"I'm sorry to have to tell you this...." Kirk knew. The knowledge leaped through him. It was strange, to feel a spear-stab where there was no spear. He said, "Pa." The Officer nodded. He seemed very tired, and he didn't look at Kirk. He hadn't, after the first glance. "Your father, and his two friends." Kirk shivered. The horny lids dropped over his eyes. "I wish I'd known," he whispered. "I'd have killed more of them." The Officer put his hands flat on the top of the wall and looked at them as if they were strange things and no part of him. "Kirk," he said, "this is going to be hard to explain. I've never done anything as hard. The Piruts didn't kill them. They were responsible, but they didn't actually kill them." Wes raised his head slowly. "I don't understand." "We saw them coming up the tongue of rock. The Piruts were behind them, but not far. Not far enough. One of the three, it wasn't your father, called to us to put the ladder down. We waited...." A muscle began to twitch under Kirk's eye. That, too, was something that had never happened before, like the stab of pain with no spear behind it. He licked his lips and repeated hoarsely: "I don't understand." The Officer tightened suddenly and made one hand into a fist and beat it slowly on the wall, up and down. "I didn't want to give the order. God knows I didn't want to! But there was nothing else to do." A man came up over the top of the ladder. He was carrying a body over his shoulder, and breathing hard. "Here's Kirk," he said. "Where'll I put him?" There was a clear space off to the right. Kirk pointed to it. "Over there, Charley. I'll help." It was hard to move. He'd never been tired like this before. He'd never been afraid like this, either. He didn't know what he was afraid of. Something in the Officer's voice. He helped to lay his father down. He'd seen bodies before. He'd handled them, fighting on the pillbox walls. But never one he'd known so long, one he'd eaten and slept and wrestled with. The thick arm that hauled him out of bed this morning, the big hands that warmed the baby against the barrel chest. You saw it lying lax and cold, but you didn't believe it. You saw it. You saw the spear shaft sticking out clean from the heart.... You saw it.... "That's one of our spears!" He screamed it, like a woman. "One of our own--from the front!" "I let them get as close as I dared," said the Officer tonelessly. "I tried to find a way. But there wasn't any way but the ladder, and that was what the Piruts wanted. That's why they made them come." Kirk's voice wasn't a voice at all. "You killed them. You killed my father." "Three lives, against all those back on the plain. We held our fire too long as it was, hoping. The Piruts nearly broke through. Try to understand! I had to do it." Kirk's spear made a flat clatter on the stone. He started forward. Men moved in and held him, without rancor, looking at their own feet.