39

The sled moved steadily northward toward the Lannar Crater in almost total silence. It was so dark that Merral could make out very little clearly. There was a constant sense of trees and bushes racing past, and occasionally branches and leaves would whip against the sled and rattle off helmets or hands. Almost the only noises were the soft whistle of the air, the low hum of the engine, and the gentle rustle of grass and small shrubs against the sled’s underside. Their passage was so quiet that more than once they startled animals. Once, a herd of deer bounded away as leaping shadows. Another time they stopped abruptly, and ahead of them Merral made out the shape of a large bear lumbering irritably out of the way.

Normally Merral would have found the journey invigorating, particularly after being enclosed inside a ship. He had always loved being out in the open, and this journey with the stars above and the fresh clean air with its scents of pine and heather all around should have been enjoyable. Tonight, though, everything seemed to conspire against any enjoyment. He had to keep his head down to avoid being lashed by branches, it was impossible to find a decent position for his legs in the cramped space, the armor made his spine ache, and soon, as they climbed higher, he was very cold. Repeatedly, memories of his fight with the intruders at Carson’s Sill came back to him, and he found himself quailing at the prospect of battling against those terrible creatures. And what he fought against then had now been supplemented by this new flying monstrosity. Unease also nagged at his mind about what had happened between him and Anya. The memory of her embrace left a warm glow. Nevertheless, in another part of his mind, he told himself that he could perhaps have handled it in a better way. He had somehow allowed himself to be caught unawares by events. It would have surely been better to have resolved matters with Isabella first.

After ninety minutes, his troubled reflections were broken when they stopped in the midst of a pile of gravelly dunes overlooked by a high, saw-edged line of summits. With groans of relief, everybody clambered out and stretched to restore circulation.

Merral checked the dimmed digital map with Frankie and Philip. He saw that they had slowly climbed up from the landing site but still had the main part of the southern Rim Ranges to negotiate.

After ten minutes they set off again. Over the next hour, they wound their way through the mountains, climbing ever higher and going round great fragments of rock beside which patches of snow still persisted. Above them the stars seemed to burn ever more brightly, and in the deep cold everybody huddled next to each other, grateful for even the slight warmth transmitted from the man on either side. They slowly descended into the crater proper. The high, sharp-edged blackness of the bladed peaks was now behind them. They descended gulches and ragged screes to the crater floor, and as they did, Merral found himself ever more troubled. He tried praying, but that gave him no peace, a fact that unsettled him still more. He sat there shivering, trying to keep warm and wishing that, one way or another, it was all over. Slowly, the bare angular rocks gave way to a flatter and more swampy area, and for some time the sled pushed through tall reeds, while in the waters below, unseen creatures plopped and jumped as the sled glided over them.

On the other side of the marsh, they stopped again amid clumps of dwarf willows and, on a bank covered with thin sparse grass and moss, stretched out trying to massage cramped muscles. Frankie sent a brief coded message, compressed into a fraction of a second’s tight directional transmission, southward to the Emilia Kay. A few moments later, the terse acknowledgement came back from Maria Dalphey. All parties, the message said, were on schedule.

They continued on, and as the ground rose again, Philip was forced to steer the sled in an increasingly circuitous route in order to keep them low in valleys. Merral tried to doze but found that he could not.

An hour later, there was a final stop in a barren, gravel-strewn depression. Everyone dismounted, did more stretching exercises, drank water, and ate biscuits. Here, Merral noted, all the men seemed subdued, and an air of unease hung over everyone. At least two of the party kept their guns with them, and in the darkness he could sense people looking around warily.

Merral was lying down, trying to bring life to stiff legs, when one of the men came over to him.

“Sir, a question: You were a forester, right?” Merral recognized Lee Rodwen from his southern Varrend Tablelands accent.

“Yes, Lee,” Merral sighed, “and at this moment I would like to be one again. As you would want to go back to your farming studies.”

“Aye, true enough. But is it always this quiet up ’ere?”

Merral listened beyond the low whispers of the men and realized that he had heard no sign of either bird or animal for a long time. I have been too preoccupied. I must concentrate more on this undertaking.

“You feel something is missing?” he asked.

He sensed Lee looking around, sniffing the air. “Life, sir, is what’s missing. Birds, rabbits, foxes—anything. I’m no forester, but I am a countryman, and this is a funny place ’ere. Bleak. As if round ’ere, the Seeding went wrong.”

Merral listened again, hearing only the tense silence, as heavy as the air before a summer storm.

“No, Lee, the Seeding went right. But, if I can make up a word, perhaps it’s been unseeded.”

“Unseeded?” There was a pause and then the man spoke again. “Aye, that about feels like it. But sir, who—or what—unseeds what the Assembly seeds?”

“A good question, Lee.”

Then behind them there was a murmur of activity, and Merral was aware that people were starting to climb back into the sled. It was time for the final lap.

Forty minutes later, the sled glided to a halt in a shallow but steep-sided river valley. It was still dark; indeed, the night was now thicker and more impenetrable than ever before.

There were whispered commands from Frankie; the sled sank slowly to the ground, and the faint hum of the engine died away. Stiffly, but with great care, the men dismounted from the sled and, trying not to make the slightest noise, began taking out their weapons and their packs.

In low whispers, Frankie assigned duties. “Three hours sleep, one hour on guard. If you’re not on guard now, go and sleep. Everyone keep your weapons next to you.” Then he turned and touched Merral on the arm. “If it’s all right with you, Captain, shall we go and take a look?”

Putting on light-enhancing goggles that, in happier days, Merral had used for monitoring wildlife, he and Frankie grabbed their guns and picked their way down the stony valley bottom. There was little vegetation, just straggly thistles and wiry grass clumps around the flanks of the sluggish shallow stream. After a hundred meters, they began climbing up a slope, trying not to slip on the loose stones. A few minutes’ labor brought them to just below the rounded summit, and there they hesitated for a moment.

If we are in the right place, Merral thought, then just over the top will be the lake and, on the other side of that, will be the ship.

Frankie gestured him forward. They crawled up on their hands and knees and, lying uncomfortably on the cold and pebbly ground, peered eastward.

With the image distorted in color and texture by the goggles, it took time for Merral to work out what it was that he was seeing. Before them was the rough descent down to the lake edge, and beyond the dark, immobile waters he could see the other shoreline. In the middle of that, like some sort of strange reclining ebony sculpture, was the intruder vessel.

“The ship.” Merral’s whispered words rang with soft wonderment and fear. At first, all he could make out was the general shape of the intruder craft. Even when Frankie passed him a fieldscope, he could still make out little more than he had seen on Vero’s images. There was the single front leg, the paired and larger rear legs, and between them, the forward-descending entrance ramp. He could see no sign of life but felt that in the irresolvable blackness around the ship there could easily have been any number of sentries.

Merral put down the scope. Although actually seeing this vessel added little new to what he had already observed on the images, there was nevertheless something almost overwhelming about the experience. The intruder ship had been progressively an abstract theory, a computer image, and a crude piece of imagery. Now, at last, it was a solid and tangible reality, and with that the whole operation had assumed a dire immediacy. After all, with a real ship went real battles and real deaths.

Frankie tapped Merral’s arm and together they slid down below the crest of the hill.

“Well, it’s there,” Frankie said in low, awed tones, and Merral knew that he had, in his own way, felt the same arresting intrusion of reality.

“Did you expect something else?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Frankie answered, and Merral could make out his shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose, sir, that’s the thing about this business. I’ve given up knowing what to expect. I was concerned, I suppose, that it might have gone. To have been a bad dream.”

“No, it’s there. But that may be the bad dream.”

“Yeah. So it’s as we planned then, sir?” Merral identified disquiet in the voice. “It looks awful big. To try and blast that front leg and maybe get a hole in the ramp doorway?”

“Yes,” Merral answered, sounding more confident than he felt. “We can do it. That’s what Perena preferred. Her argument was that we were more likely to disable the ship by concentrating on the front. I think she was also worried that there might be fuel at the rear.”

Frankie seemed to chew on that. “Yeah, sir. It makes sense. Right; I’ll make sure we keep a continuous watch on the ship from here. Get us an optic fiber communications link down to the sled. What watch do you want, sir?”

“Me? I’ll take the last hour before dawn. I need to be here to watch the diplomatic team approach anyway.”

“Yeah, I worry about them,” Frankie said in a sad voice. “I feel they are going to be in trouble.”

“Yes, I think so too. And I think they know it. I think they are the bravest of the lot of us.”

“True. Anyway, Captain, if it suits you, let’s go and get the cable set up to here. Then you can go and snatch some sleep.”

Down by the sled, Merral settled down on a more or less flat spot, put his cutter gun within reach, rolled himself in a thermal blanket, and tried to switch his mind off.

Despite his tiredness, he found sleep elusive. The cold, pebbly ground and the inadequate blanket were factors in keeping him awake, but what ultimately kept sleep at bay were the wild swings of emotion he felt. He struggled against the near certainty of a battle and the unnerving possibility that, in the darkness, a sheet-dragon creature circled above them. To seek relief, Merral turned his mind to warm thoughts of Anya and again felt excited that she cared for him and that he cared for her. Yet from that peak of exhilaration, he would soon slide into guilty feelings about Isabella, and then the fear would return. Eventually sleep came, only to be broken after what seemed mere seconds by a gentle shaking and Philip Matakala’s apologetic voice in his ear asking him to wake up.

Stiffly, Merral pulled himself to his feet, yawning and rubbing his face, aware he was covered in a cold dew. His watch told him it was almost five. Now, an hour before dawn, the dark of the western sky was already becoming lighter.

Philip had prepared him a cup of coffee, and Merral gratefully drank it and ate some biscuits. Then putting his armored jacket and the goggles back on, he picked up his gun and walked slowly back down the stream valley. Ahead he could easily make out the figure of the watching soldier on the ridge, the circuitry of his goggles painting his warm body orange against the cold blue of the ground. Carefully, Merral climbed to the summit of the mound and crawled forward to get alongside the man who, hearing his footsteps, turned toward him as he approached.

“Morning,” Merral said quietly.

“Morning, sir. Good to see you. Very good.” Merral recognized who it was and noted the relief in the voice of Lorrin Venn.

“See anything, Lorrin?”

“No, sir, but I feel it.” Merral sensed him shudder. “Nasty-looking ship. Gives me the creeps.” Merral found it hard to remember the bubbly young man whom he had first met and realized that he hadn’t heard Lorrin whistle at any time during the night.

“Wish you were back working in Isterrane?”

There was a faint pause. “I won’t say, sir, that in the last hour, the idea hasn’t come to me,” Lorrin answered; then Merral felt he smiled. “But I asked for this. I asked you to get me in on this. And I’ll stick with it. . . .”

“That’s the spirit, Lorrin. I can’t say I’m very happy about it.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose back in Isterrane it all seemed . . . well, exciting. Like a sort of grand sports event. Know what I mean, sir? I couldn’t miss it, could I?”

“No, I guess you couldn’t,” Merral replied.

“I’ve been thinking about this. I mean this is the—I don’t know—strangest event in the history of the Assembly. This is history in the making. And when it gets talked about in the future, I want to be able to say, ‘I was there.’ Yet I’m still a bit scared, sir.”

“I don’t blame you, Lorrin. The key thing is, I suppose, to do what you have to do. That’s what I tell myself.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

Merral suddenly felt sorry for Lorrin. “I know you will. Now, any signs of life?”

“I think they vented steam a few minutes ago. A cloud of something warm, but otherwise it’s quiet. I thought I saw something move around just now below the ship, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Nothing on this side then. No birds or bats?”

“No, sir,” Lorrin said with just a hint of hesitation. “But I find your eyes play tricks after a while.”

“In what way?” Merral asked, feeling that something lay behind his words.

“Well . . . I thought I heard footsteps earlier. Lee Rodwen was with me and he agreed. But there was no sign of anything. Or anybody. But we felt, well . . . watched.”

Unsettled by his words, Merral glanced around with the night goggles but saw nothing but cold ground and a gnarled pine tree to his left.

After dismissing Lorrin, Merral stared again at the ship for several minutes but saw nothing new. He found the silence odd; it was a strange and tense quietness, as if some colossal storm was brewing. He slid his goggles up and squinted into the darkness with his unaided eyesight. Above him, the stars were glowing. In the sky ahead, the pure blackness of night was now turning into shades of indigo, and above the jagged horizon the stars were fading out. Indeed, by straining his eyes, Merral could make out the silhouettes of the eastern Rim Ranges standing black against the purpling sky. Wreathes of mist drifted this way and that in the slight westerly breeze.

Merral slid the goggles back down and examined the ship again with the scope. There was no sign of activity. He gave up looking and concentrated on listening, stretching his senses as far as he could, swinging his head this way and that. He wondered whether Lorrin and Lee had really heard anything. Or had it simply been their imaginations?

He listened carefully, but all he could hear was the faint rustling of the breeze in the branches on the solitary pine tree nearby and the feeble gurgle of water in the stream behind. There was no sound of animal life: no birds, not even the buzz of an insect. Merral felt ill at ease.

Then he looked again at the distant ship and felt suddenly almost overwhelmed by its power and menace. In contrast to that machine, his own force for the initial attack seemed pathetic; a mere sixty men, mostly dragged from college studies barely days ago, with almost every piece of equipment improvised from quarrying, farming, or forestry. True, they had courage and dedication, and Merral knew he could rely on them to do their best, but what he had seemed so puny. Our only real asset is surprise, and even that might have been compromised. . . . Surely, we are like a bunch of village children suddenly thrown into playing a Team-Ball game against the Isterrane champions.

As Merral stared across the still, dark waters of Lake Fallambet Five and considered the sheer inadequacy of his forces, he slipped into silent prayer. Yet, here and now, it seemed that prayer was not easy. Merral was able to say the words in his mind, but as he tried to pray for the day ahead, words were all that they seemed to be. Irritatingly, Anya’s form and face seemed to teasingly pop up into his prayers and distract him with guilt and desire. Finally he ended his praying, feeling that there was no answer.

As he considered the situation, Merral felt himself drifting toward self-pity and even anger. Here he was, on the verge of awesome events and about to lead men to possible—even probable—death, and badly in need of God’s support. Yet instead, he had silence. Say something, Lord! But the silence only continued.

Suddenly Merral heard the tiniest of noises off to the right. He knew with certainty that another man had joined him. He felt a spasm of irritation that he had been so absorbed in his own struggles that he had missed his arrival. Merral swung his head round but, to his surprise, the goggles showed only the cold ground and the single forlorn pine.

I must have imagined it.

As he looked back across the lake to the ship, there was another slight sound from his right. It was as if one of the men was adjusting his position on the ground. Mistrustful now of his goggles, Merral slid them up and peered into the darkness toward where he had heard the sound.

He stopped breathing.

A mere arm’s length away from him, a large, dark shape was lying on the ground.

Slowly, taking strained breaths and aware that his hands were shaking, Merral put the goggles back over his eyes. To his surprise, he could make out no form there and no hint of any heat source disturbing the uniform chill blueness of the ground. Alarm threatening to flood his mind, Merral slid the goggles up again and stared to his right. Were his senses playing tricks on him?

The shape was still there and Merral peered at it. He shivered, certain now that something was lying next to him—something the size and shape of a man.

The dark form next to him stirred, and abruptly Merral felt under a gaze that seemed to go right through him. Suddenly he felt terribly exposed, as if he was being examined. An almost irresistible urge to run and hide descended on him.

In the silence the figure spoke. “Man, a time has passed. The war deepens.”

“I’m sorry,” Merral replied, hearing his voice wobbling with fear. “I can’t remember your name.”

Even as he spoke, he knew what he heard was not the voice of any man he knew. Indeed, he realized, with a strange and chilling certainty, the voice was not human. It was in one way characterless and neutral, and yet in another it had an extraordinary and unassailable authority.

“You do not know my name.”

Merral’s throat was suddenly dry. “I mean,” he said, swallowing nervously, “you, er, are one of my men?”

“One of your men? In no sense.”

The words held a rebuke.

“Then who are you?” Merral asked, his hand inching toward his gun. Perhaps, he thought, the enemy was already among them. His fingers closed around the stock. “Who are you?” he repeated.

The voice broke the silence. “Man, you are right to be concerned. I have come as the representative of the King.”

Merral felt that the word King reverberated strangely, as if it had its own special resonance.

Before Merral could answer, the voice spoke again. “The King who was, and is, and is to come. The one who was slain as a Lamb and rules as a Lion. Does that answer your question?”

“Yes,” quavered Merral, realizing that whatever this creature was, it was not an enemy. He felt at once relieved, chastened, and terrified. “But—but, who are you?” he asked.

There was another pause. “I am an envoy. I am sent to you from the Highest.”

Suddenly it came to Merral in a flash of comprehension that this had to be the strange being who, only hours before the Gate was destroyed, had appeared to Perena.

“You—you are the one who spoke to Perena Lewitz? the one who warned her about the Gate?”

Slowly, and with only the faintest rustling sound, the dark form seemed to rise up from the ground and stand upright, obscuring the waning stars. Merral peered up at the figure, knowing with a hard certainty that the being that stood before him was gazing down at him with stern, cold, invisible eyes. He suddenly felt small and exposed, as if he were a mouse under an eagle’s gaze.

“I did,” the voice said.

Merral sensed, with a deepening fear, the head move as if to stare more closely at him. He cringed. I ought to thank him. I owe him my life.

“Man, whom do you serve?” the voice asked suddenly, its tone cutting and sharp.

“The King, of course,” Merral answered. “It goes without saying. I bear his badge.”

In the darkness, he reached out to his shoulder and touched the embossed Lamb and Stars emblem on his armored jacket.

The voice spoke again. “Nothing goes without saying. It never did. And least of all now, with the enemy unchained.”

The blackness that marked the figure’s head seemed to bend accusingly over him. “So you are his servant?”

“Er, yes. Yes, of course,” Merral answered, shivering and wondering why he sounded so guilty.

“So you obey him in all matters?”

The word all seemed somehow to have a universal feel to it, as if there was nothing it did not include. Merral felt a new stab of discomfort, as if somewhere, some raw nerve in his soul was being probed.

“Why, yes,” he answered, desperately wishing that the conversation might move on to other subjects.

“In all matters, Man?” Merral found the coolly knowing tone to the voice profoundly unnerving.

“Well, yes . . . ,” Merral answered slowly, aware of something like acid eating into his mind and etching around thoughts of Isabella and Anya.

“So there is nothing that has happened this night of which you are ashamed?”

There was a terrible ring to the words, and Merral quailed at them. He felt as if a spotlight had illuminated the innermost parts of his life.

“Well, I . . . I suppose I may have . . . made an error of judgment.”

The only answer was a strange and terrible silence in which Merral felt he had to speak. “I was confused,” he said, almost spluttering his words, feeling his face flush. “It’s, well, been an awful time. Awful.”

“Man, did I ask for your excuses?”

“No . . .” Merral fell silent.

“You broke a promise.”

“But that . . . ,” Merral hesitated, feeling transfixed by the invisible gaze of this visitor. “Well, you see, Isabella extracted it from me. . . .”

“And what has that do with breaking a promise?”

“Ah, things have been changing in Ynysmant. It has been very hard.”

There was a heavy silence before the dark figure spoke again.

“I was sent on the basis that you wanted help. Is that still the case?” Now the words seemed to have a ring of impatience in them.

Suddenly, Merral felt a surge of defiance. He had to resist. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I must say that she manipulated me.”

“Really?” There was a strange weariness in the voice. “Your first ancestor used a similar excuse. In the beginning.”

“Well, I do feel that Isabella—”

“Man, I was sent to deal with Merral D’Avanos. Not any Isabella.”

Merral suddenly felt that being apologetic might be more profitable. This terrible figure had to be placated. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “What must I do?”

“Man, you must resolve to repair the wrongs you have done. The commitment you made must stand until it is ended—if it is to be ended—by agreement between you. You must also explain the true situation to the one you lied to and encouraged unfairly. And apologize. And apologizing, I must remind you, is not the same as making excuses.”

It suddenly occurred to Merral that both actions were horribly unattractive. “Look, is this important, I mean, right now? Really important?”

There was a sound like an angry intake of breath. “Of course!” The words were charged with displeasure. “Do not add folly to dishonesty. You have invoked the King’s help this day of battle because of his covenant agreement with his people. At the heart of all covenants lies obedience and faithfulness. Yet in these last few hours you have despised both of these in your own life.”

From nowhere came the wild thought that he couldn’t let Anya go. I must fight for her. “But—”

“Enough, Man!” The envoy said, and his dark form loomed over Merral so that the voice almost seemed to buffet him physically. “Choose. If you wish to fight these things in your strength, then you may do so.” Merral, pressing himself against the ground, found the pause before the voice spoke again as menacing as any words. “But I warn you, you will not win. Not against these foes.”

Suddenly the voice sounded as if it was retreating into the distance. “Or if you do win, it will be such a victory that men and women will wish until the end of time that you had lost.”

Merral sensed the figure seemed less substantial now, as if it were merely smoke or mist.

“Which will it be, Man?” asked the quieter, fainter voice. He could see a star now where the figure had stood, as if the envoy was fading away.

His mind buffeted by a tumult of emotions, Merral hesitated, unable to choose between his fears and his desires.

“Decide,” the voice said, but now it was a drained echo coming from a vast distance. Where the envoy’s figure had been, more and more stars were becoming visible.

Suddenly a great and awful fear came into Merral’s mind, a terror of an unspeakable darkness and grief. In the fear, he saw that there was only one way forward.

“Please! I’m sorry. I choose the right way,” he cried, and this time he was aware his contrition was genuine. “I am truly sorry and I repent. I will try to sort out things with Anya and Isabella.”

“Try?” The voice was nearer now and the figure more solid. Stars vanished. “That is inadequate, Man. Do. Make things right whatever it costs you. And watch yourself, Merral D’Avanos. The enemy delights in using a man against himself.” The voice seemed to resonate strangely. “He seeks your ruin. For him, there are more satisfying and useful ways for your destruction than fire, sword, or tooth.”

“I can imagine.”

“Imagine?” The rebuke in the tone was tangible. “Man, I have seen.” There was a knife’s edge to the words. “I saw Saul, son of Kish, go from mighty warrior over Israel to the haunted wreckage of a man. And many after him. Lesser and greater. I am an envoy and I am a witness.”

Merral, now utterly appalled at the idea that he had tried to withstand this being, felt unable to speak.

“Now listen, Man,” the envoy went on. “We have wasted time. The hour of battle is almost upon you. I am to warn you of the thing on the ship.”

“The dragon thing?”

“That? That is a servant, no more. It is its master you must fear. That is a spirit, released from the utter depths and now housed in a body crafted for it by some of your race.”

“Mine?”

“Yes. But listen. Such beings are powerful and not easily vanquished. They remain linked to their own realm and derive their power from there. Even were that ship to be utterly destroyed, that being would shed its body and persist here as a disembodied form. Your world would not care for that.”

“Like a ghost?”

“Their kind has had that name. And others. To destroy it completely, the link with its realm must first be broken. Then, while it is weakened, you can consign it back to the abyss.”

Merral felt a cold sweat on his forehead. “And how am I to do that?”

“You, and you alone, will enter the ship. You will need courage and arms. Take your gun, a blade, and a charge. I will meet you inside to give you instructions. There, Man, you must fight, and there is no certainty of victory. I do not know the outcome. Only the King does.”

Against the lightening sky, Merral felt that he could make out limbs and a head on the envoy’s form.

“I want to know—please—will there be casualties?”

“Man, if you want to battle evil without loss, then evil has already won.”

“I see. I just wanted to know.”

“You have the only guarantees that there are, and those have existed since the founding of the worlds. Have faith in the King, and be true to him and his Word and, in the end, all will be well.”

“In the end, yes. But what about in the meantime?”

“That? That is mere curiosity.” There was almost scorn in the words. “Play your part. See, the sun rises.”

The voice had begun to become more distant again. The figure suddenly began to fade away as if it had been merely vapor.

“Merral D’Avanos,” came the whisper, “I trust we will meet in the ship.”

“Wait!” Merral cried, but there was only silence, and he knew he was now alone.

He stared across the lake, his mind reeling both at the contact he had had and the dreadful revelation about his own behavior. He found himself humbly asking God for forgiveness. How appalling, he thought in a mood of bitter astonishment, that I could have ever behaved like that.

Then, suddenly aware that dawn was about to break, Merral forced himself to consider the task ahead. Across the western sky the stars were fading out; in the predawn glow he could make out the difference between the lake and the rough land beyond and see the ship with his naked eye. Looking at his watch, he saw that there was just twenty minutes before the hoverer would start its journey up the lake.

He peered again at the ship through the fieldscope, seeing slightly more details of it now. As he looked at it, he felt that Perena’s insight had been right: this could never have been an Assembly ship. Not that all Assembly vessels were beautiful; the Emilia Kay, for a start, was hardly stunning, but she had a plain functional harmony that was pleasing. This intruder ship, by contrast, had an unattractiveness that seemed almost to be deliberate.

Realizing that dawn was only minutes away, Merral took off the night goggles and laid them aside. From now on, there would be enough natural light. He turned his gaze back to the ship. With a shock, he realized that something was different. He snatched up the fieldscope to see that around the ship there were creatures moving like ants around a fragment of food. It took him a few seconds to work out exactly what was happening and a few more seconds for the implications to sink in. Above the long black hull, camouflage sheeting was being rolled back, and down on the ground, he could make out creatures working on the supporting frame.

Merral grabbed the microphone, fumbled for the call button, and pressed it.

“Frankie!” he snapped, hearing agitation—if not panic—in his voice. “They are preparing the ship for takeoff. Get the men ready for action. Alert Perena and Zak’s team, now!”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, will do!”

As Merral turned back to the view of the ship, he could hear orders being given. Desperately, he tried to weigh his limited options. Was he to wait for the diplomatic team? Or should they launch their attack now? It was a complication he had not envisaged.

He looked across again to the intruder vessel, hoping against hope that he had been mistaken. Yet, in the growing light, there could be no doubt that they were indeed removing the camouflage. As he watched, Merral noted that the tall, dark ape-creatures were doing most of the lifting with their long forelimbs, while the smaller cockroach-beasts scurried around at their feet, apparently working on lesser tasks. The shapes and characteristic movements of the two intruder types dug up hateful memories to Merral that he tried to suppress.

There was a bleep from beside him and he picked up the handset.

He could hear Frankie breathing heavily. “We are now ready, sir. I guess we can launch within seconds.”

“Okay. I don’t think they are going to leave just yet. There is still work to do. But it definitely looks like they are getting ready to move. I’ll get on board as you come past.”

“Fine. I’ll have a helmet ready for you, sir.” Besides Frankie, Merral could hear men moving.

“Oh, and I want an explosive charge too.”

“For you, sir?” Frankie answered, his tone filled with doubt.

“Yes,” Merral answered, hearing the reluctance in his own voice. “I’m going to get inside the ship. I may need it.”

“Inside?” There was a pause. “Er, sir, did we discuss that?”

“No, Lieutenant, we didn’t,” Merral said, surprising himself with the sharp authority in his voice.

“Yes, sir,” Frankie answered. “A kilo charge with an intermolecular cement pad and a sixty-second fuse—will that be all right? That’s all we have.”

I have no idea. I haven’t a clue. “Ideal. Thanks, and keep the line open.”

A sliver of brilliant red light suddenly rose over the horizon, and the rays of the new sun cut through the mist patches on the water. Even as Merral watched, the world seemed to change. The light lit up the hill around him, and he felt grateful for the warmth of its rays. He was suddenly awed by the realization that, with the exception of the space conflicts that ended the Rebellion, this was going to be the first true battle of mankind under a strange sun. Then he pushed the thought aside, telling himself that in reality it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.

Merral switched his gaze back to the ship. Here it was now plain, even to the naked eye, that the camouflage was being dismantled. With the fieldscope, Merral could see piles of metal tubes and fabric sheeting accumulating on the sand and stones at the foot of the strange vessel. It must, he decided, be more than coincidence that this was happening only a day after the attack on Felicity. If they knew they were discovered, were they then also prepared against any attack?

Merral tried to count the figures opposite. There were perhaps a dozen or more of the ape-creatures and at least the same number of the cockroach-beasts. Of the winged creature or men there was no evidence. We are at least matched in numbers, and there may be many more inside.

Without warning, the creatures burst into action. The fabric sheets and metal frames were hastily thrown aside, and the antlike figures began running about at the foot of the ship. A faint mechanical noise drifting up from the southern part of the lake explained the new activity. The hoverer was on schedule and had already been seen.

Merral stared down the lake. Far away in the middle of the water, the frail white dot of the hoverer was moving up toward them. He reached for the microphone, hoping that, away to the north, the other team was ready.

“Frankie,” he said, marveling at how steady his voice sounded, “the diplomatic team is in view and has been seen by the ship.”

“They said they were moving, sir. Everybody here is ready to go. Ready for your word.”

Merral turned his gaze back to the ship, where there was renewed activity. Some of the creatures had returned to packing the camouflage sheeting while others were bringing a tubular apparatus on a tripod down the ramp and out onto the lake strand.

A weapon, Merral realized with a feeling of horror. He was tempted to call Frankie and have him order the hoverer to turn back. In the end, he resisted the idea. The rules they had agreed upon were plain. There had to be clear evidence of the failure of diplomacy and preferably active aggression by the intruders before any Assembly attack could take place.

With the fieldscope, Merral looked south down the lake, seeing the hoverer moving straight and steady toward the Intruder ship. He could make out the flags flying, the creamy V-shape of the wake behind, and could even make out dark forms of two people standing erect by the hoverer’s prow. He lowered the scope, trying to gauge the present distance between the hoverer and the ship. Contact must only be minutes away.

There was a yellow flash on the other side of the lake.

A large, dirty orange sphere of flame rolled from below the ship across the water straight at the approaching hoverer. Trailing white steam behind it, the ball crossed the gap between the ship and the hoverer in under a second. As the burning sphere was on the point of engulfing its target, the hoverer lurched abruptly sideways.

The evasive action came too late.

The flaming ball, almost half the size of the hoverer, struck the side of the hull and rolled over the vessel in a explosion of oily golden light.

Merral, already speaking into the handset, had a confused impression of the white craft being thrown up and sideways, and of tiny figures being flung into the water.

“Hoverer attacked! Hoverer attacked!” he shouted. “Everybody start immediate operations!”

As he spoke, the boom of the explosion reached him. Waiting only a fraction of a second for Frankie to acknowledge his order, Merral flung the handset aside and grabbed his gun.

As he did, out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of another smoking ball of flame being fired from below the intruder ship. Whether it struck what was left of the hoverer Merral never saw, because he was already slithering down the stony slope toward the stream and his men.

Two thoughts hammered together in his brain as he raced down: a cold fury that the intruders had attacked an unarmed boat and a cloying fear that the sleds would suffer the same fate before they were halfway across the lake.

“Let it not be!” he gasped under his breath as he slid down, sending a volley of small stones flying around. “Lord, let us at least have a chance to fight!”