Again! Lanny thought, with disgust. The Almost-men—or at least their missionary women—had a limited gamut of emotional reactions. It seemed an inadequate way to solve a problem.

They left Tak Laleen where she lay. Gill expertly stripped off the skin of the animal they had killed, another hide they could fashion into a jacket for Juan Pendillo. Lanny had been superficially wounded—a long, shallow scratch across his chest. He examined it carefully, feeling through the severed body cells with his mind and directing the blood purifiers to seal off the few germ colonies which were present. When the skin seemed to require no healing exposure to the sun, he allowed the scratch to heal at once.

Gill shouldered the cougar hide, still warm and dripping blood. Lanny picked up the missionary and they returned to the cottage. Tak Laleen's uniform was torn and useless, but the material was a tough plastic which had protected her from any serious wound. Her chest and arms were criss-crossed with scores of tiny abrasions. It puzzled Lanny that she had made no effort to repair her body. It occured to him, with something of a shock, that the Almost-men might use machines to do that, too.

Tak Laleen regained consciousness when Lanny put her on the bed in front of the fire. Pendillo tore off her battered uniform and bathed the scratches with hot water.

"You saved me; you risked your own life!" She said it with a peculiar fervor. Lanny couldn't understand why she thought an element of risk had been involved. A hunter with half his skill and experience could have done as much.

"I won't try to run away again," she promised. Not much of a concession, Lanny thought, suppressing a grin.

Pendillo said they would have to spend the next day in the cottage, to give the missionary a chance to rest. She was suffering, he said, from something he called shock. Precisely what that was neither of his sons knew, but they supposed it was an obscure ailment that beset the enemy. The more they learned about Tak Laleen, the stranger it seemed that such a weak people could have conquered the earth.

During the interval of waiting, Lanny and Gill dried the two hides they had taken. They cut breeches and a jacket for Tak Laleen, to replace the uniform she could no longer wear.

After they resumed their trek north, it took them four days more to reach the pylon barrier south of the San Francisco treaty area. Tak 

 Prev. P 17/42 next