* * * * * Torcred considered. The mark on his forehead burned, but he remembered how there had been compassion in Vazcled's face even as he wielded the knife, and that his worst enemy was discreditably dead in the desert. "Perhaps," he muttered. "If you go back," said Ladna quietly, "I go too." Relez stroked his beard. "That might make trouble." The girl turned on him, electric fire in her look. "None of your business!" Relez smiled. "On the other hand, maybe it will be for the best--a step forward in contact between the peoples." Torcred felt a new strength and confidence born of Ladna's loyalty. He said, "Your scheme is good, if it will work. I will--_we_ will help you make it work." The older man's face lit. "Good!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "You already have some sound ideas. I suggest--" "Captain!" broke in a low, taut voice. "What do you make of this?" Relez wheeled. The young technician who had been operating the controls of the televiewer was pointing at the screen in horror. The scene was a sweep of desert, silvered by the risen moon. There were indistinct dark shapes that might be a tribe of dragons, stalled, of course. But around and among them red flashes leaped and black towers of smoke sprang up to drift down the quiet night wind. It was a scene of death and destruction whose silence made it unreal. But as the five people in the rock chamber held their breath, they heard and felt, telegraphed from far away through the ground, the dull heavy concussions of exploding bombs. "Scan the sky, Rhenu," gulped the captain. The view shifted as Rhenu's trembling fingers made adjustments, and they glimpsed a black squadron drifting across the moonlit sky. Cruising with a leisurely consciousness of invulnerability, in the knowledge that the victims were helpless to maneuver, sitting ducks to be blasted at will. "Keep on scanning!" snapped Relez, but his face was ashen as he saw his dreams crumbling. Dunu was incredulously checking the anti-ionization generator. "There's nothing wrong here," he reported. But the screen showed scene after scene of a carnival of destruction. The night sky was full of buzzards, flying low, playing their search-lights on the desert and raining gas and explosives on everything that lived. It was the buzzards' moment to strike for dominance and they were making the most of it. Dunu said frozenly, "They must have been warned by their kin on the coast, and have managed to develop an engine with a hotpoint ignition system." Relez muttered, looking suddenly old and weary, "It's too bad. The people with the highest technical ingenuity--but their motivation seems to be insane hate of everything unlike them." "I told you so," Ladna said bitterly. Torcred had no ears for philosophy; he had seen enough of the murder going on out there. He bounded to his feet and his knife flashed in his hand.