Busby turned impatiently. "I'm busy."

"Just a single moment-please!"

"Well, speak up."

"Just this-where can I go to enlist?" Busby frowned; Don raced ahead with explanation, insisting that he had been trying to join -up when the attack came.

"If you meant to enlist, I should think you would have done so long ago. Anyway, by your own story you've lived a major portion of your life on Earth. You're not one of us."

"Yes, I am!''"

"I think you're a kid with your head stuffed with romantic notions. You're not old enough to vote."

"I'm old enough to fight."

"What can you do?"

"Uh, well, I'm a pretty good shot, with a hand gun anyway."

"What else?"

Don thought rapidly; it had not occurred to him that soldiers were expected to have anything more than willingness. Ride horseback? It meant nothing here. "Uh, I talk `true speech'-fairly well."

"That's useful-we need men who can palaver with the dragons. What else?"

Don thought about the fact that he had been able to make his escape through the bush without disaster-but the Lieutenant knew that; it simply proved that he was truly a fog-eater in spite of his mixed background. He decided that Busby would not be interested in the details of his ranch school education. "Well, I can wash dishes."

Busby grudged a faint smile. "That is unquestionably a soldierly virtue. Nevertheless, Harvey, I doubt if you're suited. This won't be parade-ground soldiering. We'll live off the country and probably never get paid at all. It means going hungry, going dirty, always on the move. You not only risk being killed in action; if you are captured, you'll be burned for treason."

"Yes, sir. I figured that out last night."

"And you still want to join?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hold up your right hand."

Don did so. Busby continued. "Do you solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Venus Republic against all enemies, domestic and foreign; and to serve faithfully in the armed forces of the Republic for the duration of this emergency unless sooner discharged by competent authority; and to obey the lawful orders of superior officers placed over you?"

Don took a deep breath. "I do."

"Very well, soldier-get in the boat."

"Yes, sirl"

There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted-but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service. More of the time he was reasonably content, though he would have denied this sincerely-he acquired considerable talent at the most common of soldiers' pastimes, griping about the war, the weather, the food, the mud, the stupidities of high command. The old soldier can substitute for recreation, or even for rest or food, this ancient, conventional, and harmless form of literary art.

He learned the ways of the guerilla-to infiltrate without a sound, to strike silently, and to fade back into the dark and the mist before the alarm can be raised. Those who learned it lived; those who did not, died. Don lived. He learned other things-to sleep for ten minutes when opportunity offered, to come fully and quietly awake at a touch or a sound, to do without sleep for a night, or two night sor even three. He acquired deep lines around his mouth, lines beyond his years, and a white, puckered scar on his left forearm.

He did not stay long with Busby but was transferred to a company of gondola infantry operating between CuiCui and New London. They called themselves proudly "Marsten's Raiders"; he was assigned as "true speech" interpreter for his outfit. While most colonials can whistle a few phrases of dragon talk-or, more usually, can understand a bit of a pidgin sufficient for buying and selling-few of them can converse freely in it. Don, for all his lack of practice during his years on Earth, had been taught it young and taught it well by a dragon who had taken an interest in him as a child. And both his parents used it as easily as they did Basic English; Don had been drilled in it by daily use at home until he was eleven.

The dragons were of great use to the resistance fighters; a while not belligerents themselves their sympathies lay with the colonials-more accurately, they despised the Federation soldiers. The colonials had managed to make a home on Venus through getting along with the dragons-an enlightened self-interest policy instituted by Cyrus Buchanan himself. To a human born on Venus there was never any doubt that there existed another race-dragons-as intelligent, as wealthy, and as civilized as their own. But to the great majority of the Federation soldiers, new to the planet, the dragons were merely ugly, uncouth animals, incapable of speech and giving themselves airs, arrogating to themselves privileges that no animal had a right to claim.

This orientation cut below the conscious level; no general order issued to the Federation troops, no amount of disciplinary action for violations, could cope with it. It was stronger and less reasoned than any analogous Earthly trouble-white versus black, gentile versus Jew, Roman versus barbarian, or whatever-had ever been. The very officers issuing the orders could not feel the matter correctly; they were not Venus born. Even the governor's prime political adviser, the shrewd and able Stanley Bankfield, could not really grasp that one does not ingratiate oneself with a dragon by (so to speak) patting him on the head and talking down.

Two serious incidents had set the pattern on the very day of the original attack; in New London a dragon-the same one Don had seen reading the Times' bulletins had been, not killed, but seriously damaged by a flamethrower; he had been silent partner in the local bank and lessor of many ichthorium pits. Still worse, in CuiCui a dragon had been killed-by a rocket; through mischance he had had his mouth open. And this dragon had been related collaterally to the descendants of the Great Egg.

It does not do to antagonize highly intelligent creatures each of whom is physically equivalent to, say three rhinoceri or a medium tank. Nevertheless they were not themselves belligerents, as our convention of warfare is not part of their culture. They work in different ways to their ends.

When in the course of his duties Don had to speak to dragons he sometimes inquired whether or not this particular citizen or the dragon nation knew his friend "Sir Isaac" using, of course, "Sir Isaac's true name. He found that those who could not claim personal acquaintance at least knew of him; he found, too, that it raised his own prestige to claim acquaintanceship. But he did not attempt to send a message to "Sir Isaac"; there was no longer any occasion for it-no need to try to wangle a transfer to a High Guard that no longer existed.

He did try and try repeatedly to learn what had happened to Isobel Costello-through refugees, through dragons, and through the increasingly numerous clandestine resistance fighters who could move fairly freely from one side to the other. He never found her. He heard once that she was confined in the prison camp on East Spit; he heard again that she and her father had been deported to Earth-neither rumor could be confirmed. He suspected, with a dull, sick feeling inside, that she had been killed in the original attack.

He was grieved about Isobel herself-not about the ring that he had left with her. He had tried to guess what it could possibly be about the ring, which would cause him to be chased from planet to planet. He could not think of an answer and concluded that Bankfield, for all his superior airs, had been mistaken; the important thing must have been the wrapping paper but the I.B.I. bad been too stupid to figure it out. Then he quit thinking about it at all; the ring was gone and that was that.

As for his parents and Mars - sure, sure, someday! Someday when the war was over and ships were running again-in the meantime why let the worry mice gnaw at one's mind?