He had come to physical blows with the two Chamco brothers, blast them. They were readying up a heavy armored tank. Two tanks that had gotten out that violent afternoon had been blown to cinders. So the Chamcos were rigging one of the old brutes of the Basher class: “Bash Our Way to Glory.” Nothing could penetrate its hide and its guns wrecked things for miles. The Chamcos were salvaging fuel and ammunition cartridges for it, and they had the nerve, the twisted metal nerve, to maintain that the attackers were Hockners from Duraleb, a system Psychlo had completely whipped two hundred years ago.

The battle had been over who got the cartridges, and that pompous midget Ker had come down and given them both half. Another Terl mess!

The cartridges didn't fit the Mark 32. Zzt had spent valuable time machining a false case around them to get them into the tubes. Damn Terl!

He had told his men to move that damned drone two hours ago. Damn

Terl!

Now here he was. He had found a copilot: one of the executives in the draft that had just arrived, rated combat on a Mark 32, named Nup; a dimwit– but that's what you got on an out-of-the-way planet like this– who thought it was a typical Bolbod attack, based on a rumor he had heard in the kerbango shops lately in the imperial City that a conquest of the Bolbods was intended.

Zzt had collected a combat breathe-mask, gotten a shoulder bag of extra vials, gotten his sidearms, put spare rations in his pocket, and last but not least put his favorite wrench into the side of his boot, a wrench that sometimes came in handy in any kind of fight or situation.

The Mark 32 motors turned over easily. It purred. In no time at all he would be out there and that would be the very positive end of this attack! Damn Terl!

Zzt let off the skid grips and taxied the Mark 32, “Hit 'Em Low, Kill 'Em,” toward the firing door. Mechanics leaped to get out of his way. The place was in a turmoil of Psychlos trying to get planes ready with nothing. And that damned drone was still standing there.

Ordinarily you could fire three planes at once through that door. It was high enough even to add a fourth. But that ancient relic of a gas drone was so wide and so tall it was blocking the whole door. Just what he'd told Terl. Damn Terl! There was noway he could get the Mark 32 past it.

Zzt leaned out the door and screamed for the shift foreman. He came rushing up. Zzt almost bit him. “Move that damned drone! Two hours ago l-'

“It won't dolly,” panted the foreman. He pointed. Four dolly trucks had been trying to push it away. “It won't move!”

Zzt gave his equipment bag a hoist onto his shoulder and sprang down. “You imbecile crunch! The only inside control that thing has is its mag-grapnels. Why haven't you let it off! Those big skis are magnetically locked to this platform! Why don't you learn-'

“It’s a very old drone,” chattered the foreman, his wits starting to crumble under Zzt's glare.

Zzt rushed to the door of the drone. It was a huge door, big enough to load a dozen gas canisters at a time.

Somebody had put a rolling ladder there and Zzt ran up it, his equipment clattering, and pried at the door. It was locked! An armored door itself the size of a plane.

"Where's the key?” screamed Zzt.

"Terl had it!” the foreman shouted up at him. “We've looked everywhere for Terl. We can't find him!”

Damn Terl! “Have you searched his rooms?” Zzt yelled down from the rolling ladder.

“Yes. Yes. Yes!” cried the foreman.

“We-”

At that moment a higher-pitched voice bit into the row of the hangar. "Yoohoo!" It was Chirk. Zzt stared in daggers of hostility. The cheap twit!

But she was holding a single huge key. “I found this in his desk,” she caroled.

“Where are the other keys to this thing?” shouted Zzt. “The preset box keys.”

“That's the only one there was in the desk,” lilted Chirk.

It gave Zzt an instant's pause. He didn't want this damned old relic firing itself off in the hangar with no way to get out. But he had to move it. This was the door key they were passing up to him.

He glared at the key. Three toggles. Pitted. The shaft almost in two. Terl could at least have made a new key! But oh no, it was paws off.

He shoved the key, all twenty pounds of it, at the lock hole. He twisted it with a curse. Damn Terl!

The rusty, magnetic clenchers gave. The key fell apart.

Zzt flung it to the platform below, narrowly missing Chirk. At least the door was open.

He struggled to swing it back. Even the hinges were decayed and stiff. It opened to reveal the enormous interior.

Zzt got a torch. There were no lights in this thing. It was never meant to have a pilot in it. It was just tons and tons and tons of gas canisters, engines, and armor.

He thought belatedly he might have robbed some fuel from it. Too late now.

He lumbered forward to the control compartment. He had better throw them off. But no! They were armor-locked solid. They couldn't be unset without a key. And this metal wouldn't surrender to anything. It was armored! Damn Terl!

He darted his light around. There was the magnetic grip release, the only interior control, put there so hangar and firing people could lock and unlock it when moving it about with tractors.

Zzt reached for the release brake. Before he could touch it, it moved!

He froze, looking at it in horror. Yes, there was a click in the preset box. He dove for the door.

The forward jerk of the motors threw him off his feet. He scrambled for the exit.

Too late!

The hangar door was fleeing by. It was already yards down to the ground. He didn't dare jump.

The drone took off, its rusty side door flapping in the wind.

Zzt led out a shuddering groan. Damn

Terl!

Well, at least they could get the battle planes out and end the Tolnep attack.

And all this on half-pay and no bonuses.

Probably that was Terl's doing, too.

Jonnie, twenty miles away, saw the drone launch. It was a huge thing. The gas drone? He went ice cold.

The flash of an explosion bloomed on the side of it. He knew it would be a bazooka firing. There was a team there to prevent the launching of planes. A second flash against the hull as the boom of the first one drifted faintly to them. Neither had the slightest effect upon the drone. It rose in stately massiveness to two thousand feet as it turned. Still climbing, it headed northwest.

It went by them to the east, looming in the sky, so big it looked close even though two miles away. It was ragged and patched and dented, evidences of former combat on its discolored hide. A tense Jonnie clocked it at about three hundred miles an hour. A battle plane had fired just behind it. Bazooka missiles hit the plane, exploded in two flares of light. It continued sedately on its way, following the drone. As it passed over them he saw it was a different type of battle plane. The Psychlo numbers “32” were on its side and then the smoke logos of the Psychlos. An escort?

The heavy roars beat at the earth.

When they had gone, Terl said, “Why not admit it, animal? You're licked.

When the Psychlos counterattack from home planet, you'll already be gone. So why not toss that gun over here and we can make a deal?”

Jonnie ignored him. He was carefully tracking the compass course of the drone relating it to the afternoon sun. He watched it as long as he could as it droned away to the northeast. It was not turning further. Be calm, he told himself. Don't panic.

"Where's it going first?” he said to Terl. A battle plane could do two thousand miles an hour. You can catch it. Be calm.

“Throw the gun over and I’ll tell you all about it,” said Terl.