In moments, the craft was airborne, and Washington was falling away below them, fading away behind. And now any small thing--an incorrectly acknowledged radio challenge--would undo them, the Quadrate realized, but that was only a part of this terrible gamble they were taking. Gamble, on their very lives, yes--only why? Why? Slowly, bit by bit, the thing pieced itself together as they flew. A great forest stretched ten miles beneath them, faded, wilted at last into desert as the first shadows of a day dying crept silently upward to engulf them. In low tones, he and Lisa talked with the heavy-faced leader, and they talked for a long time. "If it were not for the boys--" Blair murmured finally. "The boys will be safe with us," Lisa answered. She looked at them, and they were sleeping, hardly looking the part now of young warriors of broadsword and mace. "We will teach them a different way...." He was silent for long moments. Then: "I cannot understand. I cannot, Lisa. That I have always believed as I have--and he, as we know he did. Yet that we should both have mortal hatred for the same men; he to the point of doing what I did not have courage to do. And now, regardless of what I believe, my own kind are hunting me down." "They would have, had you had the courage of which you speak--the courage of that conviction. And was it, Douglas, simply a conviction about a single man?" "I--I don't know." He looked through a port; it was night, and they were speeding silently westward. Then he was looking back to her, and deep into her eyes. He had never felt lost, alone, hunted before. There was something very wrong. "With us, Douglas ... will you try? To understand--with us?" "Not because I am hunted." "No. No. But now is the time for that wanting courage. Another man, too, hated a Tayne, and killed him. Can you help us kill the things that all Taynes stood for? In our way?" Great mountains were looming before them, and the 'copter was beginning to lower into their darkened maw. And suddenly he felt a new strength in him from depths of his being that were opening to him for the first time. _Another man had killed Tayne. And could he--_ "But what of the other man?" he suddenly heard himself asking. "What have I done to him? What have I done to _his_ world?" "He must be a man of great courage." Lisa answered slowly. "I think--I think such a man will find a way to undo what you have done. For such a man, and for such others as he, there is always great hope." "You will help me, Lisa." "All of us, Douglas." "Then that is all _I_ shall need," he said softly. The 'copter vanished into the mountains. * * * * * Terry and Mike came running from Doug's den, a welter of books open on the floor behind them which they had not opened. Dot was coming from her bedroom. A pistol Doug owned had been in her hand, and she put it in its place in the open drawer from which she had taken it.