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quite slowly. "We must get below!"
    They made their way down a long, dark corridor that led deeper into the castle.
    Hunter had never seen burned ice before; now it was all around him. Actually, they were blocks of ice saturated with gamma radiation, so much so they looked and felt like glass. The walls of the castle were made of huge blocks of the stuff. Each one appeared as if it had a faint yellow flame glowing from within, the eternal, if diminished by-product of the massive gamma bombardment. Though the decay of the fort's interior made the glowing blocks of ice look more like gigantic, dirty diamonds, the place must have been stunning when first built many centuries ago.
    They eventually reached a kind of subchamber about five hundred feet below ground level. There was a dull lamp hovering near the ceiling here, and it was noticeably wanner. The Great Klaaz stopped, needing to catch a breath.
    Tomm needed a break as well. He produced a flask of slow-ship wine and offered it to Klaaz. The old man took it without a moment's hesitation and nearly drained the vessel dry.
    "So, you old dog!" Tomm yelled at Klaaz, retrieving what was left of his wine supply. "All the stories I have heard about you were true!"
    The old man smiled widely, displaying a mouthful of cracked and yellowed teeth. "You know better than to believe more than half of them, Padre," he said with another wheeze. It was strange. Hunter couldn't recall ever seeing anyone so old so happy.
    Klaaz pried the flask from Tomm's hands and drank once again.
    "After all these years, dear brother," he said to the priest, "you have arrived at a very interesting moment!"
    "You do seem to be in a sort of bind here, my friend," Tomm agreed.
    Klaaz wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Obviously, a dire situation exists, Padre," he said. "The enemy beyond the walls number more than twenty thousand. They are a gang of the usual suspects: space pirates and no-goodnik meres who seek something that does not belong to them."
    "How long has this been going on, my brother?"
    "Centuries—or so it seems," Klaaz said with a cough. "You saw my holo-army. Impressive, no?"
    "I've not seen such trickery in two centuries," Tomm replied diplomatically, "and I suspect it was an ancient strategy even back then."
    "It was and still is," Klaaz admitted. "But in case you have not noticed, there is a bit of desperation in the air we are breathing."
    Above them the sound of more blaster barrages could be heard landing inside the fort's high walls.
    "But you've been able to hold out, my brother," Tomm said. "You must have some kind of brilliant defense in place—"
    Klaaz cackled loudly.
    "I have six power-gravity fields surrounding this place," he said. "And they are really the only reason the Huns haven't stormed the gates already. Trouble is, all six fields are degrading very rapidly. I mean, your craft had no problem getting through, did it?"
    The priest shook his head solemnly. Klaaz shrugged again. "Their integrity must be worse than I thought."
    Tomm let his friend drain the flask.
    "My old chum," he said. "Those twenty thousand soldiers outside your wall. Why are they here? What could they possibly want? You? This castle?"
    "Not me or the castle, Padre," Klaaz replied. "But the people I am protecting here."
    Tomm did a double take. "People? What people? You mean you aren't out here alone, my brother?"
    The twinkle returned to Klaaz's eye.
    "Alone?" he asked with a wink. "Hardly ..."
    They resumed walking down the long, descending hallway, Klaaz moving slowly in a kind of staggering gait. The lower tube was lit by simple proton-decay lanterns. They provided just enough light to reveal that the walls of the tunnel were adorned with faded ice paintings of Tonk's golden age. One depicted the planet as being the brightest body on the entire Five-Arm, literally the center of a small universe. Another illustrated a huge battle between thousands of spaceships of all shapes and sizes, with those from