 Part 1. Of The Planet Savors. by Marion Zimmer Bradley. THE PLANET SAVERS. Part 1. By the time I got myself all the way awake, I thought I was alone. I was lying on a leather couch in a bare white room with huge windows, alternate glass brick and clear glass. Beyond the clear windows was a view of snow-peaked mountains which turned to pale shadows in the glass brick. Habit and memory fitted names to all these, the bare office, the orange flare of the great sun, the names of the dimming mountains. But beyond a polished glass desk, a man sat watching me, and I had never seen the man before. He was chubby and not young, and had ginger-colored eyebrows and a fringe of ginger-colored hair around the edges of a forehead which was otherwise quite pink and bald. He was wearing a white uniform coat, and the intertwined caduceus on the pocket and on the sleeve proclaimed him a member of the medical service attached to the civilian HQ of the Terran Trade City. I didn't stop to make all these evaluations consciously, of course. They were just part of my world when I woke up and found it taking shape around me. The familiar mountains, the familiar sun, the strange man. But he spoke to me in a friendly way, as if it were an ordinary thing to find a perfect stranger sprawled out taking a siesta in here. Could I trouble you to tell me your name? That was reasonable enough. If I found somebody making himself at home in my office, if I had an office, I'd ask him his name, too. I started to swing my legs to the floor and had to stop and steady myself with one hand while the room drifted in giddy circles around me. I wouldn't try to sit up just yet," he remarked, while the floor calmed down again. Then he repeated, politely, but insistently, Your name? Oh, yes, my name. It was. I fumbled through layers of what felt like gray fuzz, trying to lay my tongue on the most familiar of all sounds, my own name. It was—why it was—I said on a high rising note—this is damn silly—and swallowed and swallowed again, hard. Calm down, the chubby man said soothingly. This was easier said than done. I stared at him in growing panic and demanded—but—but have I had amnesia or something? Or something? What's my name? Now, now, take it easy. I'm sure you'll remember it soon enough. You can answer other questions, I'm sure. How old are you? I answered eagerly and quickly. Twenty-two. The chubby man scribbled something on a card. Interesting. Interesting. Do you know where we are? I looked around the office. In the Terran headquarters. From your uniform I say we were on floor eight, medical. He nodded and scribbled again, pursing his lips. Can you, um, tell me what planet we are on? I had to laugh. Dark over, I chuckled. I hope. And if you want the names of the moons or the date of the founding of the trade city or something, he gave in laughing with me. Remember where you were born? On Samara. I came here when I was three years old. My father was in mapping and exploring. I stopped short, in shock. He's dead. Can you tell me your father's name? My father's mine. Jay, uh, Jason. The flash of memory closed down in the middle of a word. It had been a good try, but it hadn't quite worked. The doctor said, soothingly, We're doing very well. You haven't told me anything, I accused. Who are you? Why are you asking me all these questions? He pointed to a sign on his desk. I scowled and spelled out the letters. Well, fourth, director, department... And Dr. Fourth made a note. I said aloud, It is Dr. Fourth, isn't it? Don't you know? I looked down at myself and shook my head. Maybe I'm Dr. Fourth, I said, noticing for the first time that I was also wearing a white coat with a fiducious emblem of medical. But it had the wrong feel, as if I were dressed in somebody else's clothes. I was no doctor, was I? I pushed back one sleeve slightly, exposing a long triangular scar under the cuff. Dr. Fourth, by now I was sure he was Dr. Fourth, followed the direction of my eyes. Where do you get the scar? Knife-fight. One of the bands of those who may not enter the cities caught us on the slopes, and we... The memory thinned out again, and I said, despairingly, It's all confused. What's the matter? Why am I up on medical? Have I had an accident? Amnesia? Not exactly. I'll explain. I got up and walked to the window, unsteadily because my feet wanted to walk slowly, while I felt like bursting through some invisible net and striding there at one bound. Once I got to the window, the room stayed put while I gulped down great breaths of warm Swedish air. I said, I could use a drink. Good idea, though I don't usually recommend it. Dr. Fourth reached into a drawer for a flat bottle, poured tea-coloured liquid into a throwaway cup. After a minute he poured more for himself. Here, sit down, man. You make me nervous, hovering like that. I didn't sit down. I strode to the door and flung it open. Fourth's voice was low and unhurried. What's the matter? You can go out if you want to, but won't you sit down and talk to me for a minute? Anyway, where do you want to go? The question made me uncomfortable. I took a couple of long breaths and came back into the room. Fourth said, drink this, and I poured it down. He refilled the cup unasked, and I swaddled that, too, and felt the hard lump in my middle begin to loosen up and dissolve. Fourth said, claustrophobia, too, typical, and scribbled on the card some more. I was getting tired of that performance. I turned on him to tell him so, then suddenly felt amused, or maybe it was a liquor working in me. He seemed such a funny little man, shutting himself up inside an office like this and talking about claustrophobia and watching me as if I were a big bug. I tossed the cup into a disposal. Isn't it time for a few of those explanations? If you think you can take it, how do you feel now? Fine. I sat down on the couch again, leaning back and stretching out my long legs comfortably. What did you put in that drink? He chuckled, trade secret. Now, the easiest way to explain would be to let you watch a film we made yesterday. To watch? I stopped. It's your time, we're wasting. He punched a button on the desk, spoke into a mouthpiece. Surveillance, give us a monitor on. He spoke a string of incomprehensible numbers while I lounged at ease on the couch. Fourth waited for an answer, then touched another button and steel louvers closed noiselessly over the windows, blacking them out. I rose in sudden panic, then relaxed as the room went dark. The darkness felt oddly more normal than the light, and I leaned back and watched the flickers clear as one wall of the office became a large vision screen. Fourth came and sat beside me on the leather couch, but in the picture Fourth was there, sitting at his desk, watching another man, a stranger, walk into the office. Like Fourth, the newcomer wore a white coat with the caduceus emblems. I disliked the man on site. He was tall and lean and composed, with a dour face set in thin lines. I guessed that he was somewhere in his thirties. Doctor, Fourth in the film, said, Sit down, Doctor. And I drew a long breath, overwhelmed by a curious certain sensation. I have been here before. I have seen this happen before. And curiously formless I felt. I sat and watched, and I knew I was watching and sitting. But it was in that dreamlike fashion, where the dreamer at once watches his visions and participates in them. Sit down, Doctor. Fourth said, Do you bring in the reports? Jay Allison carefully took the indicated seat, poised nervously on the edge of the chair. He sat very straight, leaning forward only a little to hand a thick folder of papers across the desk. Fourth took it, but didn't open it. What do you think, Doctor Allison? There is no possible room for doubt. Jay Allison spoke precisely, in a rather high-pitched and emphatic tone. It follows the statistical pattern for all recorded attacks of forty-eight year fever. By the way, sir, haven't we any better name than that for this particular disease? The term forty-eight year fever connotes a fever of forty-eight years duration, rather than a pandemic recurring every forty-eight years. A fever that lasted forty-eight years would be quite a fever, Doctor Fourth said, with the shadow of a grim smile. Nevertheless, that's the only name we have so far. Name it, and you can have it. Allison's disease? Jay Allison greeted this pleasantry with a repressed frown. As I understand it, the disease cycle seems to be connected somehow with the once every forty-eight years conjunction of the four moons, which explains why the Dark Ovens are so superstitious about it. The moons have remarkably eccentric orbits. I don't know anything about that part. I'm quoting Doctor Moore. If there's an animal vector to the disease, we've never discovered it. The pattern runs like this. A few cases in the mountain districts. The next month a hundred odd cases all over this part of the planet. Then it skips exactly three months without increase. The next upswing puts the number of reported cases in the thousands, and three months after that it reaches real pandemic proportions and decimates the entire human population of Dark Over. That's about it, Fourth admitted. They bent together over the folder. Jay Allison drawing back slightly to avoid touching the other man. Fourth said, We Terrans have had a trade compact on Dark Over for a hundred and fifty-two years. The first outbreak of this forty-eight year fever killed all but a dozen men out of three hundred. The Dark Ovens were worse off than we were. The last outbreak wasn't quite so bad, but it was bad enough, I've heard. It has an eighty-seven percent mortality, for humans, that is. I understand the trailmen don't die of it. The Dark Ovens call it the trailmen's fever, Dr. Fourth, because the trailmen are virtually immune to it. It remains in their midst as a mild ailment taken by children. When it breaks out into the virulent form every forty-eight years most of the trailmen are already immune. I took the disease myself as a child. And maybe you heard. Fourth nodded. You may be the only Terran ever to contract the disease and survive. The trailmen incubate the disease, Jay Allison said. I should think the logical thing would be to drop a couple of hydrogen bombs on the trail cities and wipe it out for good and all. Sitting on the sofa in Fourth's dark office I stiffened with such fury that he shook my shoulder and muttered, Easy there, man. Dr. Fourth, on the screen, looked annoyed, and Jay Allison said, with a grimace of distaste, I didn't mean that literally, but the trailmen are not human. It wouldn't be genocide, just an exterminator's job, a public health measure. Fourth looked shocked as he realized that the younger man meant what he was saying. He said, Galactic Centre would have to rule on whether they're dumb animals or intelligent non-humans, and whether they're entitled to the status of a civilization. All precedent on darkover is toward recognizing them as men. And good God, Jay, you'd probably be called as a witness for the defense. How can you say they're not human after your experience with them? Anyway, by the time their status was finally decided, half of the recognizable humans on darkover would be dead. We need a better solution than that. He pushed his chair back and looked out the window. I won't go into the political situation, he said. You aren't interested in Terran Empire politics, and I'm no expert either. But you'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know that darkover's been playing the immovable object to the irresistible force. The darkovans are more advanced in some of the non-causative sciences than we are, and until now they wouldn't admit that Terra had a thing to contribute. However, and this is the big, however, they do know, and they're willing to admit, that our medical sciences are better than theirs. There's being practically non-existent. Exactly, and this could be the first crack in the barrier. You may not realize the significance of this, but the Leggett received an offer from the Hasters themselves. Jay Allison murmured, I'm to be impressed. On darkover you'd damn well better be impressed when the Hasters sit up and take notice. I understand they're telepaths or something. Telepaths, psychokinetics, parasites, just about anything else. For all practical purposes they're the gods of darkover, and one of the Hasters, a rather young and unimportant one, I'll admit, the old man's grandson, came to the Leggett's office, in person, mind you. He offered, if the Terran Medical would help darkover lick the trailman's fever, to coach selected Terran men in matrix mechanics. Good Lord, Jay said. It was a concession beyond Terra's wildest dreams. For a hundred years they had tried to beg, buy, or steal some knowledge of the mysterious science of matrix mechanics, that curious discipline which could turn matter into raw energy and vice versa, without any intermediate stages and without fish and by-products. Matrix mechanics had made the darkovans virtually immune to the lure of Terra's advanced technologies. Jay said. Personally I think darkoven science is overrated, but I can see the propaganda angle. Not to mention the humanitarian angle of healing. Jay Allison gave one of his cold shrugs. The real angle seems to be this. Can we cure the 48-year fever? Not yet, but we have a lead. During the last epidemic a Terran scientist discovered a blood fraction containing antibodies against the fever, in the trailman. Isolated to a serum it might reduce the virulent 48-year epidemic form to the mild form again. Unfortunately he died himself in the epidemic without finishing his work and his notebooks were overlooked until this year. We have eighteen thousand men and their families aren't dark over now, Jay. Frankly, if we lose too many of them, we're going to have to pull out of dark over. The big brass on Terra will write off the loss of a garrison of professional traders, but not of a whole trade-city colony. That's not even mentioning the prestige we'll lose if our much-a-vaunted Terran medical sciences can't save dark over from an epidemic. We've got exactly five months. We can't synthesize a serum in that time. We've got to appeal to the trailman, and that's why I called you up here. You know more about the trailman than any living Terran. You ought to. You spent eight years in a nest. In fourth's darkened office I sat up straighter with a flash of returning memory. Jay Allison, I judged, was several years older than I, but we had one thing in common. This cold fish of a man shared with myself that experience of marvellous year spent in an alien world. Jay Allison scowled, displeased. That was years ago. I was hardly more than a baby. My father crashed on a mapping expedition over the Hellers. God only knows what possessed him to try and take a light plane over those crosswinds. I survived the crash by the nearest chance and lived with the trailman, so I'm told, until I was thirteen or fourteen. I don't remember much about it. Children aren't particularly observant. Fourth leaned over the desk, staring. You speak their language, don't you? I used to. I might remember it under hypnosis, I suppose. Why, do you want me to translate something? Not exactly. We were thinking of sending you on an expedition to the trailmen themselves. In the darkened office, watching Jay's startled face, I thought, God, what an adventure! I wonder, I wonder if they want me to go with him. Fourth was explaining, it would be a difficult trek. You know what the Hellers are like. Still, you used to climb mountains as a hobby before you went into medical. I outgrew the childishness of hobbies many years ago, sir," Jay said stiffly. We'd get you the best guides we could, Taren and Darkoven. But they couldn't do the one thing you can do. You know the trailman, Jay. You might be able to persuade them to do the one thing they've never done before. What's that? Jay Allison sounded suspicious. Come out of the mountains. Send us volunteers, blood donors. We might, if we had enough blood to work on, be able to isolate the right fraction and synthesize it in time to prevent the epidemic from really taking hold. Jay, it's a tough mission, and it's dangerous as all hell, but somebody's got to do it. And I'm afraid you're the only qualified man. I like my first suggestion better. Bomb the trailman and the hellers right off the planet. Jay's face was said in lines of loathing which he controlled after a minute and said, I—I didn't mean that. Theoretically I can see the necessity. Only—he stopped and swallowed. Please say what you are going to say. I wonder if I am as well qualified as you think. No, don't interrupt. I find the natives of Darkover distasteful, even the humans. As for the trailman— I was getting mad and impatient. I whispered a fourth in the darkness, shut the damn film off. You couldn't send that guy on an errand like that. I'd rather—fourth snapped—shut up and listen. I shut up and the film continued to repeat. Jay Allison was not acting. He was pained and disgusted. Fourth wouldn't let him finish his explanation of why he had refused even to teach in the medical college, established for Darkovens by the Terran Empire. He interrupted and sounded irritated. We know all that. It evidently never occurred to you, Jay, that it's an inconvenience to us that this vital knowledge should lie purely by accident in the hands of the one man who's too damn stubborn to use it. Jay didn't move an eyelash where I would have squirmed. I have always been aware of that, doctor. Fourth drew a long breath. I'll concede you're not suitable at the moment, Jay, but what do you know of applied psychodynamics? Very little, I'm sorry to say. Allison didn't sound sorry, though. He sounded bored to death with the whole conversation. May I be blunt and personal? Please do. I'm not at all sensitive. Basically, then, Dr. Allison, a person as contained and repressed as yourself usually has a clearly defined subsidiary personality. In neurotic individuals this complex of personality traits sometimes splits off and we get a syndrome known as multiple or alternate personality. I've scanned a few of the classic cases. Wasn't there a woman with four separate personalities? Exactly. However, you aren't neurotic and ordinarily there would not be the slightest chance of your repressed alternate taking over your personality. Thank you, Jay murmured ironically. I'd be losing sleep over that. Nevertheless, I presume you do have such a subsidiary personality, although he would normally never manifest. This subsidiary, let's call him J2, would embody all the characteristics which you repress. He would be gregarious, where you are retiring and studious, adventurous, where you are cautious, talkative, while you are taciturn. He would perhaps enjoy action for its own sake, while you exercise faithfully in the gymnasium only for your health's sake. He might even remember the trailman with pleasure rather than dislike. In short, a blend of all the undesirable characteristics. One could put it that way. Certainly, he would be a blend of all the characteristics which you, J1, consider undesirable. But, if released by hypnotism and suggestion, he might be suitable for the job in hand. But how do you know I actually have such an alternate? I don't, but it's a good guess. Most repressed, forth coughed and amended, most disciplined personalities, who says such a suppressed secondary personality. Don't you occasionally, rather rarely, find yourself doing things which are entirely out of character for you? I could almost feel Allison taking it in as he confessed. Well, yes. For instance, the other day, although I dress conservatively at all times, a glanced at his uniform coat, I found myself buying. He stopped again and his face went an unlovely terracotta color as he finally mumbled, a flowered red sports shirt. Sitting in the dark, I felt vaguely sorry for the poor gawk disturbed by a shame of the only human impulses he ever had. On the screen, Allison frowned fiercely. A crazy impulse. You could say that, or say it was an action of the suppressed J2. How about it, Allison? You may be the only Terran on Darkover, may be the only human who could get into a trailman's nest without being murdered. Sir, as a citizen of the Empire, I don't have any choice, do I? Jay, look, forth said, and I felt him trying to reach through the barricade and touch, really touch, that cold, contained young man. We couldn't order any man to do anything like this. Aside from the ordinary dangers, it could destroy your personal balance, maybe permanently. I'm asking you to volunteer something above and beyond the call of duty. Man to man, what do you say? I would have been moved by his words. Even at second hand I was moved by them. Jay Allison looked at the floor and I saw him twist his long, well-kept surgeon's hands and crack the knuckles with an odd gesture. Finally he said, I haven't any choice either way, doctor. I'll take the chance. I'll go to the trailman. The screen went dark again and forth flicked the light on. He said, Well? I gave it back in his own intonation. Well? And was exasperated to find that I was twisting my own knuckles in the nervous gesture of Allison's painful decision. I jerked them apart and got up. I suppose it didn't work with that cold fish and you decided to come to me instead. Sure, I'll go to the trailman for you. Not with that Allison. I wouldn't go anywhere with that guy. But I speak the trailman's language and without hypnosis either. Fourth was staring at me. So you've remembered that? Hell yes, I said. My dad crashed in the hellers and a band of trailmen found me half-dead. I lived there until I was about fifteen. Then their old one decided I was too human for them and they took me out through the dam room pass and arranged to have me brought here. Sure, it's all coming back now. I spent five years in the spaceman's orphanage. Then I went to work taking Terran tourists on hunting parties and so on because I liked being around the mountains. I... I stopped. Fourth was staring at me. You think you'd like this job? It would be tough, I said considering. The people of the sky, using the trailman's name for themselves, don't like outsiders, but they might be persuaded. The worst part would be getting there. The plane, or the copter, isn't built that can get through the crosswinds around the hellers and land inside them. We'd have to go on foot all the way from Carthon. I need professional climbers, mountaineers. Then you don't share Allison's attitude? Dammit, don't insult me. I discovered that I was on my feet again, pacing the office restlessly. Fourth stared and mused aloud. What's personality anyway? A mask of emotions superimposed on the body and the intellect. Change the point of view, change the emotions and desires, and even with the same body and the same past experiences, you have a new man. I swung round in mid-step. A new and terrible suspicion, two monstrous to-name was creeping up on me. Fourth touched a button and the face of J. Allison, E-Mobile, appeared on the vision screen. Fourth put a mirror in my hand. He said, J. Allison, look at yourself. I looked. No, I said, and again. No, no, no! Fourth didn't argue. He pointed with a stubby finger. Look, he moved the finger as he spoke. Height of the forehead, set of cheekbones, your eyebrows looked different and your mouth, because the expression is different, but bony structure, the nose, the chin... I heard myself make a queer sound, dashed the mirror to the floor. He grabbed my forearm. Steady man! I found a scrap of my voice. It didn't sound like Allison's. Then I'm J2? J. Allison with amnesia? Not exactly. Fourth mopped his forehead with an immaculate sleeve and it came away damp with sweat. No, not J. Allison as I know him. He drew a long breath. And sit down, whoever you are, sit down. I sat, gingerly, not sure. But the man J might have been, given a different temperamental bias. I'd say the man J. Allison started out to be. The man he refused to be. Within his subconscious he built up barriers against a whole series of memories and the subliminal threshold. Doc, I don't understand the psychotalk. Fourth stared. And you do remember the trailman's language. I thought so. Allison's personality is suppressed in you, as yours was in him. One thing, Doc. I don't know a thing about blood fractions or epidemics. My half of the personality didn't study medicine. I took up the mirror again and broodingly studied the face there. The high thin cheeks, high forehead shaded by coarse dark hair, which J. Allison had slicked down now heavily rumpled. I still didn't think I looked anything like the doctor. Our voices were nothing alike either. His had been pitched rather high, falsetto. My own, as nearly as I could judge, was a full octave deeper and more resonant. Yet they issued from the same vocal cords, unless fourth was having a reasonless macabre joke. Did I honest to God study medicine? It's the last thing I'd think about. It's an honest trade, I guess, but I've never been that intellectual. You, or rather J. Allison, is a specialist in dark-oven parasitology, as well as a very competent surgeon. Fourth was sitting with his chin in his hands, watching me intently. He scowled and said, If anything, the physical change is more startling than the other. I would never recognize you. That tallies with me. I don't recognize myself. I added, And the queer thing is, I didn't even like J. Allison to put it mildly. If he, I can't say he, can I? I don't know why not. You're no more J. Allison. You're no more J. Allison than I am. For one thing, you're younger. Ten years younger. I doubt if any of his friends, if he had any, would recognize you. You, it's ridiculous to go on calling you J. too. What should I call you? Why should I care? Call me Jason. Suits you, Fourth said enigmatically. Look then, Jason. I'd like to give you a few days to readjust to your new personality, but we are really pressed for time. Can you fly to Carthon tonight? I've handpicked a good crew for you and sent them on ahead. You'll meet them there. You'll find them competent. I stared at him. Suddenly, the room oppressed me and I found it hard to breathe. I said in wonder, You were pretty sure of yourself, weren't you? Fourth just looked at me for what seemed a long time. Then he said, in a very quiet voice, No, I wasn't sure at all. But if you didn't turn up and I couldn't talk J. into it, I'd have had to try it myself. Jason Allison Jr. was listed on the directory of the Terran HQ as Suite 1214 Medical Residence Corridor. I found the rooms without any trouble, though an elderly doctor stared at me rather curiously as I barged along the quiet hallway. The suite, bedroom, minuscule sitting-room, compact bath, depressed me. Clean, closed-in, and neutral as the man who owned them. I rummaged them restlessly, trying to find some scrap of familiarity to indicate that I had lived there for the past eleven years. J. Allison was thirty-four years old. I had given my age without hesitation as twenty-two. There were no obvious blanks in my memory. From the moment J. Allison had spoken of the trailman, my past had rushed back and stood, complete to yesterday's supper. Only, had I eaten that supper twelve years ago. I remembered my father, a lined, silent man who had liked to fly solitary, taking photograph after photograph from his plane for the meticulous work of mapping and exploration. He liked to have me fly with him and I'd flown over virtually every inch of the planet. No one else had ever dared fly over the Hellers except the big commercial spacecraft that kept to a safe altitude. I vaguely remembered the crash, and the strange hands pulling me out of the wreckage and the weeks I'd spent, broken-bodied and delirious, gently tended by one of the red-eyed, twittering women of the trailman. In all, I had spent eight years in the nest, which was not a nest at all, but a vast, sprawling city built in the branches of enormous trees. With the small and delicate humanoids who had been my play fellows, I had gathered the nuts and buds and trapped the small arboreal animals they used for food, taken my share at weaving clothing from the fibers of parasite plants cultivated on the stems, and in all those eight years I had set foot on the ground less than a dozen times, even though I had traveled for miles through the tree-roads high above the forest floor. Then the old one's painful decision that I was too alien for them, and the difficult and dangerous journey my trailman foster parents and foster brothers had undertaken to help me out of the hellers and arrange for me to be taken to the trade city. After two years of physically painful and mentally rebellious readjustment to daytime living, the owl-eyed trailman saw best and lived largely by moonlight, I had found a niche for myself and settled down. But all of the later years, after Jay Allison had taken over, I suppose, from a basic pattern of memory common to both of us, had vanished into the limbo of the subconscious. A book rack was crammed with large microcards. I slipped one into the viewer, with a queer sense of spying, and found myself listening apprehensively to hear that measured step and Jay Allison's falsetto voice demanding what the hell I was doing, meddling with his possessions. I to the viewer, I read briefly at random something about the management of compound fracture, then realized I had understood exactly three words in a paragraph. I put my fist against my forehead and heard the words echoing there emptily. Laceration, primary effusion, serum and lymph, granulation tissue. I presumed that the words meant something and that I once had known what. But if I had a medical education, I didn't recall a syllable of it. I didn't know a fracture from a fraction. In a sudden frenzy of impatience, I stripped off the white coat and put on the first shirt I came to, a crimson thing that hung in the line of white coats, like an exotic bird in snow country. I went back to rummaging the drawers and bureaus. Carelessly shoved in a pigeonhole I found another microcard that looked familiar. And when I slipped it mechanically into the viewer, it turned out to be a book on mountaineering, which, oddly enough, I remembered buying as a youngster. It dispelled my last lingering doubts. Evidently I had bought it before the personalities had forked so sharply apart and separated, Jason from Jay. I was beginning to believe, not to accept, just to believe it had happened. The book looked well-thumbed and had been handled so much I had to baby it into the slot of the viewer. Under a folded pile of clean underwear I found a flat, half-empty bottle of whiskey. I remembered Forth's words that he had never seen Jay Allison drink, and suddenly I thought, the fool! I fixed myself a drink and sat down, idly scanning over the mountaineering book. Not till I'd entered medical school I suspected did the two halves of me fork so strongly apart. So strongly that there had been days and weeks, and I suspected years, where Jay Allison had kept me prisoner. I tried to juggle dates in my mind, looked at a calendar, and got such a mental jolt that I put it face down to think about when I was a little drunker. I wondered if my detailed memories of my teens and early twenties were the same memories Jay Allison looked back on. I didn't think so. People forget and remember selectively. Week by week then, and year by year, the dominant personality of Jay had crowded me out, so that the young, rowdy, more than half-dark-oven, loving the mountains, half-homesick for a non-human world, had been drowned in the chilly, austere young medical student who lost himself in his work. But I, Jason, I had always been the watcher behind, the person Jay Allison dared not be. Why was he past thirty, and I just twenty-two? A ringing shattered the silence. I had to hunt for the intercom on the bedroom wall. I said, Who is it? An unfamiliar voice demanded. Dr. Allison? I said automatically, Nobody here by that name, and started to put back the mouthpiece. Then I stopped and gulped and asked, Is that you, Dr. Forth? It was, and I breathed again. I didn't even want to think about what I'd say if somebody else had demanded to know why in the devil I was answering Dr. Allison's private telephone. When Forth had finished, I went to the mirror and stared, trying to see behind my face the sharp features of that stranger, Dr. Jason Allison. I delayed, even while I was wondering what few things I should pack for a trip into the mountains, and the habit of hunting parties was making mental lists about heat socks and windbreakers. The face that looked at me was a young face, unlined and faintly freckled, the same face as always except that I'd lost my suntan. J. Allison had kept me indoors too long. Suddenly I struck the mirror lightly with my fist. The hell with you, Dr. Allison, I said, and went to see if he had kept any clothes fit to pack. End of Part One Part Two of The Planet Savers by Marion Zimmer Bradley This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Planet Savers Part Two Dr. Forth was waiting for me in the small sky-port on the roof, and so was a small copter, one of the fairly old ones assigned to medical service when they were too beat up for services with higher priority. Forth took one startled stare at my crimson shirt, but all he said was, Hello, Jason. Here's something we've got to decide right away. Do we tell the crew who you really are? I shook my head emphatically. I'm not J. Allison. I don't want his name or his reputation, unless there are men on the crew who know Allison by sight. Some of them do, but I don't think they'd recognize you. Tell him I'm his twin brother, I said humorlessly. That won't be necessary. There's not enough resemblance. Forth raised his head and beckoned to a man who was doing something near the copter. He said under his breath, You'll see what I mean, as the man approached. He wore the uniform of Space Force, black leather with a little rainbow of stars on his sleeve, meaning he'd seen service on a dozen different planets, a different colored star for each one. He wasn't a young man, but on the wrong side of fifty, seemed and burly and huge, with a split lip and weathered face. I liked his looks. We shook hands and Forth said, This is our man, Kendricks. He's called Jason, and he's an expert on the trailman. Jason, this is Buck Kendricks. Glad to know you, Jason. I thought Kendricks looked at me half a second more than necessary. The copter's ready. Climb in, Doc. You're going as far as Carthon, aren't you? We put on zippered windbreaks and the copter soared noiselessly into the pale crimson sky. I sat beside Forth, looking down through pale lilac clouds at the pattern of dark overspread below me. Kendricks was giving me a funny eye, Doc. What's biting him? He has known Jay Allison for eight years, Forth said quietly, and he hasn't recognized you yet. But we'd let it ride at that, to my great relief, and didn't talk any more about me at all. As we flew under silent, whirring blades, turning our backs on the settled country which lay near the trade city, we talked about dark over itself. Forth told me about the trailman's fever and managed to give me some idea about what the blood fraction was and why it was necessary to persuade fifty or sixty of the humanoids to return with me to donate blood from which the antibody could be, first isolated, then synthesized. It would be a totally unheard of thing if I could accomplish it. Most of the trailman never touched ground in his entire lives, except when crossing the passes above the snowline. Not a dozen of them, including my foster parents, who had so painfully brought me out across Damarung, had ever crossed the ring of encircling mountains that walled them away from the rest of the planet. Humans sometimes penetrated the lower forests in search of the trailman. It was one-way traffic. The trailman never came in search of them. It was two about some of the humans who had crossed the mountains into trailman country. Those mountains profanely dubbed the Hellers by the first Terrans who had tried to fly over them in anything lower or slower than a spaceship. The dark-oven name for the Hellers was even more explicit, and even in translation unrepeatable. What about this crew you picked? They're not Terrans? Forth shook his head. It would be murder to send anyone recognizably Terran into the Hellers. You know how the trailman feel about outsiders getting into their country. I knew. Forth continued. Just the same, there will be two Terrans with you. They don't know, Jay Allison? I didn't want to be burdened with anyone, not anyone, who would know me, or expect me to behave like my forgotten other self. Kendricks knows you, Forth said. But I'm going to be perfectly truthful. I never knew Jay Allison well, except in line of work. I know a lot of things, from the past couple of days, which came out during the hypnotic sessions, which he'd never have dreamed of telling me, or anyone else, consciously. And that comes under the heading of a professional confidence, even from you. And for that reason I'm sending Kendricks along, and you're going to have to take the chance he'll recognise you. Isn't that Carthon down there? Carthon lay nestled under the outlying foothills of the Hellers, ancient and sprawling and squatty, and burned brown with the dust of five thousand years. Children ran out to stare at the copter as we landed near the city. Few planes ever flew low enough to be seen this near the Hellers. Forth had sent his crew ahead, and parked them in an abandoned huge place at the edge of the city, which might once have been a warehouse or a ruined palace. Inside there were a couple of trucks, stripped down to framework and flatbed, like all machinery shipped through space from Terra. There were pack animals, dark shapes in the gloom. Crates were stacked up in an orderly untightiness, and at the far end a fire was burning and five or six men in dark-oven clothing, loose-sleeved shirts, tight-wrapped breeches, low boots, were squatting around it, talking. They got up as Forth and Kendricks and I walked toward them, and Forth greeted them clumsily in bad-accented dark-oven, then switched to Terran Standard, letting one of the men translate for him. Forth introduced me simply as Jason, after the dark-oven custom, and I looked the men over one by one. Back when I'd climbed for fun I'd like to pick my own men, but whoever had picked this crew must have known his business. Three were mountain dark-ovans, lean, swart men, enough alike to be brothers. I learned after a while that they actually were brothers, Hjalmar, Garen, and Vardo. All three were well over six feet, and Hjalmar stood head and shoulders over his brothers, whom I never learned to tell apart. The Forth man, a redhead, was dressed rather better than the others, and introduced as Laris Ridenau, the double name indicating high dark-oven aristocracy. He looked muscular and agile enough, but his hands were suspiciously well kept for a mountain man, and I wondered how much experience he'd had. The Forth man shook hands with me, speaking to Hendricks and Forth as if they were old friends. Don't I know you from someplace, Jason? He looked dark-oven, and wore dark-oven clothes, but Forth had forewarned me, and attacks seemed the best defense. Aren't you, Terran? My father was, he said, and I understood. A situation not exactly uncommon, but ticklish on a planet like dark-oven. I said, carelessly, I may have seen you around the HQ. I can't place you, though. My name's Rafe Scott. I thought I knew most of the professional guides on dark-oven, but I admit I don't get into the hellers much, he confessed. Which route are we going to take? I found myself drawn into the middle of the group of men, accepting one of the small, Swedish dark-oven cigarettes, looking over the plan somebody had scribbled down on the top of a packing case. I borrowed a pencil from Rafe and bent over the case, sketching out a rough map of the terrain I remembered so well from boyhood. I might be bewildered about blood fractions, but when it came to climbing, I knew what I was doing. Rafe and Laris and the dark-oven brothers crowded behind me to look over the sketch, and Laris put a long fingernail on the route I'd indicated. Your elevation's pretty bad here, he said diffidently, and on the NAR campaign the trailmen attacked us here, and it was bad fighting along those ledges. I looked at him with new respect, dainty hands or not, he evidently knew the country. Kendricks patted the blaster on his hip and said grimly, but this isn't the NAR campaign. I'd like to see any trailmen attack us while I have this. But you're not going to have it, said a voice behind us, a crisp, authoritative voice. Take off that gun, man. Kendricks and I whirled together to see the speaker, a tall young dark-oven still standing in the shadows. The newcomer spoke to me directly. I'm told you are Taren, but that you understand the trailmen. Surely you don't intend to carry fission or fusion weapons against them? And I suddenly realized that we were in dark-oven territory now, and that we must reckon with the dark-oven horror of guns or of any weapons which reaches beyond the arm's length of the man who wields it. A simple heat-gun to the dark-oven ethical code is as reprehensible as a super cobalt planet-buster. Kendricks protested. We can't travel unarmed through trailmen country. We're apt to meet hostile bands of the creatures, and they're nasty with those long knives they carry. The stranger said calmly, I have no objection to you or anyone else carrying a knife for self-defense. A knife? Kendricks drew breath to roar. Listen, you bug-eyed son of a, who do you think you are, anyway? The dark-ovens muttered. The man in the shadow said, Regis Hastor. Kendricks stared, pop-eyed. My own eyes could have popped, but I decided it was time for me to take charge, if I were ever going to. I rapped, all right, this is my show. Buck, give me the gun. He looked wrathfully at me for a space of seconds, while I wondered what I'd do if he didn't. Then, slowly, he unbuckled the straps and handed it to me, but first. I'd never realized quite how undressed a space-force man looked without his blaster. I bounced it on my palm for a minute, while Regis Hastor came out of the shadows. He was tall and had the reddish hair and fair skin of dark-oven aristocracy. And on his face was some indefinable stamp, arrogance perhaps, or the consciousness that the Hastors had ruled this world for centuries, long before the Terrans brought ships and trade and the universe to their doors. He was looking at me as if he approved of me, and that was one step worse than the former situation. So, using the respectful dark-oven idiom of speaking to a superior, which he was, by keeping my voice hard, I said, There's just one leader on any trek, Lord Hastor. On this one, I'm it. If you want to discuss whether or not we carry guns, I suggest you discuss it with me in private, and let me give the orders. One of the dark-ovens gasped. I knew I could have been mobbed, but with a mixed bag of men I had to grab leadership quick or be relegated to nowhere. I didn't give Regis Hastor a chance to answer that either. I said, Come back here. I want to talk to you anyway. He came, and I remembered to breathe. I led the way to a fairly moderate corner of the immense place, faced him, and demanded, As for you, what are you doing here? You're not intending to cross the mountains with us. He met my scow levelly. I certainly am. I groaned. Why? You're the Regent's grandson. Important people don't take on this kind of dangerous work. If anything happens to you, it will be my responsibility. I was going to have enough trouble I was thinking without shepherding along one of the most revered personages on the whole damned planet. I didn't want anyone around who had to be fawned on or deferred to, or even listened to. He frowned slightly, and I had the unpleasant impression that he knew what I was thinking. In the first place it will mean something to the trailmen, won't it, to have a haster with you suing for this favor? It certainly would. The trailmen paid little enough heed to the ordinary humans except for considering them fair gain for plundering when they came uninvited into trailmen country. But they, with all dark-over, revered the hasters, and it was a fine point of diplomacy. If the dark-ovens sent their most important leader, they might listen to him. In the second place, Regis Hastor continued, the dark-ovens are my people, and it's my business to negotiate for them. In the third place I know the trailmen's dialect, not well, but I can speak it a little, and in the fourth I've climbed mountains all my life, purely as an amateur, but I can assure you I won't be in the way. There was little enough I could say to that. He seemed to have every point, or every point but one, and he added shrewdly after a minute. Don't worry, I'm perfectly willing to have you take charge. I won't claim privilege." I had to be satisfied with that. Dark-over is a civilized planet with a fairly high standard of living, but it is not a mechanized or a technological culture. The people don't do much mining or build factories, and the few which were founded by Terran Enterprise never were very successful. Outside the Terran trade city, machinery or modern transportation is almost unknown. While the other men checked and loaded supplies, and Rave Scott went out to contact some friends of his and arrange for last minute details, I sat down with Forth to memorize the medical details I must put so clearly to the trailman. If we could only have kept your medical knowledge. Trouble is, being a doctor doesn't suit my personality, I said. I felt absurdly light-hearted. Where I sat, I could raise my head and study the panorama of blackish green foothills which lay beyond Carthon, and search out the stone roadways, like a tiny white ribbon which we could follow for the first stage of the trip. Forth evidently did not share my enthusiasm. You know, Jason, there is one real danger. Do you think I care about danger, or are you afraid I'll turn foolhardy? Not exactly. It's not a physical danger, Jason. It's an emotional, or rather an intellectual danger. Hell, don't you know any language but that psycho-double talk? Let me finish, Jason. J. Allison may have been repressed, over controlled, but you are seriously impulsive. You lack a balance wheel, if I could put it that way. If you run too many risks, your buried alter ego may come to the surface, and take over in sheer self-preservation. In other words, I said, laughing loudly, if I scare that Allison stuffed shirt he may start stirring in his grave? Forth coughed and smothered a laugh, and said that was one way of putting it. I clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder and said, Forget it, sir. I promise to be godly, sober, and industrious. But is there any law against enjoying what I'm doing? Somebody burst out of the warehouse palace place and shouted at me. Jason, the guide is here. And I stood up, giving forth a final grin. Don't you worry, J. Allison's good riddance, I said, and went back to meet the other guide they had chosen. And I almost backed out when I saw the guide, for the guide was a woman. She was small for a dark-oven girl and narrowly built, the sort of body that would have been called boyish or coltish, but certainly not, at first glance, feminine. Close-cut curls, blue-black and wispy, cast the faintest of shadows over a squarish, sunburnt face, and her eyes were so thickly rimmed with heavy dark lashes that I could not guess their color. Her nose was snubbed, and might have looked whimsical instead, oddly arrogant. Her mouth was wide, and her chin round, and altogether I dismissed her as not at all a pretty woman. She held up her palm and said rather sullenly, Kyla Reynich, from Amazon, licensed guide. I acknowledged the gesture with a nod, scowling. The guild of free Amazons entered virtually every masculine field, but that of mountain guide seemed somewhat bizarre even for an Amazon. She seemed wiry and agile enough, her body under the heavy blanket-like clothing almost as lean of hip and flat of breast as my own. Only the slender long legs were unequivocally feminine. The other men were checking and loading supplies. I noted from the corner of my eye that Regis Hastor was taking his turn heaving bundles with the rest. I sat down in some still undisturbed sacks and motioned her to sit. You've had trail experience? We're going into the Hellers through Damarung, and that's rough going even for professionals. She said in a flat, expressionless voice, I was with the Terran Mapping Expedition to the South Polar Ridge last year. Ever been in the Hellers? If anything happened to me, could you lead the expedition safely back to Carthon? She looked down at her stubby fingers. I'm sure I could, she said, finally, and started to rise. Is that all? One thing more, I gesture to her to stay put. Kyla, you'll be one woman among eight men. The snub nose wrinkled up. I don't expect you to crawl into my blankets if that's what you mean. It's not in my contract, I hope. I felt my face burning. Damn the girl! It's not in mine anyway, I snapped, but I can't answer for seven other men, most of them mountain roughnecks. Even as I said it, I wondered why I bothered. Certainly a free Amazon could defend her own virtue, or not if she wanted to, without any help from me. I had to excuse myself by adding, In either case, you'll be a disturbing element. I don't want fights either. She made a little low-pitched sound of amusement. There's safety in numbers. And are you familiar with the physiological effect of high altitudes on men acclimated to low ones? Suddenly she threw back her head and the hidden sound became free and Mary laughed her. Jason, I'm a free Amazon, and that means—no, I'm not neutered, though some of us are—but you have my word, I won't create any trouble of any recognizably female variety. She stood up. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to check the mountain equipment. Her eyes were still laughing at me, but curiously I didn't mind at all. There was a refreshing element in her manner. We started that night, a curiously lopsided little caravan. The pack animals were loaded into one truck and didn't like it. We had another stripped-down truck which carried supplies. The ancient stone roads, rutted and gullied here and there with the flood waters and silt of decades, had not been planned for any travel other than the feet of men or beasts. We passed tiny villages and isolated country estates and a few of the solitary towers where the matrix mechanics worked alone with the secret sciences of Darkover, towers of glareless stone which sometimes shone with blue beacons in the dark. Kendricks drove the truck which carried the animals and was amused by it. Rafe and I took turns driving the other truck, sharing the wide front seat with Regis Hastur and the girl Kyla, while the other men found seats between crates and sacks in the back. Once, while Rafe was at the wheel and the girl dozing with her coat over her face to shut out the fierce sun, Regis asked me, What are the trail cities like? I tried to tell him, but I've never been good at boiling things down into descriptions, and when he found I was not disposed to talk, he fell silent and I was free to drowse over what I knew of the trailmen and their world. Nature seems to have a sameness in all inhabited worlds, tending toward the economy and simplicity of the human form. The upright carriage, freeing the hands, the opposable thumb, the color sensitivity of retinal rods and cones, the development of language and of lengthy parental nurture. These things seem to be indispensable to the growth of civilization, and in the end they spell human. Except for minor variations, depending on climate or foodstuff, the inhabitant of Maguera or Darkover is indistinguishable from the Terran or Syrian. Differences are mainly cultural and sometimes an isolated culture will mutate in a strange direction, or remain, adivists, somewhere halfway to the summit of the ladder of evolution, which, at least on the known planets, still reckons Homo sapiens as the most complex of nature's forms. The trailmen were a pausing place which had proved tenacious. When the mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for existence on the ground, a few remained behind. Evolution did not cease for them, but evolved Homo arborans, nocturnal, nice-delopic humanoids who lived out their lives in the extensive forests. The truck bumped over the bad, rutted roads. The wind was chilly, the truck, a mere conveyance for hauling, had no such refinements of luxury as windows. I jolted awake. What nonsense had I been thinking? Vague ideas about evolution swirled in my mind like burst bubbles. The trailmen? They were just the trailmen. Who could explain them? Jay Allison, maybe. Rafe turned his head and asked, Where do we pull up for the night? It's getting dark and we have all this gear to sort. I roused myself and took over the business of the expedition again. But when the trucks had been parked and a tent pitched and the pack animals unloaded and hobbled, and a start made at getting the gear together, when all this had been done I lay awake, listening to Kendrick's heavy snoring, but myself afraid to sleep. Dozing in the truck, an odd lapse of consciousness had come over me, myself yet not myself, drowsing over thoughts I did not recognize as my own. If I slept, who would I be when I woke? We had made our camp in the bend of an enormous river, wide and shallow and unbridged. The river Kaderan, traditionally a point of no return for humans on dark over. The river is fed by ocean tides, and we would have to wait for low water to cross. Beyond the river lay thick forests, and beyond the forests the slopes of the hellers, rising upward and upward, and there every fold and every valley was filled to the bottom with forest, and in the forests live the trailmen. But though all this country was thickly populated with outlying colonies and nests, it would be no use to bargain with any of them. We must deal with the old one of the North Nest, where I had spent so many of my boyhood years. From time immemorial the trailmen, usually inoffensive, had kept strict boundaries marked between their lands and the lands of ground-dwelling men. They never came beyond the Kaderan. On the other hand, almost any human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game for attack. A few of the dark-oven mountain people had trade treaties with the trailmen. They traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in return for nuts, bark for die-stuffs, and certain leaves and mosses for drugs. In return the trailmen permitted them to hunt in the forest lands without being molested. But other humans venturing into trailmen territory ran the risk of merciless raiding. The trailmen were not bloodthirsty and did not kill for the sake of killing, but they attacked in packs of two or three dozen, and their prey would be stripped and plundered of everything portable. Traveling through their country would be dangerous. The sun was high before we struck the camp. While the others were packing up the last oddments ready for the saddle, I gave the girl Kyla the task of readying the rucksacks we'd carry after the trails got too bad, even for the pack animals, and went to stand on the water's edge, checking the depth of the ford and glancing up at the smoke-hazed rifts between peak and peak. The men were packing up the small tent we'd use in the forests, moving around with a good deal of horse play and a certain brisk bustle. They were a good crew, I'd already discovered. Rafe and Larry's and the three dark-oven brothers were tireless, cheerful, and mountain hardened. Kendrick's, obviously out of his element, could be implicitly relied on to follow orders, and I felt that I could fall back on him. Strange as it seemed, the very fact that he was a Terran was vaguely comforting, where I'd anticipated it would be a nuisance. The girl Kyla was still something of a non-known quantity. She was too taut and quiet, working her share but seldom contributing a word. We were not yet in mountain country. So far she was quiet and touchy with me, although she seemed natural enough with the dark ovens, and I let her alone. Hi, Jason! Get a move on! Someone shouted, and I walked back toward the clearing, squinting in the sun. It hurt, and I touched my face gingerly, suddenly realizing what had happened. Yesterday, riding in the uncovered truck, and this morning, unused to the fierce sun of these latitudes, I had neglected to take the proper precautions against exposure, and my face was reddening with sunburn. I walked toward Kyla, who was cinching a final load on one of the pack animals, which she did efficiently enough. She didn't wait for me to ask, but sized up this situation with one amused glance at my face. Sunburn? Put some of this on it. She produced a tube of white stuff. I twisted at the top inexpertly, and she took it from me, squeezed the stuff out in her palm, and said, Stand still, and bend down your head. She smeared the mixture efficiently across my forehead and cheeks. It felt cold and good. I started to thank her, then broke off as she burst out laughing. What's the matter? You should see yourself, she gurgled. I wasn't amused. No doubt I presented a grotesque appearance, no doubt she had the right to laugh at it, but I scowled. It hurt. Intending to put things back on the proper footing, I demanded, Did you make up the climbing loads? All except bedding. I wasn't sure how much to allow, she said. Jason, have you eye shades for when you get on snow? I nodded, and she instructed me severely. Don't forget them. Snow blindness. I give you my word is even more unpleasant than sunburn, and very painful. Damn it, girl, I'm not stupid, I exploded. She said, in her expressionless monotone again, Then you ought to have known better than to get sunburnt. Here, put this in your pocket. She handed me the tube of sunburn cream. Maybe I'd better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten. She went off without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she'd come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp. Fourth had said almost the same thing. I told off the Darkoven brothers to urge the pack animals across the narrowest part of the ford, and gesture to Chorus and Kyla to ride one on either side of Kendricks, who might not be aware of the swirling, treacherous currents of a mountain river. Rafe could not urge his edgy horse into the water. He finally dismounted, took off his boots, and led the creature across the slippery rocks. I crossed last, riding close to Regis Hastor, alert for dangers, and thinking resentfully that anyone so important to Darkover's policies should not be risked on such a mission. Why, if the Terran Leggett had, unthinkably, come with us, he would be surrounded by bodyguards, secret servicemen, and dozens of precautions against accident, assassination, or misadventure. All that day we rode upward, and camping at the furthest point we could travel with pack animals or mounted. The next day's climb would enter the dangerous trails we must travel afoot. We pitched a comfortable camp, but I admit I slept badly. Kendricks and Laris and Rafe had blinding headaches from the sun and the thinness of the air. I was more used to these conditions, but I felt a sense of unpleasant pressure, and my ears rang. Regis arrogantly denied any discomfort, but he moaned and cried out continuously in his sleep until Laris kicked him, after which he was silent, and I feared, sleepless. Kyla seemed the least affected of any. Probably she had been at higher altitudes more continuously than any of us. But there were dark circles beneath her eyes. However, no one complained as we reddied ourselves for the final last long climb upward. If we were fortunate we could cross Damerung before nightfall. At the very least we should Bivouac tonight very near the pass. Our camp had been made at the last level spot. We partially hobbled the pack animals so they would not stray too far and left ample food for them, and cashed all but the most necessary of light trail gear. As we prepared to start upward on the steep, narrow track, hardly more than a rabid run, I glanced at Kyla and stated, We'll work on rope for the first stretch, starting now. One of the Darkoven brothers stared at me with contempt. Call yourself a mountain man, Jason! Boy, my little daughter could scramble up that track without so much as a push on her behind! I said my chin and glared at him. The rocks aren't easy, and some of these men aren't used to working on rope at all. We might as well get used to it, because when we start working along the ledges I don't want anybody who doesn't know how. They still didn't like it, but nobody protested further until I directed the huge Kendricks to the center of the second rope. He glared viciously at the light nylon line and demanded in some apprehension, Hadn't I better go last until I know what I'm doing? Hemmed in between the two of you, I'm apt to do something damn dumb! Yelma roared with laughter and informed him that the center place on a three-man rope was always reserved for weaklings, novices, and amateurs. I expected Kendricks tempered a flare up. The burly space-force man and the Darkoven giant glared at one another. Then Kendricks only shrugged and nodded the line through his belt. Kyla warned Kendricks and Laris about looking down from ledges, and we started. The first stretch was almost too simple, a clear track winding higher and higher for a couple of miles. Pausing to rest for a moment, we could turn and see the entire valley outspread below us. Gradually the trail grew steeper, in spots pitched almost to a fifty-degree angle, and was scattered with gravel, loose rock, and shale, so that we placed our feet carefully, leaning forward to catch at handholds and steady ourselves against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkoven brothers, Vardo, I thought, was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice, when his feet slipped on gravel, he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true. On slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroaped. Then a slip bothered no one but the slipper. But I was finding out what I wanted to know, what kind of climbers I had to lead through the hellers. Along a cliff face the trail narrowed horizontally, leading across a foot-wide ledge overhanging a sheer drop of fifty feet, and covered with loose shale and scrub plants. Nothing, of course, to an experienced climber. A foot-wide ledge might as well be a four-lane superhighway. Kendrick's made a nervous joke about a tightrope walker, but when his turn came he picked his way securely, without losing balance. The amateurs, Laris Ridenow, Regis Rafe, came across without hesitation. But I wondered how well they would have done at a less secure altitude. To a real mountaineer a footpath is a footpath, whether in a meadow, above a two-foot drop, a thirty-foot ledge, or a sheer mountain face three miles above the first-level spot. After crossing the ledge the going was harder. A steeper trail, in places nearly imperceptible, led between thick scrub and overhanging trees, thickly forested. In spots their twisted paths obscured the trail. In others the persistent growth had thrust aside rocks and dirt. We had to make our way through tangles of underbrush, which would have been nothing to a trailman, but which made our ground accustomed bodies ache with the effort of getting over or through them. And once the track was totally blocked by a barricade of tangled dead brushwood, born down on floodwater after a sudden thaw or cloudburst. We had to work painfully around it over a three-hundred-foot rock slide, which we could cross only one at a time, crab fashion, leaning double to balance ourselves, and no one complain now about the rope. Toward noon I had the first intimation that we were not alone on the slope. At first it was no more than a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my eyes, the shadow of a shadow. The fourth time I saw it I called softly to Kyla. See anything? I was beginning to think it was my eyes or the altitude. I saw, Jason. Look for a spot where we can take a break, I directed. We climbed along a shadow ledge, the faint, imperceptible flutters in the brushwood climbing with us on either side. I muttered to the girl. I'll be glad when we get clear of this. At least we'll be able to see what's coming after us. If it comes to a fight, she said surprisingly, I'd rather fight on gravel than ice. Over a rise there was a roaring sound. Kyla swung up and balanced on a rock-wedge tree-root, cupped her mouth to her hands and called, Rapids! I pulled myself up to the edge of the drop and stood looking down into the narrow gully. Here the narrow track we had been following was crossed and obscured by the deep, roaring rapids of a mountain stream. Less than twenty feet across it tumbled in an icy flood, almost a waterfall pitching over the lip of a crag above us. It had sliced or ravine five feet deep in the mountainside and came roaring down with a rushing noise that made my head vibrate. It looked formidable. Anyone stepping into it would be knocked off his feet in seconds and swept a thousand feet down the mountainside by the force of the current. Rafe scrambled gingerly over the gullied lip of the channel it had cut and bent carefully to scoop up water in his palm and sink. Phew! It's colder than Zandru's ninth hell! Must come straight down from a glacier! It did. I remembered the trail and remembered the spot. Kendrick's joined me at the water's edge and asked, How do we get across? I'm not sure, I said, studying the racing white torrent. Overhead, about twenty feet from where we clustered on the slope, thick branches of enormous trees overhung the rapids, their long roots partially bared, gnarled and twisted by recurrent floods. Between these trees swayed one of the queer swing bridges of the trailmen, hanging only about ten feet above the water. Even I had never learned to navigate one of these swing bridges without assistance. Human arms are no longer suited to brachiation. I might have managed it once, but at present, except as a desperate final expedient, it was out of the question. Rafe or Laris, who were lightly built and acrobatic, could probably do it as a simple stunt on the level, in a field. On a steep and rocky mountainside, where a fall might mean being dashed a thousand feet down the torrent, I doubted it. The trailman's bridge was out, but what other choice was there? I beckoned to Kendrick's, he being the man I was most inclined to trust with my life at the moment, and said, It looks uncrossable, but I think two men could get across, if they were steady on their feet. The others can hold us on ropes, in case we do get knocked down. If we can get to the opposite bank, we can stretch a fixed rope from that snub of rock, I pointed, and the others can cross with that. The first man over will be the only ones to run any risk. Want to try? I liked it better that he didn't answer right away, but went to the edge of the gully and peered down the rocky chasm. Doubtless, if we were knocked down, all seven of the others could haul us up again, but not before we'd been badly smashed on the rocks. And once again, I caught that elusive shadow of movement in the brushwood. If the trailman chose a moment when we were half in, half out of the rapids, we'd be ridiculously vulnerable to attack. We ought to be able to get a fixed rope easier than that, Yalmar said, and took one of the spares from his rucksack. He coiled it, making a running loop on one end, and, standing precariously on the lip of the rapids, sent it spinning toward the outcrop of rock we had chosen as a fixed point. If I can get it over... The rope fell short, and Yalmar reeled it in and cast the loop again. He made three more unsuccessful tries before, finally, with held breath, we watched the news settle over the rocky snub. Sently, pulling the line taut, we watched it stretch above the rapids. The knot tightened, fastened. Yalmar grinned and let out his breath. There, he said, and jerked hard on the rope, testing it with a long hard pull. The rocky outcrop broke, with a sharp crack, split and toppled entirely into the rapids. The sudden jerk almost pulling Yalmar off his feet. The boulder rolled, with a great bouncing splash, faster and faster down the mountain, taking the rope with it. We just stood and stared for a minute. Yalmar swore horribly in the unprintable filth of the mountain tongue, and his brothers joined in. How the devil was I to know the rock would split off! Better for it to split now than when we were depending on it, Kyla said stolidly. I have a better idea. She was untying herself from the rope as she spoke, and, knotting one of the spares through her belt, she handed the other end of the rope to Laris. Hold on to this, she said, and slipped out of her blankety windbreak, standing shivering in a thin sweater. She unstrapped her boots, and tossed them to me. Now boost me on your shoulders, Yalmar. Too late, I guessed her intention and shouted, No! Don't try! But she had already clambered to an unsteady perch on the big dark-oven shoulders, and made a flying grab for the lowest loop of the trailman's bridge. She hung there, swaying slightly and sickeningly, as the loose Leonas gave to her weight. Yalmar, Laris, haul her down. I'm lighter than any of you," Kyla called shrilly, and not hefty enough to be any use on the ropes. Her voice quavered somewhat, as she added, and, hang on to that rope, Laris, if you lose it, I'll have done this for nothing. She gripped the loop of vine and reached, with her free hand, for the next loop. Now she was swinging out over the edge of the boiling rapids. Tight-mouthed, I gestured to the others to spread out slightly below, not that anything would help her if she fell. Yalmar, watching as the woman gained the third loop, which juggled horribly to her slight weight, shouted suddenly, Kyla, quick! The loop! Beyond! Don't touch the next one! It's frayed! Rot it through! Kyla brought her left hand up to her right on the third loop. She made a long reach, missed her grab, swung again, and clung, breathing hard, to the safe fifth loop. I watched, sick with dread. The damned girl should have told me what she intended. Kyla glanced down, and we got a glimpse of her face, glistening with the mixture of sunburn, cream, and sweat, drawn with effort. Her tiny, swaying figure hung twelve feet above the white tumbling water, and if she lost her grip only a miracle could bring her out alive. She hung there for a minute, jiggling slightly, then started a long back-and-forward swing. On the third forward swing she made a long leap and grabbed at the final loop. It slipped through her fingers. She made a wild grab with the other hand, and the Lyanna dipped sharply under her weight, raced through her fingers, and with a sharp snap broke in two. She gave a wild shriek as it parted, and twisted her body frantically in mid-air, landing a sprawl half in, half out of the rapids, but on the further bank. She hauled her legs up on dry land, and crouched there, drenched to the waist, but safe. The dark ovens were yelling in delight. I motioned to Laris to make his end of the rope fast around a hefty tree-root and shouted, Are you hurt? She indicated in pantomime that the thundering of the water drowned words, and bent to belay her end of the rope. In sign language I gestured to her to make very sure of the knots. If anyone slipped she hadn't the weight to hold us. I hauled on the rope myself to test it, and it held fast. I slung her boots around my neck by their cords, then gripping the fixed rope Kendrick's and I stepped into the water. It was even icier than I expected, and my first step was nearly the last. The rush of the white water knocked me to my knees, and I floundered and would have measured my length except for my hands on the fixed rope. But Kendrick's grabbed at me, letting go the rope to do it, and I swore at him, raging, while we got on our feet again and braced ourselves against the onrushing current. While we struggled in the pounding waters, I admitted to myself we could never have crossed without the rope Kyla had risked her life to fix. Shivering we got across and hauled ourselves out. I signalled to the others to cross two at a time, and Kyla seized my elbow. Jason! Later, dammit! I had to shout to make myself heard over the roaring water as I held out a hand to help Rave get his footing on the ledge. This can't wait! she yelled, cupping her hands and shouting into my ear. I turned to her. What! There are trailmen on the top level of that bridge. I saw them! They cut the loop! Regis and Hjalmar came struggling across last. Regis, lightly built, was swept off his feet and Hjalmar turned to grab him, but I shouted to him to keep clear. They were still roped together, and if the ropes fouled we might drown someone. Laris and I leaped down and hauled Regis clear. He coughed, spitting ice water, drenched to the skin. I motioned to Laris to leave the fixed rope, though I had little hope that it would be there when we returned, and looked quickly around, debating what to do. Regis and Rave and I were wet clear through, the others too well above the knee. At this altitude this was dangerous, although we were not yet high enough to worry about frostbite. Trailmen, or no trailmen, we must run the lesser risk of finding a place where we could kindle a fire and dry out. Up there there's a clearing, I said briefly, and hurried them along.