“No, no,” said Jonnie. “That is the last thing we want. Without it we have a chance.”
“Then why,” said Sir Robert, “didn't you change your clothes before this meeting? You might have known it would take place!”
Jonnie had not thought about his clothes. He glanced down. The buckskin shoulder was dark red from the bleeding of the superficial wound at the side of his neck, long since staunched by coagulation. The entire front of his shirt and his trousers down to the knee were saturated with Bittie's blood.
At that very moment the Chief of the Campbells was speaking to the assembled Chiefs. “...and I say this is a blood feud that can only be settled in
There was a savage roar of agreement. “War!” “War!” Lochaber axes were flashing in the light of the leaping flames. The slither of swords coming from their sheaths was a deadly, martial declaration.
Jonnie stepped up on the stone rostrum. He held up his hand for quiet. They gave him a silence electric with tension and punctuated by the crackling flame of the bonfire.
“We want no war,” said Jonnie. It was the wrong thing to say. A clamor of disagreement rolled at him.
“By the very blood on his clothes,” shouted the Chief of the Argylls, “this cries out for war!”
“The murderer of the boy is dead!” said Jonnie.
"What of Allison?" cried the Chief of the Camerons. “His vile murder has not been avenged! The chief of the Brigantes, he that brought it about, still lives! These are matters of blood feud!”
Jonnie realized they were out of control. They were demanding pilots and transport. Their target was the obliteration of the entire force of Brigantes. And now! He knew this had all been decided before his arrival on the slow ore carrier. He could see all their labors going for nothing. If that area in America were wiped out, that would end their plans!
He looked for the face of Robert the Fox and found only this sea of enraged Chiefs and retainers. He did not dare tell them so openly and in public of his plans. Lars had shown there could be traitors.
He tried to tell them the planet was under a much greater threat, that they did not really know what had happened to Psychlo, that there were other races out in the stars, but not one single word he said was heard in the tumult.
Finally the big and lordly Chief of Clanfearghus leaped up beside him and bellowed at the throng: “Let the MacTyler speak!”
They quieted under that, tense, determined.
Jonnie was tired. He had not slept for days. He summoned up reserves of energy and spoke in a strong confident voice: “I can promise you
SUCCESSFUL war! If you will let me guide you, if you will each one contribute men and time to a daring enterprise, if you will but plan with me and work in preparation for the next few months, we will have war, we will have revenge, and we will have a chance of everlasting victory!”
They heard that. After a moment, while it sank in, they burst into a savage din of agreement. The lochaber axes were raised higher; claymores flashed back the light of flames. The pipes suddenly burst into the stirring tunes of war. They hailed Jonnie until they were hoarse. As he stepped down and was led away by Robert the Fox, big hands clapped him on the back as he passed, others sought to grip his. Men leaped before him, claymores held before their faces in devoted salutes. Somebody started a chant of "MacTyler! MacTyler! MacTyler!" The pipes screamed and drums added to the din.
“Count on you, laddie,” said Robert the Fox fondly as he led Jonnie off to temporary quarters in an old house, a bath, clean clothes, and rest. “But I’m only hoping we can deliver!”
They buried Bittie MacLeod the next day in a crypt in the old Cathedral Saint Giles. The funeral procession was over a mile long.
To the Chief of Clanfearghus Jonnie had said, “He died a squire. We must bury him as a knight.”
Placing a robe on the corpse, Fearghus, as titular King of Scotland-and now the entire British Isles-knighted Bittie with the tender touch of a sword.
A rock carver had worked straight through to complete a sarcophagus-a stone casket– and it was ready.
The parson read the funeral oration, and to the doleful mourn of pipes, Bittie was laid away.
On the plaque, beneath the new armorial bearings they had given Bittie, was carved:
Sir Bittie
A True Knight
They knew Bittie would have liked that.
Pattie, her face frozen in shock since she had first heard the news of his death, at the funeral's end was given the small packet they had found in his pocket. It was the locket. She numbly read the engraving on it: “To Pattie, my future wife.”
The dam of her tears broke and she collapsed across the sarcophagus, weeping uncontrollably.
But Bittie was not really gone. He had become a legend. Future generations, if they survived, would hold in song and story the memory of Sir Bittie who they said had saved the life of Jonnie.
Part XXI
Chapter 1
The spacecraft Aknar II rode in orbit four hundred twenty-one miles above the planet Earth.
The small gray man sat in a small gray office in the ship. He was looking at small gray instruments.
He was only partly finished with a critical analysis and he was not even vaguely satisfied with it.
A bottle of pills sat on his desk, pills for indigestion. His job had its drawbacks. Drinking all manner of hospitable offerings including yarb tea had upset his stomach.
The small gray man was deeply troubled. The problems which assailed such a position as his were never easy: they required the most conservative possible judgment. He had faced many situations in his long life, a large number of them involving the most dangerous and overwhelming elements. But at no time– he did a hasty calculation with a rolling calculator– in three hundred thirteen thousand years had he or his predecessors ever been confronted with the ruin potential of this one.
He sighed and took another indigestion pill. This last packet of information that his communicator had given him contained elements which defied even the most expert mathematical dissection and reassembly. There were explosive elements in all this which could well wreak havoc.
For one thing, a lightning storm had grossly interfered with the clarity of the first item. An infrabeam sound transmitter, no matter how narrowly it could be focused, was after all an electronic device, and interference was not only possible, it had happened. He considered himself no
technician; that was not his role. But his technicians aboard could not get it clarified either. Compounding his trouble was this delay in all communications to competent labs. He was two and a half months in travel time away from any such help.
Wearily, he ran the data of the first item through the display machine for the seventh time.
There was the compound, the old central Psychlo minesite of the planet. There were some men in hiding behind rocks holding weapons. There was the arrival of the car, the departure of the first man into the compound. Then three men getting out of the car, two of them with weapons held on the third.
He had tried and tried to get a clearer picture of the third man but the interference due to the lightning was really bad. He once more got out one
of the several "one-credit bank notes” he had managed to procure and studied the picture. But he could not be sure it was the same man. It was useless to call in a technician again. He had already done that.
He let the signal decode into running visual again and spin forward. Then there came this second car. Truck. A small figure leaping out holding some sort of weapon. The small figure racing forward to attack. It didn't