Angus showed MacKendrick how to guide it and MacKendrick worked out the best path to bring the sliver out with the least damage to tissue.

A few minutes later they had the broad sliver in their hands, withdrawn by the magnet.

Later the Chamco brothers identified it with closer analysis as a piece of a battle plane skid strut “which has to be very strong and very light.”

Jonnie had not been conscious enough to tell anyone what he had done on the drone and Chrissie had shooed off the historian when he tried to find out earlier. So it was a bit of a mystery as to how a sliver piece of a strut could have been daggered into Jonnie's head.

But whatever they had done to him, Chrissie was extremely relieved. The fever he had had dropped. His breathing improved and his color got better.

The following morning he came out of the coma and smiled a little at Chrissie and MacKendrick and dropped into a natural sleep.

Planetary radio was not slow in crackling with the news. Their Jonnie was out of danger!

The pipe major paraded his pipes and drums all around the compound on the heels of the crier who was yelling it out to work parties. Bonfires blazed both there and in various other parts of the world, and a Coordinator in the Andes relayed the news that the chiefs of some peoples they had found there had declared this an annual celebration day, and could they come now and pay homage? A pilot standing by with a plane in the Mountains of the Moon in Africa had to get help from both Coordinators and chiefs of that small colony in order to get space to take off again, so mobbed had the field become with celebrating, jubilant people. The compound radio operators had to double up on shifts to handle the message traffic roaring in on them as a result of the announcement.

Robert the Fox just went around grinning at everybody.

As the days wore on into weeks, it became obvious to the Council, originally composed of the parson, the schoolmaster, the historian, and Robert the Fox, and now augmented by several Clanchiefs who left deputies in Scotland, that Jonnie was brooding about something.

He would smile at them from his bed and talk to them when spoken to, but there was something deep in his eyes that was dull and moody.

Chrissie tried not to let them come very often, and when they did she was a bit impatient with them if they overstayed.

Some of the Russians and some Swedes were rebuilding parts of the Academy due to the desperate need for pilots. Until the ancient capital building in Denver could be rebuilt, the Council had a room at the Academy. They could get to both the compound and the underground military base from there, and all their berthing quarters were there.

At this particular meeting Robert the Fox was walking up and down, his kilt flaring out each time he turned, his claymore held snug enough by an ancient officer's belt from the base-which also held a Smith and Wesson-knocking against chairs. “Some thing is bothering him. He is not like the old Jonnie."

“Does he think we are doing something wrong?” said the Chief of Clanfearghus.

“No, no, it isn't that,” said Robert the Fox. “There's not a scrap of criticism for anyone in his makeup. It 's just he...he seems worried.”

The parson cleared his throat, “It just could be his side has something to do with it. He cannot much move his right arm and he cannot walk as yet. He is, after all, used to being about and very briskly as well. After all, the lad had a dreadful time of it, all alone, injured. I can't think how he managed. All that time in a cage, earlier... You're all expecting too much, too fast, gentlemen. He is a brave spirit and I have faith....”

“Could be worry over the possibility of a Psychlo counterattack,” said the Chief of Clanargyll.

“We must reassure him somehow,” said the Chief of Clanfearghus. “Heaven knows, we are working hard enough on planetary affairs.”

And they were. The World Federation for the Unification of the Human Race had been formed from those Jonnie had not accepted for the group that had come with him to America. Some two hundred young Scots and another fifty oldsters had done their beginning work well. In two dangerous but successful raids, one to the site of an ancient university named Oxford and another to a similar ruin at Cambridge, they had obtained language books and a mound of material on other countries. They had worked out where isolated groups of humans might still be and had formed up a unit for each language they thought might still be in use. Their selection was proving not far off, and ruler-bruised hands attested to the diligence of their study. They called themselves “Coordinators” and they were making a vital contribution all over the world where groups were being found.

The current estimate was that there were nearly thirty-five thousand human beings left on Earth, an astonishing number that, the Council agreed, was far too great for any one town. The groups were mostly survivors who had withdrawn to mountainous places, natural fortresses their forebears had mined, as in the case of the Rockies. But some were in the frozen north in which the Psychlos had had no interest, and some were simply overlooked strays.

The duty of the Council, as they saw it, was to preserve the tribal and local customs and government and install over all of it a clan system, appointing local leaders as Clanchiefs. The Coordinators spread the news and were extremely welcome and successful.

The hard-worked pilots were ferrying in chiefs and visitors and simply anyone who got on their passenger planes. If there were too many going or coming they simply told them to wait until next week and that was fine.

But there was no really organized forward motion. Local control of the tribes was often slack. Some had retained literacy in their language, some had not. Most of them were poor, half-starved, ragged.

The one incredible fact that after over a thousand years there was freedom from Psychlos, even if possibly temporary, united them in a wave of hope. They had once gazed from their mountains on the ruins of cities they dared not visit; they had looked upon fertile plains and great herds they dared not benefit from; they had seen no hope whatever for their dying race. And then suddenly men from the sky, speaking their language, telling them of the remarkable feats that led to possible freedom, had brought them soaring hope and reburgeoning pride in their race.

The Council's existence they accepted. They joined it and, with radios parked on rocks and in huts, communicated with it.

They all had one question. Was the Jonnie MacTyler of whom the Coordinators spoke a part of this Council? Yes, he was. Good, no more questions.

But the Council well knew that Jonnie was not an active part of the Council now. Completely aside from the political significance of it, every

Council member was himself personally concerned for Jonnie.

There were all kinds of things happening over the world, most of the actions taken without even informing the Council. People were moving about. A group of South Americans, with baggy pants and flat leather hats, swinging wide lariats and riding almost as well as Jonnie once did, had suddenly walked off a plane with their women and lariats and saddles and said, through their Spanish-speaking Scot Coordinator, that they were "Llaneros" or "gauchos" and they knew cattle– but would find out what to do with buffalo– and were taking over the management of the vast herds to preserve them and make sure the people at the compound and base were properly fed. Two Italians from the Italian Alps had shown up and taken over the commissary after making peace with the old women. Five Germans from Switzerland had shown up and opened a factory in Denver to salvage and service man-equipment such as knives and tools, you name it, and if you sent it to them they would make it shiny and working and send it back. This put a freight line into an already overburdened pilot zone. Three Basques showed up and simply started making shoes; the difficulty was that Basque as a language had been omitted by the Coordinators, and the shoemakers were learning English and Psychlo while they turned out shoes from the hides the South Americans dedicatedly furnished them. Many others came in.