Jonnie snapped his battle plane in front of Terl’s. For an instant he could see the facemasked Psychlo through the armored windscreen. It was Terl. A madly efficient Terl, a Terl who for all his insanity was a past master at flying and a top marksman. Jonnie wondered whether he could match this maniac.

Terl went to the right. Jonnie had outguessed him and gone the same direction. Terl went farther right. Jonnie had outguessed him and was in front of him with ready firing guns.

Terl went up. Jonnie's hands on the keyboard did not outguess him and Terl was almost able to dart past and return to rake the compound assault teams. Jonnie corrected and almost rammed Terl from below.

Why hadn't he battered the monster's head off in the morgue? But there had been no time.

Terl went low to the right, then to the left, then to the right. Rhythmical. Easy to predict. Jonnie was in front of him every time.

Too late, Jonnie realized it was a trap. The fourth time, Terl's guns were firing at the place Jonnie was about to be. Only the slip of a finger on a key saved him from being blasted out of the sky.

Abruptly Terl seemed to abandon his effort to get through to the compound. He headed straight north.

Down below, the burning plane sent up soaring piles of black smoke.

Was this another Terl trick? Luring him off?

Ears blasted by the scream of tortured motors, Jonnie swept his eyes across his viewscreens. Where was Terl going and why? With a sudden hunch he flipped on a heat detection screen.

Chrissie and Pattie, riding to the north! Their horses' bellies to the ground as they raced along.

Leverage. Jonnie suddenly realized Terl was trying to get back his leverage! If he could recover his hostages he might bring pressure on Jonnie.

Jonnie flipped open the local command radio. Sure enough– Terl's voice!

"If you don't go down there and land, animal, I’ll kill them both.”

Terl was right ahead of him, dropping down to about four thousand feet.

Jonnie hit his keys. He estimated exactly where Terl would be.

Jonnie's battle plane slammed into the back of Terl’s. Jonnie closed the switch for the magnetic grips. The skids of his plane locked to the back of Terl’s.

Half-deafened by the thud of contact, Jonnie stepped up his speed control to hypersonic. His motors shrieked. He punched in coordinates to compare with six feet underground directly below them.

He glanced over the side to see that the riders were clear of that spot.

They were.

The motors of both ships were screaming in discord, fighting against one another in howling dissonance. They jerked and wrestled in the sky, suspended in space. The motors began to get hot. Very shortly they would burn and explode.

Jonnie reached back for the jet packs. The straps had already been shortened. He shrugged into it. He made sure he still had Terl's belt gun.

He took one final glance at the keyboard. Locked in. Six feet underground, directly below, four thousand feet down, speed control at hypersonic.

Jonnie dove out the plane door. The air bit at him as he plummeted down.

His jets barked alive and the descent slowed. By swinging his legs, he went up to a higher altitude.

He looked at the locked and fighting ships.

He had expected that Terl would bail out. The outcome was inevitable. The ships would explode. He was counting on Terl's having no belt gun, and he intended to hunt him down in a jet pack or on the ground. But Terl didn't bail out. Jonnie could see him battering away at his control console.

Jonnie, holding in space with his backpack jets, had the sickening feeling he had made a mistake. Terl, after all, knew Psychlo tactics backward.

What Terl was doing in that jerking, fighting mess where one ship's motors fought the other's, was trying to outguess the settings of the plane that rode his back. If he could, both motors would agree. Possibly, then, a quick roll and reversal of the settings would throw the other ship off his back.

The smoke from those conflicting motors was already beginning to rise in the battle plane Jonnie had bailed out of.

Suddenly Terl got the combination! Both ships' motors smoothed into shrieking agreement.

But Jonnie's combination was straight down and six feet under, hypersonic.

At an abrupt two thousand miles an hour, both ships hurtled toward the earth.

In an instant, Terl apparently realized that this set of console coordinates was sudden death.

Jonnie could see him in the cabin, moving urgently.

With only five hundred feet to go, Terl frantically punched in the reverse combination. His ship motors went into a fighting howl.

The inertia of the mass carried it down to within twenty feet of the ground before the descent halted.

But the force on the hot motors was too great for them to overcome.

Both ships burst into an orange ball of fire!

Terl's body hurtled out of the door and struck rolling.

The ships struck!

With a swing of his legs Jonnie headed downward into a dive. With a thumb on the jet pack throttle, he guided himself to land about a hundred feet from the fiercely flaming wreck.

Terl was still rolling.

Jonnie shed his jet backpack. It was almost expended anyway. Not taking his eyes from Terl, he drew the belt gun and slid off its safety.

Terl had been on fire for a moment. He was not now. He had rolled it out in the damp spring grass. He was fifty feet away. He was lying motionless. He had a breathe-mask on.

Jonnie approached cautiously. This was a very treacherous beast. He walked within forty feet. Thirty feet. Terl was just lying there, inert.

A statement Robert the Fox had made drifted through Jonnie's head: “Plan well, but when battle is joined, expect the unexpected! And cope with it!” Terl's escape had scrambled their plans. The compound down there was without air cover. The lord alone knew what was going on. The sound of gunfire was rattling and thudding in the distance. The mutter of flames came from the burning planes nearby.

Jonnie didn't look. He had his eyes on Terl, watchful. He stopped. Twenty-five feet was close enough. He could not quite see through the faceplate. Terl was singed. There was some dried green blood on his jacket.

Suddenly Terl's hand blurred and a small gun appeared in it like magic.

Jonnie dropped at the first hint of motion and fired.

There was a flash as Terl's gun exploded in his paw. Then he was up and starting to run.

There were questions Jonnie wanted answered. His first snap shot had been lucky and had hit the gun. He drew a careful bead on Terl's right leg. “Here's one for the horses,” flashed through his head. He fired.

The leg buckled and Terl went down. The foot stayed twisted in the wrong direction.

Jonnie walked over to where the exploded gun lay. It was a very slim weapon. Was this what was called an “assassin gun”?

Terl was lying there, motionless. “Quit shamming, Terl,” said Jonnie.

Terl suddenly laughed and sat up. “Why didn't you die in the morgue?”

“Animal,” said Terl, putting his foot right-way to but carefully sitting quiet under the menace of the gun twenty feet away. “I can hold my breath for four minutes!”

He was too cheerful. His leg was bleeding through his pants. He was singed. But he was too cheerful. Jonnie knew there was something else. He backed up.

Moving so that he could keep Terl in view out of the corner of his eye, he glanced around the plain. The compound was behind them, possibly twenty miles. Gunfire was coming faintly from that direction. He knew he should make some effort to help them.

Where were the girls? Probably they had gone on. No! There they were! Jonnie hadn't expected that. They were coming back. Riding at a slow trot, cautiously, they were coming back. They were about a mile away.