Their attache cases may have helped, but I believe it was Bubba who cleared us. At each gate, after the guard's lamp beam dipped to examine him, the guy waved us through. Our having an apparent guard canid made us real to them.

Finally we were in the scout pool, moving down a broad service lane a foot or so above the pavement. Our driver stopped about twenty-five yards from the nearest scout, a forty-five-foot patrol scout. The area was lit more than I liked, by lights on tall poles around the perimeter of the field.

"That's it," the sergeant said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the scout. "Piet, get out with the canid and stand about ten yards in the other direction. Keep looking around, but act bored. And light up a weed; it'll make things look relaxed."

"I don't smoke."

"Have one of mine. Here's my lighter." He turned to Jenoor and Deneen. "You two walk with me. And you two," he added to Tarel and me, "follow us with your sidearms in your hands, looking as if you're guarding us. But not as if you're worried. Could be no one's actually watching us, but we need to look as if what we're doing is entirely according to regulations. Nothing sneaky is going on, and nothing tense-nothing worth paying attention to. Got it?"

Tarel and I answered yes in unison, and we started out. At the scout, our marine put an ID plate in the slot and the door opened. We got aboard. The marine took a hand lamp off his belt and, without turning it on, put it on the deck.

"Don't turn on any ship's lights, not even inside," he said. "That would draw attention." He looked at Tarel and me. "And I don't want any needless activity out here either, for the same reason, so you two stay aboard." He turned to Jenoor and Deneen. "Come on."

With no more than that, he stepped down the ramp onto the pavement again, the girls close behind. My guts tightened; something about this didn't feel right. I told myself it was being separated from Jenoor and Deneen in a situation like this, and I watched them cross the pavement to the floater. There the sergeant apparently said something to Piet, because Piet, with Bubba beside him, walked over to them with his blaster still at the ready.

The marine got into the floater, then backed out, pulling the box I'd noticed. Again I could hear his voice, quiet but fast. He took the handles at one end and the girls took the handles at the other, and they started toward the scout.

Beside me, Bubba growled. Then a floodlight beam speared through the night to bathe them in brightness. From across the field a loud-hailer called for them to stop. They did, for just a moment, then started for the scout, still carrying the box.

The guard tower didn't use its blasters. Maybe they thought the package was contraband and didn't want to destroy it. Instead, projectile weapons ruptured the silent night with bitter racket. Bullets struck the side of the scout, and both Tarel and I ducked back out of the open door. Scant seconds later, Deneen and Bubba came dragging the box.

"Close the door!" she yelled as they came through it. "Close it now!"

"No!" I cried. "The others!"

She screamed in my face. "The others are shot! Close the door!"

Instead I dove for it, blast pistol in hand, and started down the ramp. Then strong hands grabbed the back of my jumpsuit. I twisted. It was Tarel holding me, and I yelled at him. The heel of his hand slammed me in the forehead. Lights flashed in the space behind my eyes, and for a moment there was only blackness. I was vaguely aware that someone, Tarel, was dragging me back into the scout, and that the projectile weapons were firing again. Inside, Deneen was sobbing and cursing-I'd never heard her do either before-and I opened my eyes. She had the hand lamp, and seemed to be hunting for the door controls. I got back up and lunged clumsily for the door, but Tarel slugged me again, on the back of the neck this time.

When my eyes opened, the door had been closed and the power unit activated. A cabin light was on, Deneen was at the controls and Tarel was standing over me. I just stared. She must have found the force shield controls, something our family cutter hadn't had, because through the windows I could see flashes as blaster bolts dissipated their energies in flickering sheets around us.

The basic controls operated like those on our family cutter. Abruptly we rose, climbing in mass-proximity mode, wrapped by the drive field in a mini-space of our own that divorced us from any inertia relative to real space. In seconds, we were beyond blaster range.

Tarel looked at me with the strangest expression I'd ever seen on a person. "They're dead, Larn," he said. "They're dead. There was nothing you could do for them. They're all dead."

Then his face crumpled like plastic melting in a fire, and silently he started to cry. All I could do was stare, while my guts withered inside me.

Jenoon:

When the shooting began, the sergeant went down at once. I turned and saw Piet stumble to his knees, so I dropped my corner of the box to try to help him. I didn't take more than a step, though, when I felt a bullet smash into my foot, and I fell forward onto the pavement. I scrambled the last eight or ten feet to him on my hands and knees, I'm not sure why. Maybe I thought I still could help him somehow, maybe drag him to the scout.

But by the time I reached him, he was lying on his back. I'm pretty sure that he'd been hit some more; he'd been shot almost in two at the waist. All I could do was lie there, half on top of him. I think I was crying then. The automatic projectile weapons were still making a terrible racket across the field, their bullets smacking and whining all around. It seemed impossible that I was still alive, and I expected to be killed any moment. That went on for a long time-maybe as long as a minute. The bullets only stopped when the blaster bolts started sizzling.

Scared as I was, somehow I raised my head enough to look toward the scout. The ramp was in, the door was closed, and I could see that the cabin was lit. Someone had activated the force shield, because the energy of the blaster bolts was flickering around it like some weird aurora. It seemed to me that they might actually get away-whoever had made it to the scout- and I felt jubilant. As I watched, it lifted, then almost leaped upward, the blaster fire following it, still sheathing it in flickering light until it passed out of sight half a minute later, too high to see anymore.

Then I was filled by a sense of abandonment more terrible than anything I'd ever imagined.

But that lasted only seconds, replaced by a sense of-I guess resignation is the best word for it, I closed my eyes and laid my head down on Piet's shoulder. I realized that my hands were in a pool of what had to be his blood, and also that my foot didn't hurt. There was a feeling there, but it wasn't what you'd call pain yet. I knew there'd be enough of that when the shock wore off. I also knew that someone would come out pretty soon and I'd be arrested. And executed sooner or later.

After another minute I saw a small utility floater coming out low, and I laid my head down again and closed my eyes. I heard it settle right beside me, and a man spoke in Evdashian. "I saw her move," he said. "Well put her in on bottom and the other two on top of her."

Then I felt two men grab me by the knees arid under the arms and load me into the open back of the floater.

"If we're caught…"I heard the second one say.

"We won't be. From there they don't even know how many are down out here. She was lying on top of the big guy."

Then I heard them grunt, and a moment later a heavy dead weight was put down on top of me. "Sorry," the first voice said. After another moment there was a third body. Next I heard a light thump, and opened my eyes enough to see Piet's rifle lying on the deck. The two marines got in the front and drove off, seeming to keep within a few feet of the pavement.