THEIR MASTER

Rance had quickly inserted a pair of ear filters when the sirens first sounded. The howl was so loaded with control psych that it was only a little shy of weapon level. There was plenty for a topman to do during the pullout from a recstar, and he didn't need to be head-locked by the sirens. Not every man in the environment was completely put under. There were the ones who were too feisty, the ones who were too drunk, and some veteran longtimers who had been through it so many times that they'd built up a tolerance. The shore patrol moved systematically along the corridors, herding the stragglers out of booths and knocking shops. A belligerent few had to be incapacitated before they would go quietly.

The horns were now alternating the control howl with a full-load authority voice reciting assembly areas, departure gates, and shuttle codes. The men were glumly forming ranks. Rance made his way to the gates where his twenties would form up. It should all run fairly smoothly with his worst assholes already gone. He just hoped there wouldn't be too many unconscious. Those had to be carried by the ones who could walk, and in headlock, the ones who could walk were very badly coordinated and tended to drop the stiffs. The stiffs, in their turn, tended to throw up directly they hit free-fall, and the whole outfit had to be hosed down in the blue room. Fortunately, the liberty tans were disposable.

The last thing that anyone expected was an explosion. Just as Rance had started watching the elevator sequencer with growing impatience, there was a roar from somewhere over on the other side of the environment. For an instant, the lights dimmed. Inside the hollowed-out cavern, the concussion was stu

"What was that?"

"Are we under attack?"

Rance got to his feet again. All his men were still standing. He yelled and waved his arms. "Get down, you idiots! Get down!"

They responded sluggishly, but eventually they were all down flat. Instinctively Rance moved to cover behind a shore patrol's servo suit. Immediately after the explosion, there was an instant of silence. It was followed by a long ripping hiss, as if a pressure pipe had ruptured.

"Are we losing the atmosphere?"

"We don't have no helmets!"

"Then we'll find out soon enough."

Shore patrol sirens started up all over the environment. The servo behind which Rance was sheltering started moving forward. Rance moved with it, holding on to one of its legs and peering cautiously around the machine's bulk. There had been no second explosion, and it was looking less and less likely that they were under attack. More likely the blast was an accident or an act of sabotage. The servo's communicator crackled into life and gave him some minimal information.

"We are not under attack. Repeat, the facility is not under attack. The explosion was caused by a homemade bomb, and there are a number of fatalities. There appears to be no follow-up action, but all shore patrol units will stand to."

The communicator ran through the message for a sec- ond time. Rance straightened up. The shore looked down at him.

"You hearthatr

"I heard it."

"So I guess you can get back to moving your men out."

The full story didn't come out until they were back on the ship. Some of the old-timers, the sweetgassers, had made a pact. Just like Renchett, they had bought a homemade bomb from one of the women subversives. Unlike Renchett, they hadn't used it to try to blast their way into worm territory. One of them, probably a sapper-there were a couple of sappers among the dead- had rigged a situation fuse. After exactly seven minutes of the recall siren, the bomb had blown them all to an afterlife or none, depending on their beliefs. The women in the area must have been in on the plan. There were no women casualties at all. The suicide plot had overshadowed all other messdeck tales of the liberty.

"They must have had earplugs."

"That, or they were gassed out of their minds."

"Had to be gassed out of their minds."

"I wouldn't mind going that way, if the time was right."

"And when exactly is the time right, smartass?"

"They must have known."

Rance, when he heard that, looked around at his men. The topman in him knew that suicide talk had to be squashed, but somehow he just didn't have the strength. He wondered how many of the men around him would even make it to the light-year stare. Would he make it there himself?

The aftermath of a liberty was a topman's nightmare. The men were hung over and sullen. They'd tasted a little of what could be, and they now resented what was with a slit-eyed poison. The suicides and the fact that the liberty had been cut short had wiped out any benefit to morale that might have come from the break. If there needed to be any other reason for resentment, it was the general assumption that a jump was coming up, even though there had been no official a

He knew that the liberty had done no good, when the time-honored suit-superstition came to the surface. Even though the men were bleary and out of shape when Rance ran them through the first shakedown drill, they blamed everything on the suits. The suits were acting up. The suits were jealous because their men had been with women. Rance had never really made up his mind about the legend. He could remember, as a trooper, how his suit had seemed stiff and unyielding after a liberty. His best idea was that the suits got pissed off at the assortment of poisons that were being sweated out of the troopers wearing them. Rance was ever the realist.

Eleven

What was left of the twenty crouched on the crest of Hill 3837. It was the perfect vantage point from which to watch the big push up the Ten River valley, although nobody was relishing the advantage. The valley was a wide sweep, curving north from where the Ten ran into the gulf. It had cut a deep, steep-sided path through a range of young jagged hills. On either side of the slow, passive river was thick fungoid jungle, walls of gray, fleshy growth like luxuriant death. The jungle was so primitively virulent that it had climbed most of the way up even the most precipitous slopes. What was left of the twenty waited on their bare hilltop well above what was!oosely called the tree line. As soon as the order was given, though, they'd move on down, burning their way into the dank heat of the pallid leprous jungle that was almost certainly concealing a full menu of Yal rearguard nastiness.

All terminology on this planet was loose. The expanse of brown soup that rolled along down to the equally brown sea could scarcely qualify as water. The men hated this forsaken planet. They had fought in both its major theaters of war and taken serious casualties in each. They'd started out on the permafrost, and now they were in the jungle. Siryn, one of the new intake, had started coughing. The air was also only an approximation.

The troopers now and again cracked their facemasks for a brief respite from the metallic taste of ca