She looked across at Child.
"James?"
He shook his head.
"No choice." He looked grimly at Hal. "Thou hast done well, Howard."
"I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time," Hal said. "If I hadn't driven that truck driver to his cabin, I'd never have had a chance to see what was coming after us."
"Then we move," said Rukh. "James, would you get people started?"
Child rose and went out.
"Howard," said Rukh, "go with him and help."
He stood where he was.
"If I could mention something - " he began.
"Of course." Her dark eyes considered him. "You've been coming as fast as you could all day to bring word to us. Forget trying to help. Get half an hour's rest while the packing's going on. Sleep some if you can."
"That wasn't what I was going to say." He rested one hand on the back of Child's empty camp chair. Suddenly his weariness was overwhelming. "I ought to tell you we ran into a road block on our way to the gathering point. It had to have been set up ahead of time. The man who drove us was right in what he said back at the Mohler-Beni farm, when he said I was a danger to you all. The road block had been set up to look for me. That's also why these three units were waiting and could be right on top of us after the raid."
She nodded, still looking at him.
"The point is," he said, with effort, "the man was right. As long as I'm with you, I'm drawing all their attention to this Command. Maybe if I leave, I can draw them off."
"Do you know why they'd be hunting you?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"I'm not sure. All I know about the Others, directly, is what I told you of what happened at my home. I'm guessing it's Bleys Ahrens, their Vice-Chairman - the tall one of the two that were there that day my tutors were killed - who wants me. But exactly why is another question. At any rate, I think I ought to leave."
"You heard James at the farm," Rukh said, quietly, "when that man suggested it. The Commands have never abandoned their own people."
"Am I really one of those people?"
She looked at him.
"You've lived and fought with us. What else?" she said. "But if you want a further reason, think a moment. If they want you badly enough to mobilize the Militia across a countryside, do you think they'd simply let go the Command you were associated with - particularly when that Command had just pulled off two raids within their city limits?"
He did not answer.
"Go rest, Howard," she said.
He shook his head.
"I'm all right. I'll just get something to eat."
"Get Tallah to give you something you can carry along and eat as we move," Rukh said. "Then lie down. That's an order."
"All right," he said.
He got bread and bean-paste from Tallah, ate part of it, rewrapped the rest, put it in his pack and lay down. It seemed that he barely blinked his eyes before he was being shaken awake. He looked up groggily into the face of Jason.
"Howard - time to move," Jason said. He offered Hal a steaming cup. "Here, the last of the coffee."
Hal drank the hot liquid gratefully. It was not really coffee, even as Harmony knew it, but a variform of a native plant that had been tamed to make a brewable hot drink. But the sour gray liquid contained a certain amount of chemical stimulants; and by the time he was on his feet with his pack on his back and his rifle in hand, he was ready to move.
The Command travelled as rapidly as the terrain and the donkeys would permit, in the two hours that remained to them before darkness. When the ground became obscure under their feet, Rukh called a halt; and Hal went forward from his position with the donkeys at the tail of the Command to talk to her.
"Going to camp?" he asked.
"Yes," her voice came out of the blur that was her face, not more than arm's length from him.
He looked up at the sky, which was overcast, but lightly.
"The moon'll be up later on," he said. "And the clouds may blow clear from time to time. If we could keep moving we could put a much safer distance between us and that Militia unit. In the daytime, without donkeys to slow them up, they'll begin to gain on us."
"We'll be out of their district by noon tomorrow," said Rukh. "No Militia unit ever follows beyond its own district limits unless it's in a running fight. We ought to be able to stay ahead of them until we're in the next district; and while they get a unit after us from the local Militia there, we ought to be able to lose them."
"Maybe," he said. "In any case, if you want to keep going, there's a way."
She did not say anything for a second. Then -
"What?"
"There're ways of reading the ground even when it's as dark as this," he said. "It was part of my training; and I think I can still do it. We could rope the Command together, in effect, with me in the lead; and if the sky clears and the moon comes out, we can keep going the rest of the night. If we stop, and spread out to sleep, we won't get going again until dawn."
There was silence from her still figure and invisible face.
"Even with you to lead," she said, "how's that going to keep the rest of us from stumbling over ground we can't see?"
"At the very least," he said, "I can steer us around things in our way and pick out the more level surfaces to walk on. It works, believe me. I've done it back on Earth."
Another short silence.
"All right," she said. "How do you want the Command roped together?"
It took a full hour to get everyone lined up and connected. Hal made one last tour up and down the line, reminding each one he passed to keep slack in the line connected to the person just ahead. Then he took the lead and started out.
There was nothing in what he was doing that ordinary training could not have developed in anyone. His ability to see his way was based on a number of things, chief of which was the fact that even woods-wise people like the members of the Command instinctively raised their gaze to the relative brightness of even a heavily overcast sky when going through the night-dark outdoors, and lost part of the perception they could have maintained by keeping their eyes adjusted to the darkness at ground level.
What he made use of beyond this was a near-hypnotic concentration of attention on the ground just ahead, reinforced by a similar concentration of his ordinary powers of scent, hearing and balance, to read as much as possible of what was underfoot with these senses as well. All this had been honed by field practice during those early years of his. In fact the largest part of his skill in this was owed to that practice alone. The one danger in what he did was that of running into something above ground level that his downcast eyes had not seen; and to protect himself against this he carried a staff vertically before him, its upper end above his head and its lower end at mid-calf height.
In the beginning of that night trek, the progress of the Command was painfully slow. In spite of his warnings, individuals along the line allowed the rope between them and the person ahead to tighten, with the result that when either of them stumbled or fell, the other was occasionally dragged down as well; and the progress of the whole line halted. But gradually, as with any other physical activity, the members of the Command began to pick up the tricks that made this sort of night movement practical. The falls and the inadvertent stops came less often; and their speed increased. The forward movement of the Command became less like a drunken snake-dance through the dark, and more of a purposeful travelling.
But their speed of straight-line movement was still nothing to be proud of. Back on Earth, practicing this technique with Malachi in the lead and three trained helpers, plus equally trained pack animals, Hal and the others had made almost as good time as they might in broad daylight. Here, the donkeys adjusted to the means of travel faster than the humans in the line, not being cursed with human imaginations and the tendency to guess. But overall, improvement was slow. Rukh, directly behind Hal, was one of the quickest to learn the necessity for a slack line, but there were others, like the woman behind her, who continually forgot.