Campbell's lean shoulders twitched. "Some of them died. Some of them
submitted. The rest...."
He turned, so suddenly that the old man flinched. Campbell's dark eyes
had a hot light in them, and his face was sharply alive.
"The rest," he said evenly, "went to Romany."
* * * * *
He talked, then. Urgently, pacing the hut in nervous catlike strides,
trying to remember things he had heard and not been very much
interested in at the time. When he was through, the Kraylen said:
"It would be better. Infinitely better. But--" He spread his long pale
hands, and his white crest drooped. "But there is no time. Government
men will come within three days to take us--that was the time set. And
since we will not go...."
Campbell thought of the things that had happened to other rebellious
tribes. He felt sick. But he made his voice steady.
"We'll hope it's time, Father. Romany is in an orbit around Venus
now--I nearly crashed it coming in. I'm going to try, anyhow. If I
don't--well, stall as long as you can."
Remembering the drum and the way the men had looked, he didn't think
that would be long. He pulled on a loose shirt of green spider-silk,
slung the belt of his heavy needle-gun over one shoulder, and picked up
his black tunic.
He put his hand on the Kraylen's shoulder and smiled. "We'll take care
of it, Father."
The old man's opalescent eyes were shadowed. "I wish I could stop you.
It's hopeless for us, and you are--_hot_ is that the word?"
Campbell grinned. "Hot," he said, "is the word. Blistering! The
Coalition gets awfully mad when someone pulls their own hi-jacking
stunt on them. But I'm used to it."
It was beginning to get light outside. The old man said quietly, "The
gods go with you, my son."
Campbell went out, thinking he'd need them.
It was full day when he reached his hidden ship--a sleek, souped-up
Fitts-Sothern that had the legs of almost anything in space. He paused
briefly by the airlock, looking at the sultry green of _liha_-trees
under a pearl-grey sky, the white mist lapping around his narrow waist.
He spent a long time over his charts, feeding numbers to the
calculators. When he got a set-up that suited him, he took the
Fitts-Sothern up on purring 'copters, angling out over the deep swamps.
He felt better, with the ship under his hands.
The Planetary Patrol blanket was thin over the deep swamps, but it was
vigilant. Campbell's nerves were tight. They got tighter as he came
closer to the place where he was going to have to begin his loop over
to the night side.
He was just reaching for the rocket switch when the little red light
started to flash on the indicator panel.
Somebody had a detector beam on him. And he was morally certain that
the somebody was flying a Patrol boat.