done it."

He kissed her on the mouth, rather swiftly because he did not have much time, but with a full measure of feeling even so. She sighed, and he thought her lips answered his, but he doubted if that would be so when she came to.

He slipped into the pilot's chair and studied the controls, erasing every other thought from his mind as he remembered what he had learned from watching. The aerodyne was humming straight and steadily on. He had plenty of altitude.

He began to experiment, gingerly, and by the time he was across the river he was satisfied that he could control the craft well enough to get by. It was considerably simpler than learning to drive a car in the old days, and he had a lifetime of flying behind him to give him air-sense. The craft itself was a thing of beauty, topping anything he had ever flown. He angled southward and westward, away from the river, traveling like a bullet.

Linna spoke from behind him. Her voice was very cold and very hard, the voice of a stranger.

"Arrin told me I should have you bound. I left you free on my own responsibility."

Price felt bad about that, and he said so. "Try to look at it from my side, Linna. I have to do what I can for my own people. If you were in my shoes--"

"Go ahead," said Linna. "Talk is obviously useless. I shan't waste any more of it, except to tell you--"

She told him, vividly, what kind of a fool he was, and what she hoped would happen to him before he led all of his fellow-fools to destruction. Then she shut up and would not speak again, no matter how he tried to soften her rage.

The dark green forest, rough-textured like a wool rug, rolled back and away around him, and the sun was swallowed up in clouds. He strained his eyes for the clearing that would mark the Capitol of the Missouris. He was flying by dead reckoning. He had no compass bearing to begin with, and the Vurna instruments were useless to him. The pilot was beginning to come round, but Price knew better than to ask him for instructions.

It was a red light of fires burning on the edge of night that guided him down at last toward the timber-built Capitol. And now at last Linna spoke, because the pilot, looking out, began to yell frantically in Vurna. She translated.

"He says do not cut the down-blast so 

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