"We still have a kind of advantage," Danton said. "They don't know who we are, or where. They know nothing."

"Neither do we," Keith said. "There's a chance Seers was wrong about the Oligarchs. Maybe their culture has changed. Maybe they don't intend to attack Earth."

"Their ego couldn't stand to forget their defeat," Danton said. "They had a highly advanced technology that could conceivably control any environment, rather than the other way round. In some ways they were ahead of the rest of the world."

Keith grinned. "That's right, Captain. You're so right."

Danton looked Keith in the eyes. "You mentioned earlier, something about sometimes thinking you should be an Oligarch. You really feel that way, Keith?"

"Why not? We didn't have a choice whose side we would fight on. We were conditioned from the time we were old enough to think, and we fought the Oligarchs for fifty years. Three-quarters of the world's population rubbed out. And then we had a world that didn't want us—unless we were three other people. We fought to destroy the old values, help build a new society. But let's face it, Captain—those old values we destroyed were our own! We helped destroy our own kind of world. So what does it mean? It means we should have fought for the Oligarchs, and that we really sympathize with them. Their system is a war system, probably still is. With them, there would always be a place for a fighting-man. A soldier among the Oligarchs could expect honor and privilege."

Danton had nothing to say. He had thought in a similar way more than once.

Van Ness said, "Wrong, Keith. We've committed ourselves, and now we have to go on to the end of the road."

The words drifted with the wind across the glassy lake. You walked along the road, Danton thought, while the road was visible and you walked it to the end. And neither road nor the end was your own choice. Maybe the only glory was in walking it bravely. But maybe, as Keith had said, they had been on the wrong road. The Oligarchs, had they conquered, would have always provided an honorable place for a soldier. Banners, flags, women, the rise of battle fever, the ecstatic explosions of power, the enemy dead.

Keith fired once into the forest wall. A shape fluttered away over the tops of the trees, then fell, crying at first, then screaming like a woman. "We've been followed by those things for 

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