"I don't know. Something in the legend. Something men live for, and die
for. We'll know soon."
"We'll know soon. Samel, remember the bargain. No killing or plundering
among the Hans."
Samel smiled, but the muscles ran hard along his jaw.
"If you're telling the truth, there won't be any reason for it. We'll
let the Officers decide whether _they_ die or not." Samel started
forward. "The Ship," he said softly, and laughed. "_The Ship!_"
They went toward the cleft in the rock. Somebody said, "Hey, it's warm
in this gorge!" Kirk realized then that he wasn't cold, and wondered
why. Then he smiled bitterly. Sure. The Officers had found a vein of
heat-stones, probably just under the soil where they were standing.
The gorge had never been a source of the stones, the crystal rocks
that looked just like the ones scattered all over except that they had
a tiny light in them and burned you when you picked them up. But the
Officers must be getting them from here and taking them up to the Ship,
to hoard.
Most of his superstitious chill went away when he thought about that.
Inside the cleft was a shaft leading up, tool-shaped here and there,
with rusty metal bars set in the rock. Kirk led the way. There was
no sound made loud enough to be heard over the wind that blew across
the plateau. Kirk and Samel came up out of the shaft and took the two
guards from behind easily enough, and went on to the Ship.
Just for a moment, looking down across the plain, thinking about Ma
Kirk and Lil and the little ones, Kirk was scared. He'd let the Piruts
in. If Samel didn't keep his word, if anything....
But nothing would go wrong. There was no reason for it to. He was
telling the truth, and once the Ship was broken into there was no
quarrel between the Piruts and the Hans. They were allies against the
Officers.
He remembered what he'd said to Lil, about the Captain's yellow
daughter.
Samel left a guard behind and went into the Ship.
Darkness and cold and the smell of a place that hasn't been used or
lived in for a long, long time, and the grit of rusty metal under bare
feet. They went very slowly, and the yellow girl whimpered in her gag.
They couldn't really be silent, slipping and blundering in blackness
too thick even for their eyes, over buckled deck plates and around
broken walls. Somebody heard them and called out, and the yellow girl
struggled like a speared shag.
Kirk shivered and the palms of his hands were wet. He could feel the
Ship like a living presence in the dark.
The somebody called again, with fear in his voice. They stumbled down a
long, tilted passageway and came into a little room with a great gash
in it looking out over the gorge. There was a barred door in one wall,
and a man sitting in front of it over a tiny box of heat-stones.
The Captain.
He got up, a lean grey man moving with dignity. He didn't drop his
spear, but he didn't try to use it, either. He didn't say anything. His
eyes took them in, in the dull glow of the heat-stones--Kirk and Samel
and the Piruts, and then the yellow girl, gagged and held by the arms.
His eyes blazed, then. Kirk's heart jolted. It was just the way Pa
might have looked at Lil.
He said roughly, thinking of Pa, "Don't try anything, and you won't get
hurt. I've made a pact with the Piruts. There's to be no more fighting
and we take the Ship together, share and share alike. The Officers can
obey, or take what's coming to them. Where are the heat-stones?"
The Captain stared at him. His face had no expression. He said, "Let my
daughter go."
Samel started forward. The Captain raised his spear. "Let my daughter
go!" The Piruts raised their weapons. Samel looked around the room, at
the single door behind them, and grinned.
"Sure," he said. "Why not? Let her go."
They let her go. She tore off the gag and ran to her father and stood
by him, glaring at the Piruts with hot black eyes. Neither one said
anything.
"All right," said Samel lazily. "Now where are the stones?"
"There." The Captain pointed at the tiny box at his feet. "Those are
all the heat-stones there are in the Ship."