Otherwise, Blade led the usual life of a new recruit in any well-run military outfit. He had plenty of time to listen to the talk around him. Bit by bit, he filled in the gaps in his knowledge of what had happened in Kaldak and which of the people he'd known had survived.

He knew Kareena was dead in battle. Her father, Peython, was also dead, apparently of pure old age. Sidas had married Kareena, then remarried after her death. He was still alive; in fact he was the High Commander of the armed forces of Kaldak. Blade was glad to hear that. Sidas had a rare combination of ingenuity, courage, and common sense.

Kareena's brother, Bairam, had married the merchant Saorm's daughter, Geyrna, and produced a fine family. Then after his father's death he got into some sort of trouble-Blade couldn't learn the details. In any case, he was now in polite exile in a remote part of Kaldak's empire. Geyrna divorced him and was now a member of the Council of Nine, the highest political body in Kaldak.

Blade was glad to discover that so many of his friends had survived and done well. He was sorry about Bairam, but «trouble» sounded like just the sort of thing he might have expected. Bairam probably never did learn to keep his mouth shut!

Still, it would be wiser to stay out of Kaldak as much as he could. If he couldn't do that, he could at least avoid making himself conspicuous. He realized he'd been very lucky with his heroism at the estate. It only got him a chance at anonymity in the City Regiment, instead of a call to Kaldak for public honor.

The lie detectors and computers in Kaldak sounded much too good for Blade's comfort. If they once got the idea that travel into other Dimensions was possible…

However, nothing could make Blade stop looking for opportunities. A good secret agent needs among his other qualities the persistence of an ant or a door-to-door salesman, and Blade had been one of the best. He kept his eyes and ears open. He wasn't optimistic, particularly about doing anything to find Cheeky, but he declined to curl up into a little ball.

The thing he hoped most to learn was the fate of his child- by Kareena. «Kareena's daughter» was mentioned occasionally, but quietly and cautiously, as if she'd committed some disgraceful crime. It was impossible to tell who her father was, the Sky Master Blade or Commander Sidas.

Before Blade could learn more, the Fourth Battalion was off to war again.

The dim light in the tail of the antigravity sky-tug suddenly blinked twice. The sergeant in the bow of the balloon gondola unhooked the towing cable and let it drop away into the night. The whine of the tug's propellers died away, and the three balloon-loads of Fourth Battalion paratroopers were alone in the silent darkness.

«Count off,» came the word, in whispers. They were a good mile up and several miles from the nearest Tribesmen, so it really made no sense to whisper. A hundred-and-twenty Fourth Battalion infantrymen rode in the three balloon gondolas. Now that the tug had cast off, they were drifting before the wind.

If the wind cooperated, the balloons would drift toward an important Tribesman village. According to aerial reconnaissance, the village held much of the ammunition and weapons sent by the Doimari for the Tribesmen in the area. It might even hold a few Doimari advisers.

Parachuting from balloons drifting silently in the night sky, the Kaldakans hoped to surprise the village. The ammunition and weapons would be destroyed, the advisers captured.

Then the company would dig in and wait for a Kaldakan offensive against the Tribesmen between the village and the border. Faced with Fighting Machines and artillery, the Tribesmen would have to retreat. Their main line of retreat lay through a pass controlled by the village. They would be retreating right into the company's arms.

At least that was the plan, as Blade understood it from the briefing. He also understood how many things could go wrong with it, and how fatal some of them could be to the isolated company. Since he was supposed to be a new recruit, about to jump into his first battle with the Fourth Battalion, he kept his mouth shut. It wouldn't do for him to be caught thinking like a combat veteran and an officer.

At least he would be down on the ground, not up here with the balloon crews. Infantry combat was nasty, vicious, and dangerous, but you still had solid ground under your feet and usually some place to hide. The balloon crews would fight their battle high in the sky, hanging helplessly from a couple of million cubic feet of highly explosive hydrogen. Even if they took to their parachutes, they weren't necessarily out of the woods. They could land in wilderness and die of starvation, or land among Tribesmen and be tortured to death.

Even in the civilized lands, few lights showed on the ground at night. Here in the Tribal lands it was like looking down into a bottomless pit. Far away Blade saw what might have been a campfire, or maybe just the reflection of the half-moon on a pond.

Finally the order came to hook up. Blade clipped the static line of his parachute to the cable which ran around the edge of the gondola. Then he began to breathe slowly and steadily, to relax himself. He'd made more than forty parachute jumps, some in combat, but he still got a few butterflies in his stomach before each one. You were just as dead if your chute failed on the hundredth jump as on the first.

«Five-four-three-two»-by alternate numbers-«jump?» came the sergeant's growl.

Dark shapes began hurling themselves over the edge and plummeting out of sight. Moments later Blade saw the ghostly shapes of camouflaged parachutes deploying. The men were jumping alternately from the left and right sides of the gondolas, to keep them balanced.

The man to Blade's right was gone. Then the man opposite him followed. There was a hand on Blade's shoulder, and he heaved himself up on to the rim of the gondola. He was carrying sixty pounds of weapons and gear plus his chute. Then the hand was pushing into the small of his back, and he was stepping out into space.

As always, the fall until his chute opened seemed to go on forever. Once he was swaying under the canopy, Blade stopped worrying. It was an almost windless night at low altitude. He wouldn't be dragged helplessly across rough ground by a runaway parachute.

From somewhere off in the darkness came a long ghastly scream, dying away as the soldier with the faulty chute plunged to death. Blade swallowed and unslung his laser rifle. He might need to discourage a reception committee on the ground.

Nothing of the kind happened. Blade floated down to a standing-up landing in a meadow of long, sweet-smelling grass. By the time he'd got rid of his chute, three more men joined him. Two more came with a few minutes, one of them a female corporal from another platoon. Blade knew they were lucky not to be even more scattered and confused than this.

When it was clear that no one else was likely to show up soon, the corporal took command. She took her bearings and led her improvised squad off in what she hoped was the direction of the target village.

Blade rather hoped the corporal was wrong. If they did find the village, they might easily be hopelessly outnumbered by its defenders. Even if they weren't massacred, they would probably destroy the surprise and alert the Doimari advisers in time for them to flee. The Intelligence people would make life very difficult for anyone who wrecked their hopes of getting prisoners.

As they groped through the darkness, the ground underfoot began to slope sharply. Blade saw they were climbing down the side of a deep crater at least a hundred feet wide. It looked new, with only short grass and weeds growing on the sides. Blade stumbled over something hard, picked it up, and saw that it was a strip of worked metal. It was oddly light for its size and showed no signs of rust or corrosion.