on the plain. We held our fire too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to understand! I had to do it."
Kirk’s spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.
"Please try to understand," whispered the Officer. "I had to do it."
The Officer, the bloody wall, the stars and the cold grey gullies all went away. There was nothing but darkness, and wind, a long way off. Kirk thought of Pa coming up under the wall, close to safety, close enough to touch it, and no way through. Pa and Frank and Russ, standing under the wall, looking up, and no way through.
Looking up, calling to the men they knew, asking for help and getting a spear through the heart.
After that, even the wind was gone, and the darkness had turned red.
*
There was a voice, a long way off. It said, "God, he’s strong!" Over and over. It got louder. There were weights on his arms and legs, and he couldn’t throw them off. He was pressed against something.
It was the wall. He saw that after a while. The wall where the Officer had been standing. There were six men holding him, three on each side. The Officer was gone.
Kirk relaxed. He was shivering and covered with rime from body sweat. Somebody whistled.
"Six men! Didn’t know the kid had it in him."
The Officer’s voice said dully, "No discipline. Better take him home."
Kirk tried to turn. The six men swung with him. Kirk said, "You better discipline me. You better kill me, because, if you don’t, I’ll kill you."
"I don’t blame you, boy. Go and rest. You’ll understand."
"I’ll understand, all right." Kirk’s voice was a hoarse, harsh whisper that came out by itself and wouldn’t be stopped. "I’ll understand about Pa, and the Ship with the heat-stones in it, and the Captain’s yellow daughter getting fat and warm while my sisters freeze and go hungry. I’ll understand, and I’ll make everybody else understand, too!"
The Officer’s eyes held a quick fire. "Boy! Do you know what you’re saying?"
"You bet I know!"
"That’s mutiny. For God’s sake, don’t make things worse!"
"Worse for us, or for you?" Kirk was shouting, holding his head up in the wind. "Listen, you men! Do you know what the Officers are doing up there in the Ship they won’t let us touch?"
There was an uneasy stirring among the Hans, a slipping aside of luminous black eyes. The Officer shut his jaw tight. He stepped in close to Kirk.
"Shut up," he said urgently. "Don’t make me punish you, not now. You’re talking rot, but it’s dangerous."
Kirk’s eyes were hot and not quite sane. He couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to.
"Rot, is it? Jakk Randl knew. He saw with his own eyes and he told me while he was dying. The Captain’s yellow daughter, sneaking heat-stones into...."
The Officer hit him on the jaw, carefully and without heat. Kirk sagged down. The Officer stepped back, looking as though he had a pain in him that he didn’t want to show.
He said quietly, but so that everyone could hear him, "Discipline, for not longer than it takes to clear the rock below."
Two of the men nodded and took Kirk away down a flight of stone steps. One of the four who were left looked over the wall and spat.
"Rock’s pretty near clean," he said, "but even so...." He shook himself like a dog. "That Jakk Randl, he was always talking."
One of the others flicked a quick look around and whispered, "Yeah. And maybe he knew what he was talking about!"
*
The little stone room was cold and quiet. It was dark, too, but the sucking-plant carried its own light. Kirk lay on his back watching the cool green fire pulse on his chest and belly. It looked cool, but underneath the sprawling tentacles of it he was burning with the pain of little needles that bit and sucked.
He was spreadeagled with leather thongs. He made no sound. The sweat ran into his eyes and the blood went out of his body into the hungry plant, drop by drop.
Somebody came in, somebody too quick and light to be a fighting man. Kirk let his pupils spread. First a slim tall shape moving, a kilt of little skins swirling beneath the shimmering sinthi-mesh overall suit. Small sharp breasts and a heavy mane of hair caught back.
Then color. Yellow. Yellow like the Sunstar, from head to foot. Kirk’s jaw shut and knotted.
The sucking-plant was ripped away very deftly by its upper fronds and thrown into a corner. Kirk went rigid, but he didn’t make a sound. The yellow girl took a knife from her belt sheath and slashed him free with four quick strokes.
Kirk didn’t move.
"Well," she said. "Aren’t you going to get up?"
He could see her eyes, great black shining things. "What did you come here for?"
"They told me about you. I said I thought it was criminal to discipline you when you didn’t know what you were doing. So I came down to see what I could do about it."
She always came with the other women after a raid, to help the wounded. Kirk looked at her stonily.
"You must have just missed my speech."
"They told me about it. Whatever made you say things like that?"
"Aren’t they true?"
"No!"
Kirk laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. "You could have saved yourself the trouble. This isn’t going to make me believe you."
The girl tossed her thick hair back impatiently. "You’re acting like a child." She was no older than Kirk. "We’re all terribly sorry about your father," she went on gravely, "but that doesn’t give you the right...."
"I have the right to tell the truth."
"But you’re not telling the truth!" She was down on her knees now, beside him. "I don’t know what this Jakk Randl saw, or whether he saw anything, but...."
Kirk said slowly, "Jakk’s dead. He was my friend, and he didn’t lie."
"Perhaps not. But he was mistaken."
"He saw you, taking heat-stones into the Ship."
"But only a very few! We’re not hoarding them. We wouldn’t!"
"Then what do you use them for?"
"I can’t tell you that. And it doesn’t matter anyway."
Kirk laughed again. He got up, stiffly because of the raw places drawing across the front of him. His hair was gone in a sprawling pattern, eaten off by digestive acids. He said:
"You’ll have to do better than that."
She was angry, now, and perhaps a little scared. He enjoyed making her angry and scared. He enjoyed the thick hot feeling of power it gave him.
She asked, "Then you won’t believe, and you won’t stop talking?"
"I made a promise to go on talking. And I believe in what I’m doing."
"You know what that will mean." He could hear the quiver and the breathing of her. "People may be hurt, your own people. We don’t want trouble. We can’t afford trouble, with the Piruts getting stronger. It’ll mean you’ll be punished, maybe even—killed."
That gave him a cold twinge for a moment. Then he thought of Jakk and shrugged.
"It doesn’t matter," he said, and started out.
The Third Officer came in. There were five men with him, and one of them was the Captain, wearing the gun of authority.