Part 2

"It's not funny; it's perfectly logical. They spend their lives one jump ahead of freezing or drowning. Their world's against them. Other savage races have figured it that way, even on Terra."

"All right, it's logical. What has it to do with us?"

"It has this to do," said Guthrie. "That clown, Trent, is going around making friends like a puppy. He's cutting his own throat, an' I'd bet he thinks he's cutting mine. But you don't think they'd sacrifice a _bad_ person, do you?"

The thought penetrated, and she rose slowly to her feet. He reached out to her shoulders and gave her a little shake.

"The Skirkhi spend weeks before the stormy season making sure the evil spirits notice what nasty people they are. Like Terran kids before Christmas, in reverse. And there's that apple-polisher making a gilded saint of himself while the natives are spitting in their friends' faces and trying to steal their wives or cheat old Thyggar on their taxes."

The girl stared at him in horror. The flesh of her shoulders was soft but firm under his fingers. He suddenly wished there were no Skirkhi hanging about.

Suddenly, Karen's gray eyes widened with a new wariness.

"Let go!" she ordered.

"Maybe I shouldn't," Guthrie teased her. "Maybe I ought to let the Skirkhi see that you have claws. It would help your reputation here."

She began to struggle, and he had a hard time holding her but somehow hated to let go. He was conscious of a padding of feet in the alleyway as a couple of guards drifted in from the street.

Karen tried kicking him in the shin, then wound the fingers of one hand in his hair and yanked. Guthrie, who had by then clasped both hands in the small of her back, let go with his left to grab her wrist.

Immediately, the nails of her other hand raked past his right eye.

He muttered a curse, let go completely as he felt a sudden fury well up in him, then grabbed a handful of her long hair in his left hand. He half raised his other hand, undecided whether to slap or let her go. She screwed up her face and tried to turn away.

"Guthrie!" shouted a man's voice.

Trent ran between the huts, trailed by a score of Skirkhi.

_Well, this ought to be it_, thought Guthrie, releasing the girl. _He can't let this pass. I suppose I have a poke in the snoot coming._

Trent hauled Karen aside protectively, frowning at Guthrie. The latter stood with his hands waist-high, shoulders slightly forward, waiting. Watching Trent's eyes, he saw them flicker toward the expectant Skirkhi.

"I realize that there can be only one explanation, Guthrie," said the other, "but this is obviously neither the time nor place to argue it."

"I didn't offer any explanation," said Guthrie, ashamed but irritated.

"We are being observed," Trent reminded. "Show a little Terran dignity!"

He raised his chin with dignity and Guthrie punched it as hard as he could.

* * * * *

Thinking it over later, he realized that he had entirely wasted the quick feint with his left. Trent was still posing as a saint when Guthrie's fist sent him flying into the solid stone and clay wall of the house behind him.

The spacer stared at Trent as the man slid limply down the wall to a sitting position. He flexed his numbed fingers thoughtfully, as Trent peered glassily up at him without seeming to know where he was.

Karen slipped behind a rank of thick-shouldered Skirkhi as a hum of comment began to rise from the gathering. Guthrie turned and pushed his way through to the street. Out of habit, he took the direction to his quarters, vaguely aware that Polf had reappeared to follow him.

Disgusted with himself, he tried to see Karen's side of it.

_It must have looked just wonderful!_ he told himself. _I think I might have really tried it--guess she saw that in my face, so I can't blame her for ducking. How could I? This place is getting me. Pretty soon, I'll be a first-class Skirkh!_

He kicked moodily at the dust outside his doorway, then climbed the projecting stones at the corner. Polf grunted and followed him up to the roof.

"He is too good," said the Skirkh. "It will be easy. I will do it for you with Retho. My brother, Kror, will come too."

"Do what?" asked Guthrie.

"Steal his woman for you tonight. It will be a bad thing to do and the best time to do it. Elders say no moon tonight."

"But what makes you think--?"

"Your face. Do not say to Polf you not want. And if you not admit she is his woman, it is not bad enough a thing to do."

"You don't understand, Polf," said the spacer. "I couldn't ... that is, it's not the same for me...." _My God!_ he thought. _I'm beginning to sound like Trent!_

"The storms come," murmured Polf. "You want the wrong spirits for friends? If it is tonight, elders stay with Trent. Will be easy."

"Won't you have to be there? And your friends?"

"Gah!" exclaimed Polf. "Whole dumb village be there. What better time to do bigger spirit work? You want Thyggar steal her first?"

Guthrie sat up abruptly, and almost slid from the roof.

"Well, why not?" he muttered after a moment. "She must have warned Trent by now. If he can't think of a way out, I'd better save what can be saved. That was his own idea. I can't help it if he wouldn't listen to me."

It did not sound quite right to him, but time was running out. The thought of being transformed lingeringly into a few pounds of hacked and burnt meat crossed his mind once again, and he could feel himself beginning to sweat. He glanced over his shoulder at the broad, expectant face.

"All right," he whispered. "Tell Retho and your brother."

_What else can I do?_ he asked himself. _If it has to be one of us--_

* * * * *

Later, he tried to convince himself that he could sleep for a few hours.

Still later, following Polf down the torch-lit street, trying to look nonchalant before the unusual gathering of Skirkhi, he asked himself again, _What else can I do?_ He avoided the amused glint in old Thyggar's eyes.

The doing drove out the thought, and it was some hours before it occurred to him again. When it did, he was stumbling up a pitch-black slope miles to the south of the village.

Behind him, he could hear the sounds of panting and of dragging footsteps as Karen, Polf, and two other Skirkhi followed. The slope leveled off to a plateau. Something too big and solid to be a tree loomed up against the horizon.

"There it is!" Guthrie gasped.

The darkness was relieved only slightly by the stars, but there was no mistaking that silhouette. Guthrie stumbled the last hundred yards and came to a halt beside one big fin.

He stretched out a hand and accounted for the others by touch as they arrived. The rocket was canted slightly because one of the fins had sunk a little way into the ground, and the hatch half-way up the hull had been left open with the exit ladder extended to the surface.

"We'd better catch our wind before trying to climb up," he said.

He knelt on the grassy ground and rolled wearily over to a sitting position.

"How could I do it?" he murmured.

"What? You speak wrong talk, Gut'rie," panted Polf. "Like you talk to the good one before they start celebration. What you say to fool him?"

"What does he say?" whispered Karen anxiously.

"Wants to know what I said to Trent," he answered, tugging the frayed cuff of his trousers away from his leg. He seemed to be mud to the knees.

"When you came along as he was getting ready for the ceremony? You told him to dump the fancy costume and run for it."

"I did?" mused Guthrie. "Yes, I forgot. Well, he wouldn't listen, would he?"

"No, and he wanted me to go with him. You got mad because he thought they were taking him into the tribe."

"He's being taken, all right," muttered Guthrie. "There's no moon up yet."

He crawled to his feet and groped through the dark to the ladder.

"What are you doing?" asked Karen.

"Gonna take a look. Hope there's fuel to bounce her off this mudball."

He told Polf of his intention and began to climb. The metal rungs were cold. Reaching the open airlock, he swung himself inside the cramped chamber and closed the outer hatch in order to open the inner. Lights came on automatically.

He found a shorter ladder inside and climbed up to the passenger compartment. There were padded seats for about two dozen people, well packed, but they had swung to an upright position for landing. Guthrie climbed them to the pilot's position, where he seated himself to look over the instruments.

"Whew!" he exclaimed. "This can has just enough to get along on."

After noting the amount of fuel left in the tanks, he searched the drawers of the little control desk for information. He discovered a booklet of data on the rocket and a set of simple charts. To these, he added his memory of the mass calculated for Boyd III back when he had facilities for such work.

"We ought to get off okay," he told himself. "My God! A hand-crank calculator--they don't waste power in these things! Well ... later."

There was power provided, he saw, for "beacon" and "auto. radio" as well as for a few essentials like ventilation. A distress call could be broadcast automatically, at intervals regulated to economize on power, and the same could be done with the beacon. He looked up details in the booklet. The rocket possessed, at least, means to make a loud noise and show a bright light if any rescuer should approach. It remained for them to take it where these could be effective.

He went to work calculating firing data to blast the rocket into a course for Jhux. His figures lacked the polish he might have obtained in his own ship, but anything would have to do in this pinch.

"Maybe I ought to figure a closed orbit," he muttered. "Once up, we can pick the right time to edge out to Jhux ... maybe put out a few signals first."

He stared reflectively at his arithmetic, chin in hand.

After several minutes, he leaned back and thought, _Pete, my boy, maybe you won't have to do it after all! There might just be an out if there's still time._

He grabbed up the pencil he had been using and feverishly undertook another course calculation. In the end, after making a few corrections and comparing the requirements with the fuel gauges, he decided it would be possible.

"Now, let's see ... how do I get a distress call taped and set for broadcast...?"

When he scrambled down the ladder a little later, he brought a flashlight with him. Karen squinted and the three Skirkhi cringed in its beam.

"Polf, how long till day?" Guthrie demanded.

Polf found enough voice to guess that a third of the night remained.

Guthrie reached up and strained to unhook the ladder. As it came loose, he let it fall and said, "Let's get out of here before the jets light!"

"What are you _doing_?" protested the girl, grabbing his arm.

"Sending it up on automatic to broadcast a distress call."

"But I thought--"

"Well, I thought of a better one," snapped Guthrie. In Skirkhi, he added, "Move your feet, worms, before _we_ become a burning sacrifice!"

* * * * *

Shoving the natives ahead and towing a Karen whose voice showed signs of turning shrill, he got the group over the crest of the hill in plenty of time before the sky flared and thundered with the sudden roar of rockets.

The horrid noise departed toward the upper atmosphere. Presently, Guthrie's eyes readjusted to the dark until he could make out the trees through which they had groped and bumped heads an hour earlier.

"Might as well start," he said. "We might make it back in time for lunch."

"But the rocket!" wailed Karen. "After that awful trip to find it!"

"I set the controls," he explained, "to blast it up into an orbit around the planet, where it can broadcast our location until we're picked up."

"Oh," said Karen. "Well, I hope you can handle your friends till then."

"We should be able to see it in a little while. I set the controls to flop it over when it's high enough and send it around east to west."

"Why?"

"So it will match the apparent motions of the moons."

Karen walked perhaps twenty steps in silence, then stopped dead.

"_Guthrie! Do you really mean we can see it?_"

"Sure. I did it a bit roughly, but I'm hoping for under two thousand miles and two or three periods a night. Even when it isn't catching any sunlight, that beacon ought to show. Dimmer than Yiv, maybe, but moving and easy to spot."

With the flashlight, making their way through the woods took less time. They were half-way across a grassy plain when Polf exclaimed and pointed to the sky. Guthrie whooped.

"There's a moon for tonight!" he yelled. "And every night, for quite some time, until the pulls of the real ones spoil its orbit."

He felt so good that he threw an arm about Karen's waist. It must have felt good to her, too, for instead of pulling away, she leaned closer.

"They'll wait now, won't they?" she asked. "I mean, unless there's no moon.... Wait till George finds out what you've done for him!"

"I don't know why I'm so good to him when I like the Skirkhi better," said Guthrie. "Of course, we can't explain until I think up a suitably rotten excuse, or it would ruin my reputation with _them_!"

They stood motionless for a few minutes, watching the bright light creep perceptibly along its path in the heavens.

"Is it Yiv?" asked Kror, puzzled. "It should not be, now."

"Gah!" exclaimed Polf. "You mud-head! Of course, it is not Yiv. Our Gut'rie has made a new moon. Be grateful to Polf for bringing you, for we shall be big in the village after this!"

He looked proudly at Guthrie. The latter turned off the flashlight to see if the sky were actually beginning to show a pre-dawn lightening.

"We will be very big," Polf repeated. "Are we not friends of the evilest spirit of them all?"