REVOLT ON WAR WORLD

"Take another ration each," Nelson said, "but leave your bedrolls here. I want you back when it's time to sleep again. At the latest."

One squad went along near the rim toward the west, another to the east. Frank's squad, eleven with myself, went straight inland. When Cat's Eye is only a crescent, Dimday isn't a good time for long-distance seeing, but if there were sheep around, we'd near them farther than we could see them anyway. We'd hiked for nearly an hour and a half when we came to another pool. It looked shallow, but was about a hundred meters across, and around it were lots of tracks that looked like sheep tracks. As we walked around looking, we found pony tracks, too, and tracks as big as cow tracks, but longer and narrower, like young moose. I told Frank about muskylope, and that some people on Haven had learned to ride them, and use them as pack animals.

We looked at the trail where it left the pool. Frank Begay had worked sheep all his life, and he said it looked like a big band-about two thousand. They were going east. We didn't see any dog tracks with them. Frank decided to split the squad. He'd take five men with him and follow the sheep. The rest of us would backtrack the sheep and find where they came from. We were to keep going till we either found the place, or for five hours, whichever came first. If we found it, we would learn as much as we could about it and then come back to the big pool. If both halves weren't back in twelve hours, the half that was back could go to Nelson Tsinajini and report.

He put me in charge of the half squad I was with. He said we were all Di

I'd set my watch to zero on the stop watch mode, and we backtracked the sheep trail for almost four hours when we saw up ahead what looked like a long wall or fence. By then it was lighter; Cat's Eye was still a crescent, but it was getting thicker. So we got down on our hands and knees and crawled; the low shrubs would make us hard to see.

What we'd seen was a fence made by uprooting and piling the big thorn bushes. On the other side of it were shaggy cattle, and I remembered reading that the Kazakh colonists were going to take yaks with them. Yaks from the Tibetan Plateau, that could stand severe cold and thin oxygen. We followed the fence in more or less the direction we'd been going before, west, and pretty soon we could hear someone yelling up ahead, not an alarm, but as if he was yelling at the cattle. Closer up, I could see what looked and sounded like a young boy. He had a grub hoe, and seemed to be chopping some kind of plant out of the pasture. There was a gap in the fence, with only one big thorn shrub in it to block it, and when a cow would get close to the gap, the boy would yell and chase her away.

It wasn't just yelling; it was words. I was pretty sure it wasn't Kazakh. Kazakh is a Turkic language. This one sounded Indo-European to me. It reminded me of what Lieutenant Toloco

I told my men to stay where they were and lie low, then moved to the gap in the fence and crawled through past the shrub that blocked it. Mostly the herdboy's back was toward it, so I crawled toward him on hands and knees, slowly, easily, making no quick movements. When I got closer, I could hear him talking to himself, as if he was angry. The hoe was a kind of grub hoe, and looked too heavy to be a good weapon, unless he was really strong. When I was about forty feet away and he still hadn't seen me, I rose up and started for him in a crouch, still quietly, only rushing the last few feet. I don't think he knew I was there till I was on him. Then I hit him from behind, throwing him down and landing on him. He didn't really struggle; I was surprised at how thin he was inside his sheepskin cape.

"Don't yell," I told him, in slow, distinct English. "If you're quiet, nothing will happen to you."

He didn't make a sound.

"Come to the fence with me," I said. "I want you to answer questions about your masters." Then I let go my hold on his head and got off him.

He half turned over so he could look at me. And stared. "Are you-American?" he asked.

"I'm an American Indian," I told him, and watched his eyes get round. He must have seen old American movies back on Earth. "We don't have slaves," I added. "Those we admire, we adopt into the tribe as warriors." I'd seen some of those movies too. Sometimes they weren't even all nonsense. He nodded, then picked up his hoe, and together we trotted to the fence, he looking back over his left shoulder as if for somebody coming. I looked too, and saw something I hadn't noticed before. I should have. By the light of dimday, I saw low buildings humped in the distance. They looked like a large set of ranch buildings.

Crouching by the fence, I asked him, "What were you watching for?"

"Amud," he said. "It is his shift to keep watch on the herd. He just went to the-ranch, for tea. He'll be back soon, and if I'm not chopping puke bush, he'll beat me."

"We'll watch for him then," I said, and began to ask about the ranch and the people there. His eyes were gray, and looked too big for his thin face, but they flashed with anger, and once I got him started, he talked without urging. All I had to do was steer. His name was Janis, he said. Most of the Kazakhs had left two truedays earlier-maybe 120 hours as I figured it. They had taken the sheep to summer pastures. The lambs were now old enough to be out during the cold of truenight.

Sometimes there was no truenight between truedays; there was just day, then dimday, then day again. Sometimes there'd be a short truenight, with dimday before or after. But now and then there'd be a long truenight, and even in summer it would freeze hard then. The waterholes would freeze over, and wet places would freeze on top like concrete.

There were fifty or sixty Kazakhs with this ranch. Fifteen or sixteen of them were still here at their year-round headquarters. There were also eight indentured laborers-seven Latvians and a Russian-whose contracts the Kazakhs had bought from the Bureau of Relocation. Indentured laborers were the same as slaves. Three of the Latvians were women or girls, and two of them were pregnant by Kazakhs. Their babies would die because the air was so thin, Janis said, and maybe the mothers. The Kazakhs didn't care enough about them to take them to Shangri-La for birthing. Besides, Kazakh women were supposed to arrive from Earth, later in the year, brides for the stockmen.

Of the Kazakhs still at the headquarters, three tended the cattle here in the pasture, one on a shift. Six tended the horse herd. The rest looked after the headquarters. Those not on duty would be sleeping or loafing.

And yes, they were always armed. They carried a short, curved sword and a pistol. Those out tending herds, like Amud, also carried a whip and a rifle.

That was as far as Janis had gotten when I saw someone riding out from the buildings. "He's coming," I said to Janis. "Stay here. Pretend you're napping. When he comes over to beat you, I'll kill him. I have warriors with me. Well kill the rest of the Kazakhs, take their cattle and horses, and free your people. You can come with us if you want."

Then I crawled back past the gate bush and hid myself behind the hedge, to wait where I could see Janis through the gap. Two minutes earlier I'd felt confident. Now my guts felt tight and hot; it all seemed like a terrible mistake. Nelson had told us to scout; we were to learn, come back, and report. What I was pla