"I'm taking you back to the city. There are people you know there." Rising, he called, "Captain!"

"Sir?" Hamshard appeared at the doorway of the passage.

"I'm putting this man in your charge. Take him to my suite in the city and allow him to take with him anything he wants. Before you leave, have the men destroy everything in the cavern. The weapons, the tools, the chemicals, everything."

"Yes, sir. And you?"

Dumarest said flatly, "I am going to finish what has to be done."

Chapter Fifteen

The line had held seven thousand men, and he used them all, rafts going to each village, men dropping, busy with saws, with lasers, axes, anything that could cut and fell. Fire bloomed around each village, sparks flying from burning plants eating a wide clearing around the buildings. The men were mostly from the woodlands to the south, clerks from the city, workers who had no immediate interest in the lofios, sharing only the crumbs from the rich growers' table. Some of the officers were less eager.

"Marshal!" A major, red-faced, irate. "You can't do this! The Council-"

Dumarest snapped, "Lieutenant, place this man under close arrest. He is subversive to the state."

A captain, less polite, "Damnit, you want to ruin us all? You crazy fool, you can't-"

He joined the major, a dozen others, all fuming, helpless to resist. Dumarest had ended the war, and the men were grateful. More, they liked his style, his manner. And the loyalty of the men, as Dumarest knew, was the real basis of power for any commander.

Riding high, he watched the growing clearings, the thickening columns of smoke.

"Sir!" From the body of the raft Lieutenant Paran looked up from his communicator. His face was strained, torn with indecision. He felt that he should be doing something to halt the destruction, but didn't know what. "Colonel Stone, sir."

"Let him wait."

The next call was from Colonel Paran.

"What's going on, Earl?" His face was lined, eyes pouched with fatigue. "We've been getting reports about you burning the lofios. I can't hold the Council back much longer. They're assembling weapons and men to put you under arrest."

"They can try."

"They will try, Earl. You've hit them where it hurts. Raougat has found a bunch of men who will do anything for pay." His control broke a little. "Damnit, man! The last thing we want is a civil war!"

"You wont get it." Dumarest studied the terrain below. The firebreaks had been cut, and the lofios was well ablaze; nothing now could prevent what he had started. "All right, colonel, I'm coming in."

It was dark when he arrived, and they were waiting in the light of standards set before the Lambda warehouse, Stone, Oaken, the smiling face of Captain Raougat flanked by a score of armed men. Others stood behind Colonel Paran, more disciplined, equally well armed. At their head Lieutenant Thomile scowled at the other group. As Dumarest dropped from the raft, he snapped to attention, saluting.

Dumarest returned the salute, then turned to stare at Raougat. For a moment their eyes met, and then the captain lifted his arm.

"Marshal!"

"Your men are badly dressed," said Dumarest coldly. "Have them straighten their line. An honor guard should have respect. They are soldiers, not scum."

Raougat stared at the tall figure, the uniform stained with char and blood, the hard, cruel set of the mouth. When next he saluted, his movement was brisk.

"Yes, sir! As you order!"

Of the colonels, Paran was the first to speak. He stepped forward, hand extended. "Marshal, my congratulations on your success. As I was telling the Council, you must have a good explanation for what you've done."

"Yes, colonel."

"By God, it had better be a good one!" Oaken, face flushed with rage, stood with hands clenched, trembling. "Is this the arrangement you made with the Ayutha? That you would ruin us in return for their cooperation?"

"Treason," said Stone. He sounded dazed. "Three hundred square miles of lofios destroyed, not counting the plants you felled to make the line. Why, marshal? Why?"

"To end the war."

"But you'd done that. The Ayutha-"

"Had nothing to do with what happened to the villages," snapped Dumarest impatiently. "I thought that would have been obvious by now. The line proved it. Nothing living could pass without my knowing it, and yet there still was trouble."

Stone said slowly, "Then someone else? Sabotage?"

"No, the lofios itself." Dumarest turned toward the raft. "Lieutenant!"

Fran Paran dropped the rifle he had been holding and lifted a sack. Jumping from the raft, he moved forward, to stand at Dumarest's side.

"The clue was there all along," said Dumarest. "But you couldn't see it. You were too close. When the trouble started, you naturally thought of the Ayutha, and from then on blamed everything on them. But the real cause was much closer to hand, in the plants you grow and harvest for profit."

Oaken sucked in his breath. "You're lying," he said. "Trying to justify what you've done. You have no proof!"

"How many more dead do you need before facing reality? Two more villages? Three? The city itself?" Dumarest reached for the sack. "The lofios is a mutated hybrid. You have lived with it so long that you can't even begin to imagine that it could be anything else but harmless. But plants change. They mutate. In this case, the mutation has resulted in a subtle alteration of the pollen. A freak-it couldn't happen again perhaps for a million years-but once was enough. Now, some of the pollen isn't harmless. It contains a hallucinogenic of a particularly horrible nature. It affects the brain, turns people insane, makes them kill, and then causes them to die in turn. You have seen the effects."

Paran said shrewdly, "Some of the pollen, Earl?"

"Perhaps one plant out of ten. I don't know; your scientists can determine that. But some, certainly, there can be no doubt. All the evidence points to it; the villages destroyed without trace of an external enemy, that raft that landed and the men who fought each other-they must have broken open dangerous pods. I caught a scent of it myself, sweet, sickly, and I felt its effects." Dumarest glanced at Lieutenant Paran standing at his side. "I felt it and saw what it could do. We were lucky, breathing only a trace, but even that was enough to have killed us both. Now you know why I ordered clearings to be made around every village. The protection isn't enough, but with masks, working without them only when there is no wind, it should serve." He added bitterly, "I asked you to do that before. You refused. How many men, women, and children have died because of that refusal?"

Too many, but they were not wholly to blame. Old habits die hard, and when bolstered by greed, rarely die at all. The clearings had been made and the warning given; he could do no more.

Oaken said, "I don't believe it. It's a trick of some kind. Maybe he got paid to ruin our economy and invented this story to cover himself."

Stone added, "But proof? We still have no proof."

Ignoring the insult, Dumarest said, "I checked all the weather reports. There had been wind each time a village was affected. And if you want more proof still…"

From the sack he took a lofios pod. It was ripe, the membrane taut. He said, "I've twenty others in the sack. They could all be harmless, but the odds are against it. If not, they will prove what I say beyond any possibility of argument."

He, Fran Paran, and the men Thomile commanded were all equipped with masks. Dumarest raised his own, waited until the others had followed suit. The wind was blowing from behind them, toward where Raougat stood with Oaken and Stone before his men. Raising the pod, Dumarest threw it hard to the ground.