BROTHERS
Physically, he was big, very big. The professional soldiers of several generations from that small, harsh
world called the Dorsai, are normally larger than men from other worlds; but the Graemes are large even
among the Dorsai. At the same time, like his twin brother, Ian, Commander Kensie Graeme was so
well-proportioned in spite of his size that it was only at moments like this, when I saw him standing next
to a fellow Dorsai like his executive officer, Colonel Charley ap Morgan, that I could realize how big he
actually was. He had the black, curly hair of the Graemes, the heavy-boned face and brilliant grey-green
eyes of his family, also, that utter stillness at rest and that startling swiftness in motion that was
characteristic of the several-generations Dorsai.
So, too, had Ian, back in Blauvain; for physically the twins were the image of each other. But otherwise,
temperamentally, their difference was striking. Everybody loved Kensie. He was like some golden god of
the sunshine. While Ian was dark and solitary as the black ice of a glacier in a land where it was always
night.
". . . Blood," Pel Sinjin had said to me on our drive out here to the field encampment of the Expedition.
"You know what they say, Tom. Blood and ice water, half-and-half in his veins, is what makes a Dorsai.
But something must have gone wrong with those two when their mother was carrying them. Kensie got all
the blood. Ian . . . "
He had let the sentence finish itself. Like Kensie's own soldiers, Pel had come to idolize the man, and
downgrade Ian in proportion. I had let the matter slide.
Now, Kensie was smiling at us, as if there was some joke we were not yet in on.
"A welcoming committee?" he said. "Is that what you are?"
"Not exactly," I said. "We came out to talk about letting your men into Blauvain city for rest and
relaxation; now that you've got those invading soldiers from the Friendly Worlds all rounded up,
disarmed, and ready for shipment home --- what's the joke?"
"Just," said Charley ap Morgan, "that we were on our way into Blauvain to see you. We just got a
repeater message that you and other planetary officials here on St. Marie are giving Ian and Kensie, with
their staffs, a surprise victory dinner in Blauvain this evening."
"Hells Bells!" I said..
"You hadn't been told?" Kensie asked.
"Not a damn word," I said.
It was typical of the fumbling of the so-called government-of-mayors we had here on our little world of
St. Marie. Here was I, Superintendent of Police in Blauvain --- our capital city --- and here was Pel,
commanding general of our planetary militia which had been in the field with the Exotic Expedition sent to
rescue us from the invading puritan fanatics from the Friendly Worlds; and no one had bothered to tell
either one of us about a dinner for the two Commanders of that Expedition.
"You're going in, then?" Pel asked Kensie. Kensie nodded. "I've got to call my HQ."
Pel went out. Kensie laughed.
"Well," he said, "this gives us a chance to kill two birds at once. We'll ride back with you and talk on the
way. Is there some difficulty about Blauvain absorbing our men on leave?"
"Not that way," I said. "But even though the Friendlies have all been rounded up, the Blue Front is still
with us in the shape of a good number of political outlaws and terrorists that want to pull down our
present government. They lost the gamble they took when they invited in the Friendly troops; but now
they may take advantage of any trouble that can be stirred up around your soldiers while they're on their
awn in the city."
"There shouldn't be any," Kensie reached for a dress gunbelt of black leather and began to put it on over
the white dress uniform he was already wearing. "But we can talk about it, if you like. You'd better be
doing some dressing yourself, Charley."
"On my way," said Charley ap Morgan; and went out.
So, fifteen minutes later, Pel and I found ourselves headed back the way we had come, this time with
three passengers. I was still at the controls of the police car as we slid on its air cushion across the rich
grass of our St. Marie summer toward Blau-vain; but Kensie rode with me in front, making me feel small
beside him --- and I am considered a large man among our own people on St. Marie. Beside Kensie, I
must have looked like a fifteen year old boy in relative comparison. Pel was equally small in back
between Charley and a Dorsai Senior Commandant named Chu Van Moy --- a heavy-bodied, black
Mongol, if you can imagine such a man, from the Dorsai South Continent.
" . . .  No real problem," Kensie was saying as we left the grass at last for the vitreous road surface leading
us in among the streets and roads of the city --- in particular the road curving in between the high office
buildings; of Blauvain's West Industrial Park, now just half a kilometer ahead, "we'll turn the men loose in
small groups if you say. But there shouldn't be any need to worry. They're mercenaries, and a mercenary
knows that civilians pay his wages. He's not going to make any trouble which would give his profession a
bad name."
"I don't worry about your men," I said. "It's the Blue Front fabricating some trouble in the vicinity of some
of your men and then trying to pin the blame on them, that worries me. The only way to guard against that
is to have your troops in small enough numbers so that my policemen can keep an eye on the civilians
around them."
"Fair enough," said Kiensie. He smiled down at me. "I hope, though, you don't plan on having your men
holding our men's hands all through their evenings in town --- "
Just then we passed between the first of the tall office buildings. A shadow from the late morning sun fell
across the car, and the high walls around us gave Kensie's last words a flat echo. Right on the heels of
those words --- in fact, mixed with them --- came a faint sound as of multiple whistlings about us; and
Kensie fell forward, no longer speaking, until his forehead against the front windscreen stopped him from
movement.
The next thing I knew I was flying through the air, literally. Charley ap Morgan had left the police car on
the right side, dragging me along with a hand like a steel clamp on my arm, until we ended up against the
front of the building on our right. We crouched there, Charley with his dress handgun in his fist and
looking up at the windows of the building opposite. Across the narrow way, I could see Chu Van Moy
with Pel beside him, a dress gun also in Chu's fist. I reached for my own police beltgun, and remembered
I was not wearing it.
About us there was utter silence. The narrow little projectiles from one or more sliver rifles, that had
fluted about us, did not come again. For the first time I realized there was no one on the streets and no
movement to be seen behind the windows about us.
"We've got to get him to a hospital," said Pel, on the other side of the street. His voice was strained and
tight. He was staring fixedly at the still figure of Kensie, still slumped against the windscreen.
"A hospital," he said again. His face was as pale as a sick man's.
Neither Charley or Chu paid any attention. Silently they were continuing to scan the windows of the
building opposite them.
"A hospital!" shouted Pel, suddenly.
Abruptly, Charley got to his feet and slid his weapon back into its holster. Across the street, Chu also
was rising. Charley looked at the other Dorsai.
"Yes," said Charley, "where is the nearest hospital?"
But Pel was already behind the controls of the police car. The rest of us had to move or be left behind.
He swung the car toward Blauvain's Medical Receiving, West, only three minutes away.
He drove the streets like a madman, switching on the warning lights and siren as he went. Screaming, the
vehicle careened through traffic and signals alike, to jerk to a stop behind the ambulance entrance at
Medical West. Pel jumped from the car.
"I'll get a life support system --- a medician --- " he said, and ran inside.
I got out; and then Charley and Chu got out, more slowly. The two Dorsais were on opposite sides of
the car.
"Find a room," Charley said. Chu nodded and went after Pel through the ambulance entrance.
Charley turned to the car. Gently, he picked up Kensie in his arms, the way you pick up a sleeping child,
gently, holding Kensie to his chest so that Kensie's head fell in to rest on Charley's left shoulder. Carrying
his Reid Commander, Charley turned and went into the medical establishment. I followed.
Inside, there was a long corridor with hospital personnel milling about. Chu stood by a doorway a few
meters down the hall to the left, half a head taller than the people between us. With Kensie in his arms,
Charley went toward the other Commandant.
Chu stood aside as Charley came up. The door swung back automatically, and Charley led the way into
a room with surgical equipment in sterile cases along both its sides, and an operating table in its center.
Charley laid Kensie softly on the table, which was almost too short for his tall body. He put the long legs
together, picked up the arms and laid their hands on the upper thighs. There was a line of small, red stains
across the front of his jacket, high up, but no other marks. Kensie's face, with its eyes closed, looked
blindly to the white ceiling overhead.
"All right," said Charley. He led the way back out into the hall. Chu came last and turned to click the lock
on the door into place, drawing his handgun.
"What's this?" somebody shouted at my elbow, pushing toward Chu. "That's an emergency room. You
can't do that-"
Chu was using his handgun on low aperture to slag the lock of the door. A crude but effective way to
make sure that the room would not be opened by anyone with anything short of an industrial, heavy-duty
torch. The man who was talking was middle-aged, with a grey mustache and the short green jacket of a
senior surgeon. I intercepted him and held him back from Chu.
"Yes, he can," I said, as he turned to stare furiously in my direction. "Do you recognize me? I'm Tomas
Velt, the Superintendent of Police."
He hesitated, and then calmed slightly --- but only slightly.
"I still say --- " he began.
"By the authority of my office," I said, "I do now deputize you as a temporary Police Assistant. That
puts you under my orders. You'll see that no one in this hospital tries to open that door or get into that
room until Police authorization is given. I make you responsible. Do you understand?"
He blinked at me. But before he could say anything, there was a new outburst of sound and action; and
Pel broke into our group, literally dragging along another man in a senior surgeon's jacket.
"Here!" Pel was shouting. "Right in here. Bring the life support --- "
He broke off, catching sight of Chu.
"What?" he said. "What's going on? Is Kensie in there? We don't want the door sealed --- "
"Pel," I said. I put my hand on his shoulder. "Pel!"
He finally felt and heard me. He turned a furious face in my direction.
"Pel," I said quietly, but slowly and clearly to him. "He's dead. Kensie. Kensie is dead."
Pel stared at me.
"No," he said irritably, trying to pull away from me. I held him. "No!"
"Dead," I said, looking him squarely in the eyes. "Dead, Pel."
His eyes stared back at me, then seemed to loose their focus and stare off at something else. After a little
they focused back, on mine again and I let go of him.
"Dead?" he repeated. It was hardly more than a whisper.
He walked over and leaned against one of the white-painted corridor walls. A nurse moved toward him
and I signalled her to stop.
"Just leave him alone for a moment," I said. I
turned back to the two Dorsai officers who were now-testing the door to see if it was truly sealed.
"If you'll come to Police Headquarters," I said, "we can get the hunt going for whoever did it."
Charley looked at me briefly. There was no more friendly humor in his face now; but neither did it show
any kind of shock, or fury. The expression it showed was only a businesslike one.
"No," he said briefly. "We have to report."
He went out, followed by Chu, moving so rapidly that I had to run to keep up with their long strides.
Outside the door, they climbed back into the police car, Charley taking the controls. I scrambled in
behind them and felt someone behind me. It was Pel.
"Pel," I said. "You'd better stay-"
"No. Too late," he said.
And it was too late. Charley already had the police car in motion. He drove no less swiftly than Pel had
driven, but without madness. For all that, though, I made most of the trip with my fingers tight on the edge
of my seat; for with the faster speed of Dorsai reflexes he went through available spaces and openings in
traffic where I would have sworn we could not get through.
We pulled up before the office building attached to the Exotic Embassy as space for Expeditionary Base
Headquarters. Charley led the way in past a guard, whose routine challenge broke off in mid-sentence as
he recognized the two of them.
"We have to talk to the Base Commander," Charley said to him. "Where's Commander Graeme?"
"With the Blauvain Mayor, and the Outbond." The guard, who was no Dorsai, stammered a little.
Charley turned on his heel. "Wait --- sir, I mean the Outbond's with him, here in the Commander's office."
Charley turned again.
"We'll go on in. Call ahead," Charley said.
He led the way, without waiting to watch the guard obey, down a corridor and up an escalator ramp to
an outer office where a young Force-Leader stood up behind his desk at the sight of us.
"Sir --- " The Force-Leader said to Charley, "the Outbond and the Mayor will only be with the
Commander another few minutes --- "
Charley brushed past him, and the Force-leader spun around to punch at his desk phone. Heels clicking
on the polished stone floor, Charley led us toward a further door and opened it, stepping into the office
beyond. We followed him there into a large, square room with windows overlooking the city and our
own broad-shouldered Mayor, Moro Spence, standing there with a white-haired, calm-faced,
hazel-eyed man in a blue robe both facing a desk at which sat the mirror image of Kensie that was his
twin brother, Ian Graeme.
Ian spoke to his desk as we came in.
"It's all right," he said. He punched a button and looked up at Charley, who went forward with Chu
beside him, to the very edge of the desk, and then both saluted.
"What is it?" asked Ian.
"Kensie," said Charley. His voice became formal. "Field Commander Kensie Graeme has just been
killed, sir, as we were on our way into the city."
For perhaps a second --- no longer --- Ian sat without speaking. But his face --- so like Kensie's and yet so
different --- did not change expression.
"How?" he asked, then.
"By assassins we couldn't see," Charley answered. "Civilians we think They got away."
Moro Spence swore.
"The Blue Front!" he said. "Ian . . .  Ian, listen . . . "
No one paid any attention to him. Charley was briefly recounting what had happened from the time the
message about the invitation had reached the encampment --- 
"But there wasn't any celebration like that planned!" protested Moro Spence, to the deaf ears around
him. Ian sat quietly, his harsh, powerful face half in shadow from the sunlight coming in the high window
behind him, listening as he might have listened to a thousand other reports. There was still no change
visible in him; except perhaps that he, who had always been remote from everyone else, seemed even
more remote now. His heavy forearms lay on the desktop, and the massive hands that were trained to be
deadly weapons in their own right lay open and still on the papers beneath them. Almost, he seemed to
be more legendary character than ordinary man; and that impression was not mine alone, because behind
me I heard Pel hiss on a breath of sick fury indrawn between his teeth; and I remembered how he had
talked of Ian being only ice and water, Kensie only blood.
The white-haired man in the blue robe, who was the Exotic, Padma, Outbond to St. Marie for the period
of the Expedition, was also watching Ian steadily. When Charley was through with his account, Padma
spoke.
"Ian," he said; and his calm, light baritone seemed to linger and reecho strangely on the ear, "I think this is
something best handled by the local authorities."
Ian glanced at him.
"No," he answered. He looked at Charley. "Who's Duty Officer?"
"NgTsok," said Charley.
Ian punched the phone button on his desk
"Get me Colonel Waru Ng'kok, Encampment HQ," he said to the desk
" 'No?' " echoed Moro. "I don't understand Commander. We can handle it. It's the Blue Front, you see.
They're an outlawed political --- "
I came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. He broke off, turning around.
"Oh, Tom!" he said, on a note of relief "I didn't see you before. I'm glad you're here --- "
I put my finger to my lips. He was politician enough to recognize that there are times to shut up. He shut
up now, and we both looked back at Ian.
" . . .  Waru? This is Base Commander Ian Graeme," Ian was saying to his phone. "Activate our four best
Hunter Teams; and take three Forces from your on-duty troops to surround Blauvain. Seal all entrances
to the city. No one allowed in or out without our authority. Tell the involved troops briefing on these
actions will be forthcoming."
As professional, free-lance soldiers, under the pattern of the Dorsai contract --- which the Exotic
employers honored for all their military employees --- the mercenaries were entitled to know the aim and
purpose of any general orders for military action they were given. By a ninety-six per cent vote among
the enlisted men concerned, they could refuse to obey the order. In fact, by a hundred per cent vote, they
could force their officers to use them in an action they themselves demanded. But a hundred per cent
vote was almost unheard of. The phone grid in lan's desk top said something I could not catch.
"No," replied Ian, "that's all."
He clicked off the phone and reached down to open a drawer in his desk He took out a gunbelt --- a
working, earth-colored gunbelt unlike the dress one Kensie had put on earlier --- with sidearm already in
its holster; and, standing up, began to strap it on. On his feet, he dominated the room, towering over us
all.
"Tom," he said, looking at me, "put your police to work, finding out what they can. Tell them all to be
prepared to obey orders by any one of our soldiers, no matter what his rank."
"I don't know if I've got the authority to tell them that," I said.
"I've just given you the authority," he answered calmly. "As of this moment, Blauvain is under martial
law."
Moro cleared his throat; but I jerked a hand at him to keep him quiet. There was no one in this room
with the power to deal with lan's authority now, except the gentle-faced man in the blue robe. I looked
appealingly at Padma, and he turned from me to Ian.
"Naturally, Ian, measures will have to be taken, for the satisfaction of the soldiers who knew Kensie,"
Padma said softly, "but perhaps finding the guilty men would be better done by the civilian police without
military assistance?"
"I'm afraid we can't leave it to them," said Ian briefly. He turned to the other two Dorsai officers.. "Chu,
take command of the Forces I've just ordered to cordon the city. Charley, you'll take over as Acting
Field Commander. Have all the officers and men in the encampment held there, and gather back any who
are off post. You can use the office next to this one. We'll brief the troops in the encampment, this
afternoon. Chu can brief his forces as he posts them around the city."
The two turned and headed toward the door.
"Just a minute, gentlemen!"
Padma's voice was raised only slightly. But the pair of officers paused and turned for a moment.
"Colonel ap Morgan, Commandant Moy," said Padma, "as the official representative of the Exotic
Government, which is your employer, I relieve you from the requirement of following any further orders
of Commander Ian Graeme."
Charley and Chu looked past the Exotic, to Ian.
"Go ahead," said Ian. They went. Ian turned back to Padma. "Our contracts provide that officers and
men are not subject to civilian authority while on active duty, engaged with an enemy."
"But the war --- the war with the Friendly invaders --- is over," said Moro.
"One of our soldiers has just been killed," said Ian. "Until the identity of the killers is established, I'm
going to assume we're still engaged with an enemy."
He looked again at me.
"Tom," he said. "You can contact your Police Headquarters from this desk As soon as you've done that,
report to me in the office next door, where I sent Charley."
He came around the desk and went out. Padma followed him. I went to the desk and put in a phone call
to my own office.
"For God's sake, Tom!" said Moro to me, as I punched phone buttons for the number of my office, and
started to get the police machinery rolling. "What's going on, here?"
I was too busy to answer him. Someone else was not.
"He's going to make them pay for killing his brother," said Pel savagely, from across the room. "That's
what's going on!"
I had nearly forgotten Pel. Moro must have forgotten him absolutely, because he turned around to him
now as if Pel had suddenly appeared on the scene in a cloud of fire and brimstone-odorous smoke.
"Pel?" he said. "Oh, Pel --- get your militia together and under arms, right away. This is an emergency --- "
"Go to hell!" Pel answered him. "I'm not going to lift a finger to keep Ian from hunting down those
assassins. And no one else in the militia who knew Kensie Graeme is going to lift a finger, either."
"But this could bring down the government!"
Moro was close to the idea of tears, if not to the actual article. "This could throw St. Marie back into
anarchy, and the Blue Front will take over by default!"
"That's what the planet deserves," said Pel, "when it lets men like Kensie be shot down like dogs  --- men
who came here to risk their lives to save our government!"
"You're crazier than these mercenaries are!" said Moro, staring at him. Then a touch of hope lifted
Moro's drawn features. "Actually, Ian seems calm enough. Maybe he won't --- "
"He'll take this city apart if he has to," said Pel, savagely. "Don't blind yourself"
I had finished my phoning. I punched off, and straightened up, looking at Pel.
"I thought you told me there was nothing but ice and water to Ian?" I said.
"There isn't," Pel answered. "But Kensie's his twin brother. That's the one thing he can't sit back from and
shuffle off. You'll see."
"I hope and pray I don't," I said; and I left the office for the one next door where Ian was waiting for me.
Pel and Moro followed; but when we came to the doorway of the" other office, there was a soldier there
who would let only me through.
" . . .  We'll want a guard on that hospital room, and a Force guarding the hospital itself," Ian was saying
slowly and deliberately to Charley ap Morgan as I came in. He was standing over Charley, who was
seated at a desk Back against a wall stood the silent figure in a blue robe that was Padma. Ian turned to
face me.
"The troops at the encampment are being paraded in one hour," he said. "Charley will be going out to
brief them on what's happened. I'd like you to go with him and be on the stand with him during the
briefing."
I looked back at him, up at him. I had not gone along with Pel's ice-and-water assessement of the man.
But now for the first time I began to doubt myself and begin to believe Pel. If ever there had been two
brothers who had seemed to be opposite halves of a single egg, Kensie and Ian had been those two. But
here was Ian with Kensie dead --- perhaps the only living person on the eleven human-inhabited worlds
among the stars who had loved or understood him ---  and Ian had so far shown no more emotion at his
brother's death than he might have on discovering an incorrect Order of the Day.
It occurred to me then that perhaps he was in emotional shock --- and this was the cause of his unnatural
calmness. But the man I looked at now had none of the signs of a person in shock. I found myself
wondering if any man's love for his brother could be hidden so deep that not even that brother's violent
death could cause a crack in the frozen surface of the one who went on living.
If Ian was repressing emotion that was due to explode sometime soon, then we were all in trouble. My
Blauvain police and the planetary militia together were toy soldiers compared to these professionals.
Without the Exotic control to govern them, the whole planet was at their mercy. But there was no point in
admitting that --- even to ourselves --- while even the shadow of independence was left to us.
"Commander," I said. "General Pel Sinjin's planetary militia were closely involved with your brother's
forces. He would like to be at any such brief-ing. Also, Moro Spence, Blauvain's Mayor and pro-tem
President of the St. Marie Planetary Government, would want to be there. Both these men, Commander,
have as deep a stake in this situation as your troops."
Ian looked at me.
"General Sinjin," he said, after a moment. "Of course. But we don't need mayors."
"St. Marie needs them," I said. "That's all our St. Marie World Council is, actually --- a collection of
mayors from our largest cities. Show that Moro and the rest mean nothing, and what little authority they
have will be gone in ten minutes. Does St. Marie deserve that from you?"
He could have answered that St. Marie had been the death of his brother --- and it deserved anything he
wished to give it. But he did not. I would have felt safer with him if he had. Instead, he looked at me as if
from a long, long distance for several seconds, then over at Padma.
"You'd favor that?" he asked.
"Yes," said Padma. Ian looked back at me.
"Both Moro and General Sinjin can go with you, then," he said. "Charley will be leaving from here by air
in about forty minutes. I'll let you get back to your own responsibilities until then. You'd better appoint
someone as liaison from your police, to stand by here in this office."
"Thanks," I said. "I will."
I turned and went out. As I left, I heard Ian behind me, dictating.
" . . .  All travel by the inhabitants of the City of Blauvain will be restricted to that which is absolutely
essential. Military passes must be obtained for such travel. Inhabitants are to stay off the streets. Anyone
involved in any gathering will be subject to investigation and arrest. The City of Blauvain is to recognize
the fact that it is now under martial, not civil, law . . . "
The door closed behind me. I saw Pel and Moro waiting in the corridor.
"It's all right," I told them, "you haven't been shut out of things --- yet."
We took off from the top of that building, forty minutes later, Charley and myself up in the control seats
of a military eight-man liaison craft with Pel and Moro sitting back among the passenger seats.
"Charley," I asked him, in the privacy of our isolation together up front in the craft, once we were
airborne. "What's going to happen?"
He was looking ahead through the forward vision screen and he did not answer for a moment. When he
did, it was without turning his head.
"Kensie and I," he said softly, almost absently, "grew up together. Most of our lives we've been in the
same place, working for the same employers."
I had thought I knew Charley ap Morgan. In his cheerfulness, he had seemed more human, less of a
half-god of Avar than other Dorsai like Kensie or Ian ---  or even lesser Dorsai officers like Chu. But now
he had moved off with the rest. His words took him out of my reach, into some cold, high, distant country
where only Dorsai lived. It was a land I could not enter, the rules of which I would never understand. But
I tried again, anyway.
"Charley," I said, after a moment of silence, "that doesn't answer what I asked you."
He looked at me then, briefly.
"I don't know what's going to happen," he said.
He turned his attention back to the controls. We flew the rest of the way to the encampment without
talking.
When we landed, we found the entire Expedition drawn up in formation. They were grouped by Forces
into Battalion and Arm Groups; and their dun-colored battle dress showed glints of light in the late
afternoon sunlight. It was not until we mounted the stand facing them that I recognized the glitter for what
it was. They had come to the formation under arms, all of them --- although that had not been in lan's
orders. Word of Kensie had preceded us. I looked at Charlie; but he was paying no attention to the
weapons.
The sun struck at us from the southwest at a lowered angle. The troops were in formation, with their
backs to the old factory, and when Charley spoke, the amplifiers caught up his voice and carried it out
over their heads.
"Troops of the Exotic Expeditionary Force in relief of Saint Marie," he said. "By order of Commander
Ian Graeme, this briefing is ordered for the hundred and eighty-seventh day of the Expedition on St.
Marie soil."
The brick walls slapped his words back with a flat echo over the still men in uniform. I stood a little
behind him, in the shadow of his shoulders, listening. Pel and Moro were behind me.
"I regret to inform you," Charley said, "that sniper activity within the City of Blauvain, this day, about
thirteen hundred hours, cost us the life of Commander Kensie Graeme."
There was no sound from the men.
"The snipers have not yet been captured or killed. Since they remain unidentified, Commander Ian
Graeme has ordered that the condition of hostilities, which was earlier assumed to have ended, is still in
effect. Blauvain has been placed under martial law, sufficient force has been sent to seal the city against
any exit or ingress, and all persons under Exotic contract to the Expedition have been recalled to this
encampment . . . "
I felt the heat of a breath on my ear and Pel's voice whispered to me.
"Look at them!" he said. "They're ready to march on Blauvain right now. Do you think they'll let Kensie
be killed on some stinking little world like this of ours, and not see that somebody pays for it?"
"Shut up, Pel," I murmured out of the corner of my mouth at him. But he went on.
"Look at them!" he said. "It's the order to march they're waiting for --- the order to march on Blauvain.
And if Charley doesn't end up giving it, there'll be hell to pay. You see how they've all come armed?"
"That's right, Pel, Blauvain's not your city!" It was a bitter whisper from Moro. "If it was Castelmane they
were itching to march on, would you feel the same way about it?"
"Yes!" hissed Pel, fiercely. "If men come here to risk their lives for us, and we can't do any better than let
them be gunned down in the streets, what do we deserve? What does anyone deserve?"
"Stop making a court case out of it!" whispered Moro harshly. "It's Kensie you're thinking of --- that's all.
Just like it's only Kensie they're thinking of, out there . . . "
I tried again to quiet them, then realized that actually it did not make any difference. For all practical
purposes, the three of us were invisible there behind Charley. The attention of the armed men ranked
before us was all on Charley, and only on him. As Pel had said, they were waiting for one certain order;
and only that order mattered to them.
It was like standing facing some great, dun-colored, wounded beast which must charge at any second
now, if only because in action would there be relief from the pain it was suffering. Charley's
expressionless voice went on, each word coming back like a slapping of dry boards together, in the echo
from the factory wall. He was issuing a long list of commands having to do with the order of the camp,
and its transition back to a condition of battle-alert.
I could feel the tension rising as he approached the end of his list of orders without one which might
indicate action by the Expedition against the city in which Kensie had died. Then, suddenly, the list was
at an end.
" . . . That concludes," said Charley, in the same unvarying tones, "the present orders dealing with the
situation. I would remind the personnel of this Expedition that at present the identity of the assassins of
Commander Graeme is unknown. The civilian police are exerting every effort to investigate the matter;
and it is the opinion of your officers that nothing else can be done for the moment but to give them our
complete cooperation. A suspicion exists that a native, outlawed political party, known as The Blue
Front, may have been responsible for the assassination. If this should be so, we must be careful to
distinguish between those of this world who are actually guilty of Commander Graeme's death and the
great majority of innocent bystanders."
He stopped speaking.
There was not a sound from the thousands of men ranked before him.
"All right, Brigade-Major," said Charley, looking down from the stand at the ranking officer in the
formation. "Dismiss your troops."
The Brigade-Major, who had been standing like all the rest facing the stand, wheeled about.
"Atten-shun!" he snapped, and the amplifier sensors of the stand picked his voice up and threw it out
over the men in formation as they had projected Charley's voice. "Dis-miss!"
The formation did not disperse. Here and there, a slight wavering in the ranks showed itself, and then the
lines of standing figures were motionless again. For a long second, it seemed that nothing more was going
to happen, that Charley and the mercenary soldiers before him would stand facing each other until the
day of Judgment . . .  and then somewhere among the ranks, a solitary and off-key bass voice began to
sing.
"They little knew of brotherhood . . . "
Other voices rapidly picked it up.

<div class="singing">
The faith of fighting men
Who once to prove their lie was good
Hanged Colonel Jacques Chrétien
</div>

--- And suddenly they were all singing in the ranks facing us. It was a song of the young Colonel who had
been put to death one hundred years before, when the Dorsai were just in their beginning. A New Earth
city had employed a force of Dorsai with the secret intention of using them against an enemy force so
superior as to surely destroy them utterly --- so rendering payment for their services unnecessary while at
the same time doing considerable damage to the enemy. Then the Dorsai had defeated the enemy,
instead, and the city faced the necessity of paying, after all. To avoid this, the city authorities came up
with the idea of charging the Dorsai commanding officer with dealing with the enemy, taking a bribe to
claim victory for a battle never fought at all. It was the technique of the big lie; and it might even have
worked if they had not made the mistake of arresting the commanding officer, to back up their story.
It was not a song to which I would have had any objection, ordinarily. But now --- suddenly --- I found it
directed at me. It was at Pel, Moro, myself, that the soldiers of the Expedition were all singing it. Before,
I had felt almost invisible on the stand behind Charley ap Morgan. Now, we three civilians were the focus
of every pair of eyes on the field --- we civilians who were like the civilians that had hanged Jacques
Chretien; we who were St. Marians, like whoever had shot Kensie Graeme. It was like facing into the
roaring maw of some great beast ready to swallow us up. We stood facing it, frozen.
Nor did Charley ap Morgan interfere.
He stood silent himself, waiting while they went through all the verses of the song to its end:

<div class="singing">
One-fourth of Rochmont's fighting strength
One battalion of Dorsai
Was sent by Rochmont forth alone
To bleed Helmuth and die

But look, look down from Rochmont's heights
Upon the Helmuth plain
At all of Helmuth's armored force
By Dorsai checked or slain

Look down, look down, on Rochmont's shame
To hide the wrong she'd done
Made claim that Helmuth bribed Dorsai
No battle had been won

To prove that lie, the Rochmont lords
Arrested Jacques Chrétien
On charge he dealt with Helmuth's chiefs
For payment to his men

Commandant Arp Van Din sent word
"You may not judge Dorsai
Return our Colonel by the dawn
Or Rochmont town shall die!"

Strong-held behind her wall, Rochmont
Scorned to answer them
Condemned, and at the daybreak hanged
Young Colonel Jacques Chrétien

Bright, bright the sun that morning rose
Upon each weaponed wall
But when the sun set in the west
Those walls were leveled all

Then soft and white the moon arose
On streets and roofs unstained
But when that moon was down once more
No street or roof remained

No more is there a Rochmont town
No more are Rochmont's men
But stands a Dorsai monument
To Colonel Jacques Chrétien

So pass the word from world to world
Alone still stands Dorsai
And while she lives no one of hers
By foreign wrong shall die

They little knew of brotherhood
The faith of fighting men
Who once to prove their lie was good
Hanged Colonel Jacques Chrétien
</div>
 
It ended. Once more they were silent --- utterly silent. On the platform Charley moved. He took half a
step forward and the sensors picked up his voice once more and threw it out over the heads of the
waiting men.
"Officers! Front and Center. Face your men!"
From the end of each rank figures moved. The commissioned and non-commissioned officers stepped
forward, turned and marched to a point opposite the middle of the rank they had headed, turned once
more and stood at attention,
"Prepare to fire."
The weapons in the hands of the officers came up to waist level, their muzzles pointing at the men directly
before them. The breath in my chest was sud-denly a solid thing. I could not have inhaled or exhaled if I
had tried. I had heard of something like this but I had never believed it, let alone dreamed that I would be
there to see it happen. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the angle of Charley ap Morgan's face,
and it was a Dorsai face in all respects now. He spoke again.
"The command to dismiss has been given," Charley's voice rang and reechoed over the silent men, "and
not obeyed. The command will be repeated under the stricture of the Third Article of the Professional
Soldier's Covenant. Officers will open fire on any refusing to obey."
There was something like a small sigh that ran through all the standing men, followed by the faint rattle of
safeties being released on the weapons of the men in ranks. They stood facing their officers and
non-commissioned officers now --- fellow soldiers and old friends. But they were all professionals. They
would not simply stand and be executed if it came to the final point. The breath in my chest was now so
solid it hurt, like something jagged and heavy pressing against my ribs. In ten seconds we could all be
dead.
"Brigade-Major," said the level voice of Charley. "Dismiss your troops."
The Brigade-major, who had turned once more to face Charley, when Charley spoke to him, turned
back again to the parade ground of men.
"Dis-" No more than in Charley's voice was there perceptible change in the Brigade-Major's command
from the time it had been given before, "-miss!"
The formations dissolved. All at once the ranks were breaking up, the men in them turning away, the
officers and non-coms lowering the weapons they had lifted to ready position at Charley's earlier
command. The long-held breath tore itself out of my lungs so roughly it ripped at my throat. I turned to
Charley but he was halfway down the steps from the platform, as expressionless as he had been all
through the last few minutes. I had to half-run to catch up to him.
"Charley!" I said, reaching him.
He turned to look at me as he walked along. Suddenly I felt how pale and sweat dampened I was. I tried
to laugh.
"Thank God that's over," I said.
"Over?" He shook his head. "It's not over, Tom. The enlisted men will be voting now. It's their right."
"Vote?" The world made no sense to me, for a second. Then suddenly it made too much sense. "You
mean --- they might vote to march on Blauvain, or something like mat?"
"Perhaps --- something like that," he said.
I stared at him.
"And then?" I said. "You wouldn't . . .  if their vote should be to march on Blauvain --- what would you do?"
He looked at me almost coldly.
"Lead my troops," he said.
I stopped. Standing there, I watched him walk away from me. A hand tugged at my elbow", and I turned
around to see that Pel and Moro had caught up to me. It was Moro who had his hand on my arm.
"Tom," said Moro, "What do we do, now?"
"See Padma," I said. "If he can't do something, I don't know anybody who can."
Charley was not flying directly back to Blauvain.
He was already in a staff meeting with his fellow officers, who were barred from the voting of the enlisted
men by the Covenant. We three civilians had to borrow a land car from the encampment motor pool.
It was a silent ride, most of the way back into town. Once again I was at the controls, with Pel beside
me. Sitting behind us, just before we reached the west area of the city, Moro leaned forward to put his
head between us.
"Tom," he said. "You'll have to put your police on special duty. Pel, you've got to mobilize the militia
 --- right now."
"Moro," I answered --- and I suddenly felt dog-tired, weary to the point of exhaustion. "I've got less than
three hundred men, ninety-nine per cent of them without anything more exciting in the way of experience
than filling out reports or taking charge at a fire, an accident or a family quarrel. They wouldn't face those
mercenaries even if I ordered them to."
"Pel," he said, turning away from me, "your men are soldiers. They've been in the field with these
mercenaries --- "
Pel laughed at him.
"Over a hundred years ago, a battalion of Dorsais took a fortified city --- Rochmont --- with nothing heavier
than light field pieces. This is a brigade --- six battalions --- armed with the best weapons the Exotics can
buy them --- facing a city with no natural or artificial defenses at all. And you want my two thousand
militiamen to try to stop them? There's no force on St. Marie that could stop those professional soldiers."
"At Rochmont they were all Dorsai --- " Moro began.
"For God's sake!" cried Pel. "These are Dorsai-officered, the best mercenaries you can find. Elite
troops --- the Exotics don't hire anything else for fear they might have to touch a weapon themselves and
damage their, enlightenment --- or whatever the hell it is! Face it, Moro! If Kensie's troops want to chew
us up, they will. And there's nothing you or I can do about it!"
Moro said nothing for a long moment. Pel's last words had hit a near-hysterical note. When the Mayor of
Blauvain did speak again, it was softly.
"I just wish to God I knew why you want just that to happen, so badly," he said.
"Go to hell!" said Pel. "Just go-"
I slammed the car into retro and we skidded to a halt, thumping down on the grass as the air-cushion quit
I looked at Pel.
"That's something I'd like to know, too," I said. "All right, you liked Kensie. So did I. But what we're
facing is anything from the leveling of a city to a possible massacre of a couple of hundred thousand
people. All that for the death of just one man?"
Pel's face looked bitter and sick
"We're no good, we St. Marians," he said, thickly. "We're a fat little farm world that's never done
anything since it was first settled but yell for help to the Exotics every time we got into trouble. And the
Exotics have bailed us out every time, only because we're in the same solar system with them. What're
we worth? Nothing! At least the Dorsai and the Exotics have got some value --- some use!"
He turned away from Moro and myself; and we could not get another word out of him.
We drove on into the city, where, to my great relief, I finally got rid of Pel and Moro both; and was able
to get to Police Headquarters and take charge of things.
As I had expected, things badly needed taking care of there. As I should also have expected, I had very
much underestimated how badly they needed it. I had planned to spend two or three hours getting the
situation under control, and then be free to seek out Padma. But, as it ended up, it took me nearly seven
straight hours to damp down the panic, straighten out the confusion, and put some purpose and order
back into the operations of all my people, off-duty and otherwise, who had reported for emergency
service. Actually, it was little enough we were required to do  --- merely patrol the streets and see that the
town's citizens stayed off the streets and out of the way of the mercenaries. Still, that took seven hours to
put into smooth operation; and at the end of that time I was still not free to go hunting for Padma, but had
to respond to a series of calls for my presence by the detective crew assigned to work with the
mercenaries in tracking down the assassins.
I drove through the empty nighttime streets slowly, with my emergency lights on and the official emblem
on my police car clearly illuminated. Three times, however, I was stopped and checked by teams of three
to five mercenaries, in battle dress and fully weaponed, that appeared unexpectedly. The third time, the
Groupman --- a non-commissioned officer-in command of the team stopping me, joined me in the car.
When twice after that we encountered military teams, he leaned out the right window to show himself;
and we were waved through.
We came at last to a block of warehouses on the north side of the city; and to one warehouse in
particular. Within, the large, echoing structure was empty except for a few hundred square feet of crated
harvesting machinery on the first of its three floors. I found my men on the second floor in the transparent
cubicles that were the building's offices, apparently doing nothing.
"What's the matter?" I said, when I saw them. They were not only idle, but they looked unhappy.
"There's nothing we can do, Superintendent," said the senior detective lieutenant present --- Lee Hall, a
man I'd known for sixteen years. "We can't keep up with them, even if they'd let us."
"Keep up?" I asked.
"Yes sir," Lee said. "Come on, I'll show you. They let us watch, anyway."
He led me out of the offices up to the top floor of the warehouse, a great, bare space with a few empty
crates scattered between piles of unused packing materials. At one end, portable floodlights were
illuminating an area with a merciless blue-white light that made the shadows cast by men and things look
solid enough to stub your toe on. He led me toward the light until a Groupman stepped forward to bar
our way.
"Close enough, Lieutenant," he said to Lee. He looked at me.
"This is Tomas Velt, Blauvain superintendent of police."
"Honored to meet you, sir," said the Groupman to me. "But you and the Lieutenant will have to stand
back here if you want to see what's going on."
"What is going on?" I asked.
"Reconstruction," said the Groupman. "That's one of our Hunter Teams."
I turned to watch. In the white glare of the light were four of the mercenaries. At first glance they seemed
engaged in some odd ballet or mime acting. They were at little distances from one another; and first one,
then another of them would move a short distance --- perhaps as if he had gotten up from a nonexistent
chair and walked across to an equally nonexistent table, then turned to face the others. Following which
another man would move in and apparently do something at the same invisible table with him.
"The men of our Hunter Teams are essentially trackers, Superintendent," said the Groupman quietly in my
ear. "But some teams are better in certain surroundings than others. These are men of a team that works
well in interiors."
"But what are they doing?" I said.
"Reconstructing what the assassins did when they were here," said the Groupman. "Each of three men on
the team takes the track of one of the assassins, and the fourth man -watches them all as coordinator."
I looked at him. He wore the sleeve emblem of a Dorsai, but he was as ordinary-looking as myself or
one of my detectives. Plainly, a first-generation immigrant to that world; which explained why he was
wearing the patches of a non-commissioned, rather than a commissioned officer along with that emblem.
"But what kind of signs are they tracking?" I asked.
"Little things, mostly." He smiled. "Tiny things-some things you or I wouldn't be able to see if they were
pointed out to us. Sometimes there's nothing and they have to go on guess --- that's where the coordinator
helps." He sobered. "Looks like black magic, doesn't it? It does, even to me, sometimes, and I've been a
Dorsai for fourteen years."
I stared at the moving figures.
"You said --- three," I said.
"That's right," answered the Groupman. "There were three snipers. We've tracked them from the office in
the building they fired from, to here. This was their headquarters --- the place they moved from, to the
office, just before the killing. There's sign they were here a couple of days, at least, waiting."
"Waiting?" I asked. "How do you know there were three and they were waiting?"
"Lots of repetitive sign. Habitual actions. Signs of camping beds set up. Food signs for a number of
meals. Metal lubricant signs showing weapons had been disassembled and worked over here. Signs of a
portable, private phone --- they must have waited for a phone call from someone telling them the
Commander was on his way in from the encampment."
"But how do you know there were only three?"
"There's sign for only three," he said. "Three --- all big for your world, all under thirty. The biggest man had
black hair and a full beard. He was the one who hadn't changed clothes for a week --- " The Groupman
sniffed the air. "Smell him?"
I sniffed hard and long.
"I don't smell a thing," I said.
"Hmm," the Groupman looked grimly pleased. "Maybe those fourteen years have done me some good,
after all. The stink of him's in the air, all right. It's one of the things our Hunter Teams followed to this
place."
I looked aside at Lee Hall, then back at the soldier.
"You don't need my detectives at all, do you?" I said.
"No sir," he looked me in the face. "But we assume you'd want them to stay with us. That's all right."
"Yes." I said. And I left there. If my men were not needed, neither was I; and I had no time to stand
around being useless. There was still Padma to talk to.
But it was not easy to locate the Outbond. The Exotic Embassy either could not or would not tell me
where he was; and the Expedition Headquarters in Blauvain also claimed not to know. As a matter of
ordinary police work, my own department kept track of important outworlders like the Graeme brothers
and the Outbond, as they moved around our city. But in this case, there was no record of Padma ever
leaving the room in which I had last seen him with Ian Graeme, early in the day. I finally took my
determination in both hands and called Ian himself to ask if Padma was with him.
The answer was a blunt 'no'. That settled it. If Padma was with him, A Dorsai like Ian would have
refused to answer rather than lied outright. I gave up. I was lightheaded with fatigue and I told myself I
would go home, get at least a few hours sleep, and then try again.
So, with one of the professional soldiers in my police car to vouch for me at roadblocks, I returned to my
own dark apartment; and when, alone at last, I came into the living room and turned on the light, there
was Padma waiting for me in one of my own chair-floats.
The jar of finding him there was solid --- more like an emotional explosion than I would have thought. It
was like seeing a ghost in reality, the ghost of someone from whose funeral you have just returned. I
stood staring at him.
"Sorry to startle you, Tom," he said. "I know, you were going to have a drink and forget about everything
for a few hours. Why don't you have the drink, anyway?"
He nodded toward the bar built into a corner of the apartment living room. I never used the thing unless
there were guests on hand; but it was always stocked --- that was part of the maintenance agreement in
the lease. I went over and punched the buttons for a single brandy and water. I knew there was no use
offering Padma alcohol.
"How did you get in here?" I said, with back to him.
"I told your supervisor you were looking for me," Padma said. "He let me in. We Exotics aren't so
common on your world here that he didn't recognize me."
I swallowed half the glass at a gulp, carried the drink back, and sat down in a chair opposite him. The
background lighting in the apartment had gone on automatically when night darkened the windows. It was
a soft light, pouring from the corners of the ceiling and from little random apertures and niches in the
walls. Under it, in his blue robe, with this ageless face, Padma looked like the image of a buddah, beyond
all the human and ordinary storms of life.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. "I've been looking all over for you."
"That's why I'm here," Padma said. "The situation being what it is, you would want to appeal to me to
help you with it. So I wanted to see you away from any place where you might blame my refusal to help
on outside pressures."
"Refusal?" I said. It was probably my imagination; but the brandy and water I had swallowed seemed to
have gone to my head already. I felt light-minded and unreal. "You aren't even going to listen to me first
before saying no?"
"My hope," said Padma, "is that you'll listen to me, first, Tom, before rejecting what I've got to tell you.
You're thinking that I could bring pressure to bear on Ian Graeme to move his soldiers half a world away
from Blauvain, or otherwise take the situation out of its critical present phase. But the truth is I could not;
and even if I could, I would not."
"Would not," I echoed, muzzily.
"Yes. Would not. But not just because of personal choice. For four centuries now, Tom, we students of
the Exotic Sciences have been telling other men and women that our human race was committed to a
future, to the workings of history as it is. It's true we Exotics have a calculative technique now, called
ontogenetics, that helps us to resolve any present or predicted moment into its larger historical factors.
We've made no secret of having such techniques. But that doesn't mean we can control what will happen,
particularly while other men still tend to reject the very thing we work with --- the concept of a large,
shifting pattern of events that involves all of us and our lives."
"I'm a Catholic," I said. "I don't believe in predestination."
"Neither do we on Mara and Kultis," said Pad-ma. "But we do believe in a physics of human action and
interaction, which we believe works in a certain direction, toward a certain goal which we now think is
less than a hundred years off ---  if, in fact, we haven't already reached it. Movement toward that goal has
been building up for at least the last thousand years; and by now the momentum of its forces is massive.
No single individual or group of individuals at the present time have the mass to oppose or turn that
movement from its path. Only something greater than a human being as we know a human being might do
that."
"Sure," I said. The glass in my hand was empty. I did not remember drinking the rest of its contents; but
the alcohol was bringing me a certain easing of weariness and tension. I got up, went back to the bar, and
came back with a full glass, while Padma waited silently. "Sure, I understand. You think you've spotted a
historical trend here; and you don't want to interfere for fear of spoiling it A fancy excuse to do nothing."
"Not an excuse, Tom," Padma said; and there was something different, like a deep gong-note in his
voice, that blew the fumes of the brandy clear from my wits for a second and made me look at him. "I'm
not telling you I won't do anything about the situation. I'm telling you that I can't do anything about it.
Even if I tried to do something, it would be no use. It's not for you alone that the situation is too massive;
it's that way for everyone."
"How do you know if you don't try?" I said. "Let me see you try, and it not work Then maybe I'd believe
you."
"Tom," he said, "can you lift me out of this chair?"
I blinked at him. I am no Dorsai, as I think I have said, but I am large for my world, which meant in this
case that I was a head taller than Padma and perhaps a quarter again the weight. Also I was undoubtedly
younger; and I had worked all my life to stay in good physical condition. I could have lifted someone my
own weight out of that chair with no trouble, and Padma was less than that.
"Unless you're tied down," I said.
"I'm not." He stood up briefly, and then sat again. "Try and lift me, Tom."
I put my glass down, stepped over to his float and stood behind him. I wrapped my arms around his
body under his armpits, and lifted --- at first easily, then with all my strength.
But not only could I not lift him, I could not budge him. If he had been a lifesized statue of stone I would
have expected to feel more reaction and movement in response to my efforts.
I gave up finally, panting, and stood back from him.
"What do you weigh?" I demanded.
"No more than you think. Sit down again, Tom." I did. "Don't let it bother you. It's a trick, of course.
No, not a mechanical trick, a physiological one --- but a trick just the same, that's been shown on stage at
times, at least during the last four hundred years."
"Stand up," I said. "Let me try again."
He did. I did. He was still immovable.
"Now," he said, when I had given up a second time. "Try once more; and you'll find you can lift me."
I wiped my forehead, put my arms around him, and heaved upward with all my strength. I almost threw
him against the ceiling overhead. Numbly I set him down again.
"You see?" he said, reseating himself "Just as I knew you could not lift me until I let you, I know that
there is nothing I can do to alter present events here on St. Marie from their present direction. But you
can."
"I can?" I stared at him, then exploded. "Then for God's sake tell me how?"
He shook his head, slowly.
"I'm sorry, Tom," he said. "But that's just what I can't do. I only know that, resolved to ontogenetic
terms, the situation here shows you as a pivotal character. On you, as a point, the bundle of human forces
that were concentrated here and bent toward destruction by another such pivotal character, may be
redirected back into the general historical pattern with a minimum of harm. I tell you this so that being
aware of it, you can be watching for opportunities to redirect. That's all I can do."
Incredibly, with those words, he got up and went toward the door of the apartment.
"Hold on!" I said, and he stopped, turning back momentarily. "This other pivotal character. Who's he?"
Padma shook his head again.
"It would do you no good to know," he said. "I give you my word he is now far away from the situation
and will not be coming back to it He is not even on the planet."
"One of the assassins of Kensie!" I said. "And they've gotten away, off-planet!"
"No," said Padma. "No. The men who assassinated Kensie are only tools of events. If none of them had
existed, three others would have been there in their place. Forget this other pivotal character, Tom. He
was no more in charge of the situation he created than you are in charge of the situation here and now.
He was simply, like you, in a position that gave him freedom of choice. Good night."
With those last words, he was suddenly out the door and gone. To this day I cannot remember if he
moved particularly swiftly; or whether for some reason I now can't remember I simply let him go. Just-all
at once I was alone.
Fatigue rolled over me like the heavy waves of some ocean of mercury. I stumbled into the bedroom, fell
on my sleeping float, and that was all I remembered until --- only a second later, it seemed --- I woke to the
hammering of my telephone's chimes on my ears.
I reached out, fumbled at the bedside table and pushed the on button.
"Velt here," I said, thickly.
"Tom --- this is More. Tom? Is that you, Tom?"
I licked my lips, swallowed and spoke more understandably.
"It's me," I said. "What's the call for?"
"Where've you been?"
"Sleeping," I said. "What's the call for?"
"I've got to talk to you. Can you come --- "
"You come here," I said. "I've got to get up and dress and get some coffee in me before I go anyplace.
You can talk to me while I'm doing it."
I punched off. He was still saying something at the other end of the line but just then I did not care what it
was.
I pushed my dead-heavy body out of bed and began to move. I was dressed and at the coffee when he
came.
"Have a cup." I pushed it at him as he sat down at the porch table with me. He took it automatically.
"Tom --- " he said. The cup trembled in his hand as he lifted it and he sipped hastily from it before putting it
down again. "Tom, you were in the Blue Front once, weren't you?"
"Weren't we all?" I said. "Back when we and it were young together; and it was an idealistic outfit aimed
at putting some order and system into our world government?"
"Yes, yes of course," Moro said. "But what I mean is, if you were a member once, maybe you know
who to contact now --- "
I began to laugh. I laughed so hard I had to put my cup down to avoid spilling it.
"Moro, don't you know better than that?" I said. "If I knew who the present leaders of the Blue Front
were, they'd be in jail. The Blauvain police commissioner --- the head law enforcement man of our capital
city --- is the last man the Blue Front would be in touch with nowadays. They'd come to you, first. You
were a member once, too, back in college days, remember?"
"Yes," he said miserably. "But I don't know anything now, just as you're saying. I thought you might have
informers, or suspicions you couldn't prove, or-"
"None of them," I said. "All right. Why do you want to know who's running the Blue Front, now?"
"I thought I'd make an appeal to them, to give up the assassins of Kensie Graeme --- to save the Blauvain
people. Tom --- " he stared directly at me. "Just an hour ago the enlisted men of the mercenaries took a
vote on whether to demand their officers lead them on the city. They voted over ninety-four per cent, in
favor. And Pel . . .  Pel's finally mobilized his militia; but I don't think he means to help us. He's been trying
to get in to talk to Ian all day."
"All day?" I glanced at the time on my wrist unit. "4:25 --- it's not 4:25 pm, now?"
"Yes," said Moro, staring at me. "I thought you knew."
"I didn't mean to sleep like this!" I came out of the chair, moving toward the door. "Pel's trying to see
Ian? The sooner we get down and see him ourselves, the better."
So we went. But we were too late. By the time we got to Expedition Headquarters and past the junior
officers to the door of the office where Ian was, Pel was already with Ian. I brushed aside the Force
Leader barring our way and walked in, followed by Moro.
Pel was standing facing Ian, who sat at a desk surrounded by stacks of filmprints. He got to his feet as
Moro and I appeared.
"That'll be all right, Force-leader," he said to the officer behind us. "Tom, I'm glad you're here. Mr.
Mayor, though, if you don't mind waiting outside, I'll see you in a few minutes."
Moro had little choice but to go out again. The door shut behind him, Ian waved me to a chair beside
Pel, and sat down again himself.
"Go ahead, General," he said to Pel. "Repeat what you'd started to tell me, for the benefit of Tom, here."
Pel glanced savagely at me for a second out of the edge of his eyes before answering.
"This doesn't have anything to do with the Police Commissioner of Blauvain," he said, "or anyone else of
St. Marie."
"Repeat," said Ian again. He did not raise his voice. The word was simply an iron door dropped in Pel's
way, forcing him to turn back Pel glanced once more, grimly at me.
"I was just saying," he said, "if Commander Graeme would go to the encampment and speak to the
enlisted men there, he could probably get them to vote unanimously."
"Vote unanimously for what?" I asked.
"For a house-to-house search of the Blauvain area," Ian answered.
"The city's been cordoned," Pel said quickly. "A search like that would turn up the assassins in a matter
of hours, with the whole expeditionary force searching."
"Sure," I said, "and with the actual assassins, there'd be a few hundred suspected assassins, or people
who fought or ran for the wrong reason, killed or wounded by the searchers. Even if the Blue Front didn't
take advantage of the opportunity --- which they certainly would --- to start gunfights with the soldiers in the
city streets."
"What of it?" said Pel, talking to Ian rather than to me. "Your troops can handle any Blue Front people.
And you'd be doing St. Marie a favor to wipe them out."
"If the whole thing didn't develop into a wiping-out of the whole civilian population of the city," I said.
"You're implying, Tom," said Pel, "that the Exotic troops can't be controlled by --- "
Ian cut him short.
"Your suggestion, General," he said, "is the same one I've been getting from other quarters. Someone else
is here with it right now. I'll let you listen to the answer I give him."
He turned toward his desk annunciator.
"Send in Groupman Whallo," he said.
He straightened up and turned back to us as the door to his office opened and in came the mercenary
noncom I had brushed past out there. In the light, I saw it was the immigrant Dorsai of the Hunter Team I
had encountered --- the man who had been a Dorsai fourteen years.
"Sir!" he said, stopping a few steps before Ian and saluting. Uncovered himself, Ian did not return the
salute.
"You've got a message for me?" Ian said. "Go ahead. I want these gentlemen to hear it, and my answer."
"Yes sir," said Whallo. I could see him glance at and recognize me out of the corner of his eyes. "As
representative of the enlisted men of the Expedition, I have been sent to convey to you the results of our
latest vote on orders. By unanimous vote, the enlisted men of this command have concurred in the need
for a single operation."
"Which is?"
"That a house-to-house search of the Blauvain city area be made for the assassins of Reid Commander
Graeme," said Whallo. He nodded at lan's desk and for the first time I saw solidigraphs there-artists'
impressions, undoubtedly, but looking remarkably lifelike of three men in civilian clothes. "There's no
danger we won't recognize them when we find them."
Whallo's formal and artificial delivery was at odds with the way I had heard him speak when I had run
into him at the Hunter Team site. There was, it occurred to me suddenly, probably a military protocol
even to matters like this --- even to the matter of a man's death and the possible death of a city. It came as
a little shock to realize it and for the first time I began to feel something of what Padma had meant in
saying that the momentum of forces involved here was massive. For a second it was almost as if I could
feel those forces like great winds, blowing on the present moment. But Ian was already answering him.
"Any house-to-house search involves possible military errors and danger to the civilian population," he
was saying. "The military record of my brother is not to be marred after his death by any intemperate
order from me."
"Yes sir," said Whallo. "I'm sorry sir; but the en-listed men of the expedition had hoped that the action
would be ordered by you. Their decision calls for six hours in which you may consider the matter before
our Enlisted Men's Council takes the responsibility for the action upon itself. Meanwhile, the Hunter
Teams will be withdrawn --- this is part of the voted decision."
"That, too?" said Ian.
"I'm sorry, sir. But you know," said Whallo, "they've been at a dead end for some hours now. The trail
was lost in traffic; and the men might be anywhere in the central part of the city."
"Yes," said Ian. "Well, thank you for your message, Groupman."
"Sir!" said Whallo. He saluted again and went out.
As the door closed behind him, lan's head turned back to face Pel and myself
"You heard, gentlemen," he said. "Now, I've got work to do."
Pel and I left. In the corridor outside, Whallo was already gone and the young Force-Leader was absent.
Only Moro stood waiting for us. Pel turned on me, furiously.
"Who asked you to show up here?" he demanded.
"Moro," I answered. "And a good thing, too. Pel, what's got into you? You act as if you had some
personal axe to grind in seeing the Exotic mercenaries level Blauvain --- "
He spun away from me.
"Excuse me!" he snapped. "I've got things to do. I've got to phone my Headquarters."
Puzzled, I watched him take a couple of long strides away from me and out of the outer office.
Sud-denly, it was as if the winds of those massive forces I had felt for a moment just past in lan's office
had blown my head strangely clean, clear and empty, so that the slightest sound echoed with importance.
All at once, I was hearing the echo of Pel saying those identical words as Kensie was preparing to leave
the mercenary encampment for the non-existent victory dinner; and a half-recognized but long-held
suspicion in me flared into a raging certainty.
I took three long strides after him and caught him. I whirled him around and rammed him up against a
wall.
"It was you!" I said. "You called from the Encampment to the city just before we drove in. It was you
who told the assassins we were on the way and to move into position to snipe at our car. You're Blue
Front, Pel; and you set Kensie up to be murdered!"
My hands were on his throat and he could not have answered if he had wanted to. But he did not need
to. Then I heard the click of bootheels on the floor of the polished stone corridor flagging outside the
office, and let go of him, slipping my hand under my uniform jacket to my beltgun.
"Say a word," I whispered to him, "or try anything . . .  and I'll kill you before you can get the first syllable
out. You're coming along with us!"
The Force-leader entered. He glanced at the three of us curiously.
"Something I can do for you gentlemen?" he asked.
"No," I said, "No, we're just leaving."
With one arm through Pel's and the hand of my other arm under my jacket on the butt of my beltgun, we
went out as close as the old friends we had always been, Moro bringing up the rear. Out in the corridor,
with the office door behind us, Moro caught up with me on the opposite side from Pel.
"What are we going to do?" Moro whispered. Pel had still said nothing; but his eyes were like the black
shadows of meteor craters on the gray face of an airless moon.
"Take him downstairs and out to a locked room in the nearest police post," I said. "He's a walking stick
of high explosive if any of the mercenaries find out what he did. Someone of his rank involved in Kensie's
killing is all the excuse they need to run our streets red in the gutters."
We got Pel to a private back room in Post Ninety-six, a local police center less than three minutes drive
from the building where Ian had his office.
"But how can you be sure, he --- " Moro hesitated at putting it into words, once we were safe in the room.
He stood staring at Pel, who sat huddled in a chair, still without speaking.
"I'm sure," I said. "The Exotic, Padma-" I cut myself off as much as Moro had done. "Never mind. The
main thing is he's Blue Front, he's involved --- and what do we do about it?"
Pel stirred and spoke for the first time since I had almost strangled him. He looked up at Moro and
myself out of his grey-dead face.
"I did it for St. Marie!" he said, hoarsely. "But I didn't know they were going to kill him! I didn't know
that. They said it was just to be shooting around the car --- for an incident --- "
"You hear?" I jerked my head at Moro. "Do you want more proof than that?"
"What'll we do?" Moro was staring in fascinated horror at Pel.
"That was my question," I reminded him. He stood there looking hardly in better case than Pel. "But it
doesn't look like you're going to be much help in answering it." I laughed, but not happily. "Padma said
the choice was up to me."
"Who? What're you talking about? What choice?" asked Moro.
"Pel here --- " I nodded at him, "knows where the assassins are hiding."
"No," said Pel.
"Well, you know enough so that we can find them," I said. "It makes no difference. And outside of this
room, there's only two people on St. Marie we can trust with that information."
"You think I'd tell you anything?" Pel said. His face was still grey, but it had firmed up now. "Do you think
even if I knew anything I'd tell you? St. Marie needs a strong government to survive and only the Blue
Front can give it to her. I was ready to give my life for that, yesterday. I'm still willing. I won't tell you
anything --- and you can't make me. Not in six hours."
"What two people?" Moro asked me.
"Padma," I said, "and Ian."
"Ian!" said Pel. "You think he'll help you? He doesn't give a damn for St. Marie, either way. Did you
believe that talk of his about his brother's military record? He's got no feelings. It's his own military record
he's concerned with; and he doesn't care if the mercenaries tear Blauvain up by the roots, as long as it's
done over his own objection. He's just as happy as any of the other mercenaries with that vote. He's just
going to sit out his six hours and let things happen."
"And I suppose Padma doesn't care either?" Moro was beginning to sound a little ugly himself. "It was
the Exotics sent us help against the Friendlies in the first place!"
"Who knows what Exotics want?" Pel retorted. "They pretend to go about doing nothing but helping
other people, and never dirtying their hands with violence and so on; and somehow with all that they
keep on getting richer and more powerful all the time. Sure, trust Padma, why don't you? Trust Padma
and see what happens!"
Moro looked at me uncomfortably.
"What if he's right?" Moro said.
"What if he's right?" I snarled at him. "Moro, can't you see this is what St. Marie's trouble has always
been? Here's the troublemaker we always have around --- someone like Pel --- whispering that the devil's in
the chimney and you --- like the rest of our people always do --- starting to shake at the knees and wanting
to sell him the house at any price! Stay here both of you; and don't try to leave the room."
I went out, locking the door behind me. They were in one of a number of rooms set up behind the duty
officer's desk and I went up to the night sergeant on duty. He was a man I'd known back when I had
been in detective training on the Blauvain force, an old-line policeman named Jaker Reales.
"Jaker," I said, "I've got a couple of valuable items locked up in that back room. J hope to be back in an
hour or so to collect them; but if I don't, make sure they don't get out and nobody gets in to them, or
knows they're mere. I don't care what kind of noises may seem to come out of there, it's all in the
imagination of anyone who thinks he hears them, for twenty-four hours at least, if I don't come back"
"Got you, Tom," said Jaker. "Leave it up to me, sir."
"Thanks, Jaker," I said.
I went out and back to Expedition Headquarters. It had not occurred to me to wonder what Ian would
do now that his Hunter Teams had been taken from him. I found Expedition Headquarters now quietly
aswarm with officers --- officers who clearly were most of them Dorsai. No enlisted men were to be seen.
I was braced to argue my way into seeing Ian; but the men on duty surprised me. I had to wait only four
or five minutes outside the door of lan's private office before six Senior Commandants, Charley ap
Morgan among them, filed out.
"Good," said Charley, nodding as he saw me; and then went on without any further explanation of what
he meant. I had no time even to look after him. Ian was waiting.
I went in. Ian sat massively behind his desk, waiting for me, and waved me to a chair facing him as I
came in. I sat down. He was only a few feet from me, but again I had the feeling of a vast distance
separating us. Even here and now, under the soft lights of this nighttime office, he conveyed, more
strongly than any Dorsai I had ever seen, a sense of difference. Generations of men bred to war had
made him; and I could not warm to him as Pel and others had warmed to Kensie. Far from kindling any
affection in me, as he sat there, a cold wind like that off some icy and barren mountaintop seemed to
blow from him to me, chilling me. I could believe Pel, that Ian was all ice and no blood; and there was no
reason for me to do anything for him --- except that as a man whose brother had been killed, he deserved
-whatever help any other decent, law-abiding man could give him.
But I owed something to myself, too, and to the fact that we were not all villains, like Pel, on St. Marie.
"I've got something to tell you," I said. "It's about General Sinjin."
He nodded, slowly.
"I've been waiting for you to come to me with that," he said.
I stared at him.
"You knew about Pel?" I said.
"We knew someone from the St. Marie authorities had to be involved in what happened," he said.
"Normally, a Dorsai officer is alert to any potentially dangerous situation. But there was the false dinner
invitation; and then the matter of the assassins happening to be in just the right place at the right time, with
just the right weapons. Also, our Hunter Teams found clear evidence the encounter was no accident. As
I say, an officer like Field Commander Graeme is not ordinarily killed that easily."
It was odd to sit there and hear him speak Kensie's name that way. Title and name rang on my ears with
the strangeness one feels when somebody speaks of himself in the third person.
"But Pel?" I said.
"We didn't know it was General Sinjin who was involved" Ian said. "You identified him yourself by
coming to me about him just now."
"He's Blue Front," I said.
"Yes," said Ian, nodding.
"I've known him all my life," I said, carefully. "I
believe he's suffered some sort of nervous breakdown over the death of your brother. You know, he
admired your brother very much. But he's still the man I grew up with; and that man can't be easily made
to do something he doesn't want to do. Pel says he won't tell us anything that'll help us find the assassins;
and he doesn't think we can make him tell us inside of the six hours left before your soldiers move in to
search Blauvain. Knowing him, I'm afraid he's right."
I stopped talking. Ian sat where he was, behind the desk, looking at me, merely waiting.
"Don't you understand?" I said. "Pel can help us, but I don't know of any way to make him do it."
Still Ian said nothing.
"What do you want from me?" I almost shouted it at him, at last.
"Whatever," Ian said, "you have to give."
For a moment it seemed to me that there was something like a crack in the granite mountain that he
seemed to be. For a moment I could have sworn that I saw into him. But if this was true, the crack
closed up immediately, the minute I glimpsed it. He sat remote, icy, waiting, there behind his desk
"I've got nothing," I said, "unless you know of some way to make Pel talk"
"I have no way consistent with my brother's reputation as a Dorsai officer," said Ian, remotely.
"You're concerned with reputations?" I said. "I'm concerned with the people who'll die and be hurt in
Blauvain if your mercenaries come in to hunt door-to-door for those assassins. Which is more important,
the reputation of a dead man, or the lives of living ones?"
"The people are rightly your concern, Com-missioner," said Ian, still remotely, "the professional
reputation of Kensie Graeme is rightly mine."
"What will happen to that reputation if those troops move into Blauvain in less than six hours from now?"
I demanded.
"Something not good," Ian said. "That doesn't change my personal responsibilities. I can't do what I
shouldn't do and I must do what I ought to do."
I stood up.
"There's no answer to the situation, then," I said. Suddenly, the utter tiredness I had felt before was on
me again. I was tired of the fanatic Friendlies who had come out of another solar system to exercise a
purely theoretical claim to our revenues and world surface as an excuse to assault St. Marie. I was tired
of the Blue Front and people like Pel. I was tired of off-world people of all kinds, including Exotics and
Dorsais. I was tired, tired . . .  It came to me then that I could walk out. I could refuse to make the decision
that Padma had said I would make and the whole matter would be out of my hands. I told myself to do
that, to get up and walk out; but my feet did not budge. In picking on me, events had chosen the right
idiot as a pivot point. Like Ian, I could not do what I should not do, and I must do what I ought to do.
"All right," I said, "Padma might be able to do something with him."
"The Exotics," said Ian, "force nobody." But he stood up.
"Maybe I can talk him into it," I said, exhaustedly. "At least, I can try."
Once more, I would have had no idea where to find Padma in a hurry. But Ian located him in a research
enclosure, a carrel in the stacks of the Blauvain library; which like many libraries on all the eleven
inhabited worlds, had been Exotic-endowed. In the small space of the carrel Ian and I faced him; the two
of us standing, Padma seated in the serenity of his blue robe and unchanging facial expression. I told him
what we needed with Pel, and he shook his head.
"Tom," he said, "you must already know that we who study the Exotic sciences never force anyone or
anything. Not for moral reasons alone; but because using force would damage our ability to do the
sensitive work we've dedicated our lives to doing. "That's why we hire mercenaries to fight for us, and
Cetan lawyers to handle our off-world business contracts. I am the last person on this world to make Pel
talk"
"Don't you feel any responsibility to the innocent people of this city?" I said. "To the lives that will be lost
if he doesn't?"
"Emotionally, yes," Padma said, softly. "But there are practical limits to the responsibility of personal
inaction. If I were to concern myself with all possible pain consequent upon the least, single action of
mine, I would have to spend my life like a statue. I was not responsible for Kensie's death; and I am not
responsible for finding his killers. Without such a responsibility I can't violate the most basic prohibition of
my life's rules."
"You knew Kensie," I said. "Don't you owe anything to him? And don't you owe anything to the same St.
Marie people you sent an armed expedition to help?"
"We make it a point to give, rather than take," Padma said, "just to avoid debts like that which could
force us into doing what we shouldn't do. No, Tom.
The Exotics and I have no obligation to your people, or even to Kensie."
" --- And to the Dorsai?" asked Ian, behind me.
I had almost forgotten he was there, I had been concentrating so hard on Padma. Certainly, I had not
expected Ian to speak The sound of his deep voice was like a heavy bell tolling in the small room; and for
the first time Padma's face changed.
"The Dorsai . . . " he echoed. "Yes, the time is coming when there will be neither Exotics nor Dorsai, in the
end when the final development is achieved. But we Exotics have always counted on our work as a step
on the way to that end; and the Dorsai helped us up our step. Possibly, if things had gone otherwise, the
Dorsai might have never been; and we would still be where we are now. But things went as they have;
and our thread has been tangled with the Dorsai thread from the time your many-times removed
grandfather Cletus Grahame first freed all the younger worlds from the politics of Earth . . . "
He stood up.
"I'll force no one," he said. "But I will offer Pel my help to find peace with himself, if he can; and if he
finds such peace, then maybe he will want to tell you willingly what you want to know."
Padma, Ian and I went back to the police station where I had left Pel and Moro locked up. We let Moro
out, and closed the door upon the three of us with Pel. He sat in a chair, looking at us, pale, pinch-faced
and composed.
"So you brought the Exotic, did you, Tom?" he said to me. "What's it going to be? Some kind of
hypnosis?"
"No, Pel," said Padma softly, pacing across the room to him as Ian and I sat down to wait. "I would not
deal in hypnosis, particularly without the consent of the one to be hypnotized."
"Well, you sure as hell haven't got my consent!" said Pel.
Padma had reached him now and was standing over him. Pel looked up into the calm face above the blue
robe.
"But try it if you like." Pel said, "I don't hypnotize easily."
"No," said Padma. "I've said I would not hypnotize anyone; but in any case, neither you nor anyone else
can be hypnotized without his or her innate consent. All things between individuals are done by consent.
The prisoner consents to his captivity as the patient consents to his surgery --- the difference is only in
degree and pattern. The great, blind mass that is humanity in general is like an amoebic animal. It exists
by internal laws that cohere its body and its actions. Those internal laws are based upon conscious and
unconscious, mutual consents of its atoms --- ourselves  --- to work with each other and cooperate. Peace
and satisfaction come to each of us in proportion to our success in such cooperation, in the
forward-searching movement of the humanity-creature as a whole. Non-consent and noncooperation
work against the grain. Pain and self-hate result from friction when we fight against our natural desire to
cooperate . . . "
His voice went on. Gently but compellingly he said a great deal more, and I understood all at the time;
but beyond what I have quoted so far --- and those first few sentences stay printed-clear in my
memory --- I do not recall another specific word. I do not know to this day what happened. Perhaps I
half-dozed without realizing I was dozing. At any rate, time passed; and when I reached a point where
the memory record took up again, he was leaving and Pel had altered.
"I can talk to you some more, can't I?" Pel said as the Outbond rose to leave. Pel's voice had become
clear-toned and strangely young-sounding. "I don't mean now. I mean, there'll be other times?"
"I'm afraid not," Padma said. "Ill have to leave St. Marie shortly. My work takes me back to my own
world and then on to one of the Friendly planets to meet someone and wind up what began here. But you
don't need me to talk to. You created your own insights as we talked, and you can go on doing that by
yourself. Goodby, Pel."
"Goodby," said Pel. He watched Padma leave. When he looked at me again his face, like his voice, was
clear and younger than I had seen it in years. "Did you hear all that, Tom?"
"I think so . . . " I said; because already the memory was beginning to slip away from me. I could feel the
import of what Padma had said to Pel, but without being able to give it exact shape, it was as if I had
intercepted a message that had turned out to be not for me, and so my mental machinery had already
begun to cancel it out. I got up and went over to Pel. "You'll help us find those assassins, now?"
"Yes," he said. "Of course I will."
He was able to give us a list of five places that were possible hiding places for the three we hunted. He
provided exact directions for finding each one.
"Now," I said to Ian, when Pel was through, "we need those Hunter Teams of yours that were pulled off"
"We have Hunters," said Ian. "Those officers who are Dorsai are still with us; and there are Hunters
among them."
He stepped to the phone unit on the desk in the room and put a call in to Charley ap Morgan, at
Expeditionary Headquarters. When Charley answered, Ian gave him the five locations Pel had supplied
us.
"Now," he said to me as he turned away from the phone. "We'll go back to my office."
"I want to come," said Pel. Ian looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, without changing
expression.
"You can come," he said.
When we got back to the Expeditionary Headquarters building, the rooms and corridors there seemed
even more aswarm with officers. As Ian had said, they were mostly Dorsai. But I saw some among them
who might not have been. Apparently Ian commanded his own loyalty, or perhaps it was the Dorsai
concept that commanded its own loyalty to whoever was commanding officer. We went to his office;
and, sitting there, waited while the reports began to come in.
The first three locations to be checked out by the officer Hunter Teams drew blanks. The fourth showed
evidence of having been used within the last twenty-four hours, although it was empty now. The last
location to be checked also drew blank
The Hunter Teams concentrated on the fourth location and began to work outward from it, hoping to
cross sign of a trail away from it. I checked the clock figures on my wrist unit. It was now nearing one
a.m. in the morning, local time; and the six hour deadline of the enlisted mercenaries was due to expire in
forty-seven minutes. In the office where I waited with Ian, Pel, Charley ap Morgan, and another senior
Dorsai officer, the air was thick with the tension of waiting. Ian and the two other Dorsai sat still; even Pel
sat still. I was the one who fidgeted and paced, as the time continued to run out.
The phone on lan's desk flashed its visual signal light. Ian reached out to punch it on.
"Yes?" he said.
"Hunter Team Three," said a voice from the desk "We have clear sign and are following now. Suggest
you join us, sir."
"Thank you. Coming," said Ian.
We went, Ian, Charley, Pel and myself, in an Expedition Command Car. It was an eerie ride through the
patrolled and deserted streets of my city. lan's Hunter Team Three was ahead of us and led us to an
apartment hotel on the upper north side of the city, in the oldest section.
The building had been built of poured cement faced with Castlemane granite. Inside, the corridors were
old-fashionedly narrow and close-feeling, with dark, thick carpeting and metal Avails in imitation oak
woodgrain. The soundproofing was good, however. We mounted to the seventh story and moved down
the hall to suite number 415 without hearing any sound other than those we made, ourselves.
"Here," finally said the leader of the Hunter Team, a lean, gnarled Dorsai Senior Commandant in his late
fifties. He gestured to the door of 415. "All three of them."
"Ian," said Charley ap Morgan, glancing at his wrist unit. "The enlisted men start moving into the city in six
minutes. You could go meet them to say we've found the assassins. The others and I --- "
"No," said Ian. "We can't say we've found them until we see them and identify them positively." He
stepped up to one side of the door; and, reaching out an arm, touched the door annunciator stud.
There was no response. Above the door, the half-meter square annunciator screen stayed brown and
blank
Ian pressed the button again.
Again we waited, and there was no response.
Ian pressed the stud. Holding it down, so that his voice would go with the sound of its announcing chimes
to the ears of those within, he spoke.
"This is Commander Ian Graeme," he said. "Blauvain is now under martial law, and you are under arrest
in connection with the assassination of Field Commander Kensie Graeme. If necessary, we can cut our
way in to you. However, I'm concerned that Held Commander Graeme's reputation be kept free of
criticism in the matter of determining responsibility for his death. So I'm offering you the chance to come
out and surrender."
He released the stud and stopped talking. There was a long pause. Then a voice spoke from the
annunciator grille below the screen, although the screen itself remained blank
"Go to hell, Graeme," said the voice. "We got your brother; and if you try to blast your way in here, we'll
get you, too."
"My advice to you," said Ian --- his voice was cold, distant, and impersonal, as if this was something he
did every day, "is to surrender."
"You guarantee our safety if we do?"
"No," said Ian. "I only guarantee that I will see that Field Commander Graeme's reputation is not
adversely affected by the way you're handled."
There was no immediate answer from the screen. Behind Ian, Charley looked again at his wrist unit.
"They're playing for time," he said. "But why? What good will that do them?"
"They're fanatics," said Pel, softly. "Just as much fanatics as the Friendly soldiers were, only for the Blue
Front instead of for some puritan form of religion. Those three in there don't expect to get out of this
alive. They're only trying to set a higher price on their own deaths --- get something more for their dying."
Charley ap Morgan's wrist unit chimed.
"Time's up," he said to Ian. "The enlisted men are moving into the suburbs of Blauvain now, to begin their
search."
Ian reached out and pushed the annunciator stud again, holding it down as he spoke to the men inside.
"Are you coming out?"
"Why should we?" answered the voice that had spoken the first time. "Give us a reason."
"I'll come in and talk to you if you like," said Ian.
"No --- " began Pel out loud. I gripped his arm, and he turned on me, whispering. "Torn, tell him not to go
in! That's what they want."
"Stay here," I said.
I pushed forward until Charley ap Morgan put out an arm to stop me. I spoke across that arm to Ian.
"Ian," I said, in a voice safely low enough so that the door annunciator would not pick it up. "Pel says --- "
"Maybe that's a good idea," said the voice from the annunciator. "That's right, why don't you come on in,
Graeme? Leave your weapons outside."
"Tom," said Ian, without looking either at me or Charley ap Morgan, "Stay back Keep him back,
Charley."
"Yes sir," said Charley. He looked into my face, eye to eye with me. "Stay out of this, Tom. Backup."
Ian stepped forward to stand square in front of the door, where a beam coming through it could go
through him as well. He was taking off his sidearm as he went. He dropped it to the floor, in full sight of
the screen, through the blankness of which those inside would be looking out.
"I'm unarmed," he said.
"Of that sidepiece, you are," said the annunciator. "Do you think we're going to take your word for the
rest of you? Strip."
Without hesitation, Ian unsealed his uniform jacket and began to take off his clothes. In a moment or two,
he stood naked in the hallway, but if the men in the suite had thought to gain some sort of moral
advantage over him because of that, they were disappointed.
Stripped, he looked --- like an athlete --- larger and more impressive than he had, clothed. He towered
over us all in the hall, even over the other Dorsai there; and with his darkly tanned skin under the lights he
seemed like a massive figure carved in oak
"I'm waiting," he said, after a moment, calmly.
"All right," said the voice from the annunciator. "Come on in."
He moved forward. The door unlatched and slid aside before him. He passed through and it closed
behind him. For a moment we were left with no sound or word from him or the suite; then, unexpectedly,
the screen lit up. We found ourselves looking over and past lan's bare shoulders at a room in which three
men, each armed with a rifle and a pair of side-arms, sat facing him. They gave no sign of knowing that
he had turned on the annunciator screen, the controls of which would be hidden behind him, now that he
stood inside the door, facing the room.
The center one of the three seated men laughed. He was the big, black-bearded man I had found vaguely
familiar when I saw the solidigraphs of the three of them in lan's office; and I recognized him now. He
was a professional wrestler. He had been arraigned on assault charges four years ago, but lack of
testimony against him had caused the charges to be dismissed. He was not as tall as Ian, but much
heavier of body; and it was his voice we had been hearing, because now we heard it again as his lips
moved on the screen.
"Well, well, Commander," he said. "Just what we needed --- a visit from you. Now we can rack up a
score of two Dorsai Commanders before your soldiers carry what's left of us off to the morgue; and St.
Marie can see that even you people can be handled by the Blue Front"
We could not see lan's face; but he said nothing and apparently his lack of reaction was irritating to the
big assassin, because he dropped his cheerful tone and leaned forward in his chair.
"Don't you understand, Graeme?" he said. "We've lived and died for the Blue Front, all three of us --- for
the one political parry with the strength and guts to save our world. We're dead men no matter what we
do. Did you think we don't know that? You think we don't know what would happen to us if we were
idiots enough to surrender the way you said? Your men would tear us apart; and if there was anything left
of us after that, the government's law would try us and then shoot us. We only let you in here so that we
could lay you out like your twin brother, before we were laid out ourselves. Don't you follow me, man?
You walked into our hands here like a fly into a trap, never realizing."
"I realized," said Ian.
The big man scowled at him and the muzzle of the heat rifle he held in one thick hand, came up.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Whatever you think you've got up your sleeve isn't going to save
you. Why would you come in here, knowing what we'd do?"
"The Dorsai are professional soldiers," said lan's voice, calmly. "We live and survive by our reputation.
Without that reputation none of us could earn our living. And the reputation of the Dorsai in general is the
sum of the reputations of its individual men and women. So Field Commander Kensie Graeme's
professional reputation is a thing of value, to be guarded even after his death. I came in for that reason."
The big man's eyes narrowed. He was doing all the talking and his two companions seemed content to
leave it that way.
"A reputation's worth dying for?" he said.
"I've been ready to die for mine for eighteen years," said lan's voice, quietly. "Today's no different than
yesterday."
"And you came in here --- " the big man's voice broke off on a snort. "I don't believe it. Watch him, you
two!"
"Believe or not," said Ian. "I came in here, just as I told you, to see that the professional reputation of
Held Commander Graeme was protected from events which might tarnish it. You'll notice --- " his head
moved slightly as if indicating something behind him and out of our sight, "I've turned on your annunciator
screen, so that outside the door they can see what's going on in here."
The eyes of the three men jerked upwards to stare at the screen inside the suite, somewhere over lan's
head. There was a blur of motion that was lan's tanned body flying through the air, a sound of something
smashing and the screen went blank again.
We outside were left blind once more, standing in the hallway, staring at the unresponsive screen and
door. Pel, who had stepped up next to me, moved toward the door itself
"Stay!" snapped Charley.
The single sharp tone was like a command given to some domestic beast. Pel flinched at the tone, but
stopped --- and in that moment the door before us disintegrated to the roar of an explosion in the room.
"Come on!" I yelled, and flung myself through the now-open doorway.
It was like diving into a centrifuge filled with whirling bodies. I ducked to avoid the flying form of one of
the men I had seen in the screen, but his leg slammed my head, and I went reeling, half-dazed and
disoriented, into the very heart of the tumult. It was all a blur of action. I had a scrambled impression of
explosions, of fire-beams lancing around me --- and somehow in the midst of it all, the towering, brown
body of Ian moving with the certainty and deadliness of a panther. All those he touched went down; and
all who went down, stayed down.
Then it was over. I steadied myself with one hand against a half-burned wall and realized that only Ian
and myself were on our feet in that room. Not one of the other Dorsai had followed me in. On the floor,
the three assassins lay still. One had his neck broken. Across the room a second man lay obviously dead,
but with no obvious sign of the damage that had ended his life. The big man, the ex-wrestler, had the right
side of his forehead crushed in, as if by a club.
Looking up from the three bodies, I saw I was now alone in the room. I turned back into the corridor,
and found there only Pel and Charley. Ian and the other Dorsai were already gone.
"Where's Ian?" I asked Charley. My voice came out thickly, like the voice of a slightly drunken man.
"Leave him alone," said Charley. "You don't need him, now. Those are the assassins there; and the
enlisted men have already been notified and pulled back from their search of Blauvain. What more is
needed?"
I pulled myself together; and remembered I was a policeman.
"I've got to know exactly what happened," I said. "I've got to know if it was self-defense, or . . . "
The words died on my tongue. To accuse a naked man of anything else in the death of three heavily
armed individuals who had threatened his life, as I had just heard them do over the annunciator, was
ridiculous.
"No," said Charley. "This was done during a period of martial law in Blauvain. Your office will receive a
report from our command about it; but actually it's not even something within your authority."
Some of the tension that had been in him earlier seemed to leak out of him, then. He half-smiled and
became more like the friendly officer I had known before Kensie's death.
"But that martial law is about to be withdrawn," he said. "Maybe you'll want to get on the phone and start
getting your own people out here to tidy up the details."
And he stood aside to let me go.
One day later, and the professional soldiers of the Exotic Expeditionary Force showed their affection for
Kensie in a different fashion.
His body had been laid in state for a public review in the open, main floor lobby of the Blauvain City
Government building. Beginning in the grey dawn and through the cloudless day --- the sort of hard, bright
day that seems impatient with those who will not bury their dead and get on to further things  --- the
mercenaries filed past the casket holding Kensie, visible at foil length in dress uniform under the
transparent cover. Each one as he passed touched the casket lightly with his fingertips, or said a word to
the dead man, or both. There were over ten thousand soldiers passing, one at a time. They were
unarmed, in field uniforms and their line seemed endless.
But that was not the end of it. The civilians of Blauvain had formed along either side of the street down
which the line of troops wound on its way to the place where Kensie lay waiting for them. The civilians
had formed in the face of strict police orders against doing any such thing; and my men could not drive
them away. The situation could not have offered a better opportunity for the Blue Front to cause trouble.
One heat grenade tossed into that line of slowly moving, unarmed soldiers, for example . . .  But nothing
happened.
By the time noon came and went without incident, I was ready to make a guess why not. It was because
there was something in the mood of the civilian crowd itself that forbade terrorism, here and now. Any
Blue Front activists trying such a thing would have been smothered by the very civilians around them in
whose name they were doing it.
Something of awe and pity, and almost of envy, seemed to be stirring the souls of the Blauvain people;
those same people of mine who had huddled in their houses twenty hours before, in undiluted fear of the
very men now lined up before them and moving slowly to the City Government building. Once more, as I
stood on a balcony above the lobby holding the casket, I felt those winds of vast movement I had sensed
first for a moment in lan's office, the winds of those forces of which Padma had spoken to me. The
Blauvain people were different today and showed the difference. Kensie's death had changed them.
Then, something more happened. As the last of the soldiers passed, Blauvain civilians began to fall in
behind them, extending the line. By mid-afternoon, the last soldier had gone by and the first figure in
civilian clothes passed the casket, neither touching it nor speaking to it, but pausing to look with an
unusual, almost shy curiosity upon the face of the body inside, in the name of which so much might have
happened.
Already, behind that one man, the line of civilians was half again as long as the line of soldiers had been.
It was nearly midnight, long past the time when it had been planned to shut the gates of the lobby, when
the last of the civilians had gone and the casket could be transferred to a room at Expeditionary
Headquarters from which it would be shipped back to the Dorsai. This business of shipping a body home
happened seldom, even in the case of mercenaries of the highest rank; but there had never been any
doubt that it would happen in the case of Kensie. The enlisted men and officers of his command had
contributed the extra funds necessary for the shipment. Ian, when his time came, would undoubtedly
be buried in the earth of whatever world on which he fell. Only if he happened to be at home when the
time came, would that earth be soil of the Dorsai. But Kensie had been --- Kensie.
"Do you know what's been suggested to me?" asked Moro, as he, Pel and I, along with several of the
Expedition's senior officers --- Charley ap Morgan among them --- stood watching Kensie's casket being
brought into the room at Expedition HQ, "There's a proposal to get the city government to put up a
statue of him, here in Blauvain. A statue of Kensie."
Neither Pel nor I answered. We stood watching the placing of the casket. For all its massive appearance,
four men handled it and the body within easily. The apparently thick metal of its sides were actually
hollow to reduce shipping weight. The soldiers settled it, took off the transparent weather cover and
carried it out. The body of Kensie lay alone, uncovered; the profile of his face, seen from where we
stood, quiet and still against the light pink cloth of the casket's lining. The senior officers who were with us
and who had not been in the line of soldiers filing through the lobby, now began to go into the room, one
at a time to stand for a second at the casket before coming out again.
"It's what we never had on St. Marie," said Pel, after a long moment. He was a different man since
Padma had talked to him. "A leader. Someone to love and follow. Now that our people have seen there
is such a thing, they want something like it for themselves."
He looked up at Charley ap Morgan, who was just coming back out of the room.
"You Dorsai changed us," Pel said.
"Did we?" said Charley, stopping. "How do you feel about Ian now, Pel?"
"Ian?" Pel frowned. "We're talking about Kensie. lan's just . . . what he always was."
"What you all never understood," said Charley, looking from one to the other of us.
"lan's a good man," said Pel. "I don't argue with that. But there'll never be another Kensie."
"There'll never be another Ian," said Charley. "He and Kensie made up one person. That's what none of
you ever understood. Now half of Ian is gone, into the grave."
Pel shook his head slowly.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't believe that. I can't believe Ian ever needed anyone --- even Kensie. He's
never risked anything, so how could he lose anything? After Kensie's death he did nothing but sit on his
spine here insisting that he couldn't risk Kensie's reputation by doing anything --- until events forced his
hand. That's not the action of a man who's lost the better half of himself"
"I didn't say better half," said Charley, "I only said half --- and just half is enough. Stop and try to feel for a
moment what it would be like. Stop for a second and feel how it would be if you -were amputated down
the middle --- if the life that was closest to you was wrenched away, shot down in the street by a handful
of self-deluded, crackpot revolutionaries from a world you'd come to rescue. Suppose it was like that for
you, how would you feel?"
Pel had gone a little pale as Charley talked. When he answered his voice had a slight echo of the
difference and youngness it had had after Padma had talked to him.
"I guess . . . " he said very slowly, and ran off into silence.
"Yes?" said Charley. "Now you're beginning to understand, to feel as Ian feels. Suppose you feel like this
and just outside the city where the assassins of your brother are hiding there are six battalions of
seasoned soldiers who can turn that same city --- who can hardly be held back from turning that city --- into
another Rochmont, at one word from you. Tell me, is it easy, or is it hard, not to say that one word that
will turn them loose?"
"It would be . . . " The words seemed dragged from Pel, "hard . . . "
"Yes," said Charley, grimly, "as it was hard for Ian."
"Then why did he do it?" demanded Pel.
"He told you why," said Charley. "He did it to protect his brother's military reputation, so that not even
after his death should Kensie Graeme's name be an excuse for anything but the highest and best of
military conduct."
"But Kensie was dead. He couldn't hurt his own reputation!"
"His troops could," said Charley. "His troops wanted someone to pay for Kensie's death. They wanted
to leave a monument to Kensie and their grief for him, as long-lasting a monument as Rochmont has been
to Jacques Chretian. There was only one way to satisfy them, and that was if Ian himself acted for
them --- as their agent --- in dealing with the assassins. Because nobody could deny that Kensie's brother
had the greatest right of all to represent all those who had lost with Kensie's death."
"You're talking about the fact that Ian killed the men, personally," said Moro. "But there was no way he
could know he'd come face to face --- "
He stopped, halted by the thin, faint smile on Charley's face.
"Ian was our Battle Op, our strategist," said Charley. "Just as Kensie was Field Commander, our
tactician. Do you think that a strategist of lan's ability couldn't lay a plan that would bring him face to face,
alone, with the assassins once they were located?"
"What if they hadn't been located?" I asked. "What if I hadn't found out about Pel, and Pel hadn't told us
what he knew?"
Charley shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "Somehow Ian must have known this way would work --- or he would have done
it differently. For some reason he counted on help from you, Tom."
"Me!" I said. "What makes you say that?"
"He told me so." Charley looked at me strangely. "You know, many people thought that because they
didn't understand Ian, that Ian didn't understand them. Actually, he understands other people unusually
well. I think he saw something in you, Tom, he could rely on. And he was right, wasn't he?"
Once more, the winds I had felt --- of the forces of which Padma had spoken, blew through me, chilling
and enlightening me. Ian had felt those winds as well as I had --- and understood them better. I could see
the inevitability of it now. There had been only one pull on the many threads entangled in the fabric of
events here; and that pull had been through me to Ian.
"When he went to that suite where the assassins were holed up," said Charley, "he intended to go in to
them alone, and unarmed. And when he killed them with his bare hands, he did what every man in the
Expeditionary force wanted to do. So, when that was done, the anger of the troops was
lightning-rodded. Through Ian, they all had their revenge; and then they were free. Free just to mourn for
Kensie as they're doing today. So Blauvain escaped; and the Dorsai reputation has escaped stain, and
the state of affairs between the inhabited worlds hasn't been upset by an incident here on St. Marie that
could make enemies out of worlds, like the Exotic and the Dorsai, and St. Marie, who should all be
friends."
He stopped talking. It had been a long speech for Charley; and none of us could think of anything to say.
The last of the senior officers, all except Ian, had gone past us now, in and out of the room, and the
casket was alone. Then Pel spoke.
"I'm sorry," he said, and he sounded sorry. "But even if what you say is all true, it only proves what I
always said about Ian. Kensie had two mens' feelings, but Ian hasn't any. He's ice and water with no
blood in him. He couldn't bleed if he wanted to. Don't tell me any man torn apart emotionally by his twin
brother's death could sit down and plan to handle a situation so cold-bloodedly and efficiently."
"People don't always bleed on the outside where you can see --- " Charley broke off, turning his head.
We looked where he was looking, down the corridor behind us, and saw Ian coming, tall and alone. He
strode up to us, nodded briefly at us, and went past into the room. We saw him walk to the side of the
casket.
He did not speak to Kensie, or touch the casket gently as the soldiers passing through the lobby had
done. Instead he closed his big hands, those hands that had killed three armed men, almost casually on
the edge of it, and looked down into the face of his dead brother.
Twin face gazed to twin face, the living and the dead. Under the lights of the room, with the motionless
towering figure of Ian, it was as if both were living, or both were dead --- so little difference there was to
be seen between them. Only, Kensie's eyes were closed and lan's opened; Kensie' slept while Ian
waked. And the oneness of the two of them was so solid and evident a thing, there in that room, that it
stopped the breath in my chest.
For perhaps a minute or two Ian stood without moving. His face did not change. Then he lifted his gaze,
let go of the casket and turned about. He came walking toward us, out of the room, his hands at his
sides, the fingers curled into his palms.
"Gentlemen," he said, nodding to us as he passed, and went down the corridor until a turn in it took him
out of sight.
Charley left us and went softly back into the room. He stood a moment there, then turned and called to
us.
"Pel," he said, "come here."
Pel came; and the rest of us after him.
"I told you," Charley said to Pel, "some people don't bleed on the outside where you can see it."
He moved away from the casket and we looked at it. On its edge were the two areas where Ian had laid
hold of it with his hands while he stood looking down at his dead brother. There was no mistaking the
places, for at both of them, the hollow metal side had been bent in on itself and crushed with the strength
of a grip that was hard to imagine. Below the crushed areas, the cloth lining of the casket was also
crumpled and rent; and where each fingertip had pressed, the fabric was torn and marked with a dark
stain of blood.