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this fact to the group yonder; then let us judge their zeal."
    The balloon-way led into the Wildlands, the lridixn now sailing at the full length of its guys, the better to catch the most direct draughts of wind. At Angwin an endless cable drew the lridixn across Angwin Gorge to Angwin Junction, an island in the sky, from which Etzwane had escaped long ago with the unwitting assistance of Jerd Finnerack.
    The lridixn continued southeast, across the most dramatic regions of the Wildlands. Casallo scrutinized the panorama through binoculars. He pointed down into a mountain valley. "You're concerned with the Roguskhoi? Look there! A whole tribe before your eyes!"
    Taking the binoculars Etzwane observed a large number of quiet dark spots, perhaps as many as four hundred, beside a stockade of thorn bush. From under a dozen great cauldrons came wisps of smoke, to drift away down the valley. Etzwane examined the interior of the stockade. Certain ambiguous bunches of rags he saw to be huddles of women, to the number of possibly a hundred. At the back of the stockade, under the shelter of a rude shed, were perhaps others. . . .
    Etzwane examined other areas of the camp. Each Roguskhoi squatted alone and self-sufficient; a few mended harness, rubbed grease on their bodies, fed wood into the fires under the cauldrons. None, so far as Etzwane could detect, so much as glanced up at the passing balloon or toward the dolly which rolled whirring through the slot not a quarter-mile distant. . . . The Iridixn passed around a crag of rock; the valley could no longer be seen.
    Etzwane put the binoculars on the rack. "Where do they get their swords? Those cauldrons are metal—a fortune wouldn't buy them."
    Casallo laughed. "Metal cauldrons and they cook grass, leaves, black worms, dead ahulph, and live ones too, anything they can get down their throats. I've watched them through the binoculars."
    "Do they ever show any interest in the balloon? They could cause trouble if they meddled with the slot."
    "They've never bothered the slot," said Casallo. "Many things they don't seem to notice. When they're not eating or breeding, they just sit. Do they think? I don't know. I talked to a mountain man who walked past twenty sitting quietly in the shade. I asked: 'Were they asleep?' He said, no; apparently they felt no urge to kill him. It's a fact: they never attack a man unless he's trying to keep them from a woman, or unless they're hungry —when he'll go into the cauldron along with everything else."
    "If we were carrying a bomb, we could have killed five hundred Roguskhoi," said Etzwane.
    "Not a good idea," said Casallo, who tended to contest or qualify each of Etzwane's remarks. "If bombs came from balloons, they'd break the slot."
    "Unless we used free balloons."
    "So then? In a balloon you can only bomb what lies directly below; not often would you drift over a camp. If we had engines to move the balloons, there's a different story, but you can't build engines from withe and glass, even if someone remembered the ancient crafts."
    Etzwane said, "A glider can fly where a balloon can only drift." .
    "On the other hand," Casallo troubled himself to point out, "a glider must land, when a balloon will drift on to safety."
    "Our business is killing Roguskhoi," snapped Etzwane, "not drifting safely back and forth."
    Casallo merely laughed and went off to his compartment to play his khitan, an accomplishment of which he was very proud.
    They had reached the heart of the Wildlands. To all sides ridges of gray rock humped into the sky; the slot veered first this way, then that, compromising between vertical and horizontal variations, the first of which made for an uneasy ride and the second for continuous exertion on the part of the winch-tender. As much as possible the slots led across the prevailing winds to afford a reach to balloons in either direction. In the mountains the winds shifted and bounced, sometimes blowing directly along the slot. The