could not answer Barlow's poisonous despair in any other way. Lanny was ashamed. But who would know his real motive if he killed Barlow now? Who—but himself?

Lanny's club touched Barlow's chest. He felt a drain of energy, a disintegration of structure. The energy Lanny had absorbed from the missionary's force-field exploded in a fierce, white heat. Barlow crumbled into dust.

Lanny's awareness of what he had done survived for a fraction of a second. He stood facing the exploding light and waves of concussion lashed at his body. A dark chaos, whipped into fury by a floodtide of guilt, rocked his mind. He willed himself into unconsciousness, a bleak forgetfulness that sponged the guilt—and the truth—from his mind.

And now he remembered nothing but the explosion and the queasy shadow of self-accusation.

"The settlement," Juan Pendillo said to his sons, "is required to surrender the hunters at dawn. That gives us forty-five minutes. We're all heading for different treaty areas. We are to go to the San Francisco colony."

The three men slid along the street, clinging to the shadows. Twice they passed other hunters in flight, but no one spoke, for the enemy sound detectors on the Chapel of the Triangle were sensitive enough to pick up a whisper at a distance of half a mile. Lanny and Gill discarded their moccasins, in order to be more sure of their footing. The moccasins were useless except as symbols of status. Juan Pendillo qualified to give the extra skins to his sons, since before the invasion he had been a Doctor of Philosophy, and the teachers had become the governing force in every treaty area.

For two hours Pendillo and his foster sons walked north. Occasionally they saw enemy spheres overhead, but the ships never came closer. After they reached the coast, the pounding surf formed a protective sound barrier when they talked.

"How far is the San Francisco treaty area?" Gill asked.

"Three hundred miles, more or less," Pendillo replied.

"How many days?" Lanny inquired. His father, like all the older survivors in the settlement, always spoke of distance in terms of miles—a word that was meaningless to the new generation.

Pendillo laughed, with gentle bitterness. "Once, Lanny, we might have made it by car in eight hours. Now?—I don't know. The couriers sometimes do it in a week, when 

 Prev. P 4/42 next