Amy took out her camera. A flyer dived past the gasbag, then zoomed up again as the pilot shouted curses in a hoarse voice.

Mark pressed his lips together and said nothing. Lucius had headed basically downwind. With a following breeze, the dirigible was about as fast as a flyer, but this course was going to take them out over the ocean again very shortly.

More missiles dropped. Several hit; the locals were improving their technique with practice. Even though they weren't using lethal weapons, the impacts would damage the solar cells. Sooner or later they'd start tearing holes in the ballonets. Mark didn't want to be over salt water if the dirigible was forced down.

When the dirigible was forced down.

"Dad?" he called. "If you get some altitude, we can maybe get a radio signal through to Yerby or the Spiker."

"In good time," his father said. He didn't raise his voice, but there was steel in his tone.

The dirigible crossed the sandy beach, still only twenty feet above the surface. A jagged piece of metal screamed past them and splashed in the surf. What sounded like a wooden crate of bottles smashed on the upper surface and rained shards of glass down on all sides.

The flyers were holding course directly above the dirigible, so now they hit more often than not. Mark put an arm around Amy without looking at her. She leaned forward, recording the pattern of fragments splashing in the water.

The dirigible was traveling at nearly forty-five miles an hour. Immediately ahead of them the sea brightened to sunlit splendor; they were about to leave the shadow of the cloud in which they'd been proceeding since before Lucius took the helm.

"Hold tight!" Lucius shouted. The dirigible entered sunlight. Lucius pulled the lever that dumped the entire water ballast from the bottom of the gondola. The sea roiled like a storm surge as the dirigible shot upward faster than Mark had dreamed it could.

Somebody screamed in fear from above them. The flyers flicked past to either side. Three were under marginal control; the wing of the last was cocked up at a 45° angle with a bent spar. It spiraled wildly down toward the sea as the bearded man who'd thrown the first bottle fought his controls in vain.

The dirigible gained five hundred feet in a few seconds and continued to rise. "Amy?" Lucius called from the helm. "Would you care to take the controls again? I'm not sure I could find the compound."

"Dad, what did you do?" Mark asked as Amy took the helm. They'd passed a thousand feet. At this rate, the flyers wouldn't be able to reach the dirigible again in less than an hour, even if the Blind Cove settlers had the stomach to try.

"The gas cools in the cloud's shadow," Lucius said. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. "When we came into the sunlight, it expanded very quickly and gave us a great deal more lift. In combination with dumping the ballast, I thought we could rise fast enough to… at least disconcert the others."

"There's only a few hundred settlers on Zenith grants on the planet," Mark said quietly. "I suppose they've been treated pretty roughly the past month or two."

"No doubt," his father said. Lucius turned to Amy and went on, "Ms. Bannock? I'm very sorry about the ballast, but I thought it was necessary. I'm afraid it will make landing difficult."

"I'll manage, Lucius," she replied. "And I'm still Amy, remember."

Mark lifted the radio handset and said, "This is the Bannock blimp to all Woodsrunners. We're headed home from just west of Blind Cove, and I'd really like some company!"

25. A Pause for Reflection

The fireworks for Lucius' send-off celebration were homemade. The first bomb choonked into the night sky from the tube by the Spiker's front entrance and exploded in a green flash five hundred feet over the starport. The second followed twenty seconds later and burst brilliantly white.

The third blew the launcher up in a great scarlet eruption. Fragments of metal pinged off the courtyard wall. The pyrotechnics crew, four brothers jointly settling a tract well to the east, capered and beat at places where sparks had ignited their clothing and hair. The crowd-those who hadn't been close enough to have their own mini-fires to deal with-cheered wildly and continued drinking.

There were several hundred people at the gathering, far too many for the tavern itself to put up. Lights and fires dotted the slope down to the landing field. Folk were camping in tents or just bedrolls, and many were heating their dinners besides.

The freighter Ice Queen, bound for Quelhagen after a quick turnaround on Greenwood, had been winched onto the magnetic mass. The starship's underside was brightly lit as the crew gave a last-minute check to an induction module.

When the brothers started to light the fireworks, Lucius had backed himself and Mark into the nook beside the gateposts-out of direct sight of the nearby launchers. Now father and son eased forward again.

"Good thing we were covered," Mark said, patting the gatepost with the heel of his hand. "Good thing you thought of it."

Lucius looked at the cheerful settlers. They were a scattering of silhouettes and shadows; firelight picked out an occasional bearded face or the glint of a bottle. He knew only a handful of them, and many didn't know him. They were present for a party, and because Yerby Bannock had called them to honor an ally.

"What are you thinking, Dad?" Mark asked. His father's smile was oddly wistful.

Lucius looked at him. "That for people on the edge of disaster, risking their lives every day, living in enormous discomfort and often squalor," he said, "they're oddly happy, aren't they? But perhaps it's not so odd. Just something one becomes too sophisticated to appreciate."

"We're trying to do something about the squalor, at least," Mark said defensively. "The Ice Queen brought the recycling plant for the Spiker. You've seen the unit Yerby's installing, right?"

His father laughed wholeheartedly, a sound as unlikely and disconcerting as sight of Lucius in battle dress on his arrival had been. He'd returned to being a proper Quelhagen gentleman for his departure. "I'm sure you will, Mark," he said. "One of the problems with frontiers is that they attract folk whose only concern is where their next meal is going to come from. Of course those are the people most likely to survive on a frontier, as well."

Lucius cleared his throat. "We don't talk very much, you and I. About personal matters."

"No, sir," Mark said, feeling his body stiffen. They both stared in the direction of the waiting starship rather than meet one another's eyes.

Lucius chuckled. "Well, don't worry," he said. "We're not going to start now." He rested his fingers lightly on Mark's shoulder. "There are a few things that I should say, however."

Mark turned. He grinned, but his muscles were still tense. He wondered what Yerby's relationship with his own father had been like.

"I won't ask if you'll be all right," Lucius said, "because none of us know the answer to that. And I won't ask you to be careful, because I know you're young."

He smiled tightly. Mark nodded without returning the smile.

"I will tell you, though," Lucius continued, "that in the long run it's even more important to know which battles to fight than it is to win the battles you do fight."

He cleared his throat. "Well," he said, "I think I'll get down to the ship. I'd appreciate it if you'd stay here and make my excuses. If I take formal leave of everyone I've met, they'll each ask me to take a drink with them. I don't care to be churlish, but neither do I want to be poured into my capsule on the Ice Queen."

He smiled again at the bit of deliberate humor.