Nup kicked the door further open, the ore basket in plain view on his lap. Then Nup saw Jonnie and yelled and pointed, and Zzt looked back down.

Jonnie fired!

He tried to duck back inside an instant after the shot. He was not quite fast enough.

Enough fuel and ammunition for twenty battles not only went up, it also flashed down into the open fuel and ammunition receptacles!

The roar and almost instantaneous concussion hit Jonnie like a sledge hammer. He went outward over black space.

The safety line held and snapped him back inside the door.

In that confused instant, as though it were a still picture, he saw Zzt on fire just starting to fly out into space. He saw the whole Mark 32 leap in an exploding ball high in the air.

Jonnie hit the floor plates just inside the open slots so he wouldn't slide back.

The concussion had been too much for his head and he was passing out again.

An idiot phrase passed through his mind just before a deeper darkness blanketed his senses. “Old Staffor was wrong. I’m not too smart. I just cost myself the only target search beams can pick up.”

The drone was not rolling now that it had been relieved of its unstabilizing weight.

The body on the icy floor just inside the door did not move.

The lethal cargo soared onward toward Scotland and the rest of the world, its goal the final obliteration of the remainder of the human race, the ones it had missed a thousand or more years ago.

The small boy sped on feet of fire through the underground passages of the dungeons of the castle. He was soaked with the rain that fell outside. His bonnet was askew. His eyes were glowing with the urgency of a message he had carried for a two-mile sprint through the dawn twilight.

He identified a room ahead and tore into it, shouting: “Prince Dunneldeen!

Prince Dunneldeen! Wake up! Wake up!”

Dunneldeen had just settled down in his own room, in his own plaid blanket for a nice comfortable snooze, his first in quite some time.

The small boy was wrestling with excited hands to light a candle dip with a ratchet flint device.

So it was “Prince” Dunneldeen now.

They only called him that on feast days or when somebody wanted a favor. His uncle, Chief of Clanfearghus, was the last of the Stewarts and entitled to be called King, but he never made anything of it.

The light was burning now. It shone upon the sparsely furnished stonewalled room. It showed the rain-drenched, excited black-eyed boy, Bittie MacLeod.

“Your squire Dwight, your squire Dwight ha' sent a message, who he say is most urgent!”

Ah, this was different. Dunneldeen got up and reached for his clothes. “Squire” Dwight. Probably Dwight had used that because “copilot” would be an unknown word to this child.

“Your gillies are afoot asaddling a mount. Your squire ha' said 'twas most urgent!”

Dunneldeen glanced at his watch. It meant that the twelve-hour radio silence was over, that was all. Probably a babble of news. Dunneldeen had no idea at all that things had gone other than successfully at the other minesites or that they'd succeeded at the compound. He got back into his flight clothes. No hurry. He took his time.

What a busy night it had been. His and Dwight's plan had been to bring the

Chiefs across the sea to celebrate the victory. They had landed both ships on a flat place two miles off so as not to shock the people, and he had borrowed a horse from a startled farmer he had known and ridden in.

He had gotten his uncle, Chief of Clanfearghus, out of bed, and gillies had flown to light the fires on the hills to gather the clans to hear the news. The minesite in Cornwall was no more. They would be free to roam the whole of England!

The Chief was very fond of his nephew Dunneldeen who was, in fact, his heir. He liked Dunneldeen's style. A true Scot. He had listened enraptured as Dunneldeen had given him a thumbnail but torrential account of all their doings. And if Dunneldeen were a bit incautious, the Chief gave his attention while making very sure to reserve judgment and act in a wise way on the general scene, without spoiling Dunneldeen's flair. So he had ordered the beacons lighted. He was cautiously thrilled.

Dunneldeen had then gone to see a lass and had asked her to marry him, and she had said, “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes, Dunneldeen!”

That attended to, he had come home for a nice snooze.

Bittie seemed to be trying to remember something else. He was hopping from one bare foot to the other, squinting up his eyes, wiping at his nose. Then the boy seemed to abandon his effort. Dunneldeen was almost dressed.

The boy's eyes caught the sword on the wall. It was a claymore, used in battles and for ceremony. It was a real claid heamh mar, five feet long, not just a basket hilt saber. Bittie was gesturing at it, indicating the prince should wear it. Dunneldeen shook his head to signify no, he wasn't going to take it this time.

When he saw the eagerness die in Bittie's eyes, Dunneldeen relented. He took it down and handed it to him. “All right, but you carry it!” The sword was a foot taller than the boy. Worship, awe, and joy sprang up in the boy again as he draped the hanger around his neck.

Dunneldeen checked his gear and went out. The castle passages and halls were as warm with gillies. They had lochaber axes in their belts and were bustling around with a hundred chores in preparation for a gathering of the clans. Dunneldeen had really thrown a firebrand into the scene. Nobody had been briefed. They didn't know what was going on. Dunneldeen had come home. Orders had been given. Somebody said the Psychlo minesite was no more. There was an awful lot to do.

The ancient ruin had remained a ruin above ground so as to attract minimal attention from drones that had gone over for centuries. Some said the place had once been the seat of Scottish kings. It s dungeons had been expanded and it was a fortress in itself.

Two gillies had Dunneldeen's own horse saddled and it was prancing about. The gillies were smiling broad welcomes to Dunneldeen.

He mounted, and at a signal they tossed the boy up behind him, claid heamh mar and all.

It was raining. A storm apparently had moved in. It had been clear when they landed but now the dawn was thick with overcast.

It was at that moment that Bittie

MacLeod remembered the rest of the message. “Your squire,” he said to Dunneldeen's back, “also say to 'squiggle'!"

The boy's accent was thick, not the accent of an educated Scot. “To what?” demanded Dunneldeen.

“I misremembered, I couldna think of the word,” apologized the boy. “But it did sound like 'squiggle.' "

“Scramble?” asked Dunneldeen. The word that meant emergency takeoff.

“Ah, so 'twas, so 'twas!”

Dunneldeen was off like a shot and two miles were never eaten up so fast by a horse.

They came plunging to a stop on the flat-topped knoll. Dunneldeen looked wildly about. Only the passenger plane was there. He flung himself off the horse and flung the reins to the boy. He opened the door and leaped into the passenger plane, reaching for the radio.

And then Dwight landed nearby, startling the horse into frantic plunging that lifted the boy and the sword off the ground at every rear.

Dunneldeen raced over to Dwight. “It’s gone now,” said Dwight.

There had been no radio messages from the compound. Dwight, as arranged, had faithfully stayed on watch. He had waited for any break in radio silence and the end of the silence itself. The time period had ended, but pilots, not hearing from the compound and Robert the Fox, had not opened up.

But something else peculiar had happened. Dwight had picked up a Psychlo conversation on the planetary plane band, very loud and clear. It seemed loud enough to be within a thousand miles or so, maybe more, hard to tell.