She wondered what Liu Mei was doing out there. Glaring at the memorial tablet the scaly devils had set up, more than likely. Liu Han bit her lip. Her daughter wasn’t going to listen to her. She could feel that in her bones. What would happen when Liu Mei took a hatchet to the tablet or smashed it with a rock or did whatever else she was thinking of doing?

Maybe nothing. Maybe the little devils were bluffing. Their propaganda was better these days than it had been-maybe they were paying more attention to their Chinese running dogs. But maybe they weren’t bluffing. The spirits of Emperors past played a big role in their ideological system. Liu Mei didn’t understand that. She thought superstitions were unimportant because they were false. She didn’t understand the power they could hold over people’s-and scaly devils’-minds.

Would she listen to Nieh Ho-T’ing if he told her the same things Liu Han had been telling her? Unfortunately, Liu Han doubted it. Liu Mei would do whatever she would do. She lacked the almost blind respect for her elders Liu Han had had at the same age. That lack of filial piety sprang from revolutionary rhetoric, too. Most of the time, Liu Han applauded it; it made Liu Mei freer than she had been. This once, Liu Han would have been content-would have been delighted-with a little old-fashioned blind obedience.

That evening, Liu Mai carried the chamber pot out to dump it in the snow. She was gone longer than Liu Han thought she should have been. Liu Han craned her neck, listening for smashing noises. None came, but she didn’t rest easy. The next morning, she went out herself to make sure the memorial tablet was still there. When she saw it, she breathed a long, foggy sigh of relief. She said nothing of that to her daughter. Silence seemed wiser.

Less than a week later, she bitterly regretted that silence. Excited exclamations in the village square brought her out of her hut, hastily fastening the toggles of her quilted, cotton-stuffed jacket Sure enough, it was just as she’d feared: someone had overturned and wrecked the memorial tablet.

“Eee!” the village headman squealed, looking about ready to tear his hair. He rounded on Liu Han and Nieh Ho-T’ing. “If the scaly devils come down on us, it will be your fault! Yours, do you hear me?”

“I don’t think the scaly devils will do one thing,” Liu Han said, much more calmly than she felt. Standing in front of his own hut, Nieh nodded. The headman subsided. Having important Communists in his village had taught him there were authorities greater than his.

All Liu Han could do was hope she’d been right. That she did, for the village’s sake, and her own, and most of all her daughter’s. She didn’t know Liu Mei had destroyed the memorial tablet, but couldn’t think who else might have. She didn’t want to ask her daughter, either, for fear interrogators might tear the truth from her if she knew it.

The day passed quietly. So did the night. In the morning, helicopters that looked like flying tadpoles came thuttering toward the village from the east, from the direction of fallen Peking. They landed in the frozen, snow-covered fields. Little scaly devils, looking miserably cold, got out of them. Almost all the little devils carried weapons. Liu Han’s heart sank.

One of the little devils, an unarmed one, spoke Chinese. “Let everyone assemble!” he shouted. “A crime has been committed here, a vile crime, and justice shall be done on the criminals.”

“How do you even know who the criminals are?” someone shouted. “You weren’t here. You didn’t see.”

“We were not here,” the scaly devil agreed. “But we did see.” He set down a machine he’d been carrying. Liu Han had seen its like in Peking: the little devils used them to display images. “This will show us who the criminal was,” the little scaly devil declared, sticking a clawed forefinger into a control on the side of the machine.

As Liu Han had expected, a three-dimensional image sprang to life above the device. Several of the villagers exclaimed; even though they lived close to Peking, they’d never seen, never imagined, such a thing. They’d probably never even seen a human-made motion picture. Liu Han kept hoping some other villager had decided to wreck the memorial tablet. No such luck: there came Liu Mei, advancing on the tablet with a pick-axe handle in her hand and smashing it till it abruptly stopped recording. She must have done that during the night, but the image was as clear as if it were daylight.

Numbly, Liu Han waited for the little scaly devils to seize her daughter, or perhaps to shoot her down on the spot. But the one who spoke Chinese said, “Now you will tell us who this person is, and tell us immediately.”

They have as much trouble knowing one person from another as we do with them, Liu Han thought. Hope surged in her. It grew even higher when no one gathered there in the snowy square said a word.

Then the scaly devil said, “You will tell us who this person is, and nothing bad will happen to this village.” Yes, his kind were learning ruthlessness.

But still no one spoke. Some of the little devils hefted their weapons. Others examined the crowd, doing their best to identify the person in the recording, which kept repeating over and over. They didn’t seem to be having any luck, though. Some of the villagers started to laugh at them.

The little scaly devil who spoke Chinese said, “You tell us who this person is, and you take everything this person has.”

They were indeed learning. There was always someone, someone full of greed, who would pounce on an offer like that. And, sure enough, someone pointed at Liu Mei and shouted, “She did it! She’s the one! She’s a Red!”

Little scaly devils skittered forward to seize Liu Mei. Liu Han vowed a horrible revenge on the traitor. Maybe he also thought of that, for he kept right on pointing. “And there’s her mother, and there’s her mother’s comrade! They’re both Reds, too!” If he could remove the Communist presence from the village, maybe he could escape vengeance.

More scaly devils aimed their rifles at Liu Han. Numbly, she stuck her hands in the air. A little devil frisked her, and found a pistol in her pocket. That raised a fresh alarm. The scaly devils tied her hands behind her back, and served her daughter and Nieh Ho-T’ing the same way. Then they marched them back toward their helicopters.

I was captured once before, Liu Han thought. Eventually, I got away. I can do it again. She didn’t know if she would, but she could. She was sure of it. Because of that, she didn’t give way to despair, however tempted she might have been. Something will turn up. But, as she climbed into the helicopter, she couldn’t imagine what.

Glen Johnson grimly pedaled away on one of the Lewis and Clark’ s exercise bicycles. Sweat flew off him and floated in little, nasty drops in the exercise room. His wasn’t the only sweat floating around in the chamber, either. Several other crewmen and — women also exercised there. In spite of the ventilation currents that also eventually got rid of the sweat, the place smelled like a locker room right after a big game.

After what seemed like forever, an alarm chimed. Panting, Johnson eased upon the pedals. His heart pounded in his chest. It usually took things easy in weightlessness, and resented having to go back and work for a living. But he’d keep on living longer if it did, so he exercised. Besides, he’d get in trouble with the powers that be if he didn’t.

He unhooked the belt that held him onto the bike. The rest of the people in the chamber were doing the same. One of the troubles with strenuous exercise was that it made him look at a sweaty, tousled woman and not think of anything except how tired he was.

Lucy Vegetti, the sweaty, tousled woman in question, was looking at him, too. He wondered what that meant, and hoped to find out some time when his interest wasn’t quite so academic. But the mineralogist, after wiping her face on her sleeve, told him at least some of what was on her mind: “I heard last night that somebody had spotted another Lizard spy ship.”