The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 27

"I can't take any more of this!" said Calas in a thick voice. He got up abruptly and blundered off into the darkness. They heard the sounds of him being sick farther back from the lip of the ledge.

Hal and Old Man sat in silence for a while. Eventually, Old Man spoke, raising his voice, but not looking back over his shoulder as he spoke. "It's over for now," he said.

There was a pause, then the sound of footsteps coming back to them. Calas reappeared, a shadow in the darkness, and stepped around in front of Hal. "We've got to do something about this," he said. "We will." Hal looked into the screen. Artur sagged in his ropes, apparently unconscious. The Urk and the two soldiers had abandoned him when Liu had stepped out of his shelter and spoken to them, a few minutes earlier. As the three men on the ledge watched, they came back now, untied Artur from the tree, eased his unconscious body to the ground and re-tied it with the same ropes that had held it upright.

Cee, supple as a cat, had managed to slide downward not only herself but the ropes binding around her and the tree, until now she sat cross-legged on the ground at the foot of the tree. She looked almost comfortable. But nothing else about her expression or the target of her eyes, which was still either Liu or his shelter when he was inside it, had changed. "We'll do something," said Hal. "I just had to know whether Liu was going to try to force the answers he wants tonight, or stretch the process out a day or two. Clearly, he's going to drag it out. Time doesn't seem to be a factor or perhaps he has at least several days to find out what he wants to know. I was afraid he'd need to find out tonight whatever Artur or Cee could tell him, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Look, they're even covering Artur against the night cold."

It was true. On the screen they could see one of the soldiers throwing a blanket over the motionless form of Artur. Another soldier took a blanket over to Cee and tucked it around her shoulders so that it made a sort of small tent covering her body. Like the others, he ignored the fact she was now seated on the ground.

She paid no attention to the blanket being put around her, but when next they looked, it had left her shoulders and was a pool of darkness around her lower legs and on the ground. A soldier got up from among a group of them who were seated around the fire and passing a bottle around. He tucked the blanket into place again about her shoulders, but a few minutes later it was once more on the ground.

He started to get up once more, but the soldier next to him pulled him back into a sitting position. After that they ignored Cee. "Missy? Hadnah?" Hal said to the screen. "We're watching," the voice of Missy came back to him. "Good," said Hal. "We're going to leave our screens down here for a council of war at Amid's. If you want me, that's where I'll be. You two can keep the watch going?" "Count on us," chimed in the voice of Hadnah.

Hal got to his feet a little stiffly. His legs had adjusted to the morning sittings to watch the sunrise, but whole days seated on the ground were something else again. Old Man got to his feet lightly and easily, as if he had been seated there for minutes rather than hours. With Calas, they went to Amid's office.

He was busy dealing with a short, thick-set, and - for an Exotic - a remarkably pugnacious - Iooking man with bristly gray hair, cut short, about some matter having to do with the building on of extra dormitory space to provide larger units for couples, particularly couples with young children. The grayhaired man was named Abke-Smythe, but that was all Hal knew about him except that he had some sort of responsibility for the group's housing. Amid started to interrupt this, to talk with Hal and the others as they came in, but Hal shook his head at the older man. "We can sit and wait a few minutes," he said. "In fact one of your chairs would feel good."

He dropped into one of the larger overstuffed chairs, and both Calas and Old Man followed his example, except that Old Man, with a momentary, mischievous smile at Hal, took his position in cross-legged fashion upon the seat cushion of his chair.

Hal grinned back, momentarily, then let his mind go elsewhere. The fact was, as much as his body needed a rest from the position it had held all day, his mind now needed to switch gears from analyzing everything he had seen in the jungle below him since early morning and planning what was to be done with the night before him.

Without intending to, he fell asleep. He blinked and woke, startled to find that time had gone by and things in the office had changed. A table had been set up with three straight chairs, and in two of them Calas and Old Man were already seated, eating. At another empty chair a place had been set which was obviously waiting for him. "Take your time, " said the voice of Amid. Hal looked over to see the head of the Chantry Guild still behind his desk, fingers busily tapping on some keys inset in his desktop. "We can keep the food hot," "It's all right," said Hal. "I guess I just needed a moment to sort my mind out. I'll be right there."

He got up, went over and took the empty chair at the table. Calas passed him covered dishes, from which Hal began transferring large amounts of food to his plate. The fact was, he thought as he did this, that what he had just said was exactly the truth. The night before he had had a good night's sleep, and had not needed more now, but from long experience he recognized that his unconscious mind had wanted his consciousness out of the way while it addressed the problem he was facing now. It had worked. He had awakened with a solution clear to him.

He opened his mouth to start talking to Amid and the others, then closed it again. There was eating to be done and it would be some time into tomorrow's daylight before he would have a chance to eat again, probably. Best to finish his meal now, and have his discussion later. He went to work on the food, accordingly, in spite of his late start, ending up at almost the same second as Calas, who had continued to eat for some minutes after Old Man had finished. "Thank you," Hal said, looking over at Amid. " Now," said Amid, "what have you got to thank me for? Simply a share of our food, which we'd give to anyone who was here, let alone someone like yourself, who we count on to help us solve a situation like this." " Don't count too much on me," said Hal. "In the first place, something might happen to me, and, in the second place, there are a number of people, including you and Old Man, who could do a creditable job of solving it alone. And in fact, if Amanda was here, you'd be idiots not to use her for dealing with this, rather than me. She's had experience with this world, the soldiers, and a complete Dorsai upbringing." "No doubt," said Amid. "But I think that if she, or anyone else, was here, she'd join the rest of us in choosing you to suggest what we need to do. There's something about you that carries a banner everyone rallies to." "Including Bleys?" Hal smiled. "I'm being serious," said Amid. "You know what I mean. All right, if you've finished eating, what have you got to tell us?"

"Not a lot that I haven't told you already," answered Hal soberly. "The trick's going to be to send these soldiers home thinking they've found nothing worth worrying about, and also to get Cee and Artur back alive, if we can. That's where those darts come in. By the way-" ''if you'll look on the table over in the corner there, under that white cloth, I think you'll find what you're asking about,'' interrupted Amid. "Tannaheh ought to have been here fifteen minutes ago - ah, here he is, finally!"

It was a little difficult to see why Amid should sound so sure, since he completed his sentence before the door to his "office'' had swung wide enough to reveal who was coming in. But he was not wrong. Tannaheh was the one who entered, carrying a good-sized box which seemed to have been filled with long strands of grass, now dried to a golden brown color. Behind him was another man, a short man in his fifties or older with a long, straight nose and hands that were large for the rest of his body, as if spread and thickened by years of hard work. Under the thin, straight, gray hair the man's face was solemn almost to the point of sourness. He wore a jacket made of some material that looked like leather, over heavy, dark brown trousers and a checked shirt - a contrast to Tannaheh, whose slim body was dressed, as it had been earlier, in the gray wool sweater, white shirt, blue trousers and boots. "Sorry to hold everybody up," said Tannaheh cheerfully. He carried the box over and set it down gently on the table covered with the white cloth. "I thought Luke was going to wait for me at his workshop with the belts and bows, and when I got there and didn't find him, I thought he'd just stepped out for a minute, and so I spent some time waiting there for him, until his son dropped in for some tool or other. He told me Luke'd already brought the things over here earlier and then gone on to the dispensary to wait for me. Anyway, we got together finally at the dispensary and here we are." "You know Luke, don't you?" Amid asked Hal. "Indeed, I do," said Hal, nodding at Luke, who was the Guild's chief craftsman. "Sorry about the mix-up," said Luke, in a surprisingly deep bass voice. "Well, well, it doesn't matter now you're here, and Hal and everyone's here," said Amid, getting up to come around his desk, rubbing his hands and holding them out to the central fireplace of the office, to warm them. "Poor circulation in the extremities, Age. Well, show them what you've got." "You go ahead, Luke," said Tannaheh. "The darts and the drugs in them'll need a little explaining." "All right."

Luke twitched the white cover to the back of the table, revealing a number of items on the polished surface, including several bandoleer-like belts, with loops for ammunition. But what took Hal's eye particularly were five short recurved bows, no more than four feet in length, made of a milky-colored, smoothly glasslike material. Luke noted the direction of his gaze. "Had the boys up all night, making these," he said. "The belts took hardly any time at all."

He picked up one of the bows and handed it to Hal, meanwhile reaching with his other hand for a rather stubbylooking arrow, apparently made of' the same material as bows.

The bow was already equipped with a string, tied tightly at one end and ending in a loop at the other. Hal had already placed the tied end on the floor and was putting his weight on the bow to bend it, as he slid the looped end up the shaft and into the notch prepared to hold it at the bow's far end. The bow, he saw, seemed to be made of a form of glass. Once strung, he held the bow up in one hand and ticked the string with the thumb of his other. It hummed musically.

The string was a little strange. It appeared to be made of the same milky material as the arrow shafts. Also there was a feel to it that was different from that of any bow string Hal had handled before. He plucked the string, listened to the musical note of it, hefted the bow and turned to pass it to Old Man. "You know swords," he said, smiling. "Am I correct in thinking you know something about these, too?" "Something," said Old Man, nodding as he took the weapon. "We used to shoot at a prayer target, blindfolded.- "Oh?" said Amid, interested. "Some form of divination? Or should we ask?" "Of course you may ask," said Old Man. "But it wasn't divination. Hitting the target correctly was a test of control over the body and mind."

He was going through the same motions with the bow as Hal before, first unstringing, then restringing it - except that where Hal had placed an end of the bow on the floor and leaned his weight on it in order to bend it enough to slide the looped end up into its notch, Old Man merely tucked the bow under one arm and bent it against his body to string it. "I don't think I'd be able to do that," said Hal, watching. "Indeed you could," said Old Man earnestly. "It's only a matter of practice - and habit. Forgive me. I didn't mean to seem to be showing off." "We all know you don't show off," said Amid. "What was that about shooting at a mark, blindfolded, though? Could you show us that?" "If you'll forgive me" Old Man looked around the room, then turned his back on it, so that he was facing the wall behind Amid's desk. "If one of you would fix a piece of paper against the far wall, then blindfold me and hand me an arrow - one with a sharp point, if you have one?" "I'm afraid," said Tannaheh, "all the points are on the darts which fasten to the ends of the arrows-" "That's all right," said Luke, "give me an arrow."

He took the blunt-ended, feathered shaft Tannaheh gave him, reached to Amid's desk for a pin from a tray which held such things, along with page fasteners and other small clips and devices. Hitching around from the back of his belt a case that held a number of small instruments, he clipped off the blunt head of the pin with what looked like a needle-nosed set of pliers, then held the chopped-off point for a moment in the jaws of the pliers. Hal saw the blunt end of the pin glow red for a second before Luke used the pliers to sink it into the blunt end of the arrow shaft, which melted before it. "That ought to give you point enough for wooden walls like these," Luke said. "I'll go put up a target."

He handed the arrow to Old Man, who received it without turning back to look at him. Luke tore off a sheet from the memo pad on Amid's desk, walked with it to the far wall and placed it against the wall at a point about level with his own eyes. By some means Hal could not see, he made it cling to the wall, then stood aside.

Meanwhile, Amid had been busy blindfolding Old Man with one of the napkins that had come with the food. When he was done, he stood back. "All ready," he said to Old Man. "The target's up. Go ahead. "

Old Man turned almost casually, with the arrow already notched to the bow string. He gave the string the merest tweak, for the other wall was at most ten meters away. The arrow arced into the air and almost fell against the target, the pin in its end sticking in the very center of the paper, and plainly through it to the wood, for the arrow drooped, but did not fall to the floor. "Now," said Old Man, "if you'll bring the arrow back to me and take down the paper."

Luke did both things, stopping halfway back to use one of his tools to straighten out the pin, which apparently had become bent. Once more Old Man fitted the arrow to his bow and sent it on its way. It stuck again, this time in the bare wall. Luke walked over to retrieve it, reached for the shaft, then hesitated, staring at the place where it was stuck in the wall. He whistled. "Just a few millimeters off from the first hole," he said.

He pulled the arrow loose and brought it back, as Amid took off the blindfold and Old Man laid down the still strung bow on Amid's desk. "How could you do it?" Hal asked him.

"I listened to the rustle of the paper as it was carried across the room," said Old Man, "and aimed at where the noise stopped." "But you hit the center of the paper!" Amid said.

Old Man smiled. "There were only two sources of paper on your desk," he answered. "Notepaper, and the memo pad. They would rustle differently. Besides the memo sheets are glued together at the top. I heard Luke tear one loose, and when he pressed it against the wall to make it stick, the board made a small creak. I aimed at were that sound had been, with the memo sheet, and the wall, pictured in my mind." "And then you did it again, with the paper gone," said Amid admiringly. "Even more simply, I'm afraid," said Old Man. "The second time I simply used the bow exactly the way I'd done the first - and the arrow went to the same place."

He turned to Hal. "These things are unimportant in themselves," he said. "I just wanted you to be sure I could be useful to you with the bow. " "You've made your point," said Hal. He turned to Amid. "Amid, we've got a record of all the scopes saw today, haven't we?"

"Why, yes," said Amid. "They're the usual sort of scope. They store images unless you set them not to, and we assumed you might want to check something or other." "I do," said Hal. "Would you have someone check the records for everything seen in them today, to see if we've got any views of even parts of the interiors of the three structures Liu put up down there. Particularly, I'd like any views we might have of the building he's in, himself."

"I can do that right from here," said Amid. He sat back down at his desk, punched a few keys, and looked expectantly at the screen of the scope on the desk that was now showing the brightly lit scene of the soldiers' camp below. The uniformed men around the table had dwindled to two and the bottle had disappeared. The extra men were spread around on the ground in sleeping sacks, unmoving. "They were drinking when I last looked," said Hal. "That underofficer, whatever his name is-" "The Urk," supplied Calas. "Urk. Odd name," said Amid, "looked out just before you came in here and they put the bottle away. He was in the center one of - what do you call those buildings?" "Hutments is the military name," said Calas. "They're a kind of tent."

"The middle one of those hutments," went on Amid. "The officer's in the one on the right of the screen as we look at it now. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a cooker and various kitchen furniture in that same one the Urk's in. Strange, but he and the officer are the only ones under shelter. Of course, at this time of year night showers are unlikely-" "That's one of Liu's little military points," said Calas. "He never misses a chance to point up the fact that rank has its privileges. Making the ranks sleep on the open ground just drives home the difference between them and him and the Urk. "A strange personality," said Amid. "Not so strange, after all," said Old Man softly. "Here we go!" interrupted Amid, as the scene on the screen changed to a still picture which showed Liu's hutment, with one of the two flaps that closed its front entrance folded back. A camp chair, an unfolded and set up desk and the corner of a cot could be seen, the cot already with bedding on it. "Seventeen more views, the screen says. Shall we look at all of them?" "If you don't mind-," said Hal. "Of course not..." Amid tapped his desk controls and they went, one by one, through the various views the scopes had been able to make of the inner area of Liu's hutment. It was furnished with what they had already seen, plus a sort of tall box that could be it filing cabinet or a food and liquor cabinet. "All right," said Hal, when they had examined the last view.

"Liu should be in that cot now and asleep. So should the Urk, in the center hutment. The two guards will probably be changed at intervals. Now-"

He turned his attention back to Amid. "I'm going to go down there tonight," he said, "to try to get Cee and Artur back and leave those soldiers with the impression that they found nothing worthwhile. If I can manage the hypnosis properly, after disabling them with the darts, I'll hope to leave them believing neither Artur nor Cee had anything to tell them - that they both died under torture, and were buried up here - so that they'll go back thinking the whole thing was a wild goose chase. The question is going to be who I take with me.

"Me, for one," said Calas. "Perhaps," said Hal. "We'll see. Now, Amid, who in the Guild knows the forest down there at night, and can move around in it in the dark, quietly?" "Onete, of course," said Amid. "And there are four or five other foragers who like to do night foraging. There're some plants - some tubers particularly - that betray their presence at night more than in the day, by actions like opening blossoms or leaves, or - there's even a tuber that causes the ground above it to glow slightly, at night. But I'm wandering."

He pressed a key and leaned over a speaker grille in his desk. "All those whore particularly adept at night foraging," he said into the grille, "come to my office right away, please." "Good," said Hal. "How many of them, do you know, can use a bow and arrow effectively?"

Amid looked blank. "I haven't the slightest idea. " He appealed to Old Man. "Do you know""

Old Man shook his head. "Calas?" "I haven't any idea," said Calas. "By the way," Hal said to him, "you wanted to come. Can you move quietly through the jungle at night?" "I've been out night foraging, too, if that's what you mean," said Calas. Then, on a more subdued note, he added, "I may not be the quietest, but I know enough to look where I'm putting my feet. No one down there'll hear me." "And you can use a bow?"

"No!" said Calas explosively. "But we've got to have an hour or two before we go down. I'll learn in that time."

He looked at Old Man. "He can teach me." Hal turned his gaze on the quiet, bearded face. "What do you think?" he asked Old Man. "Could you teach him to use one to any good purpose, in just a few hours?" "At short range, perhaps," said Old Man softly. "At any rate I could try. Perhaps you'll have to let me try teaching others along with Calas. Perhaps several people. " "I can use a bow," said Luke. "Shot one for years. Made my own first real bow when I was thirteen. I may not be as good as this magician, here-" He nodded at Old Man. "but I'm good by any ordinary standards. I'll say that and stand on it!" "Then perhaps the two of you can do some teaching," said Hal. "When we finally go down, the six best shots will carry bows and darts. Old Man and I are two, that leaves four to be picked."

He turned to Amid. "You might put out a call for anyone in the Guild who does know how to use one, night forager or not. And Tannaheh, while we're waiting, you might start showing me how the darts work and telling me about them." "Of course!" said Tannaheh, on an explosive outrush of breath that betrayed his chafing at the delay in getting to discussion of this particular subject.

He led Hal to the box and reached down among the dried grass he had used as packing. What he came up with looked like an old-fashioned hypodermic of the kind used back before the human race had first settled the Younger Worlds, three hundred years before. There was a round, tubelike cylinder with a collar at one end that was threaded on the inside. At the other end was a slim needle of a rod, perhaps twelve millimeters in length, ending in a point that was so sharp Hal could not see it, except as a twinkle in the overhead light from the ceiling of the office. All of it was made of the same milky-appearing material as the arrow shaft. "You're lucky I have a library," said Tannaheh, holding up the dart. "You're from Earth, Friend, as I understand it, and there they've still got zoos and refuges with wild animals in them. Consequently, they've got wild animals that need to be tranquilized so they can care for them when they're sick, or whatever. But Kultis hasn't any large fauna, native or introduced. The largest wild variform creatures we've brought in as frozen embryos from Earth have been some rabbits, and big birds, like hawks and vultures. The result was we haven't had any need for tranquilizer darts, or means to propel them into the animal. I had to go back into medical history, to the time of Earth's first ventures into space, to find the information I needed. "

Hal nodded. Tannaheh gave every evidence of wanting to deliver a lecture, but it was too early to put the brakes on him, yet. He let the Guild pharmacist go on. "I managed to dig up illustrations and information on what they were using then, and build on that, making do with substitutes, where necessary - which was in almost every phase of making the dart."

He reached into the box and came up with a machine copy of what was obviously a page from some old book. It showed a drawing of something very much like the dart he had in his other hand. " You see, " he said, " I've recreated an artifact from the past. But I had to use my imagination to duplicate almost everything about it. To begin with, our ancestors used metal projectiles. The body of the dart and even the needle itself was metal. We have some metal, but no way to machine it into this sort of shape. " "I understand," said Hal. "But clearly you found an answer to that." "Quite right. I didn't have metal I could work with, but I did have glass that was as strong as metal and as flexible as I wanted to make it, something our ancestors of that time didn't have, and I could work with it more easily than they could work with their earlier version of glass. So this dart you see is made entirely of glass. " "Well done," said Hal. "I'm glad you think so," Tannaheh went on. "But actually the problem of what to make the dart out of was small compared to finding the drugs needed to produce the effect you told me you wanted. Now, when the dart hits..."

He laid the drawing back in the box, fumbled around among the packing and came up with a small square of wood about three times as thick as his hand. "The needle is pushed back into the body of the dart, this cylinder here-" He pushed on the dart and the needle shortened to perhaps four millimeters. "as you see, injecting the drug. I'll be giving you a chart showing what parts of the body you should try to shoot the needle into for best results. Then, once the drug has been injected, the cylinder falls off, again as you see"

He let go of the body of the dart and it fell to the floor, leaving the needle still sticking in the wood with only a length of what looked like string trailing from it. "The needle," he went on, "is coated with a sterilizing agent, which means you can pull it out without worrying about having started an infection. Not only that, but it's thin enough and sharp enough so that the person hit by the dart isn't going to feel much, and the only evidence that'll be left is going to be a small red mark on the skin surface. No blood, probably. Afterwards, the site of the needle entry is going to itch, rather than hurt, once the tranquilizing agent wears off, and this, together with the red dot, will make it seem like the person was bitten by some insect. No one should suspect." "Good," said Hal. "Old Man, you and Luke had better try out the arrows with the weight of the dart on their ends. I assume," he turned to Tannaheh, "you've got some practice darts there without the drug in them, which can be used without our worrying about blunting the needles on something we're going to have to use later?" "Of course," said Tannaheh. "I'll give them to you in just a second. But first let me tell you how I came up with substitutes for the drugs used in the old Earth darts." "Go ahead," said Hal patiently. The hours of night were short, but he could give this man, who had after all done something absolutely necessary for them, the courtesy of listening to him for a little while longer. "The original darts described in my books," said Tannaheh, used several drugs which weren't difficult to obtain back on Earth, even in those days, but impossible for me to get here. There were several mixtures. One of the very good ones was ketanine hydrochloride combined with xylazine hydrochloride and atropine. The atropine was there essentially to keep the subjects under, but breathing, after they'd been knocked down by the other two - which were very quick acting."

He paused, obviously waiting. "I can see where you'd have a problem," Hal said. "A large problem," said Tannaheh. "I had native substances that could duplicate the knock-down effects of the two hydrochlorides, but they wouldn't mix with the closest native equivalent to atropine derived from one of our night-blooming plants. Mixed, they started interacting chemically, immediately."

He paused again. "So what did you do?" Hal asked. "Obviously the only solution was to have you inject the atropinelike drug after the earlier ones were already in the blood streams of your targets!" said Tannaheh. "And so you made two kinds of darts?" "That was the first thing I thought of," Tannaheh said. "Then I had a better idea."

He picked up the shaft which had fallen from the end of the dart head driven into the piece of wood. "You'll notice," he said, passing the detached shaft back to Hal, "how the shaft is marked with a circle some twelve millimeters back from the end where the needle comes out? Break that end off."

Hal broke it off. It came free very easily, revealing another. somewhat shorter, needle projecting from what was now the new, effective end of the shaft. "You see?" said Tannaheh. "You can shoot it from the bow again, or use it by hand to inject the atropinelike drug directly. Be careful of giving anyone a double dose, though. It's in very dilute form, here, but still dangerous. In its natural state, as part of the sap of the plant you get it from, it's a very effective poison. "You've made whatever we can do down there possible," said Hal. "I think you know how grateful everyone is to you-" "Nothing!" said Tannaheh. He waved his hand lightly. "I'd like to tell you, though, what you've actually got by way of chemicals there in these darts-" "is this something we need to know to use them?" interrupted Hal.

"Well, no. But- " Then, if you don't mind, you can tell us all about it later," said Hal. "We've only got so many hours of darkness to work in and a lot to do. I'm sure you understand."

"-well, of course," said Tannaheh. "Believe me," Hal said to him, more softly, "later, when there's time, we'll want to know. But right now there's a lot to be done." "Of course. Of course," said Tannaheh, taking a step back from the desk with its open box of darts. "Forgive me." "There's nothing to forgive." Hal turned to the rest of the room.

While they had been speaking, the door had been opening to let people in, and now there was a small crowd of them in Amid's office. They had lined up against the front wall of the office on either side of the door. "Now," said Hal, "which of you are night foragers who can move quietly down there among the vegetation and rocks? Put your hands up so I can identify you."

Eight men and women to the right of the door as Hal faced it responded. "And who's the best?" "Onete," said several voices at once, with several more following - all, in fact, but Onete herself, who had been one of those standing there and holding up her arm.

"Good," said Hal. "Which of you can use a bow and arrow?"

There was some hesitation. Those who had their hands up lowered them and looked at each other, Finally, two of them raised their hands hesitantly again.

Hal smiled at them, to relax them. "I take it," he said, "this means you two can shoot an arrow from a bow, but you haven't much faith in yourselves as far as being able to hit the mark?"

The two arms went down and the heads above them nodded. "Old Man," said Hal, turning to him, "and you, Luke, do you suppose you could take these two and any other two who want to volunteer-" "Me," said Calas, quickly and stubbornly. '"All right," said Hal, "and one other volunteer, then. Take them to some inside space where there's light to see a target at about six to ten meters, and see if you can teach them something about hitting what they aim at." "The corridors in the dormitories'd give us the distance," said Luke to Old Man.

Old Man nodded. "And there are ways of hitting the point desired, that call for belief in self more than practice," he said. Both men began to move toward the door. "Just a minute," said Hal. "In addition to the six who feel most sure about their ability to move in the dark quietly, we're going to need about six more who'll be needed to help carry. For the benefit of those of you who've just come in, what we're going to do is go down to that camp where Artur and Cee are, try to put the soldiers out of action, and bring Cee and her uncle back up here to the ledge. We'll need a stretcher for Artur, and that stretcher will need at least four people to carry it at any given time."

He paused to let that sink in. "Bringing him up the steep slope is going to be the real problem. He'll have to be roped to the stretcher, so he doesn't slide off, and his bearers are going to have to be changed frequently. For those of you who've never done this - and I think that's most, if not all, of you - I can tell you that carrying even an ordinary-sized man on a stretcher up a steep slope is a very rough task, indeed. So we'll need at least three teams, so that the stretcher bearers can change off frequently. That's where you other eight come in. You can wait for the rest of us back out of earshot of the camp and help carry once we reach you with Artur and Cee." Will the girl come?" asked one of the men to the left of the door. "I think she'll come if you bring Artur," said Old Man. "You should be careful how you handle him, though. If he cries out or any reason, she may assume you're just more people like the soldiers, as far as your reason for carrying him off goes."

"By the way," put in Tannaheh, "I've made up a medical kit with pain-killers and other first aid supplies for use on Artur, as soon as you reach him." "Good," said Hal, "and thank you. I should have thought to ask you for that myself."

He turned to look at Onete. "I think you better take care of the first aid," he said to Onete. "You may be the one person who can do things to Artur without Cee thinking we're simply harming him more." "I can try," said Onete. "She just might trust me." "Old Man's right, too, I think," said Hal, "in saying she'll follow if we take Artur - even all the way up here, where she's never come before. She won't trust him out of her sight in anyone else's hands."

He turned back to the people who had just come into the office. "We've got until midnight to get ready," he said. "If for any reason some of you don't want to go, speak up now. The rest of us'll start getting ready to go down. I want to move into that camp there as soon as both moons are down, and be back behind the boulder on our way up to the ledge before it starts to get light."

No one moved or spoke up. "Good," said Hal. "Then, you four bow-people go with Old Man and Luke. Onete, you and the other night foragers gather around me, here. I'll explain how your part of it'll work."