He brushed the Zenith aside with an arm as hard as the threat he'd just implied.

If it hadn't been for Finch's terrified courage, Mark wouldn't have been able to step in front of Yerby himself. "Yerby," he said. He was so tense that he wasn't sure whether his voice squeaked as he feared it did. "If it's a personal matter, it's the one I've already taken care of. Please. It's on my honor if I let you kill him."

"You don't let me do any blame thing I choose, boy!" Yerby shouted. He tried to step around Mark.

Mark grabbed Yerby's right wrist with both hands. It was like trying to hold a spinning driveshaft. Yerby bent Mark's arms back and took a handful of his shirt. He lifted Mark completely off the ground with one hand.

"Yerby!" Amy cried. She pressed the fat muzzle of her gas gun against her brother's chest. "Stop this right now! Put him down!"

"I don't need a woman to fight for me!" Mark wheezed. He wasn't exactly being strangled, but he sure wasn't getting the amount of air his lungs thought they needed.

"And I don't need a man to fight for me!" Amy replied. "Yerby, put him down this instant."

Yerby looked at her. He lowered Mark gently to the ground. "Sorry, lad," he muttered. His big hands tried to straighten Mark's shirt. "Got a bit above myself there."

Amy let out her breath in a vast sigh. She flung her gun down.

Nobody else had moved during the confrontation. Now Finch got cautiously to his feet and the other spectators relaxed sightly.

"Doctor," Yerby said to the trembling Jesilind, "I think you and I better not meet again. I don't figure I'll ever go to Marques… but if I see you anywhere else, anywhere at all but your home planet-"

He didn't finish the sentence. He just smiled.

Jesilind said in a tiny voice, "I'm leaving immediately, Mr. Bannock."

"How right you are," Yerby said. Before anyone could react, he'd grabbed Jesilind by collar and waistband. Yerby took a step forward, swinging the doctor back; then took a second step and launched Jesilind toward the open hatch.

It was a beautiful throw. Jesilind didn't touch anything but air for the twenty feet before he crashed into the starship's hold.

28. Democracy in Action

Major Ustinov was one of the military aides Mark had seen in Protector Giscard's office. The Alliance emissary wore a gray field uniform in place of the sky-blue jacket and silver trousers of the previous occasion, but he still looked remarkably neat and clean to eyes that had gotten used to Greenwood settlers over the past four months.

Yerby hammered the table that had been brought into the Spiker's bunkroom for the meeting. All six legs jounced off the floor. "And just how do you figure to keep me from going, Dagmar Wately?" he shouted. Ustinov winced even though the anger wasn't directed at him.

"By knocking you cold as a trout with a gas gun," Zeb Randifer replied, leaning over the table from the other side. "If you're that big a durned fool, that is. And I mean it!"

This had started as a Woodsrunner muster called because a Zenith ship wanted to land. When the passengers turned out to be from Protector Giscard instead of more thugs sent by the investment syndicate, what might have been a battle turned into a meeting almost equally heated. The three dim lamps shone on angry, puzzled faces.

"You put me in charge!" Yerby said. "That means I go!"

The rain that hammered the tavern's uninsulated roof would probably be sleet by nightfall. By clearing out all the bedframes, most of the hundred or so Woodsrunners at the Spiker could squeeze into the barracks-style sleeping room. The rest were in the hallway-or the taproom below, drinking instead of worrying about Protector Giscard's offer of truce negotiations.

The meeting was very likely going to decide the fate of Greenwood. It bothered Mark that the people present were a small fraction of the settlers and had been called for a purpose completely different from the one they were involved with now. On the other hand-

You could make a case that folks who came out in dangerous weather to defend their planet had as much right to decide for that planet as any group could possibly have.

"Yeah, you're in charge, Bannock," Dagmar said. "And that's exactly why you're not going back to Zenith. They'd snatch you sure, and much as I'd like to be shut of you for a neighbor, we can't afford that now."

The concrete wall was directly behind Yerby with Major Ustinov to his right. Mark was to the left, and Amy stood on a low stool in the corner behind Mark, recording the proceedings for posterity. Mark wondered if Blaney had deliberately arranged things so that the table was a barrier in case Yerby really lost his temper.

Probably not. In a rage, Yerby was strong enough to use the massive table for a weapon.

"All envoys will be under the protection of the Atlantic Alliance!" Ustinov said huffily. "You need have no fears on that score."

Desiree stared at the Alliance envoy. She stood directly opposite Yerby, as fitting a place as there was for her. "You can stuff that up your ear," she snorted.

"Look, Bannock," Dagmar said. "I'm not trying to say you're not boss."

She gestured to Ustinov. "I'm not even saying that this guy's a lying prick in a fancy uniform. I'm saying that after the way you did Biber and Finch in the eye, there's no chance they won't grab you, I don't care what anybody promises. Not if they went to jail for it, which they wouldn't."

"If you don't want to deal, Yerby," Randifer said, "we don't deal. But it ain't going to be you on that ship to Zenith. That's free passage all right. Free passage to a cell you won't leave till you're old and gray!"

"And we need you," Dagmar repeated. "Little though I care to admit it."

"Aw, you worry like a bunch of old women," Yerby muttered; but his grimace and mild tone showed that he'd accepted the argument against him.

"Seems to me Zeb put his finger on it the first time," said Buck Koslovsky, one of the defendants in the ejectment action. "What does any of us want to be going to Zenith again for? You name me one thing we got out of going the first time!"

The rumble of the settlers' response was varied, but it was mostly agreement. The chorus of "Yeah!" and "Damn right!" far outweighed the one peevish, "Well, Zeb can stick his finger right back where it was!"

"There's a problem with that course," Mark said. He shouted to be sure of being heard, but he hoped he didn't sound like he wanted to start a fight.

Yerby banged his fist on the table again. "All you shut up and listen what my legal advisor's got to say!" he bellowed. "Or I'll start knocking heads till you do shut up!"

Mark smiled faintly. Nobody had to worry about sounding belligerent so long as Yerby Bannock was present to do it for him.

"Fellow…" He'd started to say, "Fellow-citizens," as if he were addressing a meeting on Quelhagen. "Friends and neighbors!" he said instead. "It's not the Zenith investors or even the Zenith government who's proposed this meeting."

"It is so the Zenith government!" Koslovsky said. "I just heard that fellow Ustinov say it was!"

"We're being summoned by the Alliance!" Mark said, wishing he had Yerby's presence and leather lungs, "speaking through its representative, who happens to be the Protector of Zenith. If we reject out of hand Protector Giscard's attempt to mediate, it will leave the Alliance very few options as to how to proceed."

He looked over the table at a sea of blank stares.

"What the lad's saying and you lot are too dumb to understand," Yerby said, "is that if we don't send somebody to this meeting, Giscard's going to send his soldiers to drag us there by the neck. That's right, ain't it, Mark?"