LITMIR.BIZ

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of his loaded sap, and kicked the body out of the way.

      He said, "Wonder how they got so close, so fast?"

      "Some trick." Randl laughed suddenly. "Funny their wanting the Ship as much as you and I do."

      "Think they could know what’s in it?"

      Randl’s narrow shoulders twitched. "Near as we know, their legend is the same as ours. Something holy in the Ship, sacred and tabu. Only difference is they want to get it for themselves, and we want to keep it." He coughed and spat in sudden angry disgust. "And we’ve swallowed that stuff. We’ve let the Officers hoard heat and food so they can live no matter what happens to us. We’re fools, Wes! A lot of bloody fools!"

      He got up and began jabbing with his spear at heads that poked up over the wall.

      *

      The Piruts began to slack off. Stones still whistled past Kirk’s head—a couple of them had grazed him by now—and spears showered down, but they weren’t climbing the walls any more.

      Randl grounded his spear, gasping. "That’s that. Pretty soon they’ll break, and then we can start thinking about...."

      He stopped. Kirk put a stone accurately through the back of a Pirut’s head and said grimly:

      "Yeah. About what we’re going to do."

      Randl didn’t answer. He sat down suddenly, doubled over. Kirk grinned. "Take it easy," he said softly. "I’ll cover you."

      Randl whispered, "Wes. Wes!" He held up one thin hand. Kirk let his own drop, looking at it. There was blood on it, running clear to the elbow.

      He went down beside Randl, putting his arms around him, trying to see. Randl shook him off.

      "Don’t move me, you fool! Just listen." His voice was harsh and rapid. He was holding both hands over the left side of his neck, where it joined the shoulder. Kirk could see the bright blood beating up through his fingers.

      He said, "Jakk, I’ll get the sawbones...."

      Hot black eyes turned to his. Burnt-out fires in a face with the young beard hardly full on its sharp jaw.

      "Sit down, Wes, quick, and listen. Sawbones is no good—and why would I want to go on living anyway?"

      He smiled. Kirk had never seen him smile like that, without bitterness or pain. He sat down, crouched on the body of a man who lived only two huts away from him. The blood made little red fountains between Randl’s fingers.

      "It’s up to you, Wes. You’re the only one that really knows about the Ship. You’ll do better than I would, anyhow. You’re a fighter. You carry it on, so the Hans can live. Promise."

      Kirk nodded. He couldn’t say anything. The heat was dying in Randl’s eyes.

      "Listen, Wes. I saw the secret way into Ship. Bend closer, and listen...."

      Kirk bent. He didn’t move for a long time. After a while Randl’s voice stopped, and then the blood wasn’t pumping any more, just oozing. Randl’s hands slid away, so that Kirk could see the hole the stone had made. Everything seemed to be very quiet.

      Kirk sat there, holding Randl in his arms.

      Presently someone came up and shook Kirk’s shoulder and said, "Hey, kid, are you deaf? We been yelling for you." He stopped, and then said more gently, "Oh. Jakk got it, did he?"

      Kirk laid the body carefully on the stones and got up. "Yeah."

      "Kind of a pal of yours, wasn’t he?"

      "He wasn’t very strong. He needed someone to cover him."

      "Too bad." The man shook his head, and then shrugged. "Maybe it’s better, at that. He was headed for trouble, that one. Kinda leading you that way, too, I heard. Always talking."

      He looked at Kirk’s face and shut up suddenly. He turned away and grunted over his shoulders, "The O.D.’s looking for you."

      Kirk followed. The wind was cold, howling up from the outer gullies.

      *

      The Officer of the Day was waiting at the north end of the wall. There was a ladder dropped over it now, and men were climbing up and down with bodies and sheaves of recovered spears. More were busy down below, rolling the dead Piruts and the shags down into the deep gullies for the scavenger rats and the living shags who didn’t mind turning cannibal.

      That ladder made Kirk think of Pa. It was the only way for a man to get into the outer gullies from the west escarpment of the colony. He shook some of the queer heaviness out of his head, touched his forelock and said:

      "I’m Wes Kirk, sir. You wanted me?"

      "Yes." The O.D. was also the Third Officer. Taller than Kirk, thinner, with the hair going grey on his body and exhausted eyes sunk deep under his horny overlids. He said quietly:

      "I’m sorry to have to tell you this...."

      Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a spear-stab where there was no spear.

      He said, "Pa."

      The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn’t look at Kirk. He hadn’t, after the first glance.

      "Your father, and his two friends."

      Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. "I wish I’d known," he whispered. "I’d have killed more of them."

      The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at them as if they were strange things and no part of him.

      "Kirk," he said, "this is going to be hard to explain. I’ve never done anything as hard. The Piruts didn’t kill them. They were responsible, but they didn’t actually kill them."

      Wes raised his head slowly. "I don’t understand."

      "We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them, but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn’t your father, called to us to put the ladder down. We waited...."

      A muscle began to twitch under Kirk’s eye. That, too, was something that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely:

      "I don’t understand."

      The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat it slowly on the wall, up and down.

      "I didn’t want to give the order. God knows I didn’t want to! But there was nothing else to do."

      A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over his shoulder, and breathing hard.

      "Here’s Kirk," he said. "Where’ll I put him?"

      There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. "Over there, Charley. I’ll help."

      It was hard to move. He’d never been tired like this before. He’d never been afraid like this, either. He didn’t know what he was afraid of. Something in the Officer’s voice.

      He helped to lay his father down. He’d seen bodies before. He’d handled them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he’d known so long, one he’d eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn’t believe it.

      You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the heart....

      You saw it....

      "That’s one of our spears!" He screamed it, like a woman. "One of our own—from the front!"

      "I let them get as close as I dared," said the Officer tonelessly. "I tried to find a way. But there wasn’t any way but the ladder, and that was what the Piruts wanted. That’s why they made them come."

      Kirk’s voice wasn’t a voice at all. "You

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