the third day after rea's death. three days, and three of the hairy, half-naked white savages, he thought grimly. he had never killed a fellow being before—in york dome hatred and love and loyalty were mere words from the barbarian centuries—but now he had destroyed three of his own kind. nor did he feel any shame or regret....
the savages on rea's backtrail had come upon bryt carby. he had killed one of them before they had overpowered him and built their fires.
carby had not died until an hour after brink had come upon the howling pack of six warriors and had emptied his gun into them. he had killed two of them outright and wounded three others; and then he had cared for the broken, blistered thing that had been his friend, until carby died.
now he watched before the cave where two savages lay hidden—and he watched the growing swarmings of green-bodied flies about the elevated rocky lip of their shelter.
the warriors must not escape to carry word back to their tribesmen of the settlement of the men from york dome....
at a sound from behind him, he turned about, his rifle butt dug into his shoulder and chest, his finger pressing the firing button.
"tzal!"
behind the boulder overlooking the savages' rocky death trap he took her in his arms. she was tzal, smiling and full-bodied as always, and his partner for this year and for the other years. the years yet to come.
she was dirt-streaked and sweaty. her clothes were torn and her hair was matted and discolored with dust. weariness darkened the skin beneath her eyes.... she was beautiful!
"where," she asked him after a time, "are they hidden?"
"up there, just back of those—"
he spun about, racing back to where he had dropped his rifle. the two savages, wounded and limping grotesquely, were scuttling toward a broken jumble of rock fragments. once hidden there they might work up the slope and escape.
tzal's rifle cracked, once, twice, even as he turned and brought up his own weapon. a defiant yell slapped across the rocky slot and an arrow thudded weakly at tzal's feet. brink's thumb hit the firing button and the warrior spun about and fell across the man tzal had shot.
for now the settlements were safe. the colonists, bargaining years of hard work for a supposed passage to a distant unsettled world, were secure from attack. only a few hours from their luxurious home domes, they could sweat and toil and suffer as the hardy explorers of the earlier centuries must have done.
dorav brink wanted to laugh—to tell tzal and the others of the colossal duping they had experienced. yet he kept silent. from the evil of the trickery a great good might come. for the first time in centuries men were living an active, brain-stimulating life.
let the great hothouse domes with their dwarfish inbred animals in their parks, and their controlled atmosphere, and odor content index, and mass-produced pleasure booths go their way. let the pale, thready-muscled humans nibble their synthetic promines and yea-steaks—the pioneers had no need for substitutes....
brink's arm went around tzal's shoulders and he was looking into her shaken, tear-stained eyes. he smiled. it was the first time he had ever seen his placid partner so moved.
"all this," brink said, his hand sweeping, "for our son, and for the sons to follow him. our children will make of sulle ii a better world than earth."
tzal's lips trembled. she had not heard him, he thought. his head lifted yet higher and he filled his lungs with the crisp upland air. tzal was clinging to him, depending on him....
precisely, perhaps, as tzal wished him to feel.
