmuring among themselves. Rolf glanced around weakly. They had been carrying him deeper into the cave, for there was some moisture on the rocks. He looked up at his captors—two bushy-bearded males and a girl. The males were lean, furry, and barrel-chested with rose-tinted hides and large pale eyes. The girl was slender and well-shaped with peach-fuzz skin. But below the knees she was as furry as the males. Her boot-pelt was parted down the center of the shin and combed back neatly into a cowlick behind her calves. All three of the creatures were dressed in short bat-skin skirts and jackets. They carried short clubs of hatchet-shaped bone.

One of the warriors nudged him with his toe and grunted, "Hauka d'lag Saralesara, Erdmad!"

Rolf glared up at him angrily and told them where to go.

The warriors glanced at each other, then growled a word at the girl. She shook her head doubtfully, paused to summon her thoughts, and spoke to him haltingly.

"Wye you...keel girl Saralesara, Erdman?"

Startled, Rolf made her repeat it. It was Earthtongue, all right, but where had she learned it? There was only one possible answer—his father!

"Who's Saralesara?" he growled. "I didn't kill anybody."

"She go you city. We see Erd-warr'ors take her out walls. Shoot t'roo head wid Erd-weapod. You Erdman, yes?"

Rolf explained that he had had no part in the killing of his father's androon mate, told them of Jason's execution, and related the events involved in his flight from the city. After he'd told it three times, the girl finally seemed to understand what had happened, but she failed to grasp any reason for it.

"Wye they kill for get marry?" she demanded angrily.

Rolf's pain-dazed mind balked at furnishing any lengthy explanations. His throbbing undermind popped a quotation from Kipling at him. "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, fur-legs."

The girl's eyebrows arched high with surprise. "An avery zeengle wan uv tham is right, huh? You son uv Yason Kanlan, hokay! He usta say that!"

Rolf remembered vaguely that his father had been sold on Kipling, and quoted the old balladeer frequently.

The girl turned to the others and began speaking rapidly in the guttural but pleasantly rhythmic androon tongue. Rolf took advantage of the interruption to study them more completely. He had seen androons only in textbook pictures and through binoculars when staring toward the mountains.

They were not more hairy than the Japanese Ainu tribes—above the knee, it least. And they were remarkably well developed for having evolved in Martian gravity—if they had in fact done so. They were tight-muscled and long-limbed, with high foreheads and thin features. With a generous application of the razor, they might easily pass for a polyracial mixture of Scandinavian, American Indian, and Hawaiian.

ONE OF the warriors was holding Doc by the feet. The bat-pup's wings were dragging the ground limply, and its small frightened eyes were darting about in weary terror. The warrior carried the pup like a chicken on its way to the chopping block, and Rolf suspected that the little beast was headed for a cook-pot. He pushed himself toward the warrior and tried to wrest the bat from him. The warrior snatched it back and moved aside with a surly growl. Doc revived enough to squeak plaintively.

Rolf struggled to his feet and demanded the bat. The warrior held it behind his back, and brandished his club at the Earthman. It was a mistake. Doc sank his needle-teeth into the most available portion of androon anatomy. The warrior yelped and released him. Doc fluttered to Rolf's feet, climbed up his clothing, and perched on his shoulder to shriek invective at his former persecutor.

The androons muttered among themselves in surprise. The girl looked at him respectfully. "You blessed by Menbana, god of bat. Is not many who can do this thing."

Rolf nodded solemnly and neglected to mention the bat-blood on his sleeves. "You go," said the girl, pointing a slender arm deeper into the cavern. "We take you to council."

Rolf took a few steps, then leaned against the wall, his head spinning sickeningly. A warrior stepped on either side of him, caught his arms, and helped him along the tunnel. "What's the council?" he muttered to the girl who walked a few paces ahead, carrying a sputtering torch.

She glanced back at him cooly. "Is three priests of Phanton, Erdman. They say somebody got to die for life of Saralesara. They decide if somebody should be you."

Rolf gasped, then raged at her for a time, telling her about how he had traded a life among his own people to come and find the androon tribes. "Why don't you kill your enemies instead of your friends?" he growled.

She shrugged. "You already here. It nice and convenient. But I dunno —if you blessed by Menbana, maybe they pick somebody else."

Rolf resolved to treat Doc with all the affection he could muster.

AS THEY moved ever deeper into the cave, Rolf's dazed senses began to warn him that there was something unusual here, something of which he should take note. After a time, they stopped to let him lean against a steel supporting column to rest. He tried to think about it, but the wounded bulge on his head kept firing volleys of pain through his reasoning organ.

They led him on again, dodging the heavy steel columns that gleamed rustlessly in the torchlight. Stainless steel columns?

"What the hell!" he gasped.

The girl looked back curiously. "You pain, Son of Kenlan?"

He stared at the columns in unbelief. They supported the ceiling under the crushing tons of rock overhead. "Who dug these tunnels?" he barked.

The girl laughed, then spoke to the warriors, who also laughed. Rolf repeated the question.

"Gods build tunnels," she told him promptly. "Our fathers served gods here, but gods go away."

Rolf stumbled on for a moment in silence. So it was true—there had been an earlier race of intelligent beings on Mars.

"Where did your people come from?" he asked.

"Gods make us." She laughed again. "You father, he say we come from Erd. Make priests mad, but we don't believe anyway. Gods make us."

They passed a sudden turn in the tunnel, and the girl whipped the torch against the wall, extinguishing it. Rolf stared ahead in amazement. The ceiling was aglow with pale green light, apparently fluorescing from gamma-radiation originating in troughs that ran high along the walls. The corridor was no longer jagged rock, but had been finished and polished to a high lustre. Doorways led off the main hall, and several androons appeared in them to stare at the captive. A hundred yards ahead, he could see a huge, brightly lighted room with a fountain in the center. A steamy pool surrounded the fountain, and an androon woman came out to dip water.

It reminded Rolf of a million-dollar hen house built by a chicken-fancier with money to burn. Certainly no androons had built it. They apparently lived in it without thinking twice about the wonder of it. He could hear the distant hum of machinery—wholly automatic, undoubtedly, and running for thousands of years, untended by its users. Certainly they couldn't understand it—or they wouldn't still be carrying clubs and wearing skins. He glanced at his captors in scorn. They had probably lived here for milleniums without wondering what processes gave them light, heat, and water.

BUT THEN his scorn faded. How long had man lived in the forests without understanding what process made a tree bloom in Spring to hand him an apple in the Fall? Without knowing why the rain came to give him water, and the sun to give him warmth? He spoke to the girl again.

"Where does the light come from?"

She watched him with a faint frown. "You are ignorant as you father, Erdman. He too think light God have only one eye. Has one big-eye in sky, many little ones here."

He shrugged and looked around again. There was some lead shielding around the wall troughs. They undoubtedly contained a good gamma-emitter which would last for many ages, while the ceiling was coated with a thick phosphor.

They entered the mighty room and he saw that it was as large as a giant space-freighter hangar. He looked around and instantly knew the nature of the builders. Fiery phosphorescent murals depicted scenes of an ancient Mars. And he also saw the place of the bats in the biology of the fourth planet.

For the builders—the "Bolsewi", as his father had called them—were cousins to the bats. The first joints of their wings ended in short arms with tong, delicate fingers. Their bodies were spindly, and their heads oversized. Their wings were much smaller than those of the bats. But, as he looked at the murals, he knew that Man was to the apes as the Bolsewi were to the bats—cousins out of a common "Father Abraham". He looked around at his captors questioningly.

"Bolsewi," the girl told him, "The gods who made us."

Androons were congregating in the central room to stare. Rolf was being led toward a flight of steps that led to a second-story balcony. It was hard to believe that they were several thousand feet beneath the surface. But then, the fainter gravity would make deeper excavations possible on Mars. The crushing weight of rock would not be so great.

He looked at the murals again. Some of them involved ships of curious design, obviously meant for flight into space. His heart leapt at one of them —a ship lancing toward a blue-green planet with a single moon. Earth! The Bolsewi had been to Earth, possibly while Man was little above the ape.

So they had killed his father for telling the truth!

The warriors led him up the steps and made him sit upon a low, wide pedestal facing the deep balcony where three stone cathedrae were set against the wall. They were unoccupied. Above the cathedrae hung a pair of long, thin objects that reminded Rolf of weapons, although he had seen nothing like hem before. They appeared to be a pair of bagpipes with a flame thrower in place of the chanter. He questioned he girl.

"They are the sacred symbols of Manton," she told him. Then she vent away, leaving him alone on the platform with the two warrior guards and Doc, who was asleep again on his shoulder.

ROLF WONDERED if he had escaped from the Mars-Commission guards only to be killed in the name of superstition by the guards of the people he had meant to befriend. Toward the rear of the balcony a door opened and three ancient androons shuffled out, followed by the girl. The old men took their places upon the cathedrae with appropriate rustling of robes and stroking of beards. Then they bent forward to peer officiously at the prisoner. Their bat-skin togas draped them from shoulder to top, and each wore a metal pendant about his throat. Upon closer examination, Rolf decided that the pendants were stainless steel wing-nuts borrowed from some Bolsewi machine. He snickered. One man's toy was another man's god.

A priest barked a question, and the girl translated: "Why you laugh, Erdman?"

Rolf removed his smile and replied acidly, "I was surprised to see such intelligent-looking gentlemen."

She translated tonelessly and the priests appeared neither pleased nor insulted. They were eyeing the bat-pup while they spoke to the girl.

"The elders ask—you blessed by Menbana, Erdman? They ask also you name. And why you people kill Saralesara, who is daughter of elder?"

Rolf glanced at them quickly and decided that the elder with the fiery demanding eyes was the father of Jason's bride. He assured them that he had always been chummy with Menbana, told them his story again, and insisted that the angry-eyed elder was his grandfather-in-law. The priests appeared baffled as the girl translated. They went into a huddle and argued noisily among themselves. The girl turned frequently to ask questions about his father, questions apparently designed to confirm the contention that he was Jason's son. Rolf began to get the impression that Jason had won their respect and friendship.

The priests broke off their argument suddenly to gaze at him. Rolf felt the chilly nervousness of a prisoner awaiting judgement. Then the father of Saralesara spoke to him directly, without the girl's translating.

"Jason Kenlan was a guest in my house," he said in slow but well-managed Earthtongue. "We accepted him as one of us, and he took my daughter in marriage. But his heart went back to his own people. He spoke dreamily of a day when Earthmen would be our brothers. He said that they now wish to conquer us and make us slaves as soon as their city has grown enough. But he said that he would tell them that we are also men, and that then they would welcome us. Is it for this cause that they killed him?"

Rolf nodded, then frowned. "He never was able to tell the people. He told the rulers. That was a mistake. The rulers didn't tell the people. They killed him to keep him quiet. If the people knew, then they would want to leave the city—to make homes in the hills—homes where they could be free as they were once free on Earth...."

The priest leaned forward suddenly. "Your father said that the gods did not make us. He said that our patriarchs came from Earth. Do you believe this also?"

ROLF NOTICED the challenging expression on the oldster's face. He saw the eyes flicker toward the murals—and he paused. It was clear that the old man believed the tribal legend. The caverns had obviously been made by the "gods". The caverns were the androons' world. The world was the Bolsewi's and the fulness thereof—including the inhabitants. Why should the priest believe some far-fetched tale of a foreigner? Rolf weighed his words carefully.

"I believe," he said, "that your tribe and my tribe have a common ancestor. Perhaps the Bolsewi planted some men upon this world and left others upon Earth. If you think the Bolsewi created you, don't you suppose that they could have left some of your kin on another world?"

The old man looked startled. He stared at Rolf thoughtfully, then spoke to the others in the androon tongue. The girl was watching him with a faint smile. Then she winked. He started slightly, having no doubt as to where she had learned to wink. Jason, he thought, must have looked over the crop before he picked Saralesara. At fifty, he had certainly not been ready for the rocking chair and flannel muffler. Rolf wondered if the androons were polygamous, and if Jason had brought home only one of his wives. He ignored the wink and watched the old high-priest, who had finished his discussion with the others.

"You are indeed blessed by Menbana, who is god of wisdom," the priest said. "We think your explanation is possible. The Bolsewi created our patriarchs and carried some of them to your world."

Rolf saw no reason to contend upon which planet man had originated. If the priest wanted to believe that Earthmen were an offshoot of Martian stock, then he would let them believe it. He was at least one notch righter than before. Rolf kept his mouth tightly shut and thanked the elder with a nod.

"You are an outcast now?" the priest asked.

"As long as the present rulers are in power."

"You wish to live among us?"

"That was my intention."

"Then you may do so upon certain conditions." He gestured toward the ones who had captured Rolf. "These were sent out to capture a victim for sacrifice—in reparation for the death of Saralesara. You must see that we find some Earthman to replace yourself."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you will be hung by the heels and skinned alive," said the priest with a faint smile.

Rolf swallowed a dry place in his throat and thought of the man who lad shot his brother. "How much time will you give me?" he grunted.

The priest hesitated. "There is no set time for the sacrifice. But do not wait for Phanton to become impatient. He is a thirsty god. You may have time for your head to heal, and a reasonable time to learn our ways."

Rolf nodded, seeing no way to escape the injunction.

"You must also take up some duty —some responsibility—if you wish to join our people. You might bear arms, or take some housekeeping chores, ..." He paused, eyeing the sleeping bat-pup. "It is a high responsibility for an outsider, but ...if you have been blessed by the bat-god..."

ROLF NOTICED that the girl cast a startled glance from one to the other of them. She seemed to shake her head slightly, and her eyes warned him.

"You might join the bat-hunters," said the elder. "But that would also oblige you to become an acolyte of Menbana, and serve his priestesses in he temple. Do you object to this?"

Rolf hesitated thoughtfully. For some reason, the girl was frowning at him and saying "no" with her eyes. But he thought of the possibility of domesticating the bats; if they could be trained from puphood, they should make good mounts, and intelligent. And, as an acolyte in the temple, he might have access to a wealth of information. It was obvious that the androons had attached sacredness to the artifacts of the Bolsewi civilization, and through the minor priesthood he might gain access to some of them.

"Make your choice, Rolf Kenlan," the high-priest told him. "Let me tell you that an acolyte of Menbana must endure a humiliating initiation, and he is but a lackey to his priestess. But that is somewhat mitigated by his hunting activities, although few acolytes are really able to enjoy hunting after their initiation."

Rolf was irritated by the girl's warning glances. Did she think he couldn't take a little entrance exam? He had been shot at, exposed to the Martian night, nearly dashed to death by a giant bat, strafed by a Marsville jet, and clubbed in the head with a rock —all in the space of a day. What more could he expect from an initiation? A flogging? Dancing on live coals?

He snorted at the girl and spoke to the priest: "It would please me to serve Menbana," he said.

The girl's glance turned to scorn, but the elder smiled and stood up, indicating that the interview was at an end. The three old men started from the, balcony, but the girl called out in the androon tongue, addressing the old one as H'nrin. H'nrin turned to forwn, and glanced from the girl to the Earthman.

He answered in Earthtongue, but addressed the girl: "I don't know, Krasala. You seem too new to the Sacred Order to make such a request. Your sisters would resent it."

She reddened, apparently because Rolf was being admitted to the conversation via his own language. But she replied in kind: "What is better, High Sir: He son of Yason. I best maid of you daughter, before she keel. I lead warriors who capture him. Is fair...."

"But it was only five passages of Phobos since you were admitted to the order of Menbana."

"An I got no acolyte yet."

The priest sighed. "Very well, I'll speak to your superior. But you'll have to perform his initiation service. Are you prepared for it?"

The girl bowed slightly. "I have study under Na'Riga."

"All right, Krasala, you may have him. Take these two guards to assist you until the initiation." He paused, then spoke briefly to the warriors in the native tongue. They murmured assent.

THE THREE priests departed from the balcony. Rolf glanced at Krasala in irritation, thinking that she might prove to be a haughty little minx of an overseer. But at least she had known his father, as Saralesara's maid, and she might be more kindly disposed toward him than some other female. And, despite the natural boots of silky brown fur, she was a nice-looking morsel of androon.

They returned by the way they had come—across the massive room with a fountain and toward the corridor of polished stone. He watched Krasala striding on ahead and he decided petulantly that she wasn't his type. He had always favored the short, pleasingly plump and jolly. While Krasala walked with the too-easy grace of a Commissioner's wife. Her waist was pinched, and her back was straight. She was full-hipped and ample-breasted, but there was nothing softly feminine about her. Or at least nothing soft. She was feminine like a female panther, he thought. And he began to feel some misgivings. Maybe he should have volunteered for the soldiery and carried a bone club.

They moved halfway down the corridor, turned left and walked a hundred paces down another. Rolf decideed that there must be a network of tunnels beneath the mountains, possibly connecting a group of "community centers" like this one.

Krasala stopped before a large door, unbolted it, and gestured for him to enter. He stepped into a small windowless cell lighted only by a single splotch of phosphor on the ceiling. Its only furnishings were a hammock, a large block of stone for a table, and a small one for a chair. He shook Doc awake and set him on the floor. The bat squeaked resentfully.

"You stay here till 'nishiation," she told him curtly.

Rolf stretched out gratefully in the hammock and gingerly felt his scalp wound. Krasala was still watching him from the doorway.

"You wait," she said. "I get water to wash and bring food."

"Thanks," he grunted. "Bring something for my pet, will you."

She nodded and went away. A few minutes later she returned with a bowl of meat, a bottle of water, and a dripping slab of pickled quoie. The bat shared the meat with relish, although Rolf guessed the little beast was eating his own kind. He sat at the table hungrily wolfing the food while Kragala bathed the blood out of his hair.

"Is shame you sucha beeg fool," she told him scornfully.

"What do you mean:"

"Is better you should have been soldier-warrior. You don't like 'nishiation."

"I guess I can take it as well as the next guy. What is it, anyway?"

He felt her shrug indifferently. "Is to make you acolyte of Menbana. Is much pain. Oh well, after it over you won't care anymore. You won't care bout mucha anything."

Rolf stiffened uneasily. "What constitutes the initiation?"

"Hah?"

"What're you going to do to me?"

"Is simple. Guards tie you up to wall." She gestured toward a steel ring imbedded in the stone near the ceiling. "Guards go away. Is not permitted to see. I bring little altar, build fire, heat iron to red glow. I say prayer, concentrate you to Menbana. Is simple."

"Consecrate. What do you do with the hot iron?"

"Consecrake you wid it. Menbana don't like his acolytes should fall love wid his priestesses. I fix it so you don't. You don't love anybody after—"

THE HAIR on Rolf's neck turned to wire. He choked on a mouthful of batmeat, spat it across the room and bounded to his feet. "You do like hell fix it!" he bellowed six inches from her ear. He grabbed for her with violent intent, but she bounded away like a startled bat. She sailed through the door on overdrive, slammed it in his face and bolted it.

Then she peered back through the peep-hole, white-faced and panting. "Was you idea," she reminded him. He beat against the door and cursed eloquently. Her eyes were wide with bewilderment.

"You want change your mind?"

"You're damned right I do! Why didn't somebody tell me!"

"Is not correct high priest should speak such things. I shake my head, but you don't pay tenshun. You want me to speak to H'nrin for you?"

He choked out an affirmative and a gasping insult.

"I speak, but H'nrin not like." She scurried away as he tried to get at her through the peep-hole.

Rolf paced his cell in rage, and the bat-pup retreated to a far corner, sensing his anger. He cursed himself for not guessing the nature of the initiation. Primitive religions were full of eunuch-acolytes. And the high priest had dropped a hint of sorts.

He searched through the pockets of his torn clothing. His pistol was either lost or taken from him, but he still had his pocket knife and fifty rounds of ammunition. His captors had not worked out the folding feature of the blade, and the cartridges would be meaningless to them, unrecognizable as weapons. He could never hope to escape alive, but at least they'd have to kill him before perpetrating such an initiation.

Glowering within himself, he waited for Krasala to return. Surely she could make H'nrin realize that he hadn't known what awaited him in the service of the bat-god. This was worse than being sacrificed in vengeance for Saralesara's murder at the hands of the Commission's guards. This was an assault against his dignity as a man. Raw savagery! He stalked about the cell with growing resolve to kill as many as possible before they clubbed him down.

Ages later, Krasala peered at him through the peephole again. They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

"Well?"

"He say he already speak to high priestess. She enter you name. He say you get use to it afta while."

"You'll have to kill me first," Rolf roared. "You're a damn bunch of barbarous beasts. Savages! Whatever made me think you're human!"

She watched him calmly, feeling the safety of the door between them. "Savage? Like you father say, 'Are nine-an-sixty ways uv construction tribal laws, an—"

She bolted away from the door as he reached for the peep-hole with a snarl. Then he heard her footsteps padding away in the corridor.

AFTER MORE floor-pacing, he sat down to damn himself thoroughly. His anger had cost him his only hope. He thought of it belatedly. He might have gotten out of it by making love to the young priestess, much as he disliked the idea. But now his rage had ruined any possibility along those lines. Surely she wouldn't come back —until she brought the small altar and a hot poker.

He sat at the table and began prying slugs out of the cartridges and emptying the powder into the metal-foil wrapper from a candy bar. When he finished, he had what seemed to be half a pound of high explosive. Then he tried to decide the most effective way to use it.

The hinges were on the other side of the door and there was no keyhole. He might try wedging it under the sill, but he was uncertain that the amount of explosive was enough to blast it off. And also uncertain that it was not too much. He could wait until they came and touch it off in their midst, but he needed a tight-walled container to get a decent explosion out of it. And the cell was small enough to insure his own death if he managed to detonate the others. He laid it aside and pushed the problem to the back of his mental stove to simmer while he made a thorough examination of his cell.

There was a ring in the floor directly below the one in the wall. He could feel himself dangling there, lashed by hands and feet while Krasala did hot tricks with the poker. He shuddered and turned away. There were a few sifts of ashes on the floor where the altar had been placed previously. How many men had entered the cell, to leave it again as something less than men? He wondered if Krasala had already participated in any such savageries. But H'nrin had said she hadn't been a priestess for long. And she had tried to warn him. Maybe she was a nice kid—within the limitations of her society.

Surprisingly, she brought his next meal. She entered warily behind a pair of burly guards, deposited the food on the table and tossed a cloth bundle in his hammock. "You ceremony robe. Pud it on," she told him.

He fashioned a curse, but left it unspoken. She started out of the cell.

"Wait a minute," he muttered, fingering the knife in his pocket. "Tell me about this thing. What happens."

"I tell you awready. Pretty soon I show you."

He saw with amazement that she was pouting. Primitive psychology, he grunted to himself. The executioner gets his feelings hurt because the condemned man says an unkind word. The executioner calls him an ingrate for squirming when the axe falls.

Rolf forced a sweet smile. "Don't go away yet. There's nobody else I can talk to. Can't we discuss this thing logically?"

"Ha!" she snorted. "You think you grab me. Choke me, mebbe. Like you try to do before. Hah-uh!"

SHE SHOOK her head knowingly and her eyes were wary. She glanced at the guards to make certain they were alert by her side.

"I won't touch you," he assured her. "I lost my temper a while ago. But I know you can't help what you have to do. Just sit down and talk a while."

She stood her ground. "What you wanna talk about?"

He winked at her solemnly, remembering that she had done it in the council meeting. "Who knows? I may never enjoy the company of a pretty girl again."

Primitive minds flattered easily, he noticed. She reddened, let a smile flicker, then erased it and looked unhappy. She immediately perched on the corner of the table and said, "We talk."

Conceited little savage, he thought angrily, but kept a wistful smile in place. "The guards," he murmured miserably. "Do they have to stand there staring that way?"

She stiffened suspiciously, watched his bland gaze for a moment, then began to relax. "You promise?"

"I promise."

She snapped an order at the guards, and they moved out into the corridor. "They come kill you if you don't behave," she told him calmly.

He put on a wounded expression which she noted with another smile. She sat dangling furry shins over the edge of the stone table and watching him curiously. He guessed her age at eighteen, an age which could be both cruel and sentimental. He let his eyes wander over her young figure in a casual but interested way.

"The last time," he muttered dolefully. "I guess I won't forget."

He could see her wince, but he knew very well that if he had been looking at some other wench she would have treated the self-pitying statement with merciless sarcasm or icy indifference.

"Tell me," he said, "can you ever marry while in the service of Menbana?"

"Of course not. Menbana is a jealous god."

"It's a pity, but I'm glad. If I'm to be your acolyte, then at least I'll be satisfied that someone else can't... well ...can't have you..."

He paused to let it take a set before he continued. She sniffed unconvincingly and tossed her head, but she appeared disturbed. He felt himself treading the borderline of ridiculousness. Was he laying it on too thick? But it had to be a swift frontal assault before she got her wind.

He continued in a bitter voice: "...but I guess it won't matter, will it? I won't be able to care. You'll just be a piece of furniture, like this table. It's like H'nrin said, the acolytes aren't able to enjoy much of anything...not even looking at such a one as you."

She whirled to stare at him. He weighed her expression and decided that it was born of complete confusion. If he didn't act quickly, she might defend herself against the confusion by waxing suddenly derisive. He leaned forward slowly, keeping his eyes on hers, and making no sudden moves to startle her. Gradually he came to his feet and touched her bare arm with his fingertips. Absorbed in his unexpected display, she swayed lightly against the hand. But he knew that in a moment she would react strongly against her brief weakness. He inched nearer, murmuring half-incomprehensible things to her eyes. In his other hand was the pocketknife. Soon, his face was a breath away from hers, and she was still watching the slow whisper of his lips. He slipped his arms around behind her, aiming the knife for her ribs.

SUDDENLY SHE kissed him, to his surprise and dismay. She stood up, wound her arms around his neck, andd did it again. He toyed for an instant with the idea of switching back to a former plan, but decided he couldn't trust her. He'd have to go on with what he had intended.

"Send the guards away," he whispered.

"They can't see inside," she breathed, fawning his mouth with her lips.

He pressed the point of the knife against her back. "Send the guards away," he repeated.

She caught a small breath of surprise and became rigid as a board, staring at him but saying nothing.

"I'm sorry, kid," he whispered again. "You're probably a nice sort, in your own way. But damned if I'll let you butcher me, even if your tribe tells you that it's really all the rage this season, and your gods approve it. Now, send the guards away. I won't hurt you if you behave. If you don't, I'll kill you."

She was still staring at him in bewilderment. He caught her shoulder and moved around behind her. He sat on the table and pulled her back against him with the knife against her kidney. "Tell the guards to take a walk," he hissed, giving her a light jab.

She hesitated, then called out in a calm voice in the androon tongue. There was an unhurried shuffling of feet in the hallway. Then, to Rolf's dismay, the bolt snapped and the guards entered. They stopped in the doorway, staring at the close positioning of the priestess and the prisoner. One of them asked a quick question. She shook her head and answered with a monosyllable. Obviously they were unaware that he had a knife against her back. She began to pull away from him. Rolf saw despairingly that he must either kill her or let her go.

Suddenly she wrenched free, and he concealed the knife quickly. The guards started forward, but she waved them back with a scornful snort. She turned in the doorway, and glanced back cooly.

"Are more than nine and sixty," she said. "Put on the ceremony cloak. I be back soon. You eat now."

They left his cell and the bolt clicked in place. He stared after her for a moment. Why hadn't he killed the treacherous wench? But then, he was no match for two burly guards. He might as well concentrate on working an effective explosive out of the gunpowder. He sat down at the table and unrolled the package.

Why had she left him the knife? Why hadn't she warned the guards of what was happening?

He shrugged. What difference did it make? He spread the metal foil out smoothly, then covered it with a thick layer of powder and rolled it into a cylinder. He crimped one end tightly, and twisted the other out into a fuse. A thick yellow suet was congealing atop his cooling dish of meat. He covered the foil cylinder with the grease, then rolled it in a scrap of paper from his pocket. He sliced half a dozen of the soft lead slugs into thin slivers, and stuck them to the cylinder with more suet. After another wrapping of paper, he laid the crude grenade aside to set while he ate some of the meat. It had a peculiar taste, he thought, but blamed it on his nervousness.

WHEN THEY entered the cell, he intended to light the grenade and toss it, then make a dash during the confusion. He wondered if the clumsy contraption would explode at all, and he doubted seriously that it would inflict any grave injuries. But if it even made a bright flare and a hiss, it might divert the guards' attention for an instant.

He yawned suddenly and stretched. It was a helluva time to get sleepy. He stood up and walked around the table, lurching against it slightly. The metallic after-taste of the meat still lingered in his mouth. He was staggering a little as he sat down again.

Drugs! The meat...they were insuring his peaceful behaviour. He fumbled in his pockets, searching for a match. A match...to light the powder. Weren't there footsteps in the hallway...and voices? The pockets were hard to find among all the folds of cloth. He pawed at them, then decided he'd lost his matches. He wobbled dangerously.

They were just outside the door, and the bolt snapped suddenly. What to do with the grenade? They'd have him in the silly ceremonial robe in a few minutes. Pockets were no good. Where?

He crammed the eggsized object in his mouth as they entered, then collapsed across the stone table, thinking, "Maybe she'll light it for me with her poker."

He was hanging by his wrists, and he couldn't let go. He tried to open his eyes, but they wandered and fogged. At last he managed it, but he saw through a mist of sleep. The girl—Krasala—she was standing before a tongue of blue flame that arose from a gleaming brazier. Her arms were outstretched, and she chanted a polytonal litany to the fire wherein lay a blunt knife of reddening steel.

The pain in his shoulders kept him half awake and he resented it. Why the hell was he dressed in the silly blue nightshirt? Something in his mouth—oh, the grenade! He was supposed to spit it in the brazier. He worked it to between his front teeth, and tried to keep his head straight. The brazier was large enough, and close enough, but he was so unsteady.

The girl lifted the hot iron and turned. She saw his eyes were open, and gazed at him steadily. He summoned energy to spit the explosive, but she spoke to him, stepping closer.

"Scream, Rolf Kenlan," she whispered. "Scream convincingly."

How could he scream with the grenade in his mouth? No, he wouldn't scream. He'd spit death in the pot.

"Scream!" she commanded irritably, and touched his thigh with the hot iron. It sizzled and fried for an instant, and Rolf screamed fervently. The grenade shot toward the altar, missed the brazier, and rolled aside.

"Keep screaming," she told him, folding her arms and stepping back a pace.

He howled with real artistry. He eyed the hot iron and shrieked for mercy. She winked at him and nodded.

"We gotta get the right smell, too," she said, and prodded the iron into what was left of the dish of meat. The cell filled with the odor of burned flesh.

"Hokay, you faint now."

She chanted again briefly, then burned the thongs that bound him to the steel rings. He crumpled weakly to the floor. She tugged at his arm and helped him into the hammock.

"You sleep."

THE CELL door opened. An elderly hag entered with a pair of guards, looked around, and nodded. She spoke briefly to Krasala and seemed satisfied by the answer. They cleaned up the mess, and just before they left, Rolf Saw the hag pick up the grenade, look at it curiously, and toss it in the brazier. They started down the corridor.

"Krasala! Wait!" he muttered.

She paused in the doorway while the others moved on ahead.

"Yes? Whatchoo want?"

There was a muffled roar from the hallway, followed by several shrieks.

"Nothing," he murmured. "Never mind."

He rolled over and went to sleep peacefully, after making certain that he was still anatomically intact.

When he awoke, the girl was sitting in his cell watching him with a placid green-eyed gaze.

"You sleep two days," she told him. He rolled over and sat up, shaking the fuzz from his mind.

She narrowed her eyes and gazed at him accusingly. "Firepot blow up and blast off high priestess' hands. Burn off all her hair. She might die. Whatchoo know about?"

He shrugged innocently. "It's too bad. What should I know about it?"

"I dunno. Never happen before. I think you magic."

"Anybody else think so?"

"High priestess does. Council don't believe."

"The will of Menbana," he told her. "Thanks for leaving me in one piece."

She snorted angrily. "You beeg fool. Why you think I ask H'nrin for you in first place? He might give you to somebody who really do it."

Rolf began to see the light. "Do most of them do it or not?"

"Is supposed to. Old ugly ones do. Others don't." She walked to the door and swung it open. "You free to go now, when you feel like. But you supposed to be sick a few days."

Rolf nodded and decided to be properly sick. He wanted no repetition of the initiating procedure.

He lay in his cell for a time, making plans for the future. His father's goal had been to convince the people of Marsville that the androons were human and not unfriendly, that there were no threats lurking in the mountains to prevent a free expansion and colonization. Contrary beliefs held the people imprisoned in the city and under the thumb of the Commission.

Rolf now thought he knew why the Commission imposed the rigid segregation and insisted upon the androons' inhumanity. The colonization of Mars was to be a controlled colonization, not a free one. The people of Marsville, if given their liberty to roam forth, would shed the shackles of the tightly integrated city, and build homes for themselves in the hills and valleys where they would be free to live as their ancestors had done on the last frontiers of Earth. Growing room always gave men freedom, but it also denied the hope for a closely knit industrial civilization, which was Earth's hope for Mars. A man would not work in a crowded factory if he could own a thousand acres of land, rule his family clan, and be free of outside interference. He turned to the specialized bee-hive society of industrial civilization only when the population-density became so high as to void the hope of living free on the land.

ANOTHER FACTOR might be the fact that there were thousands of androons on Mars for every Earthman. Earth culture could easily be swallowed up by sheer weight of numbers, by intermingling and intermarriage—if such intermingling ever occurred. Rolf doubted that it would. The androons stuck close to their caverns, their traditional home. Even since the Dawson-Heide Operation Icecap had made the surface conditions endurable, the androons had kept to their underground habitation, because the caverns had always been their world. Probably, after many more generations, they would gradually seep forth to live upon the surface, but it would be a slow process. And when the Earthlings settled, they would settle on the surface. There would be some intermingling, but not enough to destroy the cultural traditions of the settlers.

Rolf envisioned the consequences of the Commission's probable plan. They would allow Marsville to expand very slowly, keeping the tight industrial organization and the concentrated population, with its consequent regimentation of the citizenry. The smoking industrial monster would spread gradually across the plain until it became the manufacturing belt of a nation, still dependent upon its hydroponic tanks for food, and upon the factories for all of its needs. The Commission, which was Earth-appointed and subject to recall, meant to keep close supervision of the industrial production, the culture, and the very lives of the people, to insure that they remained loyal and useful vassals of Earth.

Rolf asked himself how a Martian civilization could be useful to the mother planet, when space freighting was so difficult that the Commission could not afford to replenish Marsville with the fruits of Earth industry. Marsville had to take care of itself. But then it struck him that space freighting would not be so difficult in reverse. A ship needed less fuel to escape Martian gravity with full load. And the twin moons made good stockpiling points for cargo. Even combustion rockets could run ferry service between Mars and her satellites, where nuclear-powered ships could await conjunction of the planets. A good healthy boot kick would be nearly enough to get a ship off Phobos or Deimos, and even the sun's gravity would aid the flight of the freighter bearing Martian steel earthward. On the return trip, the freighter would be empty—or loaded with chewing gum, maybe.

Was the Commission aiming to make a slave planet out of Mars? A working planet that labored while Earth played?

And how would the androons figure in such a plan? There was only one possible answer. An industrial feudalism in which the androons were at the bottom rung of the ladder. Empires had always kept their colonial slaves happy by letting the slaves have lesser slaves to serve them. Even now there was grumbling talk in the city: "Why don't we go out and round up a bunch of andies to do some of this dirty work?"

And the Commission did nothing to discourage such talk, although they politely refused. Their attitude was, "Wait awhile. Not yet." But some day they would graciously assent. That day would be when Earth started bleeding Mars of her resources.

IN A FEW more generations, the Commission would succeed in culturally conditioning the Marsville citizenry to such an extent that they would regard themselves as rulers by divine right over Mars, the androons as their natural slaves, and Earth as their rightful king. Then there would be no hope for a free society on Mars. Hope for such had passed on Earth long ago. It passed when the population exceeded three billion or thereabouts. Freedom was inversely proportional to man-density per square mile.

Rolf was not thinking of these things for the first time. Snatches of such ideas had come to him before and, indeed, he had discussed them casually and quietly with other citizens of the city. Such talk was considered unpatriotic, but it was something like griping about dirty politics or congressional stupidity. Nobody bothered to do anything about it.

But now that the Commission had killed his father and his brother, Rolf felt differently toward it. The Commission was his personal enemy now, and he saw Jason and Lennie as sacrifices to its ambitions for empire.. The city was the mother that had nursed him from birth, and he loved the city. But the Commission ruled her cruelly, and he could never see her again unless the Commission's power were destroyed.

So? What could he do about it? He would have a hard time getting much effective aid from the superstitious androons.

On the third day after his initiation, H'nrin and the other two council members came to Rolf's quarters. The oldsters' faces were grim with solemn anger, and they wasted little time for ceremony.

"Perhaps you can tell us," H'nrin said acidly, "why a party from your city entered our caves, killed three bat-hunters, captured four warriors and two women, and carried them away in mechanical bats. Phanton is becoming very thirsty indeed."

Rolf gasped. "When did this happen?"

"This very morning."

"How close did they come to the living quarters here?"

"A thousand paces, perhaps. What difference does it make?"

"A lot, maybe. The city's rulers know you live underground, but they've never explored these places. They probably don't really know what's down here. It might be dangerous for you if they did know."

"Why?"

"There seems to be some valuable machinery here. They might decide to take it off your hands."

H'nrin stiffened visibly. "The creations of the Bolsewi are holy. Some of them are even gods. We will guard them with our lives." He paused, then relaxed slightly. "But surely the captives won't tell."

"They will when the Commission police get through with them. Dad probably told them anyway, come to think of it." He hesitated. "Maybe that's it. Maybe they're afraid I'll teach you how to use the Bolsewi machinery."

H'nrin recoiled at the thought of such sacrilege. "We must not touch the articles of the gods."

"Yeah? Well, they don't know that. I can guess what their plans are if you'll show me everything that Dad saw while he was down here. I want to know how much they learned from him."

H'NRIN DEMURRED at first, then submitted reluctantly when Rolf hinted direly of things that the Commission might do.

"You should see first the temple of Menbana, where you will serve as acolyte. I will have your priestess conduct you there." He paused, eyeing Rolf suspiciously. "I've heard rumors about your initiation ...certain irregularities. And now I think I'm inclined to believe them. You don't seem to be grieving particularly for your lost manhood."

Rolf paled. "I am, I assure you!"

"Baloney—as your father used to say. However, it's not my business. You're now the property of the Order of Menbana, which is autonomous in such matters. If they choose to wink at their own code, I shan't interfere."

"Thank you," said Rolf.

"One thing, however. If the high priestess manages to convince me that you were responsible for the fire-pot's behavior, I'll have you flayed."

Rolf thanked him again. He was sorry that the old hag had gotten her just deserts, but he didn't feel responsible. The initiation was a crime against sanity and human reason, and if she got her hand blown off while supervising its perpetration, then it was probably the will of some god or other—maybe even Menbana.

Krasala brought him another nightshirt—a white one this time—and briefed him on temple ritual. He was to enter the temple with a dragging pace, just behind Krasala, and his only duty was to keep the tips of her artifical bat-wings from dragging the floor. They would advance to kiss the great toe of the high priestess who sat upon the wing of Menbana.

"The same high priestess?" he asked anxiously.

"No. She's still fighting the devil that entered her arm. They say she'll retire. There's a new one now."

"Good," he grunted as they went out into the corridor. "Say, your Earthtongue is improving."

"It's come back. Long time since I talk it with Saralesara. Now you get in back of me. Is not right for acolyte to walk beside priestess."

They passed across the fountain room and entered one of the many corridors which led away from it. The temple lay at its end, but a draped doorway hid it from view. Krasala left him in the corridor and stepped into an anteroom to vest.

When she came out, smiling faintly and self consciously, he closed his eyes and shook his head. Now he knew why the acolytes were eunuchs. Her vestments consisted of a pair of batwings and a gauze kerchief. His confusion brought back her pout. She tossed her head and flicked the kerchief under his nose. "Follow me, acolyte. Lift my wings."

AT LEAST there was a certain amount of modesty in her noble walk, he thought as he followed her into the House of Menbana, holding the tips of the wings delicately as he had been instructed to do.

The temple was gloomy, pierced by the flickering tongues of yellow fat-burners and hazed by their smoke. The room was gigantic and appeared ceilingless. Rolf peered about him hurriedly trying to digest all that he saw—the stately processions of bat-winged priestesses, followed by their submissive acolytes, the side-altars along the walls. He noticed that many of the acolytes were plump and dull-eyed creatures, while others followed their mistresses with a not-so-humble stride that suggested the continued influence of testosterone. Rolf grinned to himself; there seemed to be a certain correlation between the shapeliness of the priestess and the masculinity of her acolyte.

"Stop crowding me!" Krasala hissed. "Sorry."

For the first time, he searched the room for the focus of activity. It lay directly ahead. The high priestess, a middle-aged but not unshapely androon, sat between a pair of sputtering fat-burners. She wore a bat's head as well as wings. Rolf strained his eyes in the gloomy light. Then he stopped in stunned unbelief, dropping Krasala's wingtips.

Menbana, bat-deity, and god of knowledge, was an ancient, mouldering, stub-winged rocket craft, obviously meant for transatmospheric service. The androons had lovingly given it a bat-skin hide, stitched over it like a jacket, but the landing gear and the jet tubes were still in evidence. He guessed by its design that it had not been used for interplanetary rocketing, but rather perhaps for moon flight.

Krasala was shaking his arm in rage and muttering about blasphemy. Rolf resumed his duty in awed silence. Such grandiose stupidity was awe-inspiring. The man who suggested the experiment with the monkeys in a roomful of typewriters probably hadn't considered the possibility that the anthropoids might start worshiping the machines.

They advanced toward the ship, where the high priestess perched on a wingtip. Krasala knelt to kiss the superior's horny toe, and Rolf felt himself being inspected by the eyes that lay behind the unblinking bat's head. The seeress was bulgy in spots, with a middle-age sag, but she might have been a beauty in her day. She said nothing and they moved to take their place in line but, glancing over his shoulder, Rolf saw the bat's head turn to stare after them.

The lesser priestesses formed a long line facing Menbana, while their acolytes stood silently behind them. They began a monotonous chant, while the high priestess slipped down from her wing tip to begin the sacrifice. She accepted a thurible from a burly acolyte, then leaned close to whisper something to him. His eyes swept along the rank of priestesses; then he hurried away. The high priestess incensed Menbana with the .thurible. A portable altar was brought forward, and she began a ritual offering of food.

ROLF FELT someone nudging his elbow. He glanced around and saw the burly acolyte who had whispered with the high priestess. The man touched his fingers to his lips for silence. He was accompanied by a short pudgy eunuch who wheezed and looked frightened. The burly man took Krasala's wingtips away from Rolf and gave them to the eunuch. Rolf was pushed roughly aside.

"What's the idea?"

"Shhhh!"

The burly acolyte took his arm and tugged him quickly away. Krasala seemed unaware of the change in her escort. Rolf judged the size of the acolyte and decided to follow peacefully. He was led to a small phosphor-lighted anteroom behind a row of columns.

"You wait. Lalyahe come," grunted the acolyte.

"Who's Lalyahe?"

The acolyte nodded gravely. "You wait. Lalyahe come."

"Your mother was a mangy bat," said Rolf.

The acolyte nodded gravely again. "You wait. Lalyahe come," he repeated, proving the extent of his vocabulary. He left the room, leaving the door ajar.

Rolf sat on a stone pedestal and listened to the chanting in the temple. He was certain that Lalyahe was the high priestess, but the open door suggested that her intentions were not unfriendly.

The temple had evidently been some sort of hangar at one time, and the lack of a visible ceiling suggested that it had opened to the surface in ages past. Or perhaps, far up in the darkness, there were swinging hatchways that opened it to the sky.

He glanced around the anteroom curiously. There was a table altar at one wall, and above the altar were a pair of small doors. He tugged them open and found an array of small tools hung on steel pegs in the cabinet. Some of them were recognizable—a drill with a self-contained power unit of some sort, a group of oddly shaped wrenches, a device that had the appearance of a spray gun. They were fashioned of some rustless metal that gleamed dully in the dim light. He toyed with some of them, but the moving parts were frozen from lack of lubricant.

Glancing around the room again he saw other cabinets set in the walls. Making a complete inspection of them, he found parts bins, racks of bottles, and one of the bagpipe affairs that hung over the cathedrae of the council. He examined the last carefully. It consisted of a collapsible plastimetal tank, a long tube or barrel, a hand crank with a vernier slide geared to it, and a heavy steel breech that suggested high pressures. A pair of tiny rings atop the tube and at either end of it suggested gun-sights. He tried to turn the crank but the mechanism was frozen.

SEARCHING among the bottles he found several that still contained fluid. The one that opened most easily was a jellied lubricant. He used it to loosen the caps on some of the others. One liquid smelled vaguely like kerosene. He poured some of it in with the lubricant and stepped back. Nothing terrifying happened. He shook the bottle and the lubricant dissolved to make a thin oil. He used it to soak the breach and movable parts of the "bagpipe" until the crank came unfrozen. He worked at it until it turned freely.

Shaking the mechanism, he heard a sloshing sound in the collapsible tank. It was half full of liquid. He gave the crank a few turns and noticed that the tank began to expand. He kept twisting it until a pair of heavy lines met and became one on the vernier. The tank had grown plump and hard, the size of a basketball. He found a button on the breach, pointed the tube toward the wall, and fingered the button thoughtfully.

Then, as an afterthought, he found a length of heavy wire in a cabinet and prodded it into the barrel. It brought out gobs of fibrous dust. He soaked the barrel in oil and scraped out choking dust wads with the wire. When he had it clear, he again fingered the stud nervously.

Suddenly he was aware that the chanting had ceased in the temple. He glanced up just in time to see the door swing open and the high priestess appear in the entranceway. She froze at the sight, caught at the door jambs for support, and stared down at the blasphemy on the floor.

Rolf sat spraddlelegged in his "night-shirt" ceremonial robe amid a litter of bottles and tools. He returned her stare apprehensively. She ripped off the bat's head, letting a frowsy mop of gray-brown hair burst forth. She turned and shrieked a word into the temple. It could only have been a summons for the guards.

Rolf dived forward, caught her ankle and dragged her inside, kicking and clawing. The bolt was on the inside of the door. He slammed and locked it as a group of acolytes faced toward the anteroom. Then he tried to hold off the snarling fury of the high priestess. She raked at his arms with fingernails while he seized her throat and held her away. He pushed her roughly into a corner, tripped her, then pinned her against the wall with his foot when she fell.

"Be good, baby, or I'll kick you to sleep," he growled.

Gradually she subsided, panting and glaring at him.

"Now, send your flunkies away!" he told her, jerking his thumb at the door where the guards were battering against the bolt. He increased the pressure of his foot to speed her reaction.

She moaned and called out: "W'nu poyit ya!"

The battering ceased.

"Okay, what did you want to see me about?" he asked acidly. "Or do you speak Earthtongue?"

"Your father taught it to all our leaders," she replied, staring at the bag-pipe on the floor.

He picked it up. "You know what this is?"

"Holy symbol of Phanton, god of light, king of the gods. It is not to be touched by such as you—under penalty of death."

"Nobody but you has seen me with it. What did you call me here for?"

SHE WAS silent for a time, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She moistened her lips nervously, and kept glancing toward the door. She had a small sensual face, touched lightly by age and pleasurable living.

"You have much magic, don't you, Earthman?"

Rolf neglected to disagree with her.

"I called you here because your magic disposed of my rival. I wished to make you my acolyte." Her voice was slow and musing, and she glanced from Rolf to the bagpipe with a calculating expression. "Perhaps none of the others did see you with it, at that."

He grinned at her. "That's right. But what do you want with me as an acolyte? And if there's another induction ceremony involved, the answer's no."

She stiffened proudly. "It's not for you to refuse," she snapped. Then snorted scornfully: "You have already been consecrated to Menbana. That is enough. Tell me, are you a eunuch?"

"Why, of course!" he answered nervously.

"You lie! Ha! I have heard how this young wench Krasala is mooning over you. Would she fall in love with a eunuch? Let me tell you. There are two factions among us. One faction believes that it is enough if the acolytes are merely celibates—which is to say, eunuchs in spirit."

"Which party do you belong to?" She gave him a speculative head-to-toe glance which suggested that there might be a third faction which favored an altogether different course.

"Let it suffice to say that you will not need to endure reconsecration. I might manage to forget your blasphemy, if you will serve as my acolyte and teach me your magic."

They watched each other for a moment. Rolf was still fingering the Phanton gun. "Useful Magic will involve blasphemy," he told her. "You'll become a party to it."

She frowned haughtily. "As high priestess, I define what is blasphemy, in the temple of Menbana, at least."

He nodded. This could possibly be a useful alliance, although he suspected Lalyahe of some rather high and shady ambitions. "Very well," he told her, "I'll serve as your acolyte. But we'll make a trade on this magic business."

"I make no bargains."

"I make no magic."

Her eyes flared haughtily for a moment, but she asked, "What do you want of me?"

"Your help in a rather hopeless cause—that of unseating the rulers of the surface city and breaking down the barriers that surround it."

SHE CAUGHT her breath, then smiled wickedly at him, sat down on the table altar and leaned her elbows on her knees to grin. "Ah! You wish to rule your city; I wish to rule mine. We should work well together, son of Kenlan. You are not the gentle man your father was. Tell me, would you like to be my lover as well as my acolyte?"

Rolf suppressed a shudder and stammered apologetically. She sighed and shrugged. "I thought not. Krasala has caught your eye. Well, your bare shins are rather repulsive anyway. But enough of that. Shall we work together for our purposes?"

"Maybe. I suggest we make some plans." He paused, listening to the mutter of voices beyond the door. "Send that rabble away and then we'll talk."

She hesitated, then nodded. "Get the holy articles out of sight. I'll open the door to reassure them. The sacrifice s over; it's time to clear the temple anyway."

Rolf quickly gathered up the scattered relics and returned them to their cabinets. But he propped the bagpipe in a corner, and stood in front of it or concealment. Lalyahe watched with mingled curiosity and superstitious nervousness. Then she unbolted the door and swung it ajar. The mutter arose to a babble. She barked several curt words, and the babble ceased. Rolf caught a glimpse of Krasala peering over the high priestess' shoulder, and he shivered at the murderous expression on her pretty face. Lalyahe spoke again, and the crowd began dispersing.

She closed the door, leaned against it, and smiled nastily at him. "I think I shall have your Krasala flogged. Did you see the way she glared at me?"

"You do and the deal's off."

"Don't you threaten me, acolyte!" the snapped, advancing to snap her fingers in his face.

Rolf grinned mockingly, but said nothing. He decided that it would be a bad day for the androon tribe if Lalythe ever got the power she desired. "She glared at his grin for a moment, then said, "Well! The priestesses have gone. Show me a demonstration of your magic."

Silently, he recovered the bagpipe and stepped to the door. The temple was empty, save for a pair of guards that flanked the entrance. "Send them away," he told her.

SHE PUSHED her way past him and shouted across the great room in a piercing voice that sent echoes reverberating from high above them. The guards departed silently. Rolf moved outside, carrying the bagpipe and the stiff wire. He removed a fat-burner from its tripod, dragged the tripod near a massive column that supported a balcony, and rested the bagpipe against it, aiming the muzzle toward the vault of darkness overhead. "Keep out of the way," he told her, as he stepped behind the column and straightened the wire into a prod.

"What will happen?" she asked nervously.

"I'm not sure," he grunted uneasily. Then he leaned around the column and pressed the button with the wire.

There was a brief high-pitched shriek and a burst of light. It was followed by a distant ping, a bright violet light that flooded the temple, and a continuous sizzle from above. The gun had fallen from the tripod. Rolf stepped out to recover it, and darted back just in time to escape a white-hot shower of sparks that danced downward and rolled about the main floor. Lalyahe was whimpering insanely. She crouched in the foetal position and hid her head in her arms.

Rolf glanced upward around the edge of the balcony and saw a ball of violet incandescence clinging to the underside of a metal ceiling a thousand feet above them. It burned out suddenly, but the immediate vicinity lingered at white heat, dripping bits of liquid hell. By its light, he could see that the ceiling was braced with heavy struts that slanted down to the side-walls, where they appeared heavily anchored.

The racket had aroused the androons in the caverns beyond, and he heard them racing toward the entrance. He kicked Lalyahe lightly in the hams and dragged her to her feet. She was still whimpering and glancing around with wild frightened eyes. He shook her.

"Brace up!" he growled. "It's over. All but the shouting. Now, get this straight. Your crowd is coming back. Tell them that Menbana has spoken, or something." He shook her again. "Listen to me!"

She nodded weakly. "I'm listening. But why should I tell them that?" "You want prestige, don't you? Tell them Menbana has spoken to you personally. And that you'll reveal his prophecy later."

Androons were pouring into the temple and stopping to stare up at the distant ceiling, which had subsided to cherry red heat. Rolf pushed the high priestess out into the open, then darted back to the anteroom to conceal the weapon. Suddenly Lalyahe's fog-horn contralto was ringing out dramatically in the temple, and Rolf grinned to himself. The grasping witch was shivering in her fur boots, but she did a good job of rabble-rousing. The mob fell silent. She cried out several words of a ritual chant, and after a moment the crowd sang a brief responsory. She was quieting them with in impromptu service honoring Menbana, whose bat-fur jacket was smoldering impressively from the shower of sparks.

WHEN THE chanting was done, she spoke a few sonorous sentences, which were followed by the shuffling of many feet. Lalyahe returned to the anteroom. Some of her arrogant calm had returned, but she gazed at him in a new and fearful light.

"Was that sufficient magic for you?"

She nodded grudgingly. "A few more demonstrations like that and I shall be able to unseat the council, I think. But be careful you don't go too far." She glanced at the weapon in the corner. "This is not your magic. This is the magic of the Bolsewi."

"True. But I control it. Have any of you done that before?"

"No. It's not good to do so. When the Bolsewi went away, they instructed our ancestors to guard their possessions and worship them until the gods returned. It's not good to tamper this way."

Rolf decided her ambitions needed further whetting. "Baloney!" he snapped. "How many other tribes are there besides this one?"

She shook her head. "They are countless. It is said that there is no end to these caverns."

"All right! By controlling this magic, you can rule all the tribes. Why think of stopping with this one?"

She gnawed at her lower lip and stared speculatively at the bagpipe. "Why should you suggest this to me, son of Kenlan?"

"Because you can't do it without my help, and I want you to buy that help by helping me."

"I don't trust you."

"I don't trust you either, but it might be a good idea to start."

"What do you expect from me?" she asked suspiciously.

"Twenty-five bat-hunters who aren't eunuchs: Able-bodied men who will obey orders. And I want access to all the so-called holy articles in your jurisdiction."

"Why? Why do you want the men?"

"We'll need a small fighting force," he explained impatiently. "And twenty-five are few enough to attract little attention."

"Don't worry about that, Kenlan," she said. "Only priestesses and their acolytes may enter Menbana's temple. You won't be observed."

"Will you provide the men? And I'll need a translator, too."

She nodded. "I'll give you the men, but the translator ... none of the acolytes speaks Earthtongue. Krasala night..."

"No!" he snapped, remembering her furious expression outside the anteroom.

"Krasala might prove treacherous," Lalyahe finished haughtily.

"Think of anyone else?"

"My successor... But she couldn't be trusted either."

"Then you'll have to do until I learn your language."

Lalyahe's smile told him that it was exactly what she wanted. Rolf promised himself that he would pick up a working knowledge of the androon tongue as quickly as possible, for until then the high priestess would be in a favorable position for treachery.

"One more thing," he muttered. "I want living quarters in one of these temple anterooms. It might be better if I stay away from the council's jurisdiction as much as possible. They might get wind of something."

"Certainly. As my acolyte, you would arouse no suspicion by living in a special..." She paused and cocked one eyebrow. "You will share my quarters, in fact. That is permissible for eunuchs." She smirked nastily.

"The hell I will!"

"Then you may return to your former cell."

Rolf said nothing but decided to sleep on the floor in the main temple. He had a brief vision of Krasala wielding a bone club in the direction of his skull.

HOURS LATER, he met Lalyahe again in a larger room off the main floor. In compliance with his request, she had chosen the specified number of bat-hunters, and had assembled them outside. He gave her brief instructions before the hunters entered.

"Tell them that Menbana expressed his will at today's manifestation. Tell them he gave you special instructions which must be obeyed."

She eyed him curiously and with faint amusement, seeming to enjoy the intrigue. "What are the instructions that Menbana has given me?"

"That live bats are to be captured for his temple. Two or three dozen of them. Large ones, but not too old. Say Menbana will teach you how to tame them."

She frowned sharply. "Why, Kenlan? What good—"

"Never mind!" He smirked. "And tell them your new acolyte has been chosen to lead them. But swear them to complete secrecy. It'll be both our necks if the council hears of it. Now call the men in and make your speech."

Lalyahe's resentful glance told him that she was unaccustomed to taking orders. But she donned her bat's head, marched to the door, and barked a command. Twenty-five toughs filed silently in and sat spraddle-legged in a ring about the walls. Rolf had seen some of them during the sacrifice service, but now they were wearing bat-skin skirts and jackets in place of the robes, and they carried hunter's snares looped across their shoulders. He noticed with satisfaction that they were heavily muscled men, and fiercely bearded.

Lalyahe began speaking crisply, turning slowly to eye each man, and punctuating her speech with much posturing and arm-waving. While she spoke, Rolf noticed that one man was glaring directly at him and hardly listening to the priestess. The man looked familiar. After a time, he placed the fellow. It was the acolyte who had whispered with Lalyahe during the service, the one who had nudged Rolf out of line and brought the fat eunuch to replace him.

Rolf was startled by the realization that the man must have been Lalythe's acolyte before he had acquired he job. Someone certainly must have been fired to make room for him. Rolf was disturbed; the man might try to make trouble.

When the priestess finished speaking, Rolf murmured a question about he angry-looking hunter. She nodded. "He was my acolyte. Why?"

"We'd better make him an honorary something-or-other. He's got fire in his eye. Tell him Menbana designated him to lead the bat-snaring party. Tell him Menbana has promised him special rewards later. Tell him anything, but make him happy."

LALYAHE called the man aside and spoke to him in low tones. The man stood breathing heavily, swelled with self-righteous indignation, and firing angry glances at the interloper. But suddenly he broke into a wide grin and bowed humbly before Lalythe. When he returned to his place, he was still grinning vacuously and licking his chops.

"What did you tell him?" Rolf asked suspiciously.

The priestess chuckled. "I told him Menbana had given him a special dispensation to have a mate. To have young Krasala, in fact."

Rolf felt himself going white. He turned away to keep from striking her. It was a deliberate cruelty, an act of sadism. But it could not be easily undone. He fumed in silence until Lalythe dismissed the men for the hunt. Then he turned on her in fury.

"Why did you do that?" he roared.

She inched away, but smiled mockingly. "To assure myself that you have no ambitions here among my tribe."

"It's a damn poor excuse and a lie!" he raged.

"What are you going to do about it?"

He sagged onto a pedestal and kicked angrily at the floor. There was nothing he could do about it. The ex-acolyte would reveal his good fortune to the others. And a god dare not go back on his word. He cursed the high priestess fervently.

"It's what you deserve for refusing to be my lover," she told him blandly.

Rolf vowed to himself that the burly huntsman-acolyte would meet with a serious accident if he tried to claim Krasala. But the settling of such accounts would have to wait. Rolf was uneasy since the Marsville guards raided the outer tunnels and kidnapped the party of androons. Something was afoot.

There was ample evidence here that what his father maintained was true. The tools and weapons of the Bolsewi were part of the evidence, and Rolf was certain that Jason had told the Commission about them. The Commission might have been willing to bide their time, but since they knew that he was taking refuge in the caverns, they would fear the weapons. Androon hands might learn to use them.

He realized gloomily that such fears were for the most part without foundation. There were probably not a dozen men in the whole tribe who were brave enough to touch one of the "symbols of Phanton". Bolsewi equipment among the androons was as mystifying as an electronic calculator would be to a tribe of Australian aborigines. They would need a grasp of basic principles, and an end to magical thinking. That would take generations. The best he could hope for would be to find a few neurotics among the acolytes of Menbana who would take a perverse delight in profaning the sacred.

WHILE THE hunting party was gone toward the cave entrances, he spent his time searching the temple's anterooms for more of the bagpipe guns. Those that appeared serviceable, he cleaned and oiled. But testing them would be disastrous to both the temple and the morale of the tribe. He hoped fervently that they would never be used.

Lalyahe brought word that the council was demanding his presence. "Why?" he grunted.

"They didn't witness the Bolsewi magic you released. They don't believe the god has made himself known. They accuse you of trickery."

"Well, stop smirking about it," he snapped. "You're in it too. If they make trouble, you're as hot as I am! I can't see them. You'll have to worm out of it somehow. Think up a good ceremonial reason why I can't leave the temple for a few days."

"I suppose you could be fasting for five days. But if they insist, and I don't release you to them, they'll make trouble."

"What kind of trouble? They can't come in here, can they?"

"No unconsecrated male may enter, but they can send women."

"Stall them the best you can," he told her.

Some of the hunting party began returning with live bats. With their wings, feet, and jaws bound, and with their eyes tightly bandaged, the beasts scarcely struggled. Rolf had them stacked like a cord of wood in a dark corner of the temple.

The huntsmen brought word that a group of men from the city was camped a thousand paces from the mouths of the bat caves, and they reported a larger party was making its way across the plain. Rolf was disturbed. The Commission was striking sooner than he had expected.

He reasoned that the raiding party would consist entirely of officers from the Commission's elite guard—men who could be trusted to remain silent about what they found in the caves. Very probably the Commission would promise them a transfer to Earth when the job was done. Their immediate goals would be to capture him, to inspect the Bolsewi artifacts, and report the findings to the Commission. He had no doubt that the Commission would follow it up with a forced evacuation of the androons from all caverns on the city-side of the mountains, and a permanent occupation of the caverns by Commission police, for the purpose of studying the Bolsewi civilization in the light of the Commission's master-plan for Mars.

Lalyahe came with more news of the council's suspicions. "They want to know why we collect the live bats. They're tired of hearing about 'the will of Menbana'. They don't believe it, and they say if you don't come out before three more eating times, they'll send in a party to arrest you."

Rolf hesitated. "If it comes to that, I'll parley with them just outside the temple." He grinned. "Accompanied by our two dozen bully-boys. By the way, are they all back from the hunt yet?"

She smiled knowingly. "All but one. P'yan, my former acolyte, lingers with his new mistress. It might interest you to know that she made no protest when I told her. In fact, I think she rather liked the idea. She called you some unpleasant names. Shall I list them for you?"

ROLF CONTROLLED an impulse to kick her, and kept his face expressionless. "Get P'yan in here with the others. We've got to hurry."

"Why? Suppose you explain what all this has to do with overthrowing the council, with making the temple of Menbana the center of authority. I trust you less and less, Kenlan. I'm thinking of letting the council have you."

"Fool!" he growled. "If those Earthmen get in here, there won't be any council to overthrow. They want to drive you out of here. They want your holy articles before you learn to use their magic."

She gathered a slow frown, then left him. He wondered if her tribal loyalty was stronger than her personal ambition. Probably, but he could not be certain.

Another factor bothered him. When the Commission police made their first move, the council would undoubtedly want to solve the problem by releasing him to them. The Commission would certainly demand his extradition before making a show of force. And H'nrin would offer him in the hope of appeasement.

After a brief inspection of the bound bats, Rolf sent a dozen acolytes to gather enough rawhide to make harnesses. He directed Lalyahe to assign several priestesses to the task of sewing weight-bags full of rocks, specifying that each should weigh as much as a heavy man. He put two acolytes to work trimming the tips off the bats' talons. Then, with the help of another, he dragged one quivering beast out of the heap and began fashioning a pair of rawhide leggins to fit tightly about the bat's wooly ankles. With loops laced through the leggins, he bound a two-foot length of bone between the bat's ankles, so that it could stand spraddle-legged but not walk. He slung another just below it for a seat, so that a man could sit on the lower rung and cling to the higher one for support.

His assistant, regarding the whole affair as purposeless sport, chuckled gleefully and chattered incomprehensible jokes in his own tongue. When they were finished with the seat, Rolf began a harness, using a whole bat-hide, with its natural holes for the wings. He laced it tightly under the beast's belly, and sewed a pair of rein-guide rings near the shoulders. Next came a hackamore with an extra loop beneath the lower jaw. Then he instructed the men to outfit the other bats similarly.

While they began work, Rolf tied a sack of rocks to the first bat's feet, tethered it at the end of a hundred-foot braided hide rope, and unbound its jaws and wings. With a shriek, it beat its way upward, reached the end of its tether, and began a mid-air battle with its cargo. The temple, half-full of working, idling, or praying androons, paused to watch and murmur curiously. "

WHILE THE bat flailed angrily at the air, Rolf went to search the anterooms. He needed a number of light metal rods for use as chin-poles to guide the bat's heads vertically. But as he stepped into a gloomy corridor that paralleled one side of the temple, he saw a shadowy figure flit behind a column. He started to pass on, then, thinking that H'nrin had perhaps sent an observer to watch the temple, he reached around the column, caught a slender arm, and dragged.

Krasala came lurching against him and snarling. She wore the secular bat-skins, not the wings of the temple. Nor was she carrying the ceremonial kerchief. He frowned at her suspiciously.

"Why are you hiding here?"

"I saw you coming!" she hissed contemptuously.

"Why aren't you in the temple?"

"Your love-one tell me to stay out. She say to keep house for P'yan. She say I no good as priestess. Is okay with me. I take P'yan, you take what P'yan leave. Is she old enough for you?"

Rolf shook her roughly. "You're crazy!" he snapped. "There isn't a damn thing between us except politics. Good Lord! And to think I wanted you myself for awhile! Well, I hope you enjoy married life with your P'yan. Me, I'll take an Earthgirl any day!"

He turned to stalk away, then paused. "I still want to know why you're hanging around here!" he growled.

"I woman. Is my right come in temple."

He grunted an oath, then moved on down the corridor and turned in at the first anteroom. After searching through most of the cabinets, shelves, and bins, he found a dozen aluminum tripods, half corroded but still useful. He removed their legs and began drilling holes in both ends of the rods.

A gasp from the doorway startled him. He glanced around to see Krasala again.

"You blasphemy!" she breathed.

He groaned disgustedly and waved her away. He'd heard enough of the word to last for the duration. "Then run get the guards and have them brain me," he growled.

She subsided gradually and watched him work. "Is true what you say?"

"About what?"

"About you and Lalyahe."

"It's true that it's not true. Now beat it. Go find your P'yan and play footsie or something."

"Then why Lalyahe say you her lover?"

"Because she's an evil old hag!" he roared. "Now beat it!"

She stared at the floor and dragged her toe in the dust. "Okay, I go, soon's I tell you why I hide."

"Do tell me," he sighed wearily.

"I hide from P'yan. He not find me yet."

He stiffened reflexively, dropped the rod, and almost grinned.

"I been to see council," she added.

His grin disappeared and he stood up to frown at her. "The council! Why?"

"Protest Lalyahe kick me out of temple. But they ask me questions about you. Say I should watch what goes on, and tell them."

He advanced menacingly. "What have you told them?"

She eyed him anxiously, but stood her ground. "I tell them you boss acolytes around, but they already know that. I don't tell them anything else."

HE PAUSED a moment to think. Lalyahe had cautioned the priestesses and their acolytes to silence, but H'nrin could easily slip some of his aides into their ranks. Nor could H'nrin be blamed for his caution and his suspicion. The old man wanted only to preserve the status quo in his realm, and he suspected that Rolf was disturbing it. The reports of the encampment of Earthmen by the cave's mouth probably helped to increase his anxiety.

"Listen," he said to Krasala. "When you go back to the council, tell them that I'm violating the temple, poking into the holy relics. Tell them that a group of priestesses are plotting to kill me. Will you do that?"

"Why? Is probably true."

"That they're plotting to kill me?" She nodded solemnly.

"Well, tell the council just that and nothing more."

"Why?"

"Because if they think a priestess group is after me, they might keep hands off and hope the job gets done without their help."

She said nothing, and resumed dragging her toe in the dust. He watched her for a moment, then returned to his drilling.

"You like Lalyahe a little maybe?" she asked without transition. "Maybe you learn to like."

He glanced up at her downcast face. Her dark brows were dragging low over her green eyes, and there was a hint of petulance about her mouth. Heavy locks of hair dangled about her cheeks as she toed the floor.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" he grumbled in a not unkindly tone.

She met his eyes suddenly, and after a moment exchanged sheepish grins. "Maybe we get away from here," she suggested. "Maybe we get to cave of another tribe."

"Who's we?" he asked in bewilderment.

"You me. Mebbe you don't want me to be you woman?"

Rolf thoughtfully drilled the last two holes. Then he nodded solemnly. "Sure. I want you. Yeah. I was sort of figuring on it before ...oh, well. Sure, I want you."

She beamed at him, then glanced up and down the corridor. "Then why we wait? Let's go!"

He gathered up the rods in his arms and moved to the door beside her. He couldn't possibly explain the full scope of what lay ahead. He looked down at her for a moment. "I've got a lot of things to do first, baby. It'd take as long to tell you about them as it would to make them happen. Can you just keep quiet and wait?"

"And watch you politix with Lalyahe?"

"Yeah, but not for long."

She wrestled with herself for a moment. "Okay, I trust."

He pushed her out into the corridor. "Go talk to the council now, kid. I'll see you later. And stay away from P'yan."

"You be careful," she warned as he moved away. "Is some would like to kill you all right."

THE BAT had settled to the floor, and crouched panting in exhaustion when he reentered the great room of the temple. Its eyes had remained bandaged during the ordeal. He left the bandage in place, but loosened the tether and prodded the beast's flank with a rod. It squeaked in fright and took wing again wearily, bearing its load of rocks. He watched it ascend in slow circles, avoiding the walls by some extra sense, possibly reflected sound. Soon it disappeared into the overhead darkness, no longer fighting its cargo.

He left it to fly freely while he carried the rods to the circle of workmen who were laboring over the harnesses. Lalyahe met him and frowned at the rods.

"The usual explanation?" she asked.

"Yeah." He glanced around at the harness makers. "They probably won't know where they came from. How many outfits are finished?"

"Three. But it's going faster now. I found some experienced garment-makers."

"Good. Have them rig out the bats and tether them until they're tired, as I did the first one."

He stacked the rods against the wall, sat down amid the scraps of leather to fashion a pair of toe-stirrups. When they were finished, he lashed them to one end of a rod and fitted them with thongs to be bow-knotted about the rider's ankles for easy loosening. The other end of the rod would be tied to the loop under the bat's lower jaw. He showed it to the harness makers and set some of them to work duplicating it.

The first bat was down again, crouched with folded wings and drooping head. Occasionally it shuffled about irritably, trying to clear its feet of the strange rigging. Rolf pitied the animal, but there was no time to waste in either gentle training or comfortable harnessing. He hoped simply that the beasts could be ridden without dashing the huntsmen against the rocks.

While the bat was resting, he slipped the loop about its jaws and had a helper wrestle with the creature's head while he bound the chin-pole to the hackamore. Eight men gripped its struggling wings while he fitted the reins in place. They eased it up until its feet were off the floor, and another huntsman came in to grasp the legs while Rolf slipped beneath the furry belly and sat on the underslung swing. He pressed his toes into the stirrups while a hunter tied the ankle-thongs.

BUT THE perch was too precarious. He had a strip of belting brought forward and fastened in a loose loop between the bat's ankles, passing it behind his back as a safety-rest. He grinned nervously at the men who gripped the wings. All he needed now, he thought, was a twentieth-century ten-gallon hat. And an embalmer, maybe, if the blind-folded creature became panicky and flew into a wall. It seemed safer with the blind-fold, however; the bat might be less willful about resisting the tug of the reins.

"Hyo!" he barked, and waved the holders back. They released the struggling wings and ducked to safety.

Instead of bolting, the bat spread his wings high and sat down, pinning Rolf's legs beneath the feet-spreading bar. Mercifully the leggins were loose enough to prevent slippage, and the fracture of the rider's legs. The base of his spine ached from the jolt, and he cursed fluently as the beast's weight doubled him over. The huntsmen, who had ridden for sport with no gear other than wrist-straps, howled with glee.

Angrily, Rolf caught a double handful of bat-fur and jerked. With a squeak of dismay, the bat crouched lower, then sprang aloft. It immediately began swooping low over the heads of the assembly and fighting at the chin-stick. Rolf let his feet ride free with the beast's head at first, letting it resign itself to the new and unwanted object. Despite the blindfold, the bat banked sharply as it approached each wall, swinging its rider wide, then soaring back across the temple.

Still fighting the stick, it suddenly leaned back on its wings for a landing stall, perhaps meaning to fight it out with the stick on the ground. Rolf lurched dangerously forward. Clutching at the cross-piece, he stiffened his legs and jerked the bat's head down with the chin-stick. The bat shrieked and beat at the air with its giant wings, darting higher to escape the steady downward tug. Rolf kept some of his weight on the stick, and the bat circled higher. The lake of light around the temple receded beneath him.

When the beast flew toward a wall, Rolf kicked upward lightly on the stick and swung its head aside with the reins, thus anticipating its behaviour by a fraction of a second. He encountered a flurry of rage when the relative merits of right and left were in dispute, but after a dozen passes, the bat began to agree more frequently with the reins. The stick, however, remained a center of contention. A downward tug would produce a fight for altitude. An upward kick would bring a stall, but if the stick continued to press upward, the bat winged over, dived shallowly, and soared high again as soon as the sharp maneuver caused Rolf to lose the upward pressure.

After a few tries, he found that a gentle upward pressure, though insufficient to cause the bat to apply brakes, would bring a slow descent.

He was at least five hundred feet above the floor of the temple now, and the vertical shaft was widening considerably. Its shape and its method of bracing were engineering masterpieces, protecting the bottom against cave-ins. Evidently it had once served as a lift-way for huge ships—from the surface to the caverns of the Bolsewi.

SOARING HIGHER, he passed a ledge, visible only as a black up-shadow, encircling the walls. He guided the bat closer to it, and made a slow circle, peering into the gloom. He saw cave entrance, and looped back. No ...not a cave...a large entranceway, like an opening onto a freightdock. Perhaps it was, he thought. A rocket, Lowered into the shaft, would need a clear length of tunnel beneath it for blast-off.

Feeling the draft, or hearing the tunnel's echo-response, the weary bat settled toward it. Rolf started to wrench its head away, then decided to chance it. The entrance was wide enough to keep him from being dashed against the floor. He tugged the bat's head down to keep it from alighting on the ledge. Then, as it soared into the entranceway, he kicked up for a stall. The bat dropped quickly. As he struggled out from under its belly, he promised himself a padded seat for the future.

He caught the reins near the hackamore, then felt around for something to tie them to. After his eyes adjusted, a faint ceiling glow became apparent, a metal door handle ended his search, and he tethered the winged animal securely. It folded its wings and stretched out on its belly with a blubbering squeak of relief.

Rolf waited, squinting and straining to accustom his eyes to the faint glow.

He was in what had apparently been a warehouse at one time. It was a huge empty vault, or nearly empty. He spied a motionless, shadowy hulk across the floor, and he moved cautiously toward it. It proved to be a heap of lightweight metallic boxes, shipping crates perhaps. He pried one of them open and found that it contained instruments, wrapped in thin plastic and packed in fibrous insulating material.

Another contained similarly protected machine-parts of strange design. He examined them briefly. The production methods that had fashioned them were obviously superior to anything that Marsville could manage. Machined surfaces in the form of hyperbolic paraboloids. A Moebius band whose unihedral side still bore faint marks of a cutting tool. Cutting a Moebius band on an earth-lathe would be an impossible feat, as far as Rolf knew.

He opened a third box that lay aside from the others, then drew back with a shudder. A white skull stared at him vacuously from atop a heap of ashes. Its needle-fangs were still intact in the slender jaw. Its tiny face was bat-like, but the braincase was larger than a man's. The remains of a Bolsewi! He sifted the ashes through his fingers. Evidently they cremated their dead, but left the head intact for religious reasons.

The boxes perhaps were part of a shipment which had never been made. But where had the Bolsewi gone? To another sun-system perhaps? Or had they become extinct, contrary to the androon legends?

But he had no time for idle speculations. A fluttering of bat's wings, and the excited shouts of other riders brought him back to the present. Other huntsmen were wrestling with their mounts in the vertical shaft. He moved back to the entrance and watched the darting shadows for a moment. The riders still regarded it as sport. He wondered how they would react when the Earth guards fired upon them.

THE BAT was still dozing by the entrance. He quietly slipped a loop over its body to bind its wings against a premature take-off. Then he struggled under the belly, released the loop, jerked a handful of fur, and burst forth into the shaft once more. He guided the beast downward.

Lalyahe met him as he alighted. Most of the harnesses were finished, and the acolytes had taken the bats aloft. "I have a plan," she said. "Let's lure the council's she-guards into the temple. Then you can swoop down to capture them from above."

"It's a good plan," he murmured diplomatically. "But perhaps we can frighten the council into submission without using force. Go tell them that the temple of Menbana will soon open its mouth to the sky. And clear everyone out of the temple."

She caught her breath and glanced up toward the darkness. "How can—"

"There's no time to explain. If you want to be the ruler of the tribe, you'd better hurry."

She nodded, and moved away. Rolf noticed a eunuch who had been standing near a column watching them impassively. When Lalyahe was gone, the eunuch approached him. He tossed his head toward the shadows beyond the columns and grunted. "Ea Krasala."

"Krasala? Is something wrong?" Rolf asked.

But the eunuch spoke no Earth-tongue. He gestured toward the shadows again and gave Rolf a slight push in that direction. Rolf obeyed nervously.

She was waiting for him behind a column, and her face was tense with worry. "The council! They are in session with the men who returned from your city!"

"You mean with some of my people?"

"No! With the ones your people kidnapped! Your people turn them loose. They bring a message for the council."

"A demand to turn me over to them?" he growled.

She nodded. "They say if you don't come out, they pour something in the caves that make everybody die that smell it."

"Gas! What did the council say?"

"They say you—" Her voice choked off as she stared across his shoulder. "P'yan!" she hissed, and began backing away.

Rolf pivoted quickly. The thick-limbed bearded huntsman was standing a few feet away with folded arms, glaring at them suspiciously. He grunted, twirled his bone club for effect, and advanced on Krasala with a surly side-glance at Rolf. He growled at her in the androon tongue with a demanding note in his voice. She retreated with a snarl.

ROLF LET the burly acolyte step past him. Then he threw a hard fist to the base of P'yan's skull. The punch numbed his hand and sent thrills of pain up his forearm. The blow should have felled the huskiest rocket-tender. But P'yan only lurched forward slightly. He turned with a growl that arose to an enraged roar.

Rolf ducked as the huge club fanned air past his head. Then he darted in to inflict the greatest possible injury upon the most convenient and unethical regions of the giant's anatomy. His fists battered against hardwood and hairy granite. P'yan scorned defense. He caught the Earthman's shoulder in one hand and threw him sprawling to the floor. He pinned Rolf down with a heavy foot and lifted the club like an axe.

Krasala threw herself into the fray with the fury of a lynx, raking at the giant's eyes with her nails. Before P'yan shook her off, Rolf managed to get out his pocket knife. He sank the blade in P'yan's leg, and ripped a twelve-inch gash down the thigh. The huntsman howled, and sent the club downward in a wild blow. It shattered on the stone floor as Rolf rolled aside. Krasala huddled by a column, holding her face and moaning. P'yan had struck her with a furious back-hand.

In a rage, Rolf darted forward with the knife. But hands suddenly gripped his arms. A sea of shouting women engulfed the fighters; pressing them apart, and seizing Rolf with many hands. He was borne off his feet and rushed out into the temple proper. Squirming frantically, he tried to break free, but a chopping blow to his temple dazed him. They were carrying him toward the entranceway. A delegation sent by the council to capture him!

He cried out to Krasala: "The symbol of Phanton! Get it! Point it at the wall and press the stud!"

A hand was clapped over his mouth. He bit it savagely, and another blow struck his head. Through the tight crowd of bodies, he caught a glimpse of Krasala darting to the anteroom where the bagpipes lay in storage. He prayed that the urgency of the moment would help her overcome superstitious fear. P'yan was pursuing her at a limping trot, but his leg wound left a trail of red across the floor.

A few huntsmen-acolytes who had returned from their bat-flights bore down on the party of fighting women. Lalyahe shrieked orders for counterattack, but the eunuchs and priestesses only parted ranks before the tight phalanx of knife-and-club-armed raiding party. The huntsmen closed in with flailing clubs beating down several of the council's guard {uncertain text begins},.ept a - . {uncertain text ends} ring about their prisoner, and chopped their way steadily toward the entrance. They left a trail of bodies—dead, wounded, or unconscious—behind them, but they drove on without pause, occasionally battering down one of the small party of defenders.

Rolf saw himself being turned over to the Mars Commission guards and summarily shot. He pleaded with his captors. "They'll kill you or drive you out anyway!" he shouted above the roar. "You can't buy them off! Don't you understand? If it would save your hides, I'd give myself up! But it won't—"

The side of a fist bashed his face, and a squat, ugly she-guard growled for silence. He realized that they couldn't understand him.

A weird shriek filled the temple. It was followed by a rising tide of violet light. The raiding party paused a dozen yards from the entrance, muttering fearfully. Struggling to peer through the sea of heads, arms and shoulders, Rolf saw the growing orb of violet incandescence clinging to the stone wall a few feet above the floor toward the rear of the temple.

A WILD cry of fright went up from the crowd. There was a sudden surge toward the entrance. Rolf was released, but felt himself being carried along in the tide of escape. He let himself be borne to the entranceway where the stream of bodies narrowed. Then he tore free and began running along the wall, battering his way through the converging crowd. The fiery orb was blazing with sun-brilliance and spitting bits of molten slag that rolled like gleaming marbles across the smooth floor. In a few moments, the entire herd of priestesses, acolytes, and raiders were surging in a tight sea about the doorway, leaving the rest of the temple barren, except for several tethered bats, P'yan, Krasala, and Lalyahe.

Glancing up, he saw the bat-riders who were still aloft. Their frightened mounts had retreated upward toward the top of the shaft, and without a doubt their riders were letting them have their way.

He hurried toward Krasala. She lay in a dead faint near the anteroom entrance. The bagpipe gun had fallen beside her. He dragged her to safety from the rolling bits of slag, then called out to Lalyahe, who crouched behind a column. She answered weakly, but refused to move. He caught up the bagpipe, twisted the crank, and aimed a shot at the wall just above the entranceway. The first inferno had burned itself out. But a new one blossomed with a shriek over the entrance. It would keep the raiders from reentering, although he doubted that they needed the warning. It would also keep the bat-flyers aloft, for he feared that if they descended they would flee the temple.

P'yan was moaning on the floor and holding his leg. An occasional bit of slag rolled through the puddle of blood that surrounded him. It hissed, sent up a cloud of steam, and lay darkened. Rolf approached the huntsman warily. The knife had severed an artery, and the giant was bleeding to death.

Rolf motioned for him to lie down. P'yan growled defiance and gestured threateningly. He tapped his chest arrogantly and grunted, "Moe Krasala!" Rolf knelt at a safe distance and indicated by sign that he wanted to apply a tourniquet to the leg.

"Moe Krasala!"

Rolf shook his head vehemently. Then he stabbed a finger at the giant, winked, and grunted, "Lalyahe. You can have Lalyahe. Do you understand? You ...toi...Lalyahe."

The effect was immediate. P'yan's eyes widened thoughtfully. He scratched his beard and glanced toward the pillar where the high priestess now stood watching them, but beyond earshot. Then he grinned and nodded. As a celibate acolyte, he wasn't particular. He just wanted a woman. Rolf crawled forward and fitted a rawhide tourniquet in place. Then he bound the wound with his undershirt. If crude androon medicine had saved the ex-priestess with the blown-off hand, it should be able to mend P'yan's leg, he reasoned.

P'yan butted heads with him in gesture of friendship, then staggered weakly to his feet, and without further ado shuffled determinedly toward Lalyahe, who simply frowned and looked bewildered. Rolf left the giant to his wooing and hurried back to Krasala, who had roused herself to wakefulness and sat shivering in fright caused by her own boldness toward the Bolsewi weapon. He tugged her to her feet, embraced her, and kissed her gratefully. But she was too frightened to respond to the unfamiliar expression of affection.

THERE WAS a sudden howl of anger from the high priestess. Rolf glanced around quickly to see her struggling with the amorous P'yan. Suddenly the frustrated giant raised his hammy hand and brought it down atop her head with what seemed to be only a gentle tap. Lalyahe crumpled limply. The hardy huntsman caught her up, threw her across his shoulder, and staggered toward the entrance. He grinned back at Rolf defiantly.

Rolf fumed impotently. There was no stopping P'yan from lugging off his prize. But he needed the high priestess as a translator. P'yan's libido wouldn't wait. He cautiously approached the entrance where the inferno had subsided to a red glow. Rolf thought of halting him with another shot, but then he would encounter trouble from the giant, unless he killed the man. While he debated with himself, P'yan slipped through the entrance and disappeared. Krasala, watching them go, giggled with perhaps a trace of hysteria.

Rolf took her arm gently. "I need your help now," he told her. "None of the huntsmen speak Earthtongue. Will you come with us?"

She hesitated, frowning.

"Some of us may be killed," he said quietly. "You can leave if you want to. Maybe I can get along with sign language."

She snorted angrily, and stamped her foot. "Of course I come! Is just I don't see how we get out of here. The council's guards wait for you. Is only one entrance. How..."

"Never mind!" he said, looking up toward a flutter of wings. "Tell those riders to go back up, or another sun will bloom down here."

She faced the center of the temple and called out in a quavering voice. A rider who was stalling his bat for a landing jerked the beast's chin down and shot quickly upward again. Rolf glanced around at the tethered mounts whose riders had run away with the crowd. There were five of them, crouched low and squeaking with fright.

"Collect all the weapons from the storeroom," he told Krasala. "I'll get the bats ready."

"Weapons?" She looked puzzled. Rolf held up the bagpipe. "These things. You shot this one. You shouldn't be afraid of them now." Her face went chalk-white and she moistened her lips.

"Listen, kid," he said impatiently. "If you can't get over your silly fright, you might as well stay here. And if we don't use the Bolsewi weapons, we'll probably all die."

She set her jaw defiantly, turned, and marched angrily toward the storeroom. Rolf grinned, gathered up a coil of rawhide rope, and tied four bats together in an aerial mule-train, leaving the fifth for Krasala. He weighted the riderless ones with rock-sacks to prevent an overly frisky flight, and made certain that all blindfolds were adjusted as insurance against willfulness. When he was finished, he began carrying away the few wounded guards who remained, and depositing them in the corridor just outside the temple's entrance. At the other end of the corridor, the crowds stared at him from the huge council room. Someone threw a club which skidded off a wall and missed him by a wide margin.

He started to turn away, then paused. A loud and metallic voice was echoing from the distance, making itself heard above the grumbling voice of the crowd. "We'll give you half an hour to produce Kenlan. Do you understand? Half an hour. Then we turn on the gas. Do you understand 'gas'? You stupid beasts, you understand `death', don't you? 'Gas' is 'death'. Send Kenlan to us, or we'll..." The voice hesitated, then went conversational: "Hey, Peterson! Somebody's coming up the tunnel. Looks like the chief."

ROLF QUICKLY guessed what was happening. The Commission guards had dragged a public address system halfway down the bat-cave. H'nrin was evidently going to meet them for a parley. But the name 'Peterson' left him startled. Could it be the same Peterson who was a member of the Commission? If so, then the public address announcer must also be a Commissionman; for no one else would dare to call the official by his last name without using the title "Commissioner". It seemed unlikely—yet the rulers might submit themselves to personal danger rather than let too many others see the caverns and understand their significance.

Rolf returned quickly to the temple. Half an hour made a dangerously close deadline. And if his plan failed, several thousand androons would die unpleasantly. He wondered how they planned to force the gas into the caverns when the natural drafts flowed in the opposite direction along the tunnel. They must mean to close off the mouth of the bat-cave as soon as the delegation came out. Or perhaps they had already walled it up, leaving a small escapeway.

Krasala had stacked half a dozen of the Bolsewi bagpipes near the tethered bats, and she stood back from them nervously, her expression shifting from awe to pride to anxiety. He grinned and applauded her bravery. She replied with a cocky smile and a sniff, but her hands were trembling. "The flyers try to come down again," she said. "I send them back up."

"Good girl. Think you can ride one of these flying ponies?"

She eyed the beasts doubtfully, but snapped, "Certainly!"

Rolf packed the Bolsewi weapons beneath a bat, but kept one to strap on his back. He helped Krasala under her mount, released the beast's tether, and slipped off the loop that bound its wings, whose sudden beating sent him sprawling. Krasala yelped as it sprang aloft.

"Jerk its head down!" he bellowed after her.

After a few wild passes across the temple, the bat began ascending. Rolf kept his own mount bound and tethered while he released the others in the four-bat train. They fluttered up to the end of the lead-rope and began tugging against one another amid furious beating of wings. Leading them would not be simple. He slipped quickly into his seat and set his own bat free.

At first it added its bit to the general chaos, and Rolf clutched the crosspiece fearfully as he felt himself being flung about like a rock at the end of a string. But he managed to exert some control; and since the vector-sum of the forces exerted by the riderless bats was frequently zero, his steady guidance urged the unwilling train steadily upward.

He peered about in the deepening gloom for the other huntsmen, but saw no one. Apparently they had already discovered the high-level storeroom. Once Krasala swooped down past him, howling angrily at her mount. But then she regained control and climbed again.

"Can you handle him yet?" he shouted, causing his own bat to squeak and dart erratically.

"I—I think so!" she called nervously.

"Go up till you see a ledge. There's a big door. Fly inside and wait."

SHE CALLED acknowledgement and soared on above him. Suddenly a riderless bat fluttered past and descended toward the floor far below. Rolf cursed to himself. Whoever had let the beast escape would be marooned in the storeroom. He unstrapped the Bolsewi bagpipe, cranked it, and aimed between his legs at the patch of light beneath him. The weapon's shriek sent the bat bolting upward with an acceleration that nearly unseated him.

A minute later, they were flurrying madly at the top of the shaft, darting dangerously close to the steel-struts that supported the cavern's lid, while the violet light blazed far below them. While he fought to regain control, he caught a glimpse of the stray bat streaking for safety within the storeroom. But he was more interested in keeping the train away from the struts. If they fouled the lead-rope and became entangled, he would be marooned a thousand feet above the floor, with no way to get down.

He jerked savagely on the reins and kicked his bat's chin high as the last beast tried to encircle a strut. There was a flutter of wings against steel, then a series of enraged squeaks. The train tugged at its rope. With a yelp of fright he glanced back. The bat was clinging to the strut with its feet. One of its wingtips dangled, broken from beating against a sharp metal edge. Rolf jabbed his mount with the weapon's muzzle.

The last bat tore free. The train sagged at the end, as the crippled creature fought to stay aloft. But its limping efforts helped to tug them slowly downward. Suddenly his bat saw—or "heard"—the storeroom entrance and began fighting toward it valiantly. A moment later, the train was inside, alighting in the midst of the others.

He climbed wearily to his feet and noticed irritably that none of the mounts was tied. They remained in the storeroom as a sanctuary from the outrages that had been perpetrated upon them in the shaft. But what he was about to do would send them into a panic, and they would have to be properly bound.

He looked around for the riders, and at last saw them huddled as a shadowy patch of collective fright in a far corner.

"Krasala!" he called into the gloom. "Where are you?"

Her slender figure detached itself from the shadow of a bat, and approached him slowly. When she drew near, he could see she was smiling weakly, although she appeared sick from the wild ride.

"Is always be like this, when I your woman?" she muttered wearily.

He chuckled and gave her a rough little hug. "Go tell the men to come tether the bats securely."

SHE NODDED and moved toward the murmuring huddle of frightened huntsmen. He listened as she relayed the order. A voice replied from the group, a protesting voice. She spoke again in a louder tone. The voice grunted a monosyllable. She raged at it in a furious snarl. Several voices answered sulkily. She turned on her heel and marched back to Rolf.

"They won't do anything," she told him. "They say they wait for Menbana to punish you."

"Tell them," he said stiffly, "that if they don't obey, the whole tribe will be killed by the Earthmen from the city. Tell them we're trying to save their people. And...tell them I'll toss any man who disobeys off the ledge."

She went to relay the order, while he stood regretting the latter threat. There was not a man among them who did not outweigh him by at least twenty pounds. He waited, listening to their heated conversation with Krasala. At last two men arose and advanced toward him. He cranked the sun-weapon and waited tensely. Krasala was hurrying behind them, chattering rapidly.

"Stop!" he barked when they were within five paces. He lifted the gun menacingly. The pair stopped and looked bewildered.

"No, they came to help you!" Krasala explained.

"What about the others?"

She shrugged. "I ask if anybody isn't coward. These two is all that come."

"Have them tie the bats, then. We don't have much time."

Rolf stacked the weapon against the wall, and went to drag the boxes of the Bolsewi shipment toward the entrance. There were six of them—the coffin, the instrument case, the machine-parts, a case of plastic scrolls that might have been books, a box whose contents had been reduced to mouldy dust, and a fat device that looked like a replacement unit for some electronic rig.

When the huntsmen had tied the bats in the pack-train, Rolf unhitched the rock-bags and emptied them. He slipped the electronic unit into one bag, the coffin into another, then began stuffing the third with samples from all the other cases. Krasala was watching him curiously.

"Where you take these god-creatures?" she asked.

He paused thoughtfully, then looked "Tell me, do you believe the gods lie or not?"

She shook her head quickly. "Gods don't die. They go to live above the world."

"In soul, body, or both?"

Her mystified expression told him that she had no concept of soul, at Least not as far as the gods were concerned.

"Another thing: would you recognize a Bolsewi if you saw one?"

"Certainly. The pictures in the council room—"

"That's all I want to know, baby." Quickly he unpacked the coffin and took out the skull. "Come with me," he grunted, and moved toward the group of idle huntsmen.

She walked beside him, staring curiously at the white object in his hands, but evidently not recognizing it. The batsmen were sitting in a tight motionless group, watching him resentfully as he approached. Suddenly he wished that he had brought the weapon. They might react violently to his words. He stopped before them and held up the skull, turning it slowly in the dim light.

"Is this the skull of a bat?" he asked rhetorically.

"Ce vanina kr'nale subolsewa?" Krasala translated.

THERE WAS a long silence. Then a man in the center of the group raised his voice to utter a few words. "He says 'no'," Krasala told him. "He says the top part is too big, and jaw too little."

"Is it the skull of a man?" Rolf asked again.

The same huntsman snorted derisively. "What man has needles for teeth and ears on top of his head?" he replied through the translator. Then his expression changed, became startled. A hushed murmur arose from the group. Krasala caught her breath and stared up at the pale and ancient bone.

"I found it here—in this room," Rolf said in a conversational tone. "Since the top of the shaft is closed, it must have come up from below. Have any of you seen something like this wandering through the temple?"

Krasala translated in a weak, halting voice. This time the man replied, with only an uneasy head-shake.

"It was in a box," Rolf continued. "Somebody must have put it in the box, a long time ago. It's very dry and brittle. Would any of you like to handle it?"

An uneasy mutter was the only answer to Krasala's translation. She had backed away from him several steps, and she was swaying weakly. Rolf turned the thing over in his hands and put on a puzzled expression.

"Now, what do you suppose has teeth, jaw, and ears like a bat, but a head that's bigger than a man's?"

He opened the jaw to peer at the teeth —and made a new discovery. "It even has two metal teeth."

"Translate, please," he murmured when Krasala lagged.

She managed to get it said before she started to faint. He leaped toward her, gave her an arm for support, and shook her slightly. She moaned and shied away from the skull. He led her gently back toward the tethered bats while a babble of voices began to grow behind him. He let her sit by the wall to recover while he silently returned the skull to the coffin and the coffin to the bag.

Then he spoke to her again: "Go tell the men that they are about to see that Bolsewi magic can be used by men, without harm to them. Tell them that the temple of Menbana will soon open its mouth to the sky, with much thunder. Tell them to watch closely while I use Bolsewi magic again."

Wordlessly; she went to do his bidding, and he heard the heated argument die when she began to speak. He hurried toward the entrance, hoping that the bagpipes were powerful enough to make good his promise. He sat in the center of the opening and fired a shrieking bolt at the ceiling of the shaft. The violet globe stung the metal, and by its light he inspected the damage wrought by the first shot which had gained him Lalyahe's respect. There was a fused crater in the metal, but the center of the crater had bulged downward, as if pressed by weight from above.

He felt certain that the ceiling was several feet in thickness, and covered with a heavy layer of earth. Burning through it would take too long, and already the half-hour deadline was approaching. He hoped, however, that H'nrin's pleas would manage to stall the Commission for a time.

INSPECTING the roof, he wondered if its sudden collapse would bring a landslide and perhaps cause the store-room to cave in. But he had to chance it. He glanced down over the lip of the ledge to assure himself that none of the tribesmen was brave enough to enter the haunted temple. Then he began firing at a group of struts which supported a section of ceiling on the opposite side of the shaft, hoping thereby to limit the overall effect and confine any rock-slide to the one side. The globes of bright fury attached themselves to the struts and bit angrily into the metal. He ducked back behind the wall to avoid a shower of sparks and to protect his eyes from the sun-glare of four globes burning at once.

A deep-throated grumble began to pervade the shaft. He stole a glance around the corner and saw one of the struts begin to buckle at the point where the charge had heated it to white incandescence. The ceiling section seemed to sag slightly. But the fire-globes had died, and the struts were subsiding to a red heat. The grumble began to die.

Quickly, in the failing light, he fired three more bursts at the same struts. When the sun-orbs bloomed again, the heated shafts crawled rapidly to white luminescence. Rolf backed away from the entrance. Two of the shafts were slipping and twisting like fat lead bars pressed lengthwise in a vise.

The grumble returned, became a rumble, became a growling roar that shivered the solid walls of the storeroom and tore at the eardrums with bursts of sound. He ran twenty paces into the storeroom, then turned and ran toward a far corner where Krasala huddled in fright. Somewhere outside, the piercing cry of shearing steel blended with the monstrous growl of tumbling rock. A hail of stones rained on the ledge, bouncing through the entranceway. A small boulder came with the debris, tearing out a bite of rock from the side of the door. It hurtled through the storeroom like a juggernaut, struck the rear wall, and narrowly missed crushing a bat before it came to rest.

The room became choked with dust as the barrage continued. Faintly, above the uproar, he heard the outcries of the huntsmen. "What are they saying?" he shouted at Krasala, who was clinging to his arm and biting her lip to keep silent.

"They are praying," she called in reply.

"Not a bad idea," he said as he watched the wall toward the shaft begin to crack. The crack grew longer, as though an invisible hand were tracing it in black ink upon the polished stone. The same crack was moving more slowly across the ceiling. In grim fascination, Rolf watched it until it finally crept to a halt.

Then the rumble was coming from far below as the cave-in piled itself upon the floor of the temple. The rain of rocks in the entranceway had stopped. But there was darkness in the shaft. With a cry of dismay he ran toward the entrance. Only blackness above and below, blackness and choking dust. Had the collapse only sheared off a layer of rock above the metal, leaving the higher stratum hanging by its bootstraps? If so, they would all die rather slowly and unpleasantly—of starvation. For he was certain enough rock had fallen to bury the tops of the temple's doorways, thereby sealing off the merciful death of the Commission's threatened gas attack.

HE SEIZED a bagpipe and fired it upward in the shaft, then waited anxiously for the bloom of brilliance. It failed to come. He laughed with hysterical relief. The lack of daylight was simple. It was nighttime on the surface. In the dayless, nightless caverns, he had lost track of time, having eaten and slept whenever the need arose.

He turned to call the news to Krasala, and was startled to see three burly shadows standing behind him. He lifted the weapon and edged toward the side of the entrance to guard himself against a sudden push. The three figures sidled with him.

"What do you want?" he barked.

One of the men stepped forward and knelt. Then the other two followed suit. A tongue of cold air licked down his back from the open maw of the shaft above. "Krasala," he called weakly. "Come find out what's wrong with these jerks!"

"I'm right here," she said from somewhere in the dusty shadows. Then her shape appeared, and she questioned the men quietly. The one in the center answered without looking up.

Rolf listened to the conversation impatiently. At first it occurred to him that they had taken him for a god, but he dismissed the notion with the thought that primitive peoples often failed to differentiate sharply between powerful natural and supernatural forces. A force could be slightly a god, partially a god, or wholly a god. And he had seen them kneel to their leaders.

"What is it?" he asked impatiently.

"They beg you pardon," she replied. "They want you to be high priest, and teach them."

"Do they speak for all the men?" he grunted.

She repeated the question, and replied, "All but a few. A few too frightened to say."

Rolf breathed relief. "Okay, tell them to get their bats ready and start chasing out of here. Straight up. We'll assemble again on the surface, around the mouth of the shaft. There's no time to waste."

One by one the bats began fluttering out of the opening and soaring up into dusty blackness. Rolf gave the train to another huntsman, to leave himself free for reconnaissance. Eight men refused to go; they remained in their corner, sulking and shivering. He decided to leave them, When the others had gone, he told Krasala to keep them assembled near the mouth of the shaft. Then they mounted their bats, and burst out into the shaft, climbing toward the invisible escapeway. A patch of stars came dimly into view as the dust thinned. Then they were out in the frigid night.

Rolf stalled his mount briefly over the mouth of the shaft, and by the light of the moons he could see that at least eight feet of rock and soil had been deposited over tire metal roof. Since the walls of the shaft sloped inward, there would be perhaps twelve feet of debris covering the temple floor, blocking all entrances. The cult of Menbana was doomed.

A FEW RIDERS were still aloft, fighting their bats, who sensed freedom in the open night. But most had landed and tethered their mounts to small boulders. The shaft's entrance lay in a pass between two mountains.

He called a repetition of his order to remain in a group, then let the bat climb high. The lights of Marsville arose above a hilltop. He reined toward it and spurred the beast to angry speed by pulling hairs out of its shaggy belly. The half hour had certainly elapsed, but H'nrin's pleading together with the commotion caused by the cave-in had probably delayed the gassing of the caves.

He kept the bat high until he located the ravine where the bat-caves stared from their low bluff. It was not hard to find; a dim aura of light arose from the encampment of guards. Then, lest they catch a glimpse of him in the moonlight, he swooped low, and darted east at fifty feet altitude. The camp lay about six miles down the slopes from the mountain pass. The icy wind numbed his face and froze his breath about his lips as he goaded the bat to furious speed.

As he drew nearer, he nosed his mount north, away from the moons, so that he would not be silhouetted as he circled at a radius of a thousand yards. From the number of portable huts erected about a monstrous bonfire, he estimated that there were at least a hundred men in the ravine. Bright lights gleamed about the cave entrances, and a group of men were working about the ledge. They had drilled into the rock, and had set a metal door over the mouth of the tunnel leading to the caverns. He murmured thankfully; the door was still open, and two men were peering into the cave. Evidently the delegation was still inside.

A tanker truck had been rolled up near the entrance, and dimly he could see a heavy hose coiled on the ground. The gas equipment. He reasoned that the gas would not be a lingering one, such as lewisite or the more deadly radioactive alphazene, for the Commission would want to reenter the caverns. Chlorine, perhaps, or a radioactive gas with a very short half-life.

Hovering at a distance of five hundred yards, he heard the sputter of an internal combustion engine. Briefly, he wondered why they hadn't brought a portable reactor instead, but then realized that there was no cooling water available in the ravine. He looked for the engine and spotted it on the bed of an open lorry. Undoubtedly driving the generator that furnished light for the encampment.

He twisted the crank of the Bolsewi bagpipe and eased the bat in closer. He could not afford to miss either target. At a hundred and fifty yards, he heard a shout. Someone had spotted him.

He set the bat in a gradual stall and calmly aimed for the generator. A searchlight stabbed out, probing toward him. He ignored it and pressed the stud. Its shriek sent the bat into a hysterical climbing turn. A machine gun chattered, and tracers drew white lines across the landscape beneath him. The ravine became illuminated with bluish light as the orb fried its way into steel. The engine's sputter died. The lights grew dim, then failed. Bullets ploughed upward in his general direction, but the guards had looked toward the sun-glare of the bag-pipe charge, and their aim was poor.

The bat was fighting its way higher and tugging doggedly toward the mountains, while Rolf tried to tug it back and keep it satisfied with a vertical ascent. But soon he was circling a thousand feet above the camp. The smoke of the bonfire seemed to hide him from view, for the barking of small arms ceased, except for an occasional wild shot toward some other bat whose sleep had been disturbed by the commotion.

WHEN HE had control of his mount again, Rolf skidded aside out of the thin smoke-pall and aimed another shot at the tank of gas. It fell wide by several yards and burned its way into the rocky ground. The bat bolted again, but this time he regained control more easily. The animal was weary of fighting.

The guards saw his intentions, and began scurrying wildly about in the area. Some were running toward the huts, while others darted into the mouth of the cave. He gave them a little time to reach cover before he fired again. A few of them appeared wearing gas masks, while those who apparently had no such protection sought refuge in the cave and closed the steel hatch behind them. A hail of bullets began streaking upward as the masked guards resumed their fire. There was a snapping sound as a slug bit through the bat's wing-membrane. The bat squeaked angrily, but evidently there were no somesthetic nerve-endings in the membrane. It seemed to be in no pain.

He aimed carefully and fired again. This time the sun-orb flared on the tank's hull. The small-arms barrage ceased as the guards raced for safety. Rolf gave the bat its head and let it streak toward the mountains. He counted the seconds ... three, four … the tank was strong.

Then came an ear-numbing thwang as a bubble of white-hot steel swelled and burst. It was followed by a gushing roar that ended sharply and echoed off the mountains. He flew onward.

Looking back from a mile's safety, he saw that the bonfire had gone green as the gas swirled about it. Even the lights of Marsville were tinted with an emerald glow as the cloud billowed upward as a tenuous mist. It behaved as a heavy fog, spreading out from the explosion, covering the camp, and rolling slowly downward to fill the ravine. How long before it would disperse and blend with the atmosphere as free gas? The coldness of the windless night should help preserve it for a time as a low-hanging vapor shroud. He needed that time badly.

The sound of a helicopter engine startled him. He looked back to see its shadow flit up from the camp past the lights of the city. It arose above the vapor and hovered for a moment, the moons glinting on its fusilage. With its landing lights, it probed the night about the camp. Then, having reassured itself that the threat had passed, it darted cityward. Another copter arose to follow it.

Rolf prodded the bat to higher speed. The pilots would bring help from the city. And if the gas was tymbogen, as he suspected, it could be quickly dispersed by jets spraying the ravine with powdered graphite. The gas was his ally, keeping the men trapped in the tunnel.

The huntsmen had built a roaring fire from dry lichen, and they were huddled about it for warmth. It guided him back to the shaft, but upon landing the flaming lichen into the shaft, lest it be spotted by aircraft taking off from the city. Krasala relayed the order as she ran toward him, grinning and scolding. He nestled her small body in his arms for a moment, then pushed her away.

"Find me five men brave enough to carry the Bolsewi weapons," he told her.

She shook her head doubtfully but followed him toward the group of men who were beating out the fire and kicking the flaming lichen into the shaft. She waited until they had finished, then spoke to the huntsmen sharply. Rolf watched the men halt in their tracks and turn to stare uneasily at the leader. No one volunteered.

"Ask them if they have decided about the skull I showed them in the storeroom. Ask them if they think it was man, bat, or Bolsewi."

"I already hear them talk about it," she said. "A few think it was Bolsewi."

"Which ones?"

She spoke sharply to a thin, saturnine batsman who stood nearby. He nodded and grunted. "Bolsewi". Then he stared nervously at his fellows and rubbed his beard contemplatively. Three others echoed the word, but a murmur of dissent arose among the group.

"Tell those four to step forward," he said.

WHEN THEY had approached sheepishly to within a few paces, he began asking Socratic questions about death, gods, immortality, and magic. They answered respectfully but briefly. But when the questioning reached the crucial stage— "Why not touch the weapons, if the Bolsewi were mortals?" —the men fell silent and inched away.

"Tell them that those who are cowards may leave," he barked in despair.

"Ga yaihi foebolsewi sundra k'raj!" she snapped scornfully.

One of the men backed away a few paces, then turned and bolted. Two others seemed ready to follow. The saturnine huntsman's shoulders stiffened proudly, however. He tapped his chest, grunted a monosyllable, and caught up a stone from the ground. He spun around and hurled it after the timid runner. There came a frightened yelp from the shadows, and a clatter of loose gravel as the man sprawled to the ground and darted behind a boulder. The thrower turned and grinned smugly at Rolf. His action seemed to deter the others from fleeing. They stood uneasily waiting.

"Get the weapons," he told Krasala.

She nodded and moved silently toward the tethered bat-train. Even the saturnine misfit's grin disappeared as she returned with them.

"Remind them that nothing horrible's happening to you," he told her. "And stop shivering. They'll notice it."

She placed the guns on the ground and translated. There was only a slight quaver in her voice, but she kept her hands clasped behind her shapely back. The men were staring down at the weapons with dismay. They seemed intellectually convinced that the Bolsewi were mortal. They had seen both Rolf and Krasala handle the bagpipes without misfortune. Yet they were afraid. Some kinds of fear were not quite reasonable, he reminded himself.

"Tell the thin one to take a gun," he growled.

Krasala lifted one of the weapons and extended it toward the batsman, calling him S'rij. But S'rij moistened his lips and let his hands dangle by his sides. His face reflected anguish. Suddenly he looked at Rolf and asked a pleading question.

"He wants to know if you will perform a spell to protect him," Krasala told him.

"What kind of a spell?" he asked in dismay.

She shrugged. "He regards you as a priest. Is business of priest to say what kind of spell."

He paused a moment, then shrugged resignedly and took the weapon from her. If they wanted spells, then they would get spells. He turned the bagpipe over in his hands, made gestures at it, blew a jug-note on its muzzle, mumbled gibberish over it, and held it up to the sky like an offering. He grinned at Krasala. "Tell the guy I'm giving it instructions."

THE BATSMAN nodded gravely as she translated. Rolf stepped forward, pressed the fellow's nose with his forefinger, and placed his hand forcefully across the breach of the weapon. "I now pronounce you man and wife," he said solemnly: then, thinking the foolishness was perhaps a good idea, he spoke to Krasala. "Tell him he's now married to the gun, and that if he leaves it or mistreats it, it'll give him a bad time."

No one laughed when she spoke. The hunter stared in awe at the thing in his hands. He turned it over slowly, inspecting its details with cautious interest. Then he nodded slowly at Rolf, and spoke in a low tone.

"He says he will guard it properly, but that he hope for a woman wife."

"Tell him its only a marriage of convenience," Rolf said, suppressing a smile. "He can have a divorce when we're finished. He can trade it in on a priestess."

The huntsman-acolyte had undoubtedly been trudging along behind his strutting bewinged female for too many years as an unthanked lackey. He broke into a beaming grin, nudged his comrades, and promptly fell in love with the bagpipe. Rolf felt his own shoulders relax and his stomach return to its proper position. "Whhh!" he breathed to Krasala. "Now to marry the others. Let's make it a double ceremony."

Having watched their comrade accept the weapon, the other two men agreed nervously but without protest. When he was finished, he asked for more volunteers and got another man. But there were still two extra weapons, not including his own.

"I'll carry it, but I won't marry it," said Krasala, who seemed to be becoming a godless heathen in imitation of her sacrilegious beloved.

"Okay, we'll leave the other. Now, get these guys over to the shaft for instructions."

The four armed batsmen followed him to the gaping mouth of the opening, and watched while he cranked and fired the weapon into the abyss. Its burst gleamed feebly up through the lingering dust from the floor of the wrecked temple far below. Then, he gave each of them individual instructions in aiming, cranking, firing, and had them fire several practice bursts into the shaft, where they could not be observed from the city or from aircraft. He feared that the operation might leave them unnerved, but after a few shots, the batsmen seemed to take heart and grow calmer.

Then he called the entire party to their bats. While he was giving them instructions, the moonlight seemed to grow brighter, bathing the ground in increasing brilliance. The men were puttering among themselves and staring past him toward the plains.

"A star grows brighter!" Krasala gasped beside him.

He looked around, and saw that the light was coming, not from the twin moons, but from a magnesium flare hovering over the ravine to the east. He bellowed for silence and listened to the night. The distant growl of a jet engine came to his ears. They were spraying the ravine to clear it of gas. 'Let's go!" he shouted to the men. "Single file, weapon-men in the lead. Head for the valley, but stay clear of he light!"

SHRILLING his orders to the others, Krasala followed close on his Leek. Soon the weird procession was airborne, winging down the slopes toward the glow of the city. He saw the lash of a jet's wings dart past the dare, and a smoky cloud of fine powler trail out behind it to sift slowly downward. The vaporous tendrils of tymbogen were thinning in the ravine. As the dusty cloud drifted through them, they came alive with a faint green light of their own. When the luminescence faded, the tendril was gone, and the vapor lost its droplet form and blended with the air like vanishing steam. Nevertheless, its potency would linger in the area for a short time, depending on the faint upcurrents of air along the slopes.

Rolf led the wavering column of bats a mile south of the ravine. A jet thundered past a hundred feet above them, causing the train to break up into a flurrying whirlpool of terrified moths. He bellowed for order, and shouted frantic explanations, but six batsmen bolted for the hills and refused to heed his angry threats. At last he let them go, and shouted at the others to fly toward the orchard and land in a group at its eastern fringes. He accompanied the flight, to assure himself of obedience.

The foliage cups of the quoie orchards gleamed like a long ribbon of buttercups beneath them in the moonlight. It lay a half mile wide between the plain and the foothills. He guided his makeshift warriors to a landing at the edge of the tree line, then called to Krasala without climbing out from under his bat.

"Tell S'rij and one other weapon-man to stay here with the others and wait for us to get back. Tell S'rij to brain any man who tries to slip away. Have them tie the bats under the trees and keep themselves out of sight if a...mechanical bat comes snooping. You and the other weapon-men come with me."

When S'rij proudly assured him that any deserter would be chopped in bits and fed to his bat, Rolf led the four-man task force aloft. Keeping low, they made their way back toward the ravine. He sniffed the night air for the sickening bouquet of tymbogen, the maker of tombs. He smelled nothing, but nervously led the party higher when they approached within a thousand yards. "Get as much altitude as you can," he called. "We'll watch from above."

The dusting-planes had dropped another flare, and by its light Rolf could see several tiny figures moving about beneath the mouth of the cavern. They were still wearing masks, and apparently testing for lingering whiffs of gas. One of the jets had gone back to the city, but the other still circled far overhead.

"No closer!" Rolf warned the others. "If the plane spots us, scatter in all directions and regroup with the others."

They hovered in a slow circle, watching the party of men in the ravine. Rolf reflected that there was little chance of being spotted by the jet from above; the riders were hidden beneath the bodies of their mounts, and enough other disturbed bats were flitting about in the area to make them inconspicuous. The ground-men's eyes were adjusted to the brightness beneath the flare, and although they cast frequent nervous glances skyward, Rolf doubted if they could see much beyond their immediate vicinity.

ONE OF the men suddenly detached himself from the group, hauled a portable radio from the back of a truck, and spoke into the mike. After a brief exchange of words, the sound of the jet took on a different note.

"Watch it!" Rolf warned sharply. "We may be spotted!"

But a moment later, the purring engine receded. Between wing flaps of his mount, he caught a glimpse of its luminous blue tail streaking toward the northeast.

"It's coming back!" Krasala cried suddenly.

"Not so loud! And don't worry, it's making another dusting run."

They watched and fought the reins, while the aircraft roared back up the ravine, scattering another haze of black powder from a greater altitude. It sifted over a wider area, and Rolf felt a few particles striking his skin. Krasala sneezed vigorously. He watched the ground as the dust drifted down, but there were no further signs of luminosity. The gas seemed to be gone.

But he waited until the cloud completely cleared. The masked guard was using the radio again when the haze thinned enough to allow visibility. He spoke for a short time, then replaced the mike and went to join his fellows. Rolf heard the jet turn off and recede toward the city. Its task was done.

He heard Krasala gasp suddenly from behind him. "Lights!" she warned. "Coming out of the city."

Rolf glanced back to see four pairs of headlights file out of the west gate and begin crawling across the plain. Trucks, bringing back the guards who had fled when the tank exploded. Evidently the Commission had cleared a road across the plain since the last time he had seen it. He smiled to himself. If things went right, the road might have a lot of future traffic—peaceful traffic. The trucks failed to worry him. He should be finished before they arrived.

"Move in closer to the caves," he told the others. "But keep silent."

HE LED them lower as they swooped toward the ravine. The flare had fallen and was burning itself out on the ground. One of the men was heaping dry lichens on the dying embers of the bonfire, and stirring them up to a light-giving blaze. There seemed to be only six men in the party. Rolf watched one of them shaking a bottle of liquid, then holding it up to the light—apparently testing for lingering gas. He seemed satisfied, and laid the bottle aside. He cracked his mask slightly, then tore it off, and shouted to the others.

"Okay, men! It's safe! Get that hatch open before the Commissioner has kittens!"

"Wait here!" Rolf hissed to Krasala. "Cover me! Don't fire unless they shoot first."

He goaded his bat to a burst of speed and ducked in close to the ground. The men had stacked their rifles against the bluff. They clambered upon the ledge and began making their way higher toward the cave entrance. He stuck a flaming orb to the ledge just ahead of them. The party bolted back toward safety. He stuck another orb to the ledge, cutting off their retreat. One man leaped off the ledge, but underestimated the drop and the hardness of the ground. He rolled over and sat up howling, with one leg twisted at a crazy angle. The others remained on the ledge, pinned between the two glaring globes.

Three of them produced side-arms and began firing at the flitting shadow of the frightened bat. Rolf retreated a hundred feet, gained altitude, and bellowed down at them: "Pitch your guns over the edge! And be quick, or I'll build a fire right between the other two!"

After a moment's hesitation, the men complied. "You'll get yours, Kenlan," major roared angrily.

Rolf ignored him and called to the others to advance. "Watch that man on the ground!" he warned. "If he lets go of his leg, blast him!" Then he landed in the ravine while the others remained aloft. He tied his bat to the tailgate of a truck, then stood guard while the others brought their harried mounts to the ground. The sun-orbs flickered out, leaving white patches of softened rock.

"You'll get yours, all right," the major repeated.

"Yeah," Rolf growled. "But in the meantime, jump over that hot-spot and come down off the ledge. All of you! Then line up at the base of the cliff, facing it."

The five guards trooped sullenly down and obediently filed along the bottom of the bluff. The major kept glancing back curiously. Finally his professional curiosity got the better of his wrath. "Where did you get those weapons, Kenlan?" he grunted.

"Watch them while I look for rope," Rolf told Krasala.

THE OFFICER was not accustomed to being ignored. He repeated the question irritably.

"Plenty of them in the caverns!" Rolf called as he leaped into the back of the first truck, and began rooting amoung the boards, tarpaulins, and such for a piece of rope.

"Who made them?" the major asked. "You mean these androons—"

"No, not these humans. They were made by an ancient civilization that borrowed a few pairs of our ancestors from earth."

The major sputtered contemptuously. "What do you take me for, Kenlan?"

"A fool!" Rolf replied calmly as he moved on to the second truck. In it, he found no rope, but stumbled across the assembly of a hydrogen welder which had evidently been used to mount the steel hatch over the cave entrance. He slit the oxygen hose with his pocket knife, tossed the end of it off the truck, and turned the cylinder valve full on. The hose writhed and hissed as the cylinder pressure needle crept slowly down the scale. When he got through with the hatch, they would need a cutting torch to open it; and he preferred that none be immediately available. While the oxygen spewed itself out, he moved on to the third truck.

But before he climbed inside, a loudspeaker voice called from the portable radio: "Major Mulvern, this is Longly, over."

"Better let me answer it, Kenlan," the major called.

Rolf cursed and darted toward the radio. He stuffed a handkerchief over the microphone to simulate the muffling effect of a talkie gas-mask, and grunted, "Go ahead, Longly."

"We've reached the orchard, sir. Shall we come on up the ravine? Uh ...are you still in your mask, sir?"

"Hold it where you are," Rolf barked. "There's still a little gas in here. Should be clear soon. Half hour, maybe."

Longly called an acknowledgement, but another station interrupted on the frequency. The voice was charged with impatience and carried the crisp ring of authority. "I thought you said the gas was clear, Mulvern. What's going on over there?"

"No trouble, sir. A little gas still lingering in the crevices."

"I'll send more jets, then."

"That won't be necessary, sir."

"Since when do you tell a Commissioner what's necessary!" the voice roared.

Rolf caught his breath. So some of the rulers had remained in the city after all. "Sorry, sir," he said meekly. "It's just that the vapor's already broken up. And the jets can't chase the fumes away."

THE COMMISSIONER broke off the conversation with a growl. Rolf replaced the mike and hurried back to the tracks. Someone was beating on the hatch from the inside of the tunnel, and shouting for news and assistance. He felt certain that the hatch could not be opened from within, since it was meant to imprison the cavern's inhabitants.

There was no rope, but he found a two-foot roll of copper wire, heavy enough for the purpose. He kicked it out of the truck, and carried it to the captives. "You've got seniority here," he told the major. "Lie down on your belly. Get away from the others."

Grumbling insults and threats, the major stretched out on the rocky ground. Rolf trussed him up like an unborn foetus, then turned to the others. "You're next, Captain," he barked.

Soon the prisoners were safely bound and propped in a circle around the bright embers of the bonfire. "You won't freeze," he told them, after glancing at the major's watch. "It'll be dawn in a couple of hours."

Longly was on the radio again, seething with polite impatience. "I've got a dozen men with masks, sir," he called. "Can they take one truck and come on up?"

"No need to," Rolf grunted into the muffled mike. "You can all come in about ten minutes. By the way, do you have a welder with you?"

"Uh, no sir! Why? There's one in truck 35-A. Isn't there?"

Rolf glanced at the truck with the hose dangling over its tail-gate. "35-A" was stencilled on its rear. "Oh, sure. Oxygen pressure's a little low, however. Never mind, it'll hold out."

Longly murmured acknowledgement and signed off.

"I want those men out of that cave in fifteen minutes, Mulvern!" barked the Commissioner's voice.

Rolf laughed into the microphone, and left the set to sputter pompously. "Get your bats aloft," he told Krasala. "Stay high and look for the trucks. They should be down the ravine and just across the quoie orchard. Circle the area, but don't let them see you. Wait until they start through the trees. When they're about halfway through, start firing at the forest behind them. Don't shoot at the trucks, but keep your shots directed at the trees along the road. Don't stop until you've got a fire big enough to cut off retreat. Then fly back and join the others. Set fires as you go. We want to block off this whole area for a while. Got that straight?"

She nodded, and chattered the information to the others. They moved silently to their bats, and he watched them spring aloft.

"Like father, like son, eh, Kenlan?" growled the major, who had been staring at the girl.

"Exactly," he grunted as he stalked to the low end of the ledge, mounted it, and made his way toward the mouth of the caves.

"Not bad looking, even if she is non-human," the major said acidly.

Rolf turned slowly. "You people killed my father when he came to you in good faith, trying to tell the truth. I watched your men shoot my brother while he lay pinned under his horse with a bullet through his middle. After all that, do you think I'd mind kicking your kidneys to a pulp and leaving you here to die?"

THE MAJOR began maintaining a rigid silence. Rolf went to inspect the hatch. It proved to be a door taken from some sort of safety vault, and its frame was set in the face of the cliff with heavy expansion-bolts. A circular hole just large enough to admit the hose had been cut through the door, and the hole was stuffed with rags that had been prodded into it from the inside. Rolf jabbed them out with the muzzle of the bagpipe, and observed that the steel was about four inches thick—probably not so thin as to melt completely through from a bagpipe blast. He turned to leave the ledge, but a muffled voice called through the hole: "Mulvern, this is Commissioner Peterson. Never mind the rags, just open the damned door."

"My name's Kenlan, Peterson!" he growled. "And don't hold your breath till I let you out."

No answer. They stalked along the ledge to the lower end, then moved back up the ravine to stand facing the door. He cranked the bagpipe, then placed three careful shots along each edge of the heavy plate of steel. He waited until the orbs died, making certain that the door was welded fast to the frame. Then he went to get the portable radio.

"Longly, this is Mulvern. You can start in now."

The junior officer responded eagerly. "Immediately, sir. Be with you in a few minutes."

"Take your time, take your time. And watch for signs of gas."

"Yes, sir."

Rolf sighed and sat on the ground to await signs of activity along the edge of the orchard, where Krasala and the two huntsmen should be ready to set the fires. The heart-pulp of the quoie was very moist, but the cup-shaped foliage and the felt covering of the trunks were dry enough to burn nicely, with a little encouragement.

A few seconds later, he heard a distant squeak. It could only be the sound of the Bolsewi weapons. Several others followed it, then a burst of small arms fire, evidently from the trucks. Longly was babbling on the radio. "Sir, we're being attacked! They're starting fires!"

"Well, stop that shooting!" Rolf roared, "and get the trucks on through the orchard, you fool! They'll have you trapped in there!"

A moment later the firing ceased. He saw a tongue of flame lick up above a low hill that hid most of the orchard from view.

"Did you hit any of your attackers?" Rolf asked nervously.

"I think we winged one, sir," the officer said. "But it's like shooting ghosts in a cellar. We don't have a spot-light."

Rolf cursed, to himself. If Krasala …

"Where are you now?" he asked.

"We're out of the orchard, sir. Starting up the ravine. You should see our headlights in a few moments. By the way, sir—you seem to still be wearing your gas mask. May I ask—"

"Just a minute," Rolf grunted. "Pull the trucks up and park. Just a minute."

THE OFFICER reluctantly acknowledged the order, and reported compliance. Rolf carried the radio to the major, who was shivering in his bonds by the now-blackened campfire. The only light in the ravine came from a few red embers in the ashes.

Rolf took the muffler off the microphone and held it close to Mulvern's mouth. "You can tell the world what your present situation is. Tell Longly to keep his trunks or men where they are, or a few hostages will be executed. Including Peterson, if he's standing close to the cave door."

"Come on up the ravine, Lieutenant!" Mulvern roared into the dead pickup.

Rolf booted him unmercifully in the shins, pushed him over, and rolled him toward the smouldering remains of the fire. He was grateful for the major's scream when it came.

"Now, let's try it with the mike-button on," he barked.

The sweating officer eyed him with hate, then panted into the microphone. "Longly, this is Mulvern. You were talking to Kenlan. He's got us trussed up here. You better stay where you are. He threatens to kill Commissioners Peterson and White."

Rolf took the mike away and listened to the ensuing babble of two stations trying to speak at once. He carried the leather-encased instrument to his bat, and strapped it between the animal's legs. Then he slipped beneath the belly, tugged the tether free, and burst aloft. He flew up the ravine, away from Longly's men, then cut plainsward toward the meeting place at the edge of the orchard. A dozen fires pierced the darkness. Soon the entire orchard would be in flames, and communication or transportation between the city and the ravine could be accomplished only by helicopter. And he doubted if a copter could make the haul with heavy welding equipment.

He spoke into the mike again. "Marsville control, this is Kenlan. Get that Commissioner on the air again."

There was a long silence, during which he could hear a mic-button being keyed nervously. Then the curt voice barked, "All right, Kenlan., This is Commissioner Rathwich. Speak your piece."

"All right. Undoubtedly you've got a direction-finder on this transmission, and a searchlight waiting to pick me up. I advise you not to do it, nor to make any other hostile move. We have a lot of your hostages over here. Over."

There was another pause, then: "You're clear, Kenlan. No d-f. What do you want? Not that you'll get it."

"I want a parley. I want to bring a party of my men to the city, under guarantee of safe conduct. Such guarantee, of course, being backed up by our possessing the persons of two Commissioners—and something like a hundred lesser beings, if they count for anything. Do you agree to that?"

"Just a minute."

There was an ominous silence while Rathwich took counsel with others or made some plans of his own. Rolf didn't like it.

"Make up your mind!" he barked. "Okay, Kenlan. Meet us at the west gate of the city."

"Un-huh! I'll pick the spot myself." "Where then?"

"I'll tell you after we get there, Rathwich. And listen! Keep the planes grounded and the searchlights off the sky. If we're not back in two hours, my men go to work on the prisoners. You understand?"

"Agreed," Rathwich snapped after a moment's hesitation.

"See you shortly!" Rolf called in signing off. He replaced the mike and reined the bat toward the spot where the others waited.

IN TWO hours it would be dawn, and Rathwich undoubtedly suspected that time was on his side and that, if he could stall until daylight, he would be able to strike quickly and effectively. Rolf shivered at the realization that his success depended upon the Commissioner's assumption that he was backed by a small army—instead or only a dozen frightened men and a girl. The party came out of the trees to meet him when he landed. Several batsmen were kneeling around a prone figure in the shadows, and for a moment he thought it was Krasala. But the girl slipped out of the orchard and trotted toward him. "They fire at us," she panted. "Grandson of H'nrin wounded."

"Badly?"

"His arm. It's shattered."

"Leave two men to take care of him. Get the rest on their bats. We're going into the city."

She caught her breath. "They'll kill us! They have always killed—"

"Not this time, I think. Let's get on our way."

She summoned the huntsmen, and together they arose above the plain. "Fly as high as the bats will go!" he ordered. "Keep well above the lights." They circled higher until the city was a warm square of brightness on the plain. Then he led the party eastward.

Somewhere in that patch of light, he knew that telephones were ringing, gate-guards were peering up into the darkness, and machine-gun crews along the walls were being alerted. Near the space-port ramp, the small ack-ack installation would be buzzing with activity, and searchlights were waiting to probe the sky. Rathwich's guarantee of safe passage meant nothing, although Rolf knew that he would observe it as long as it seemed to his advantage to do so.

Rolf, being at a disadvantage, didn't intend to bind himself by any rules of honesty. He meant to play the game the way Rathwich played it, and to use whatever opportunities arose. His only long-range weapon was public opinion.

THE COMMISSION, realizing that a police state would eventually fall, ruled by careful planning rather than by force. Marsville was an isolated society, a city-state that was an independent entity. It had achieved its own form of cultural integration after several generations of living apart from Earth. It had a sense of its own destiny as a nucleus of a Martian future. Its spirit was mildly messianic and, in the mind of its citizen, Mars was an evil wasteland which could only be made into a paradise by the "chosen people", at an "acceptable time", and under the semi-divine leadership of the Commission, whose members were Earthborn and therefore symbols of that almost legendary Paradise which was Earth.

But the time for Martian ascendency was always "not yet", and there was no frontier spirit among the people. Such attitudes had been carefully preserved and encouraged by the Commission, under the guidance of Earth-state, who wanted to keep the sapling carefully pruned and controlled, and Martian civilization tightly integrated and restricted as to pattern, thereby insuring that it would be exploitable at the "acceptable time". That time would come when Mars' industrial capacity outweighed its potentialities as a mushrooming agrarian nation. Earth-state knew very well that a frontier society would quickly get out of hand, explode outward toward individual freedom, and lose its unity as a colony of Earth. When it reached the stage of reintegration, it would have lost its Earth flavor, and would be a new and hearty nation declaring its independence. Since space-flight was limited by fuel-supply, Mars could never be brought to heel by force. Not at the present level of technical development.

There were certain inherent disadvantages in Earth's scheme of control. It had set itself up as the great green mother, the benevolent symbol of good things and of righteousness. The word "Earth" brought the same feelings to the colonists as "Democracy" or "Liberty" had brought to the ancients. Rolf, who had always been intellectually atypical, foresaw a day in the distant future when "all good colonials would go to Earth when they died". The disadvantage in Earth's scheme lay in its appeal to a mystical emotion.

A MESSIANIC spirit could always be aroused to some extent by the cry: "Now is the acceptable hour! The day of consummation is at hand!" Men who lived for a promise had always been stirred by sudden hosannas in favor of immediate fulfillment. Christianity, Bolshevism, Islam, the surge of the American frontier—history was full of examples. And Rolf had seen local political prophets arise in Marsville to proclaim that the time had come for spatial expansion. Such men had attracted sizable followings, but the Commission had always put them down with ridicule and scornful propaganda. When the hubbub died, the prophet faded from sight and finally disappeared completely.

But if proof could be furnished to show the lichen plains and quoie forests of Mars could be colonized with only the present industry to furnish the necessary tools, and if at the same time the Commission could be discredited, then there would be no restraining a gradual outpouring of emigrants without the use of force. And the Commission did not have the police power to hold down a sizable revolt.

As the small party of bat-riders crossed high above the city's walls, Rolf swept through the frequency bands of the receiver, listening for calls. The police station was busily deploying units to probable landing points. He heard the spaceport, the public square, and the administrative building mentioned, and he learned that his party would be shot "at the slightest hint of hostility". The dispatcher was warning the units that the bat-riding savages were armed with non-human weapons of unpredictable effectiveness.

"If the traitor's behavior seems suspicious," the operator continued, "you are to shoot first, and shoot to kill. Be especially alert if the party lands near a vital public facility, such as the hydrogardens, the pumping station, central heating reactors, power plant, and so forth. A threat to the public facilities is expected, if only as a bargaining point."

Rolf grinned to himself. They were guessing close, but missing. They reasoned that his only chance would be to strike at the city's power, then follow it up with a raid by androons waiting for a signal from beyond the quoie orchards which were now blazing spectacularly. They saw the fires, and heard of the hundred captives, and promptly became guilty of a fallacy—"Big effect, ergo, big cause"—and assumed that he had an army.

Rolf led his small party toward a sprawling, windowless structure of insulated concrete near the north gate. It was the city's hospital—most certainly a public facility, but hardly what the police would suspect. He reasoned that one of its third-floor offices would make a safe meeting place, since the Commission's guards would scarcely dare to stage a gun-battle amid the sick and convalescent occupants. Rolf himself had no intention of starting one.

He pointed out the building to Krasala. "Think you could find it again if you made a circle over half the city?"

"Sure! Is easy to see. Where you going?"

"Down! Listen, fly a wide circle over the city, but keep that building in sight. Fly low over it every time you circle. When you see someone on the roof, land. If no one comes by dawn, then go back to the hills and lead as many of the tribe as you can across the mountains."

HE HEARD her start to protest, but he goaded the bat and darted away from the others in the darkness. The moons had sunk below the horizon, and the predawn blackness was complete, save for the glow that arose from a few streetlights and from the headlights of prowl-cycles that sputtered about the city, watching the sky. Rolf kept the bat at a safely invisible height and flew toward the Public Information Building, which housed the city's newspaper as well as its popular "radio" station. It was not radio at all, since the city was confined to a limited area, and since there was only one channel in operation. News and entertainment programs were piped to the homes via telephone cables. Marsville had no time to waste on the production and installation of luxuries. Its industry was aimed at future empire.

Rolf skirted the gloomy cubical shadow of the building at a high altitude, then circled slowly downward. A streetlight glimmered on the corner, and he could see a few lights in the basement where printers were no doubt at work, but the rest of it was plunged in blackness. There would probably be a night watchman prowling on the first floor, hovering near the entranceway, and waiting for daylight and relief. As he soared lower, he saw the dim outline of a roof exit, perched like a box atop the structure. He began jockeying for a landing stall.

Never had the whooshing of his mount's wings seemed so loud as the bat glided in toward the roof. He held his breath as the beast stalled and settled, but the only sound was a dull thump as he sat painfully on tarred concrete. The roof was flat, and a yard-high guard fence gave him some protection. He sat frozen for a moment as a squad of motorcycles growled past, but soon their sound receded.

He waited until he was certain that he had not been observed or heard, then tied the bat to a steel drain vent, hobbled its wings, and went to examine the roof exit. The sheet-metal door was tightly locked, and there was no window. He worked at the lock with a scrap of wire; but it was hopeless. He stood cursing impotently for a moment. Why should the janitor lock the roof entrance?

He unshouldered the Bolsewi weapon, gave the crank a fraction of a turn, and hopefully aimed it skyward. If it shrieked, he would have to flee. He pressed the stud; a faint hiss was the only result. He berated himself again for not discovering that its intensity was adjustable. A second later, a faint star-glow appeared atop an adjoining building. It disappeared quickly.

He turned the weapon on the door and unleashed another modest burst. The startling brightness faded quickly, leaving a patch of distorted metal, but not a hole. He tried holding the stud down while he slowly eased the crank around and played the muzzle in a six-inch circle. The weapon burred a steady zzzzz and left a blue-white trail behind it.

"Swords and ploughshares!" he growled to himself. The thing was probably meant to be a portable welder, and not a weapon at all. He meekly recalled his irritation with the androons for misinterpreting it in another way. "Slaves of our cultures," he grumbled apologetically to any Bolsewi ghosts who might be hovering in the Martian night.

THE CIRCLE of hot metal fell inward, and made a sizzling sound on the stairway matting. He waited for the door to cool from cherry red, then reached through to trip the night latch. He paused briefly after entering, to extinguish the smoking mat, then tiptoed quietly down the stairway. The broadcasting rooms were dark and empty. A faint light gleamed up from the first floor. He swung the door softly closed and bolted it.

Then he turned to inspect the modulators, after switching on a rectifier unit to provide a faint light. A timing mechanism always switched on the equipment at five o'clock, and automatically broadcast two hours of recorded music before any of the station's personnel arrived after dawn. He found the clock, and assured himself that it had not been changed.

There were three input channels for the amplifiers. One was fed by the station's own microphones, and it was the one most frequently used. Another input was connected by wire to the administrative telephone circuits, so that the Chairman of the Commission could speak to the entire city over the entertainment system without leaving his office. A third input came from a radio frequency pickup which could be tuned to the space-port channel, or any of the special frequencies. The occasional landing of an Earth-ship was an important event to the people, and they were allowed to listen on their home amplifiers to radio-exchange between ship and ground-control.

Rolf found the selector and switched off the preset recordings. Then he turned the radio pickup into the modulator's input, and tuned it to the frequency of his portable unit. In fifteen minutes, the timer would cut on the modulators and begin transmitting whatever was picked up on the radio to the families who switched on their amplifiers while they ate, dressed, and prepared to man the city's industries at dawn.

On his way toward the stairs, he noticed a lavatory and went inside. He glanced at himself in the mirror, shuddered, and dug a handful of depilatory out of the dispenser. He smeared the pungent paste over his cheeks, then washed off two weeks' growth of beard. As he turned to go, he saw a pair of worn coveralls hung on the peg by the door. Apparently belonged to the janitor. He slipped them on quickly over his ragged and dirty clothing, and borrowed the slightly greasy janitor's cap. The apparel was ill-fitting but believable.

THE IDEA of welding the door closed occurred to him briefly, but he feared that someone on the lower floor might hear the bagpipe's buzz and come up to investigate. He left it bolted and quietly returned to the roof.

A few minutes later he was hovering over the hospital, watching for the other riders. When he heard the flapping of their wings, he stalled in for a landing on the roof, and began unfastening the portable transmitter. The others swooped low, circled, and settled about him on the flat deck.

"Have the men unpack the bags from the extra bats," he told Krasala. "Keep reasonably quiet, and wait on the roof. I'll be back in a minute."

He carried the radio to the roof exit and found the door unlocked. He descended quickly to the dimly lit third-floor corridor, and tiptoed past the sleeping rooms toward the desk where a night nurse sat cleaning her nails and studying a paper. She glanced up wearily as he approached, returned to the paper, then gave him a second look and an irritable frown.

"Are you an orderly? What are you doing up here?" she muttered. "Say ...you're not an orderly...what...?"

"Never mind!" he snapped. "Where's your telephone? It's business."

"It better be. Who are you, any way?"

"Rolf Kenlan," he murmured as he reached for the phone. The name had no effect. She watched him suspiciously as he dialed.

After two rings, a curt voice barked, "Headquarters, Colonel Luling."

"Luling, this is Rolf Kenlan. I'm at the City Hospital. If the Commissioners are still interested, tell them to come over."

There was a brief silence while Luling breathed surprise into the mouthpiece. Then he grated, "Very clever, Kenlan. What part of the hospital?"

Rolf glanced at the nurse. Her face had gone white, and she was backing away from him. "Where's an empty room?" he snapped.

"Th-three oh seven," she breathed weakly.

"Three oh seven, Luling. How soon can you get here?"

"Three to five minutes. Let me warn you, Kenlan—"

"Yeah! We'll be waiting on the roof. If you bring more than one squad of guards, you'll have a fight on your hands, and you couldn't win it without hitting at us from the air. I don't think people would like having the hospital strafed. If you don't get tricky, things will be peaceable. Keep aircraft away from the building. We can burn a copter down."

HE HUNG up without waiting for an answer, then dialed the editor of the Martian Messenger. A plump-throated, sleepy voice grunted a disgusted "Go ahead".

"Listen quickly, Menshrie! This is Rolf Kenlan. Does the name mean anything to you? If not, you should remember my father, Jason. You gave him quite a build-up."

The phone sputtered confusion as Menshrie came fully awake. "Kenlan! What—"

"Don't ask questions. Just turn on your amplifier, and call somebody from your office staff to take notes. You're going to hear a conference involving myself and the Commissioners. Will you print it straight?"

Menshrie stuttered for a moment. "Why, yes—if the Commission okays it. You don't just print anything—"

"Fool! It's going to be broadcast. Why should they disallow it? And if the people hear one thing, and then you run something else, they'll see you for the toady you really are. The people still believe the fiction that they're running things around here, and the fiction might soon be a fact. They can run you out. The Commission can't get you for printing what thousands of people have already heard!"

"I'll have to check with the Commission. Why are you calling, anyway?"

"You can't. They're on their way here now. That's why I'm calling."

Menshrie hesitated. "If I violate security, I get canned. Then they put a man in who'll respect security. But if an event is observed by enough witnesses, the Commission naturally can't hold it back. I'll get a steno on it, and see what develops. Don't get me wrong, Kenlan. I'm no bootlicker, but they've got me where—"

Rolf dropped the phone in its cradle and hurried toward Room 307. It proved to be a small office, windowless, but with a door in the outer wall. He swung open the door and found a balcony overlooking the grounds. A good place to leave the set. While it was warming up, a car's headlights swung around the corner and came to a halt in front of the building. Five men climbed out into the street and stood beyond the car with drawn weapons. They stared up toward the rooftop.

WORKING in darkness, Rolf adjusted the set, wedged the miccord under the door, and retreated into the room. He found gummed tape on the desk and fastened the microphone button down. It was impossible to conceal the pickup effectively without diminishing its sensitivity, even though the instrument had a conference-dictate adjustment. He switched it to conference, left it in the corner, and dropped a sheet of crumpled paper over it. Then he raced out into the corridor and bounded up the stairs to the roof, where Krasala and the others stood watching the party in the street.

The sky was growing gray with dawn. Another car had drawn up behind the first, and a dozen men were holding a pow-wow behind the vehicles.

"Leave two men on the roof," he said quietly. "Have the others bring those three sacks and come with me."

She nodded and relayed the order. Rolf stepped to the rail and cupped his hands about his mouth. "Hey, Rathwich!" he shouted. "Are you down there?"

Colonel Luling's voice called back: ''How many men have you got with you, Kenlan?"

"Come up and find out! Room 307."

Without further discussion he led the batsmen downstairs, after brief instructions to the roof guards. A morning-shift nurse squeaked and bolted for the elevator at the sight of the bearded and furry-legged squad trooping grimly down the corridor. He stationed a guard at either end of the hall, and the rest around the entrance of 307.

When the erect and long-limbed Colonel Luling appeared with drawn revolver beyond the doorway, Rolf was sitting at the desk with the contents of the bags arranged neatly before him. Krasala stood quietly in the corner with the bagpipe cradled easily in her arms. She lifted it suspiciously as the graying colonel strode into the room. He glanced around, then nodded. "I'll bring up eight men to match yours, Kenlan."

"Agreed. Where are the Commissioners? How many came?"

"Rathwich and Poele. Let me warn you against treachery. You won't get out of here alive, if you try it."

"Same rules apply in reverse. Get the wafflebottoms up here."

The colonel nodded curtly and departed. Rolf left the chair and darted to the microphone. "People of Marsville," he said quietly. "You are about to hear Commissioners Rathwich and Poele's reaction to a suggestion for a sensible end to the quarantine that binds us to the walls of the city. Let us listen carefully, reminding ourselves that the Commission's duty is to represent our interests as well as those of Earth—"

HE BROKE it off and returned to the chair as he heard footsteps in the corridor. Luling reappeared, flanked by two guards with sub-machine guns. Rathwich and Poele followed cautiously, while two more guards brought up the rear.

"I suggest we leave our regiments in the hallway," Rolf barked. "One guard on each side should be enough."

Luling nodded curtly and stepped aside to let the Commissioners enter. The plump and panting Poele glanced up to protest, but Rathwich, his hard face twisted into a faint smile, strode into the room and dragged a chair toward the desk. He appeared prepared to enjoy himself as he thrust out a formal hand toward Rolf and nodded wordlessly.

Rolf touched the hand briefly, while Poele sat aside and looked frightened. Luling closed the door and leaned back against it, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes on Krasala, and a revolver in his hand for safety's sake.

"It's your show for the time being Kenlan," grunted Rathwich. "Speak up. What do you want."

"What every native citizen of Marsville wants, Rathwich—freedom to use the resources of this planet for some purpose other than the present one, which is insuring our own perpetual servitude. Freedom to get out of the city and make homes where there's room to move. You and your predecessors have kept the city choked down with the myth that a man can't live out there without all the gadgets you promise to produce tomorrow. What you're really trying to do is insure that Mars will jump from nothing into the middle of complex civilization of specialists, without any intermediate stage."

Rathwich's smile tightened. "Go on. Make your suggestions."

"Fine! Do you see these articles here on the desk? Instruments, machine parts—tell me, Rathwich—did these come from the city's factories?"

The Commissioner glanced over them briefly and shook his head. "No, of course not."

"From Earth, then?"

"Obviously not."

"Then suppose you explain their existence, if the picture your people paint of the planet is a true one."

Rathwich shrugged without interest. "You're going to say, as your father did, that they're relics of an ancient civilization, eh? A pre-androon culture."

"Exactly! You admit that my father told you about it? That you withheld it from the people?"

"I'm not here to admit or deny anything, Kenlan. Get on with what you have to say."

FOR THE benefit of the microphone, Rolf reviewed briefly the events since his flight from the city, inventing a few extras to cover the existence of the imaginary army. He covered the murals in the cavern's council hall, stressing the significance of the Bolsewi spaceship with Earth in the background.

"The androons are human," he insisted. "And that's why you killed my father's wife, isn't it? She was with child."

"How did you know—"

The Commissioner caught himself, and jerked his head as if to glance at the colonel; then he replaced his faint smile and watched Rolf cooly. He was playing for time. Rolf saw Luling staring uneasily at the back of Rathwich's head. Suddenly he glanced absently at the pistol in his hand, and returned it to his holster. He leaned back to resume his thoughtful gaze at the Commissioner.

"Naturally, you've been appealing to `race'," Rolf continued. "You've used it as an excuse to keep the androons away from the city, and to keep our people away from the hills. You used it as an excuse to hang Dad. How long have you known about the Bolsewi civilization?"

Rathwich, who kept glancing at his watch, was beginning to look bored. "Ever since I came to Mars and read the reports of my predecessors," he admitted.

Rolf nodded. "And you kept it from the people for just one reason: power." He patted the breach of the bagpipe that lay across the desk. "Power in small units. Tell me, Rathwich, what would happen if every human being could have—for instance—an unlimited supply of power in his own back yard, his own reactor, his own weapons? What would happen if every man could be self-sufficient?"

"Chaos."

"Freedom," Rolf corrected. "Recall your history? On the Great Plains they used to call a six-gun an equalizer, because it made the small man the equal of the large. Rathwich, small power-packs like these are going to be the equalizers of Mars, because they can make men independent of the city's industry. A man can take his family and go out on the plains to live as a city unto himself. Bat-ranching, raising quoie, trading with the androons—all possibilities.

"With the artifacts of the Bolsewi civilization, and a knowledge of how to produce more of them, the people can have Mars now. There's no need to wait for the modern equivalents of barbed wire, windmills, and six-guns. The androons have them, and don't know how to use them. With some persuasion, they'll trade them for simpler tools—knives, rope, bat-saddles, small-calibre firearms, clothing—things they need that our industry can readily produce."

"That's enough, Kenlan," the Commissioner grunted. "I've been watching you carefully. Your two hours is up, and you've given no indication that you realized it. Evidently you're either in no position to make good a threat against the hostages, or else your savages have already slaughtered them. Our aircraft are at this moment going out to the hills. I imagine the men have already controlled the quoie fires enough so that they can take a ground rescue party through. Your show's finished."

AN URGENT fist began beating at the door in the hall. Luling started away. Rathwich growled, "See about it."

The door burst open and a pair of officers came in panting. "With your permission, Commissioner," said one, as they began dragging furniture aside, and searching shelves and drawers.

Rolf heard a metallic krrrk as Krasala cranked the bagpipe. "Hold it, kid," he told her.

"If you're looking for the transmitter, it's out on the balcony."

"What is all this?" barked Rathwich as the searchers bounded toward the outer door.

"The telecircuits, sir. You've been picked up. Half the town's been listening. We've got some men cutting the door down to get into the station. Bolted from the inside."

Rathwich lost his color as the men brought in the transmitter and ripped the tape off the mic-button. "Why wasn't this discovered sooner?" he bellowed.

The officer flushed. "Well, we heard it, sir, but we thought it must be an authorized broadcast. Finally we called administration, and—"

"Fool! Get the station back on the program. Squelch the newspaper before it prints anything. Call every guard on duty. Round up the administration staff for a meeting. Get moving!"

"One thing, sir. There's a big crowd outside. Around the hospital."

"What? How did they know we were here?"

"The hospital staff, sir. They spread the word."

"Are they disorderly?"

"Uh ...no sir. It's not a mob. They're just curious. Bewildered."

"Disperse them. Have a helicopter pick us up."

"I've instructed my men to fire on any copters that come in range," Rolf interrupted.

"Then you'll rescind the order," Rathwich snapped. "You're in a hornet's nest here, Kenlan. You can't get out. We can sit here all day, if necessary. You have a stalemate here, of course. But you can't get out of the hospital. You might as well submit."

"Eventually, I will," Rolf agreed. "At the moment, however, we're going to sit and wait. Krasala, if either of those men starts to leave, burn his legs off."

A hand darted for a holster. Rolf swung the bagpipe around and pressed the stud. He missed the man's hand, but the bright violet flare blossomed on the concrete wall a few inches away. The officer shrieked and began beating the flames out of his clothing. Poele slumped to the floor with a faint moan. Rathwich sat calmly but grew pale.

"Anybody else?"

No one spoke or moved as the orb filled the room with blinding light. When it died, all eyes watched the red spot flake away as powdered silica and fused slag.

Then Luling spoke: "May I make a suggestion, Commissioner?"

"Go ahead."

LULING glanced at Rolf and the girl. His hard cool face was impassive. "I suggest that we escort these people safely out of the city and allow them freedom, provided they agree to go beyond the mountains and stay there."

Rathwich shook his head. "We couldn't trust them to stay. I make no bargains with them. They're criminals, and they'll be properly punished." "

Luling frowned. "I'm afraid there'd be some strong opposition to hanging them, sir. Captain Jason Kenlan was charged on several counts—miscegenation, desertion, quarantine-violation. You can charge this young man with treason and quarantine-violation, but you can't make the treason stick unless you can show that he meant to forcibly overthrow the administration. And the people won't stand for another secret trial, since they've heard some of his story. I can't see how you can try him without making a public investigation of his claims. It's true he broke quarantine, but unless the necessity of quarantine can be reestablished, a trial will cause a lot of trouble. Unless, of course, the hostages have been harmed."

"There are no hostages," Rolf interrupted. "The men sealed themselves in the cavern. The androons aren't adequately armed. If there's been any bloodshed, it's been the fault of the guards who entered the caves. My only support I have here with me."

Rathwich showed irritation and surprise, but maintained a calm attitude. Luling smiled faintly, but erased it when the Commissioner turned.

"When is the next Earth-ship due? We might send them to Earth for trial."

"Not for nearly a year, sir. Earth's on the other side of Sol. I'm afraid it's too long to wait. I suggest you get these people away from here as quickly as possible."

Rathwich drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair and stared at Rolf distastefully. "Will you agree to permanent exile, with the understanding that you'll be shot on sight if you try to return?"

Rolf hesitated. His real mission had been accomplished. The people had heard the truth, and the Commission could probably no longer maintain its enforced containment of the people in the city. The outflowing would be slow, a matter of years, but it would be certain. At first a few misfits and petty criminals would steal away at night, to rob the caverns of the androons, to escape justice, or just to get away from a frustrating existence. There would be trouble with the androon tribes, but new nations always had growing pains, and they were normally built by misfits.

Rolf himself was a misfit, and so was his father before him. Jason had always chafed in the fetters of the tightly integrated little society, and had tagged around after first one prophet and then another who called for immediate agrarian outgrowth.

He glanced at Krasala, who stood alertly eyeing the Earthmen and thoughtfully fingering the stud of the bagpipe. Her batskin clothing contrasted sharply with the impeccable uniforms of the others. And the warm shin-fur that her race had developed since its exodus from Earth marked her as different, as a distinct branch of humanity. Sweaters and woolen slacks were standard feminine apparel in Marsville, and wearing them she could pass for an Earthwoman, despite the ruddy-rosy skin which always reminded him of a painful sunburn. But why should she ape Earthwomen?

In the ancient days, pioneers had often taken Indian women to wife, but they seldom brought them back to Boston or New Amsterdam.

THE FUTURE of Mars lay out on the plains and in the mountains, where men could go out to carve their own private empires. A nation would grow the way nations always grew— through strife, violence, and explosive expansion. When, after several hundred years, the frontiers were gone, the nation would begin to integrate. It would be an independent nation, not a chattel of Earth. Marsville would still be an important center, no doubt —for any immediate outgrowth would begin with a timid trickle, and its industry would remain important. But Rolf had no desire to remain within it.

"Well, Kenlan?"

"I'm willing, Rathwich, provided we can work out a scheme to insure that we won't be shot as soon as we're beyond the eyes and ears of the city."

"If you'll permit me, sir," said Luling. "I think I can arrange a plan of escort that will meet Kenlan's approval."

Rathwich looked around so that Rolf could not see his face. "All right, colonel," he said incisively. "I'll let you handle the details. I think you know what's expected of you."

There was another knock at the door. Luling opened it to admit a courier. The man saluted and spoke hurriedly.

"The other Commissioners request your presence if it's possible, sir. There's a lot of excitement, and people off work. The newspapers—"

"Any rebelliousness?" Rathwich growled.

"No, sir, not exactly. It's just excitement. People along the walls watching the guards come back from the hills. And the report on Commissioner Peterson—"

"What report?"

"Well, the way it's told sir... there was some fighting in the caverns. There wasn't any light in the tunnel, and the androons infiltrated our men. Firearms weren't good in the darkness, with everybody all mixed up that way. Commissioner Peterson kept yelling for help, and somebody clubbed him. He's dead, sir. Commissioner White's gone, too. Disappeared. Major Mulvern took charge, once they got the door off the cave. He led a party back into the caverns to look for White, but they couldn't find him. The androons pretended ignorance. White had a talk with their chief priest, and now Mulvern's behaving peculiarly. He ordered everyone back to the city."

"Where are they now?"

"They're about halfway across the plain, but they've cut around by the cemetery."

"Cemetery!"

"Yes sir. There're some androons with them. The androons are exhuming the body of the woman Captain Kenlan married. They want to take her back for tribal burial. Mulvern's men are standing guard. The major hints that White might be released if we let them have the body."

"Then let them!" Rathwich roared. "But get Mulvern's crew away before they see it! The news'll be all over town that the woman was pregnant!"

"Yes, sir!"

Luling looked at the ceiling and quoted from the bio-laws: "The generation of normal offspring by the union of a couple, one of whose partners is positively identified as human, shall constitute a criterion of humanity for the other partner, unless it be shown that the second partner is biologically inadmissable under Sections One and—"

"That's enough, Colonel!" Rathwich warned.

"Sections One and Three," Rolf continued with a wry smile, "which state minimum requirements for intelligence, physical appearance, and social adaptability—all of which the androons can pass."

"Get Mulvern's men away."

"I'm afraid it's too late, sir," said the courier. "They started digging some time ago."

RATHWICH ran his hands nervously through his hair and moistened his lips. "Colonel, get these people out of here. Keep them away from the crowds. Get them out of the city. And Kenlan, stay away—far away." He looked at the courier. "Drive me to the Administration Building at once."

When the officials had departed, Luling nodded at Rolf. "Are you ready?" he asked, smiling.

Rolf watched him suspiciously. "If I were in your boots, I might take the unwanted group out to an open plain, let them go, then send a flight out to strafe them."

"That," said Luling, "is exactly what the Commissioner expects me to do. Let's go to the roof so you can rescind the order against copters." He lifted the telephone, listened, then replaced it. "No operator on the building switchboard, I guess."

Rolf grinned and held up a pair of cut wires from beneath the desk. "I clipped them while we were talking. That's why they sent messengers."

When they moved out into the corridor, nervous orderlies and nurses were hurrying about their duties, giving a wide berth to the bearded tribesmen who stood silently against the wall, eyeing their surroundings with bewildered awe. Rolf beckoned them toward the stairway, while Luling stopped at the desk to call for a group of helicopters.

"There'll be a transport plane waiting for us at the port," he said to Rolf as they climbed to the roof and stepped out into the morning sunlight. "We'll take you as far as you want to go."

"I'm still waiting for some arrangement whereby we can be certain that we won't be hunted down afterwards," Rolf grunted.

"You'll get it. Just be patient."

The Commissioner's car was nosing its way through the dense crowd in front of the hospital. The crowd was silent, moody. Occasionally someone shouted, "When're you going to tear the walls down, Commish?" and, "Since when is Mars a jail?" But no rocks were thrown, nor was the car molested. The crowd was sullen, waiting for answers.

Rolf watched it for a time, until someone shouted, "There's Kenlan, on the roof." The crowd turned to look, silently. He grinned and waved and turned away. The crowd could possibly become a mob, if they didn't get the right answers.

"I don't think you'll be exiled for long, Kenlan," Luling murmured as the copters appeared. "The Commission can be impeached by a nine-tenths majority on a popular referendum. Earth stuck the provision into the charter to make it look good, assuming you can't get a nine-tenths majority on anything. But I think it can be done."

"I don't plan on coming back anyway, until..."

"Yes?"

He grinned at Krasala. "Prefer a j. p. or an androon priest?"

She wrinkled her forehead and looked bewildered.

"I guess we won't be coming back," he said to Luling.

"Confidentially, I won't either," murmured Luling.

HALF AN HOUR later, a twin-engine jet transport was winging westward over the gray-capped peaks. Four former batsmen had elected to accompany their leader, while the others chose to return to their own tribe. The Martian tundra lay red, gray, and dusty green behind them, while beyond the mountains lay hilly country, with quoie growing in the sheltered valleys and bats swooping low over the landscape. The colonel left the ship on autopilot and stepped back to sit with the passengers.

"You really intend to come with us?" Rolf asked.

Luling nodded. "Frontier fever, maybe. As a kid, I used to sit on the walls and look out at the mountains and wish. I never stopped wishing. Lots of people feel that way, Kenlan, but there's been no precedent—until your father started it. Now there won't be any stopping it. When the transport doesn't come back, they'll send out searchers. Some of the searchers won't come back. By that time, the Commission will have to either get out, be impeached, or follow the popular will."

He hesitated, glancing toward the cargo compartment. "There are bailout kits with the parachutes—rifles, food, and so forth. You pick your spot, and I'll circle while you heave it out. Then I'll set the autopilot to hold a westerly course, and we'll all bail out.

They'll find the ship a hundred miles or so away; not much chance of our being caught."

"I don't agree," Rolf murmured absently as he stared out at the terrain.

"Eh? You think we'll be caught? By whom?"

"Oh—prospectors, bat-trappers, traders, fugitives...in a few years."

Lulipg chuckled and went back to the cockpit. Rolf watched Krasala carefully preening her shins in a swept-back hairdo, lending the impression of winged feet. He had brought a jar of depilatory but, upon second thought, he decided to leave it aboard ship. Parachute silk should make fine hair-ribbons.

THE END