He told Robert the Fox that he had keys to the drone presets and would exchange them for a promise of an early teleportation back to Psychlo.

Robert the Fox said yes, if Terl could produce the keys. Terl thereupon asked for his boots.

A female Psychlo who said her name was Chirk had been found in a breathe-mask under the bed in Terl's old quarters. So Robert the Fox went to her where she was being held under the spotlights of an otherwise wrecked mine car and asked her whether she was Terl's secretary, and she readily said yes, she was. So Robert said he had a message from Terl for her to get the preset keys of the drone.

Chirk had had lots of time to think since Zzt sailed off on the drone for reasons of his own, and she had finally remembered about the keys. She got very cross and sent back the message that Terl must think she was very inefficient: he knew very well that he had given her a set of keys and told her to drop them in the recycling trash bin, and that had been ages ago and the keys were long gone, and if Terl was trying to blacken her company record by saying she disobeyed orders, she could do a little blackening on her own. There was something about promising her a huge home on Psychlo. She was very cross.

So Robert the Fox called for Terl's boots and examined them and found a false sole. He removed from it a very thin, small blast gun.

Right now, Terl was chained up with four separate chain strands in a well-lighted field with an assault rifle on him. He kept snarling something about females.

The compound was a litter-strewn bedlam of lights and noise. There were hundreds of Psychlo bodies lying around in everybody's way. Everything was soaking wet.

The Chamco brothers had gladly contracted for C 15,000 a year with a C500 bonus for each major job. They were a little apprehensive about a counterattack from Psychlo, but pay was pay. They were laboring with the team of Scots to get radios back into operation but it didn't look like they would earn C500 right away. Water had saturated a lot of equipment and the transshipment area was a write-off. Nobody could get a plane out into the open where its radio could broadcast, and Glencannon's ship radio was just fused metal.

Robert the Fox walked up and down, his old cape flowing. He answered where he had to and gave orders where needed. But his mind wasn't on it.

The twelve-hour radio silence was up and he was out of communication on the planetary band. He could not order the ships that had attacked the remote minesites to go look for the drone. He had no ships to send.

He went over to where about twenty wounded Scots were laid out in a field, being handled by the parson and schoolmaster and four old women. And Chrissie.

His eyes and Chrissie's eyes met. Robert the Fox felt very bad.

Jonnie had been right. It would not have done to wait for minesite-bound ships to attack the drone. They had left long before it fired and they knew nothing of it. And he could not even tell them.

He had a feeling Jonnie was in trouble.

Robert the Fox gave his head a slight shake. Chrissie looked at him steadily for a moment, swallowed hard, and then went back to work.

Zzt felt triumphant.

The animal had been hurt and hurt badly. It could have been better. The roll of the drone had caused a slight miscalculation in the throw, and instead of totally severing the animal's head as he intended, the plate had hit a strut of the plane skids and then had struck the animal.

But the results had been very satisfactory. There was red blood all over the floor plates under there.

The animal had fired a new small weapon up the corridor. But in the mirror Zzt could see that the animal was passing out, coming to for an instant, and passing out again. Zzt had waited. The animal would pass out long enough for Zzt to dart forward and finish it.

However, it didn't quite come off as Zzt had planned. The animal had crawled backward toward the back end of the drone, halting and firing a shot, backward further, firing another shot.

It had crawled into a canister-loading hole in the rear cargo space. The hole it went through was almost too small for it. It disappeared.

Zzt waited a long time and nothing else happened. Finally he crept out of his recess and, ducking into other recesses and using his mirror, got all the way back to the rear cargo bulkheads.

He tried to look in with the mirror. It was too dark in there.

He shone a torch in there. Nothing. The animal must have crawled off to the side.

Zzt tied the torch to the mirror and looked to the right. He got one very short glimpse of the animal and then a bullet hit the torch and mirror and they went flying out of Zzt’s hand. Lucky he hadn't tried to reach in there himself.

He listened all along the bulkhead. The roar of the drone was too great to hear any breathing.

For quite a while he expected the animal to pop out and shoot. But nothing like that happened. He finally concluded that the animal had crawled in there and died. There sure was enough blood. Bled to death, probably. Zzt beamed happily.

Well, enough! Zzt decided he better get to work.

He opened the door of the battle plane and switched on the local command channel and tried to wake up Nup. The dimwit certainly must be up there. Maybe asleep. Zzt impatiently threw on all the radio channels. That would blast the nincompoop out of his wits. Planetary had a habit of knocking in earbones at just a few hundred feet.

“Nup, you crap brain! Wake up!” Nup's voice came back. “Who? Who's this?”

“Look, Nup," said Zzt with controlled patience, “I know you are short on sleep. I know they didn't teach you the exact solution to all this in mine school. But, I feel that under the existing circumstances you might try to cooperate!”

“Is this Zzt?”

What a dimwit, what a flutter brain with its bearings burned out! “Of course it's Zzt!”

“And you're down in the drone? Ah, I thought you were. But didn't Snit fly you out? If you were-'

“Shut up,” roared Zzt. “Here's exactly what I want you to do. Take off and land that ship just above this door. Land it close to the edge above the door so it will break the wind.”

Nup wanted to know break the wind from what?

Zzt told him very unpleasantly. Nup, with ten minutes of fuel left, hastened to comply.

Zzt intended to rob this damaged battle plane of its cartridges of fuel. He had been appalled at the skill it would take to fly it out this door. Then he had a happy thought. Maybe it carried some spares.

He got up on the seat and started to rummage in the back compartment. A whole bag of cartridges! Dozens of them!

But he saw something else. His breathe-mask exhale ports flashed. This stuff had radioactive dust on it! Of course, this wasn't surprising for packages that had been in a radiation-bullet battle, and it was not much, but it frightened Zzt. He flung the bag of cartridges out into the passageway and jumped out to stop them before they rolled into open spaces. Holding them at arm's length he shook the bag. He breathed on it cautiously. No flash. Good.

He opened both doors of the battle plane. He wouldn't go near the back compartment. He did everything now at arm's length.

He played a torch on the housings of both main drive and balance motors. His practiced eye detected a hairline crack in the right balance motor.

Maybe it would run, maybe not. The crash hadn't helped. He reached underneath it and got a paw full of wires and tore them loose, scrambled them, and laid them back unconnected but out of view. One battle plane that wouldn't fly straight! Good.

He got down under the plane and looked at the drone's main drive. Ah, there was his wrench. And the animal hadn't removed the plate. Good. He put the wrench back in his boot where it belonged.