Laughter chorused through the common room. Woodsrunners bent to explain the joke to recruits from other planets. The story didn't lose anything in the telling, and the merriment continued for some time.

"So I guess it's clear to all of you," Yerby resumed with a grin as broad as a jack-o'-lantern's. "You've got to follow Mr. Finch here." He patted Finch on the head as a final insult.

"Like hell," Dagmar Wately said. "We didn't come here with some pretty boy from Zenith."

"Yeah," Zeb Randifer agreed. "Look, if the choice is go home or go on with that dipstick leading us, I'm going home. And the ship's right outside, too!"

The chorus of agreement was loudest from the non-Greenwood recruits. They were determined to show they were part of the same team as the original Woodsrunners.

Berkeley Finch went white, then red. It was hard to tell whether his primary emotion was anger or embarrassment.

Yerby smiled gently at him and said, "Well, Colonel, it seems like it's this way. You can join the expedition I'm leading. Or you can go dig up an expedition of your own, which I wish you the best of luck for doing. Now, what'll it be?"

Finch swallowed. Amy's camera was on him, its lenses the triple eyes of fate. Finch had only one option unless he wanted to go on record as being the man who'd scuttled the independence movement because it conflicted with his personal ambition.

"Colonel Bannock," he said formally, "I would be honored if you'd let me join your expedition."

"Glad to have you, Finch," Yerby said. "And glad to have your pretty uniforms, too. Now, getting back to just what we're going to do tomorrow night…"

As the meeting broke up for dinner and serious drinking, Berkeley Finch bent close to Amy's ear and said, "Ms. Bannock? Might I have a word with you in private?"

"No," said Mark, "you can't. I've had experience of what it means to be caught alone by you, Finch."

Mark was jealous. He knew that, but he could legitimately claim there was a chance that Finch hoped to use Amy as a hostage to control her brother.

Finch grimaced. "Nothing like that," he muttered.

Amy nodded coolly. "I think this is as private as we need to be, Vice-Protector," she said, using the Alliance title to keep Finch ill at ease. "Nobody's listening to the three of us."

That was true. The court echoed with people calling to one another. Most of the raiders were donning rain gear to splash outside in search of food and drink more interesting than the rations they'd brought from Greenwood.

"Of course," said Finch. "I've noticed that you're very scrupulously recording events as they occur?"

Amy nodded. "Yes I am," she said. "And I have no intention of wiping any image at the request of someone who doesn't care for the way it makes him look."

"Not that," Finch said. "Not at all. But what I would like, and what I'd be willing to pay very well for, would be copies of recordings of my actions during the raid to come. Particularly images that might show me involved in-"

He looked around to see where his rival, Mayor Biber, was. Biber was talking to Yerby and the husky local who owned the truck that three of the expedition's better mechanics were trying to put in running order.

"-the sort of heroic actions that would interest voters in a political campaign on Zenith," Finch went on in a still lower voice. "In return, besides paying you, I would be very supportive of your planet's independence from Zenith. One hand washes the other, as the saying goes."

He winked.

"I'll see what can be arranged, Vice-Protector," Amy said. "No promises, but-we'll see."

It wasn't an offer a Greenwood patriot could afford to reject, Mark knew; but he hadn't trusted Finch before and now he really didn't trust the man. Listening to the Vice-Protector planning to turn a dangerous, maybe bloody, raid into political capital made Mark want to wash all over, not just his hands…

36. Once More into the Breach

The land ahead loomed out of the sea's soft phosphorescence. "See?" Yerby crowed. "Didn't I tell you we'd be OK? I don't need a compass, I got a natural compass in my head!"

"It was monstrously irresponsible to leave before navigational aids were installed in this vehicle!" Berkeley Finch said. "I didn't dream that you were considering such a thing!"

"You were welcome to stay at the spaceport, Colonel," Amy said.

"Naw, Finchie," Yerby said. "I knew I could find Minor. It'd have been a lot riskier to wait around the port, looking for a radiocompass that maybe we wouldn't find anyhow."

"And have the Alliance reinforcements arrive early while we were cooling our heels," Mark put in. "On the frontier, we learn to make do."

He was talking as if he'd been raised in a log cabin instead of conditions of luxury as civilized as those of the Vice-Protector himself. The past months had changed Mark, though. He hadn't blinked when Yerby announced that he'd need to eyeball their overwater course because the compass didn't work.

A few of the recruits from more ordered planets had indeed backed out when they heard about the compass. The frontiersmen from Greenwood and other planets had taken the matter in stride. Yerby said he could get them to the fort on Minor; and if he didn't, well, they'd make do.

Finch had come anyway. His hopes for a political future were greater than his fear of drowning.

"Now hang on, everybody!" Yerby roared over his shoulder. "This may get a mite rough."

The surface-effect truck looked like a conventional aircraft with wings and a pair of turbine engines at the roots of the vertical tail. The wings were too stubby to support the fat fuselage in normal flight. Their steep camber trapped a cushion of air between them and the surface of the ground or sea so long as the vehicle flew forward.

The truck could sail ten feet in the air at 220 miles an hour with a modest expenditure of energy, perfect for carrying heavy loads over water or flat ground. It couldn't hover, though, and crags or a wall would rip the vehicle apart.

If the engines failed you'd better like the immediate terrain, because you were either going to land there or crash.

Mark tensed as the shoreline approached beyond a frill of seafoam. He hadn't paid any attention to the coast on his previous trips to Minor, and he doubted Yerby had either. If the margin rose too abruptly, rocks were going to take the truck's bottom off as sure as a grater scrapes cheese.

"Amy," he said. "Lift your feet."

"Why-" said Berkeley Finch.

The truck dipped, then lifted as if the shelving beach were a trampoline. Vegetation whickered beneath their keel like the brushes of an automatic car wash. Occasionally something more solid would thump the vehicle, but for the most part even the tree trunks were soft and sappy. Nothing came ripping through the bottom plates, at any rate.

"This is a much bigger vehicle than the ones you used to scout the fort earlier," Finch muttered. "It may well be above a detection threshold that the cars escaped."

"Naw, nothing much works down there," Yerby said unconcernedly. "You ain't seen the place, Finchie."

"Don't call me that," Finch said, but he spoke in an undertone that carried no conviction. Yerby chuckled and tousled Finch's hair.

"There's a signal!" Mark said. "There's a light flashing ahead of us!"

"That's the warning light on the fort's antenna tower, lad," Yerby said. "It flashes in the daytime too, when we was there before, but I guess you didn't pick it out."

He throttled back the turbines and rotated the big horizontal steering wheel hand over hand. You couldn't bank the truck without spilling the supporting cushion of air, so the rudder had to supply all the turning force. The vehicle wallowed and sideslipped as it curved around the nighted bulk of the fort.