It was plain from the probing Fragon and Maelen, two unlikely partners-in-arms, had used, that those in the camp were well guarded by devices which protected against either mind search or lasting illusions—the two ancient and tolerably efficient weapons of the People.

Nor could they compete physically. Swords and force-charged wands, the other arms which were theirs and had been for untold generations, could not stand against lasers, tanglers, even discordant sound. When the latter had blasted out of the camp earlier that day most of the winglings, the Darda, and several others of the old stock had been rendered helpless for awhile. Only those born of the earth who had immediately retreated underground kept their full senses. Then Zoror had loosed a small shape like a winged tube. That, arching up above the waiting ship and its camp, had blasted back, as a mirror might return a reflection, the same ear-piercing sound, drawing it up the scale as if each note were threaded on a cord and jerked out of reach.

In answer they had seen the men spill out into the opening, staggering here and there, hands pressed over their ears, some stumbling to their knees and then falling forward to roll across the ground, plainly in agony. At length some one of the enemy regained sense long enough to shut off their own broadcast and the ensuing silence was like that of death, so complete was it.

The spying party, in hiding along the upper reaches of the great valley in which the ship had set down, revived sooner than the opposition. While Farree and his companions stirred and came back to themselves, at least three limp bodies had been toted into the largest of the ground shelters and several others had made a difficult business of getting back to the ship itself.

It was not much later that the flitter had taken off and began to fly its spy circles around and around, each one farther than the one before. That the invader might be equipped with detectors was a point Farree considered when he had witnessed the first flight. They had had Atra long enough to run a sensor on her, set her pattern as part of the "memory" of such a machine. Thus any of her own species could be instantly detected when caught on the flitter screen. That the enemy did not coast down the wind and spray them all with laser fire as they lay in hiding was something which Farree himself could not understand. He cringed flatter to the ground—his fingers digging deep into the soil as if he were an earthling used to disappearing quickly from sight into that sanctuary.

Atra herself was up in the heights with Maelen and Fragon, submitting to their examination of her mind sense as they sought any traces of future attack which might have been placed within her, as a buried and unpleasant form of weapon, providing she did execute an impossible escape. Farree did not envy her that; he had too many times in the past undergone such delving into what was a sealed portion of his own mind.

If the invaders had taken a reading of Atra, it must have been too closely turned to her own personality to serve now to locate any of her own species. The flitter was already on a much farther circling out and had not slackened flight speed when it had crossed the place of concealment where his own party lay in wait.

Those three giants who had come into the crystal cave in the company of Beast Mask had left hours ago to tramp back with Vorlund to his ship, their supply of strength meant to transport certain equipment which both Krip and Zoror had selected for this voyage. Nothing had been chosen which would not be permitted for use on a primitive world—if this, which the first comers had named Elothian, might be termed primitive. The People had long ago set up their own defenses, recalled lessons from their history, to make as secure as possible this new world. Their inability to handle heavy metals, especially iron (Farree need only look at the bandages on his own hands covering burns the chain of Atra's captivity had left to understand what damage even that could cause) had handicapped them always when facing off-worlders.

The crystals of the caverns they had uncovered here had provided an array of weapons as deadly as lasers. Only lasers could kill at a distance far beyond that which any of the people could send elfshot, small needle-shaped and sharp fragments of the dusky spikes, which buried themselves within flesh, eventually causing clouded and diseased minds. There were other weapons, mostly mind linked. Those again required a careful assessing of the mental strength of the enemy; but Atra had been under such control while in the off-worlders' hands that now she brought her people a clear picture of their powers.

Zoror was prowling the upper heights—a good distance away. Equipped with a beamer suited to a Zacanthan's greater strength, he was busy sealing up any way through which the People's own holdings could be invaded, except from the air.

The Zacanthan might be so engaged physically but Farree was sure that mentally Zoror was busy in a different direction, that of searching his vast memory for anything of the past which could be turned into good use in this present. As for Farree himself—

He stared at the scene below, now so familiar with it from hours of observation that he was sure he would never forget so much as the curve of each and every one of the shelters. There had been lookouts before him and what they had learned from this intent study of the territory was little enough.

That the beacon which had lighted the scene at his first coming was a recent addition to the scene he understood quickly. This ship was, in the opinion of Vorlund and Zoror, but a scout for a larger force. The nose beam from the ship was set each night as a guide to lead that force in.

To have the invaders thus reinforced would be the end of any successful defense—that was already understood. Thus– the beacon would have to be taken care of, and that was Farree's part. His answer to that pillar of light in the night rested now just under the curve of his wing—a flat box slightly larger than one of his bandaged hands.

Vorlund had spent nearly the whole of a day fashioning what was inside, helped by a pair of misshapen earth dwellers who worked metal in fire with the ease of those who were master smiths. They had looked at the pictures the spacer had drawn, listened intently to a jabber of firm instruction from Beast Mask, leader of those dark dwellers—who were of a devious and often treacherous turn of mind. Metal had gone into it, but that was silver poured from clay ladles, and thin streams of gold fed into Harrow tubes of clay, to be later hammered and twisted into wire near as thin and supple as thread.

Months ago, the winged race among the People had discovered, at a bitter price, that to approach the camp by air was folly. There were various disturbances invisibly cutting the air about the ship able to paralyze wings, dashing the flyers to their deaths; or else, if those wings were to be harvested, bringing them immobile and helpless to the ground where another form of death waited. However, all such flights– and there had been very few of them after their end was witnessed—had occurred only when the winglings had recklessly soared out over the shelters or that part of the ship which was open at a high altitude.

Farree's body now was fitted with two wide belts. On each were seamed pockets into which Vorlund had fitted more small devices he had urged the smiths to make in haste. In the seven days since their meeting in the hall of crystals, they had all been driven by that need for haste. For how long would it be before that beacon would lead in larger forces?

Their one bid for victory depended on so many ifs—if Farree could indeed penetrate the air above the enemy encampment successfully undiscovered, if he could affix the device he carried to the proper place on the ship, if it would really work. All was founded on hope and the best that memory could supply from the observations and lore of the People, the encyclopedic recall of Zoror, the ship knowledge of Vorlund, born to be a star rover, and of Maelen and the Dardas, who had drawn together as they never had in the history of their colony on Elothian. So many ifs, Farree thought, but perhaps their only chance now. He watched the slow coming of sunset and his body ached with the strain of waiting.