Patriots

The Zeniths had gathered in a tight bunch like sheep in a blizzard. Dr. Jesilind was trying to worm his way into the center of the group. Boots and elbows drove him back with universal determination.

"If you're thinking you got help coming from the Doodle," Desiree called to them as she cut Mark free, "you can forget it right now. There's folks there by now ready to blow the nose off anybody who peeks out of the ship you lot come in."

Some of the kidnappers had kept or found their weapons. The chances that anything would shoot without a thorough cleaning was nothing to bet your life on, though. The battered Zeniths didn't look as though they were up to a fight in any case.

Mark stood. His feet felt as if somebody were hammering needles into them. Still, they held him.

A dirigible approached from the northeast. It crawled along low to the ground so that the crew could jump to safety if Zeniths shot the gasbag to bits. More dirigibles bobbed closer from all points of the horizon.

Yerby rose in the passenger compartment of the Zenith aircar as if he were on a dais addressing a rally. "Now, I tell you what I'm going to do, Finch my boy," he said. "I'm going to let you and your band of heroes stick all your guns here with me where they can be collected. Then I'm going to tell my friends to take it easy. We'll haul you lot to the Doodle and you can go back where you came from."

"After they've paid for the damage they caused on Greenwood," Mark interjected. "That includes a working-a demonstrably working-aircar destroyed."

Yerby chuckled. "Yep, he's a feisty one, my attorney here," he said. In a tone with more hard edges than a file he went on, "Now, I hope you take the deal offered, Finchie. If you don't, the best thing that's going to happen is that you walk around a while, and that won't be longer than sunrise. I don't much mind what happens to you, but there's me and mine here too… and a bullet don't have eyes."

Colonel Finch wiped his forehead. "Stack arms in the car," he ordered hoarsely.

The community of Wanker's Doodle was at the south end of Centipede Lake, a multibranched thickening of the glacial White River. The lake was three hundred miles long, and its shoreline was ten or twenty times as great. Heavy loads of the sort that had to be ferried to the Spiker by dirigible could be rafted to the Doodle from any point on the lake's circumference.

Despite that, Wanker's Doodle wasn't as busy a port as the Spiker. The Doodle itself was a finger of basalt, the core of an ancient volcano, that thrust up through soil deposited by the floods every spring. The hard rock spreading from the base of the Doodle could hold only three starships at a time-four if they were smaller than average-and other ground nearby was too soft for the concentrated weight.

There were two typical freighters on the basalt at the moment. The third, larger vessel waiting on the magnetic mass was much shinier than what usually landed at Greenwood. Frontiersmen with guns and bottles sat in the big ship's open hatches while crewmen in spiffy white uniforms watched them glumly.

Yerby was leaning over the rail of Bat Lunaan's dirigible to view the approaching community. "Pretty as a picture, that ship, ain't it? Bet the captain's having co

Because the prisoners in the netting below weighed so much, Lunaan had only Yerby and Mark with him in the gondola. Even so, his airship was slower than the others. The flat ground near the Doodle was brilliant with the coverings of thirty or more dirigibles and the wings of flyers that had started arriving soon after the sun came up.

"There's Amy," Mark said, pointing. She stood near the starship's hatch holding a gas gun.

Somebody must have picked her up on the way to the Doodle. It would be another day at least before enough water had been electrolyzed into hydrogen-the oxygen was vented-to refill the tanks of the Ba

Yerby stepped back from the railing. "What do you figure our friends from Zenith are going to try next, lad?" he asked quietly. "Oh, not this lot," he added, gesturing toward the deck and the captives who dangled beneath it. "The syndicate of folks that wants to steal our land, I mean."

"I think…" Mark said. "I think there'll be a peace conference. Protector Giscard'll call it, or maybe even a delegation from Earth. You've made the Zenith authorities look very foolish. They'll make a compromise offer to avoid worse."

The dirigible settled in the cleared space near the starship's hatch. Pumps whined to suck hydrogen from the ballonets now that the prisoners' weight rested on the ground.

"I thought maybe something like that," Yerby said as if he were making idle conversation. "Myself, I've never been much for compromise, though."

Yerby jumped from the gondola while the deck was still six feet above the ground. Mark sighed and followed. He didn't fall over when he hit, so he figured the paralysis must have worn off completely by now.

Mark's mouth still tasted worse than he could imagine. The swig of what Lunaan claimed was whiskey had added its own ghastly flavors without in the least cutting the miasma of the gas.

The cargo net collapsed about the Zeniths when Lunaan dropped it and moved the dirigible off the starport. Desiree took charge of freeing them. Yerby nodded approval, then sauntered to the starship's captain standing beside the boarding ramp. Mark smiled to Amy as they both followed her brother without speaking.

"Well, Captain…" Yerby said, peering at the nametag. "Captain Drumm. I'll bet you're not very pleased about how things went this voyage, are you?"

"My ship's been looted!" Drumm said. He was a dapper man with, at the moment, the red face of someone on the verge of a stroke. "Are you responsible for this, sir? My liquor cabinet's been emptied and my passengers' private lockers have been broken into as well!"

Yerby nodded sympathetically. "Looting's a terrible thing, yes sir. But-did you lose anything besides booze, Captain?"

"My pistol," Drumm said. Apprehension was replacing anger as he realized how very powerful Yerby was. "I don't know that there was anything else. Except the liquor."

"Peaceful visitors don't need guns on Greenwood," Yerby said with the smile of a cat for the mouse between its paws. "Reckon we can forget that."

"It isn't important, no," Drumm agreed. "And the liquor-"

"And the liquor's the sort of hospitality a smart fellow'd offer people when he came waltzing into their house without a by-your-leave," Yerby continued, overriding the captain's nervous mumble. "Which is the thing I wanted to take up with you, Captain. The next time you want to land on Greenwood, why don't you hold in orbit until I've radioed you a personal invitation? Because if you land without my permission again, you'll never take off."

Drumm licked his lips. His face was as sallow as it had been red a moment before. "I understand," he said.

Yerby smiled and patted Drumm on the shoulder. "I thought you would," Yerby said. Whistling "Men of Harlech" between his teeth, he turned to watch the prisoners being marched in line toward the ramp.

Dr. Jesilind felt the weight of Yerby's stare. He eased to the side to put Colonel Finch between him and the frontiersman. A Woodsru

Berkeley Finch swallowed and deliberately faced Yerby. "One moment, please, sir," he said in a voice that got higher with every syllable. "My troops and I surrendered our weapons upon your promise of safe conduct until we were off-planet."

"And that's just what you'll have if you step out of my way," Yerby said in a tone Mark had never heard him use before. It was like listening to millstones speak. "There's a personal matter between me and the doc, though I guess you can have part of it if you're fool enough to want it."