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the dimness like a figure meditating and remote, Mondar reached out and took one of the staring girl’s hands in his own. Her gaze did not move from the arm in the ditch, but her own grip tightened, tightened, on Mondar’s hand with a strength that was unbelievable. She did not make a sound, but her gaze never moved and her face was as white and still as a mask.
    The shots from the jungle stopped suddenly. Mondar turned to look at Eachan.
    The Dorsai looked back over his own shoulder and their eyes met.
    â€œAny second now,” said Eachan, in businesslike tones. “You’re a fool if you let them take you alive, Outbond.”
    â€œWhen there is no more point in living, I can always die,” answered Mondar, serenely. “No man commands this body but myself.”
    Eachan fired again.
    â€œThe bus,” said Mondar, calmly, “ought to have gotten close enough to hear the firing and phoned, by this tune.”
    â€œNo doubt,” said the Dorsai. “But help’d have to be on top of us right now to do any good. Any second, as I said, they’ll give up sniping at us and make a rush. And one pistol won’t hold off a dozen or more… Here they come now!”
    Through the aperture, over the soldier’s shoulder strap, Mondar could see the two waves of camouflaged-overalled figures that erupted suddenly from both sides of the jungle trail and came pouring down upon the car. The little handgun in Eachan’s hand was speaking steadily, and, magically—for its voice was almost lost in the general din and uproar—figures in the front of the rush were going down.
    But there was only a matter of fifteen meters or so for the attackers to cover; and then the jungle and the little patch of sunlight Mondar could see were blotted out by camouflaged overalls.
    The gun in Eachan’s hand clicked empty—and in that second, just as the shape of the first guerrilla darkened the opening through which Cletus had gotten out, the wild yammer of a dally gun roared from behind the attackers, and they melted like sand figures under the blow of a heavy surf.
    The dally gun yammered on for a second longer, and then stopped. Stillness flowed in over the scene like water back into a hole made in a mountain lake by a falling stone. Eachan pushed past the frozen figures of Mondar and Melissa and crawled out from the car. Numbly, they followed him.
    Limping on his artificial right knee joint, Cletus was climbing out of the ditch, dragging the shape of the dally gun behind him. He got to his feet on the roadway just as Eachan came up to him.
    â€œVery well done,” said the Dorsai, with a rare note of warmth back in his usually stiff voice. “Thank you, Colonel.”
    â€œNot at all, Colonel,” said Cletus, a little shakily. Now that the excitement was over, his one knee that was still flesh and blood was trembling with reaction, invisibly but perceptibly under his uniform trouser leg.
    â€œVery well done, indeed,” said Mondar, as quietly as ever, joining them. Melissa had halted and was staring down into the ditch where the dead driver lay. It was his arm that had been upflung, obviously with intention by Cletus, as he lay thrashing about like a deeply wounded man, unseen in the ditch. Melissa shivered and turned away to face the rest of them.
    She stared at Cletus out of her white face, in which a strange mixture of emotions were now intermingled. Mondar spoke:
    â€œHere come our relief forces,” commented the Exotic, gazing skyward. A couple of battle aircars, with a squad of infantry aboard each, were dropping down to the roadway. A hiss of a braking airjet sounded behind them and they turned to see the bus slide into view around a turn in the road. “As well as our signal section,” he added, smiling a little.

5.
    The command car, its compressor damaged by guerrilla fire, was left behind. One of the battle aircars carried its four surviving