barlow snorted. "don't think i ran to the chapel of the triangle and told tak laleen what you were up to. they don't need that sort of help from us. when are you going to get it through that thick skull of yours? we're outclassed; we're second-raters; we'll never defeat them."
from the night sky they heard the low hum of a force-field car. an opalescent sphere soared above the canyon. gill's fist smashed into barlow's jaw.
"so you did tell her!"
barlow fell back against the canyon wall, his mouth bleeding.
the sphere came to a graceful stop thirty feet above the hunters and the de-grav platform lowered a woman toward the canyon. surrounded by the faintly opaque capsule of her protective force-field, she moved toward them, a beautiful, dark-haired woman clothed in white.
this was tak laleen, the alien missionary assigned to the santa barbara area. she lived in the chapel of the triangle. under the terms of the surrender treaty, the missionaries of the almost-men were guaranteed immunity to preach and work in the treaty areas. they were selfless, generous and kind, yet men abhorred them, for they represented the tangible power of the conqueror.
tak laleen glided toward the hunters, forming the alien's triangular sign of peace with her small, white fingers. "i come in peace, in the name of the all of the universe."
"we haven't violated any regulation," gill snapped stiffly.
barlow sidled toward her. "take me back to the triangle," he begged. "i'll tell you—"
gill's fist lashed out again; barlow reeled under the blow. "we're a legally elected punishment squad," gill lied. "this man has broken a community law."
"you don't understand!" barlow cried desperately. "they came to get—"
the other hunters fell on him, pummeling him into silence. the violence sickened lanny, yet what alternative did they have? lanny raised his club. at the same time the missionary came closer to the mob, and his club touched her forced-field capsule. normally the energy would have paralyzed him with pain. but his mind refused to accept the normal, and lanny felt the same sort of integrated unity with the energy field that he had with his hunting club. command over the matter structure of the field. the energy flowed into his body and was absorbed, stored in an explosive concentration of power.
for a moment the opaque capsule dimmed. tak laleen clenched her hand over her mouth and fled into her sphere. the car soared up above the canyon.
lanny swung his club again. since barlow must die, let him die quickly, without pain. murder!—the accusation was a pang of agony in lanny's mind. this violated everything juan had taught him. he was aware that he wanted barlow's death not because the old man had tried to betray the hunters, but because lanny could not answer barlow's poisonous despair in any other way. lanny was ashamed. but who would know his real motive if he killed barlow now? who—but himself?
lanny's club touched barlow's chest. he felt a drain of energy, a disintegration of structure. the energy lanny had absorbed from the missionary's force-field exploded in a fierce, white heat. barlow crumbled into dust.
lanny's awareness of what he had done survived for a fraction of a second. he stood facing the exploding light and waves of concussion lashed at his body. a dark chaos, whipped into fury by a floodtide of guilt, rocked his mind. he willed himself into unconsciousness, a bleak forgetfulness that sponged the guilt—and the truth—from his mind.
and now he remembered nothing but the explosion and the queasy shadow of self-accusation.
"the settlement," juan pendillo said to his sons, "is required to surrender the hunters at dawn. that gives us forty-five minutes. we're all heading for different treaty areas. we are to go to the san francisco colony."
the three men slid along the street, clinging to the shadows. twice they passed other hunters in flight, but no one spoke, for the enemy sound detectors on the chapel of the triangle were sensitive enough to pick up a whisper at a distance of half a mile. lanny and gill discarded their moccasins, in order to be more sure of their footing. the moccasins were useless except as symbols of status. juan pendillo qualified to give the extra skins to his sons, since before the invasion he had been a doctor of philosophy, and the teachers had become the governing force in every treaty area.
for two hours pendillo and his foster sons walked north. occasionally they saw enemy spheres overhead, but the ships never came closer. after they reached the coast, the pounding surf formed a protective sound barrier when they talked.
"how far is the san francisco treaty area?" gill asked.
"three hundred miles, more or less," pendillo replied.
"how many days?" lanny inquired. his father, like all the older survivors in the settlement, always spoke of distance in terms of miles—a word that was meaningless to the new generation.
pendillo laughed, with gentle bitterness. "once, lanny, we might have made it by car in eight hours. now?—i don't know. the couriers sometimes do it in a week, when the weather is good. it will take us longer. i won't be able—" he cut himself short. "it's funny, isn't it? in the old days i used to gripe about the traffic; right now i'd give ten years of my life to see a model-t again."
gill ground his naked heel into the sand. "the almost-men took everything from us. but we're not licked. one of these days we'll be strong enough—"
"as strong as their machines?" lanny asked.
gill swung toward his brother angrily. "that's barlow's kind of talk, lan."
"the weapons and the machines of the almost-men," pendillo said, "are more powerful than anything we ever had. yet we must defeat them; we must make ourselves free again. and we shall; i have no doubt of it. granted, we have no weapons like theirs, and no chance of building any. we still don't resign ourselves to defeat. the techniques we used in the past failed; then we must find new ones. how? i don't know. that's the problem our generation leaves to yours. men live by their dreams; without them we are nothing."
the three men continued to move north along the beach until they came to the barrier that marked the northern boundary of the santa barbara treaty area. the barrier was a series of widely separated pylons marching across the land. each pylon served as a pedestal for one of the enemy's highly sensitive sound receptors and an automatic energy gun. any sound detected within seventy feet of the border became instantly the focal point for a stabbing beam of disintegration. yet men crossed the barriers at will. couriers traveled freely from one treaty area to another, and hunters crossed the border because the animal life in enemy territory was more prolific.
