Down in the Outlander camp the children were gathering around the dog as the dark haired woman bandaged her shoulder. A voice came to him, treble and joyous, "Binkie is back--Binkie is back...." The little girl sat to one side, so small and alone that he almost failed to see her. She watched the children crowd up to pet their dog but she did not move to join them. Only her hands moved, caressing the white cord that was charred on one end. He felt the triumph and satisfaction become like something turned bitter around the edges and draining away. Technogration was planning and fighting and killing until at last a man reached the top and no one dared oppose him; Technogration was control of a world and the seeds of an empire. And Technogration was a child crying in the cold moonlight, was a little black hole where a kitten had screamed out with pain, with a little girl's heart that had nothing left to hold but harsh and poignant memories and a piece of burnt cord. He ran to the boarding ramp, feeling the fiery lash of pain and hot flow of blood as the wound reopened, telling himself he was a fool who would probably die in the falling ship and would deserve it. * * * * * He stood by the gray ashes of his fire, the Guardsman's combat helmet under his arm, and watched the little girl come alone up the hill. Someone had washed the tear-stains from her face and she stopped before him with her head held high and defiant, trying not to let him see she was afraid of him and almost succeeding. "I sent for you, Lornie, to tell you I'm sorry about last night." He saw she did not believe him. Her face was like a little carving of cold, unforgiving stone and she did not answer him. He set the helmet down in the grass before her. Six tiny kittens lay inside it, red and white and gray fluffs of fur, their pink mouths questing hungrily. Her eyes widened with incredulous wonder. "_Oh!_" Then the suspicion came back and she stopped the quick forward step she had taken. "They haven't any mother and they're hungry," he said. She did not move. "They're yours, Lornie. To keep." "They're--mine?" Then the doubt fled from her and she ran forward to gather them in her arms. He left her with her head bent down over the kittens in her lap, making soft little sounds of endearment to them, her face so radiant that there was no room left for hurt or hatred on it. Kennedy was coming, not yet knowing why he had been summoned nor that Technogration had died at dawn. He would not relinquish all his authority, of course. And he would have to remember to tell Kennedy that they were going to give him one of Binkie's pups. The companionship of an understanding dog might be comforting in the years to come, whenever he recalled the morning he had owned a world and a bare-footed girl had taken it away from him. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last Victory, by Tom Godwin