"Sid," Jane said. "Sid, did you hear him? They--they're going to keep us here, and--Sid, is there any chance the sun won't go nova?" Sid shook his head. His face looked suddenly bleak. "No chance at all, kid. I guess we should have listened." "Sid, I'm scared." There was a roaring sound as the runabout, instead of retreating, came bucketing toward the beach. "Come on down to the water!" the corporal bawled at the top of his voice. "We'll get you!" The Chief raised his hand. Another line of spearmen came trotting forward. "Go back," Sid shouted. "They'll kill you!" But the runabout came toward them on the heaving surf. Before the chief could raise his hand a second time, the corporal stood up in the prow of the runabout and fired a blaster toward the beach. He had fired it high and he waited for it to disperse the spearmen. When it did not, he fired again, lower. The chief lifted his hand and brought it down. A volley of spears leaped from muscular arms, arching in the sunlight, dropping toward the runabout.... The corporal fired again and a figure near the chief slumped to the sand. Then the runabout, riddled by fifty spears at the water-line, began to sink. "Take them," the chief said. A score of Mandmoorans swarmed out through the surf toward the sinking boat. Jane watched as they surrounded it and brought the three soldiers back with them quickly. By then the runabout had gone under, but the flotilla of rescue craft was now only a few hundred yards offshore and coming fast. "Five hostages," the chief said. "Tell them go." Voices shouted back and forth across the water, but Jane saw that the chief wasn't listening. Instead, he went to the man who had fallen before the corporal's blaster. He knelt and took the yellow shocked head on his knee and murmured to it. The young Mandmoora's right arm had been all but blasted off at the elbow. Blood was gushing and pumping from severed arteries. The chief raised his head and wailed: "Grower, healer, Lord Sun! Save the Princeling of your people. Grower, healer, Lord Sun!" he chanted, repeating it. "Grower...." "Princeling?" Sid said. "The old boy's son, you think?" "If they just keep chanting and leave him like that, the poor boy'll bleed to death. Can't we do something?" Just then an amplified voice came across the water toward them, metallic and somehow unreal. "Masters! Miss Crowley. We'll stay here. We won't budge until--until it's too late. Until we have to leave. But we can't come after you. The Mandmoorans would fight. There would be death on both sides and--I'm sorry, Masters, Miss Crowley. We are positively forbidden to use force of arms here. You understand?" It was a rhetorical question. It did not matter if they understood or not. The flotilla would wait--hopelessly. The flotilla would leave when it had to. And the corporal and his companions, along with Sid Masters and Jane, would be left with the Sun-trusting Mandmoorans. * * * * *