"Na, na," said Robert the Fox, his accent thickening into dialect from sudden alarm. "We canna ha' ye dae thet, laddie.”

The rest of the council also shook their heads.

The parson said, “You keep yourself safe, MacTyler. That's why we're here– to help you.”

“The small demon...” said Jonnie.

“The one that came to fix the flying machine?”

“The same,” said Jonnie. “His name's Ker. He told me an order had been issued, he said by the planet head, to forbid all hunting parties in this whole area and to restrict them all to the mining areas and compound. There was some talk, Ker said, of coming over here for some sport. So there aren't any demons wandering around and it's perfectly safe to go up to the

Great Village on a scout– so long as we don't stay in sight of the recon drone.”

“Scouts,” said Robert the Fox firmly, “are not done by Chiefs. Raids, perhaps. Scouts, no! We will send young Angus MacTavish. All those in favor?” And Jonnie was firmly voted down.

Thus it was that young Angus MacTavish went scouting to Denver in a small ground car in the dark that night. He was peculiarly adept at operating machinery: he had taken piping and brought the water closer, and he had worked out how the water mains and sewers worked, and he had even gotten a couple of inside toilets working, to the amazement of his friends.

He was gone forty-eight hours and came back with a lot of wonders to report. But the International Business

Machines Research Laboratories were in ruins that bore no fruit.

There was nothing there even vaguely resembling the Geiger counter that had been described to him. He had also located a “Bureau of Mines,” but it had only decayed records. He discovered a “Prospector's Outfitter,” and though he had found some stainless steel sample picks that he brought back, and an assortment of stainless steel knives that delighted the old women in their work, there had been no Geiger counter there either.

The council met again and grimly decided to carry on and get ready anyway, and the parson said a prayer that pleaded with the good lord to have pity on them and lead them somewhere, somehow, to a Geiger counter and uranium.

They also decided to send out more scouts, but without too much hope.

Jonnie awoke in the middle of the night to the abrupt realization that he knew where a uranium detector existed. The ore duster at the transshipment area! He had even spent apprentice time on it.

So, despite Robert the Fox's prohibition against his scouting, Jonnie was on a scout, dangerous or not.

Every few days he saw Chrissie. Each time he did, he made it a habit to ride around the minesite idly just to accustom the Psychlos to his being there. He would sit Windsplitter and wander around.

Today Chrissie and Pattie looked very forlorn. Jonnie had brought fresh meat and more deerskin for them to tan and sew. He had cut plenty of firewood– one of the Scots had unearthed a stainless steel axe from a village ruin, and it made such work remarkably fast.

He placed all this outside the wooden barrier to be taken in when Terl was “not busy” and could come out.

It was frustrating to talk through the wooden barrier and the cage bars. Chrissie and Pattie held up some buckskin shirts and breeches for him to admire and then repackaged them for him to take. He called to them that they looked fine. Pattie exhibited a new arrangement for their pitiful shelter– they could fasten nothing to the bars– and he said it looked much better.

What was he doing, they wanted to know. He said he was working. And was he all right? Yes, he was fine. And were things going well? Just fine. Difficult to carry on a conversation across a space of forty feet through two screening barricades and under the surveillance of at least two button cameras. Difficult to be calm and reassuring when what he really wanted to do was blow the place up and get them out of there.

He had a picto-recorder on a strap around his neck. With a couple of buckskin thongs he had steadied it to his chest so that with a slight motion of his hand he could start and stop it without raising it to his eye. He had practiced doing that and had gotten pretty accurate at pointing it without looking through the finder. He requisitioned a dozen of the things and plenty of miniature discs. As he talked he took pictures of the girls and the cage from several angles, pictures of the switch box and wires. It was a risk, he knew.

He told Chrissie and Pattie he would be back and rode casually to a high point above the Chinko quarters. Seemingly idle, he took broad panoramas, both wide-angle and telephoto, of the minesite. He took pictures of the twenty battle planes lined up in the field, the distant cartridge fuel dump, and, beyond that, the breathe-gas storage dump. He took pictures of the morgue a hundred yards beyond the transshipment area. And he covered the freighter landing area and ramps and conveyor belt and control tower.

Then luck! He saw a freighter on its way in with a load of ore. He idled down off the knoll. As he passed the cage, he felt a sudden need for cautiousness. He dismounted and slipped the discs he had already taken into the waiting pack, making it appear that he was just putting in some flowers.

Remounted, he wandered on down to the ore-dusting area. He let Windsplitter pause near tasty clumps of grass and at last came to the dust-coated area of transshipment.

The freighter had not unloaded yet. Employees were coming out and getting onto their machines. He rode up to the ore-dusting machine. The operator was not there. A hook was swinging from a crane and he pretended to duck it. But in actual fact he leaned over and pulled out a wire from the back of the machine's controls. He did not know its circuit, but with luck he would very soon.

The operator knew him slightly from his apprentice days but glanced at him with normal Psychlo disdain. “You better get that horse out of here! Ore coming in.”

Jonnie backed Windsplitter off.

The freighter discharged with a dusty roar. The blade machines raced about neatening up the pile. The first load was ready for the buckets on the conveyor belt.

A red light flared. A horn went off.

The ore duster operator cursed and banged at his controls.

All activity stopped.

The air around the operator's dome and mask might well have turned blue from his cursing.

Char came rumbling like a tank out of the dome of the transshipment control office, shouting as he came.

Far off was the faint moan of another freighter coming in from an overseas minesite.

It was not a transshipment firing day, but schedules were about to ball up on freighter discharge.

Char was shouting for electronics repair, and somebody in the dome, on the loudspeaker system, was demanding to know where the duty electronics was.

Jonnie could have told them where duty electronics was. He'd seen the employee walking toward the compound fifteen minutes ago.

Char was raving at the operator on the ore duster. The operator was hammering paws on the control panel.

Jonnie slid off his horse and went to them. “I can fix it.”

With a roar that had concussion in it, Char told him to get the out of there!

“No, I can fix it,” said Jonnie.

A voice coming closer said, “Let him fix it. I trained him.” It was Ker.

Char was distracted by the new interruption. He whirled to storm abuse at the midget Psychlo.

Picto-recorder running, Jonnie slid up to the front of the ore duster control panel. He snapped it open. He stood at right angles to the layout of components and pretended to study it. Then he reached in and touched a couple of points, doing nothing to them. Given pictures of this, he could build it!