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  Both missions would be dangerous enough. Barbara thought with a tingling what her punishment would be. As a non-initiate, she couldn’t go to the Ship, but she would be sent toward Greendale, Highbridge, or Blockhouse, to spy. But that’s terrific When do we start?

  The Udall smiled grimly. “And meanwhile, for weeks perhaps, we’ll have the Monster to deal with . . . and our own people. The whole town must already be getting into a panic.

  “We have to learn the truth about the Monster—yes, and all the people had better know the facts. We’ll do it this way. The carpenters will set up a cage for the Monster, right in the plaza, and while everybody not on duty watches, someone will go into that cage and we’ll see what happens.”

  “Who’s going to volunteer for that job?” grumbled Marian Burke.

  Elinor smiled gently. “Why, who but our brave Corporal Whitley?” she answered.

  IV

  Davis Bertram woke when the door was opened and lay there for a minute, trying to remember why his flesh ached in a hundred places. Then he got his eyes unglued.

  There was a boot in front of his nose. He rolled over, cautiously, and sent a bleared gaze upward. Above the boot was a shapely knee, and above that a leather-strip kilt reinforced with iron bands; then a belt supporting a knife and pouch, a cuirass of laminated leather with an iron bust bucket, a slim neck, a lot of yellow hair braided under a helmet, and a rather attractive suntanned face.

  Cosmos! That girl on the nightmare bird, the lariat and—

  “What’s going on?” croaked Davis. “Who are you?”

  “Father!” stammered one of the girls. “It talks”

  She spoke Basic—a slurred, archaic form, but it was the Basic of all human-settled planets. She must be human, thought Davis groggily; no alien was that anthropoid.

  A handsome wench, too, though a bit muscular for his taste. He began to smile through bruised lips at all ten of them.

  “Gak!” he said.

  The ten were identical.

  Well, not quite . . . some leaned on spears and some bore light, wicked-looking axes, and some had a beltful of needlenosed darts.

  He shuddered and grew aware that he had been stripped mother naked. Between the cuts and abrasions, he started to blush, more or less all over. He scrambled to his feet. A jerk at the wrists told him his hands were tied behind his back. He sat down again, lifting his knees and glaring across them.

  “I imagine Monsters would have learned the Men language, Ginny,” said one of his visitors.

  On closer observation, Davis saw that she was older and had a scar on one cheek. Some kind of insigne was painted on her breastplate . . . sunblaze, it was the six-pointed star of an astrogator’s mate!

  “It looks fairly harmless,” said one of die others doubtfully.

  “You, Monster!” The officer raised her battle ax. “Up!” She was tense as a drawn wire. Davis rose.

  They marched him out of the shed. He saw a courtyard, rudely paved with stones, a number of primitive wooden buildings, and a high palisade around all. There was a catwalk beneath the stakes, and warriors posted on it with some kind of crossbow.

  Beyond the gate, Davis saw quite a small army, alert for whatever he might try to pull. Some were on foot, some mounted on birds like the one he’d seen before: larger and stouter than ostriches, with feathers of blue-tipped white and cruel hawk heads. He decided not to pull anything.

  A rutted unpaved street snaked downhill between big, clumsy houses. Outside town it became a road of sorts, wandering through cultivated grainfields. They covered a sloping plateau, which dipped off into forest toward the river valley. Behind the castle, the mountains rose steep and wooded.

  Ignoring botanical details, this might almost have been Earth of some elder age. But not when you looked at the sky. It was blue and clear, yes, with towering white clouds in the west; overhead, though, were two crescents, dim by daylight: one almost twice the apparent size of Luna seen from Earth, the other half again as big. And there was the emperor planet, the world of which this was only another satellite. When full, it would sprawl across 14 times as much sky as Luna. Now it was a narrow sickle, pale amber. The morning sun was approaching it. That is, the smaller, Sol-type sun, Delta Capitis Lupi B, about which the giant planet moved. The primary sun, bluish-white A, had not yet risen; it would never seem more than the brightest of the stars.

  Davis shook an aching head and wrenched his attention back to the ground. Be sundered if this was like Earth, after all, even with the women and children clustered around. Not just their dress—the civilians wore a short skirt, the kids nothing. Their likeness. Women and children—all female, the children—seemed to be cast from a few hundred molds. Take two from the same mold, like those gawping dairymaid types over there, and the only difference was age and scars.

  Cosmos, but he was thirsty!

  At the farther end of a broad open space were some thousands of civilians, jammed together, craning their necks, held back by a line of guards. Their high-pitched, excited voices sawed on his nerves. In the middle of the square was a large wooden cage.

  “In there,” said the blonde captain. She drew her knife and cut his bonds.

  Davis shuffled through the cage door. “Is this a zoo?” he asked. “Where are all the men, anyway?

  “Don’t you know?” the captain asked acidly.

  “Very well, Babs, let’s see how you get out of this one!”

  It was a new voice, pleasantly husky in spite of its jeering note. Davis looked through the bars and saw a redhaired girl among the cavalry. Holy Valdaoth, the same one who’d roped him yesterday!

  Or was she? Her twin, also in armor, came walking slowly forth across the square. Davis stepped warily back as the newcomer entered. The blonde officer latched the door behind them.

  The girl touched her dagger. He could have gone for her in better circumstances. Her greenish eyes widened, and she breathed hard. It would have been an interesting sight if it hadn’t been for that iron bra.

  “I’ll light if I must,” she whispered.

  Four women approached the cage, all of die same unprepossessing genotype. The oldest wore a headdress of plumes. “Well, Corporal,” she snapped, “question it.”

  “Y-yes, ma’m,” said the girl in a small voice. “I . . . I am Corporal Maiden Barbara Whitley, Monster.”

  “The same who captured you,” said one of the bags.

  “Be quiet, Henrietta,” said the oldest witch. With a certain fearless pride: “I am Claudia, the Udall of Freetoon.”

  “Honored, Citizen,” said the man. “My name is Davis Bertram.”

  “Why . . . that could almost be a human name,” said Barbara shyly.

  “What else should it be?” asked Davis.

  “Oh . . . oh, yes, the stories do say you Monsters learned the arts from die Men.” She smiled, the least little bit.

  “But I—Who said I was a monster?” He was not, Davis told himself, vain; but more than one woman had informed him she liked his face.

  “You are! Look at you!”

  “Blast it, I’m as human as you are!”

  “With all that hair?” rapped Henrietta Udall.

  Davis gave her an unfriendly glance.

  “Look here,” said Barbara reasonably, “we’re not blind. I admit you have two legs and five fingers and no feathers. But you’re bigger than any of us, and haven’t got any more breasts than a ten-year-old.”

  “I should hope not!” said Davis.

  “In fact—” Barbara scratched her neck, puzzledly, and pointed. “Just what is that? Do you fight with it?”

  “It doesn’t look prehensile,” said the blonde captain.

  Davis told himself wildly that he had not gone insane, that he really was here on the Earth-sized third satellite of Delta Capitis Lupi B I. But somehow it seemed to slip through his fingers.

  He put his face in his palms and shuddered.

  “Poor Monster.” Barbara trod impulsively forward.


  He looked up. She paled a little with fright, under the smooth brown skin, and made half a step back. Then her lips—unfairly attractive lips—stiffened, and she stayed where she was.

  “We had no way of knowing,” she said. “Some Monsters are friendly with the Men and some aren’t. We couldn’t take chances.”

  “But I am a man!” shouted Davis.

  A groan went through the crowd. Somebody screamed.

  Barbara clenched her fists. “Why did you say that?” she asked in a wobbly voice.

  “Can’t you see, girl?’

  “But the Men . . . the Men are powerful, and beautiful, and—”

  “Oh, Evil!” Davis took her fingers and laid them against his cheek. “Feel that? I haven’t got much yet in the way of whiskers, but—”

  Barbara turned faintly toward the Udall. “It’s true, ma’m,” she whispered. “There’s hair starting to grow out of his face.”

  “But you captured him!” protested the blonde captain.

  Davis took hold of his sanity with both hands. “Look, kenno,” he began between clenched teeth. “Let’s be reasonable about this. Just what the jumping blue blazes do you think a man is?”

  “A Man is . . . is . . . a human male.” He could barely hear the Barbara girl’s reply.

  “All right. Now, have you ever seen a human male before?”

  “Certainly not.” Her courage was returning. “You must indeed be from far away, Monster, There are no Men on all Atlantis.”

  “Oh. . . is that what you’ve called this world? But how do you manage—how long since—”

  “Humans came here some 300 years ago. That is, by a year I mean the time Minos needs to go once around the sun Bee.” Minos . . . the big planet, of course. Davis had measured from space that it was about one Astronomical Unit from B, which had nearly the same mass as Sol.

  So one Minos year was approximately one Earth year. Three centuries—why, they were barely starting to colonize then! The hyperdrive was newly invented and—

  “But you have children,” he said feebly.

  “Oh, yes. By the grace of Father, the Doctors at His Ship can—I don’t know any more. I’ve never been there.”

  Davis took a while to swallow that one.

  Something came back to him. In the few hours he’d been on Atlantis, before this Barbara wench caught him, he had seen plenty of animal life: reptiles, fish, insects, flying and flightless birds. Some of the earthbound avians had been the size of buffalo.

  But no mammals. In all those flocks and herds, not a mammal.

  Excitement gripped him. “Wait a minute!” he cried. “Are there any . . . I mean, well, does Atlantis harbor any warm-blooded animals with hair that give live birth and suckle their young?”

  “Why, no,” said Barbara. “Except us humans, of course.”

  “Ahhh-ha. Mammals never evolved here, then. And they’re the only terrestroid form where the males are . . . hm—” Davis blushed. “Obviously male. No wonder you didn’t recognize—I mean, uh—”

  “What do you mean?” asked Barbara innocently.

  “This is ridiculous,” barked the Old Udall. “It’s well understood that the Men will come in all their power and glory. This wretch is a Monster, and the only question is what to do about it.” Another girl trod forth. Even now, Davis felt his eyes bug out. She was dark, throaty-voiced, with gold bangles on slender anns and red flowers in her long hair, high in the prow and walking like a sine wave. “Please, ma’m,” she said. “I have an idea.” Claudia smiled at her. “Yes, Elinor?”

  “It says it is a Man.” Elinor waggled her eyelashes at Davis. “Let it prove it.”

  “How?” demanded Davis.

  “By fertilizing the corporal,” said Elinor with scientific detachment.

  “What?”

  Barbara stepped back, whitefaced. “No!” she gasped.

  “Corporal Whitley,” said Claudia earnestly, “we’ve had our little differences, but now the future of Freetoon may depend on you. You won’t fail your duty.”

  “Unless you’re afraid, darling,” murmured Elinor.

  Davis saw Barbara flush red. She knotted her fists. After a very long minute, she looked squarely at him with an air of having but one life to give for her country.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly. “You may fertilize me, Davis—if you can!”

  He looked at several thousand interested faces.

  How did you explain the effect of social conditioning to a tribe which had never heard of such matters?

  “Not now,” he begged hoarsely. “Give me time . . . privacy, for Cosmos’ sake . . . can’t do anything here—”

  The Old Udall lifted a skeptical brow.

  “Oh, never mind,” said Davis. “Have it your way. I’m a monster.”

  V

  Barbara was not happy.

  That sorry business in the plaza had won her a good deal of respect, but she didn’t enjoy baiting captives, even Monsters. In the four days since, a growing moodiness had driven her to get permission to go out alone after game. It was not quite safe, but she felt somehow that a companion would be more of a hazard.

  We Whitleys are a crotchety lot, she admitted. For once the reflection was less arrogant than gloomy. She had not, before, felt it a loss to have no sweetheart, not even a close friend, and to be forever at odds with her only kinswoman in Freetoon. But suddenly she wanted her mother back . . . Or someone. She couldn’t understand the pull she felt, as if her thirteen-year-old self were reaching across seven years of time to invade a body gone all soft and unsure. Ever since those moments in the Monster’s cage. . . Damn the Monster! Had the thing psyched her?

  She headed northward into the woods and steeps of the Ridge, spoored a stamper herd on the second day and caught up to it on the third and shot one of the great grazing birds. She didn’t have it cut up before dark, and wasn’t sleepy even then.

  And she saw that the night was cool, a bright mystery where dewed leaves sparkled gold beneath Minos, a scent of young blossoms, the High Gaunt rearing its stern stone peak among the stars. An irrational happiness lifted in her, she gathered armfuls of sweetbird and fernish, crooned, threw her arms about a slim white tree and rubbed a hot cheek against it and was near crying when a night-triller began to sing. There was a tingle all through her.

  And this was not to be understood either. All at once she wanted very much the harsh sweaty comfort of the barracks. The trail had arced, she could be in Freetoon tonight if she rode hard.

  Sleep was no problem. Normally you slept about four hours out of the twelve between a sunset and a sunset, but huntresses could go for days on birdnaps. Barbara loaded her pack orsper, mounted the other, and started at Bee-rise.

  She ate In the saddle, not stopping even for the holy time of eclipse, when Bee went behind Minos and the stars came out. Ay and Ariadne gave light enough for those ten-plus minutes, and a muttered prayer to Father met minimum requirements.

  Shortly afterward she struck the Ironhill road. It was wider than most—all towns, however hostile, met at the mining settlement to trade. Jogging along in her own apprehension, she forgot all care. She rounded a bend and could have been shot by the Greendalers before realizing they were there.

  A dozen of them, in full armor, riding toward Freetoon . . . Barbara reined in, gasping, and stared at the crossbows as they swiveled around.

  The Greendale leader, a middle-aged Macklin with a broken nose, laughed. “We won’t harm you today, darling, if you behave yourself,” she said. “Freetooner, aren’t you? Were on embassy.”

  Barbara nodded distantly and joined them. She felt no hatred, but war was as normal a part of life as the harvest festival. She had been in several raids and skirmishes since gaining her growth, and her kin were dead at Greendale hands.

  There was a Whitley sergeant among them, about fifty years old. “I’m Gail,” she introduced herself.

  “What’s your mission?” asked Barbara, rather snappishly.

  “What
do you think?” answered Gail. “You people ought to know better than to send spies our way when I’m on patrol duty.”

  “Oh . . . you bushwhacked them, then.” Barbara felt a chill.

  “Every one. Caught three of them alive. One, Avis Damon, got pretty much cut up in the fracas, and rather than bleed to death she told us what she knew.”

  It was bad news, very bad, but Barbara’s first reaction was scorn. “I always claimed those Damons aren’t fit for combat.” Then, slowly: “So what do you think you learned?”

  “A star ship landed in your country.” Gail said it with care. “There was a Man aboard.”

  “A Monster,” corrected Barbara. “We made it admit that.”

  “Mmm . . . yes . . . I thought so myself. You couldn’t have captured a Man against his will.”

  A thin, dark-haired Burke interrupted softly: “Are you sure it was against his will? Maybe as a test of faith, he—”

  That was the trouble with the Burkes. They thought too much. Barbara’s hands felt clammy. “We’ve sent to the Doctors, of course, to ask what we ought to do,” she said defensively.

  “And meanwhile you have the Monster and its ship.” Anger writhed across the Macklin’s leathery face. “Do you think were going to stand by and let you make an ally of the Monster?”

  “What do you want?” replied Barbara.

  “We’re bringing an ultimatum,” said Gail Whitley. “Your Udall has damned well got to turn the Monster over to a joint guard till we get word from the Doctors. If you don’t—war.”

  Barbara thought about it for a while. She ought to make a break for it, try to reach Freetoon ahead of this gang . . . no, that would earn her nothing more than a bolt in the back. There was plaguey well going to be a war, no Udall would cough up a prize like the Monster. Well, who says we can’t defend our own fields? Hell and thunder, we’ll toss them out on their fat cans and chase them all the way home.

  The battle would probably start tomorrow. It was about thirty hours’ ride to Greendale, but the enemy soldiers must already have left and be bivouacked somewhere in the Ridge.

  So be it! Barbara felt a welcome tension, almost an eagerness. It was a pleasant change from her eldritch moods of the past days. She chatted amiably with the others for the rest of the trip.