Bukal swung round, eyes blazing. "Earthman! Is this true?" Numbly, Craig nodded. "That girl! Zenaor's own daughter!" Bukal choked with fury. "You brought her to our village! You gave no warning!" Craig held his voice chill: "So? Could you ask for a better hostage?" "No. Not if we had known. But now--" Bukal broke off and whirled round. "You"--this to the burly man--"take your people and head south to protect our village. The rest of us will run the barrier and try to intercept the raiders. As for you, alien"--he turned back to Craig, eyes hot and scornful--"you'll go south also. But as prisoner, not one of us." Craig looked to the others; searched their faces. Their eyes held no mercy. "All right, you. Come on!" The burly man started towards Craig. * * * * * Craig whipped up his fire-gun and laid the barrel hard along the other's temple. The man slumped to the ground. Craig said tightly, "To hell with the lot of you! I'm no man's prisoner!" "Curse you, alien!" Bukal took a quick step forward. Craig leveled the fire-gun at the flat, bronzed belly. Bukal halted. Craig flicked the weapon's muzzle to the nearest of the Baemae. "You! Spin me a disc!" Seconds stretched to eternity. Then the man's eyes fell. Wordless, he shuffled through the echoing silence, tilted up a disc, and whipped it round. The magnetic currents caught it; held it, hovering. Craig vaulted aboard it. "Death's waiting for the man that follows...." He threw his weight to one side, then back again. Rocking, the saucer swirled upward. Again he tilted; sent it careening around the far end of the line of trees. Behind him, Bukal shouted an order. There was a rush of feet, a flurry of movement. Craig leaned far out, so that the disc almost doubled on its course, sliding back on the other side of the masking sefopp trees. Then, dropping it swiftly back to the ground, he leaped off and dragged it into the shadows. Saucers sped past the end of the grove, riders and discs alike silhouetted dimly against the blue-black sky. Craig crept deeper into the undergrowth, flat on his belly. More aching tension. More seconds dragging by, turning into minutes. Then discs swept down again. Craig heard someone rasp, "He's gone, Bukal. We couldn't spot him." And then Bukal, cursing: "We can't wait any longer. Not with Zenaor prowling." Again, discs tilted skyward. All of them, this time. Silence once more, broken only by the whisper of breeze and trees, the chirp of insects. Craig crept back to his own saucer and wheeled it out into the open. Ten seconds later he, too, was climbing into Lysor's dark night sky. Climbing--to what end, with every man's hand against him? Bukal or Zenaor, Baemae or barons, one and all sought his blood. All but Narla. Somehow, he had to reach her.