kids to make sure they didn't wander out to where the water was deep and the current swift.

Anketam and Blejjo took off their clothes and cooled themselves in the water for a good half hour before they dressed again and went on upriver to a spot where Blejjo swore the fish were biting.

They were. In the next four hours, the two men had caught six fish apiece, and Blejjo was trying for his seventh. Here, near the river, there was a slight breeze, and it was fairly cool beneath the overhanging branches of the closely bunched trees.

Blejjo had spotted a big, red-and-yellow striped beauty loafing quietly in a back eddy, and he was lowering his hook gently to a point just in front of the fish when both men heard the voice calling.

"Anketam! Anketam! Blejjo! Where you at?"

Blejjo went on with his careful work, knowing that Anketam would take care of whatever it was.

Anketam recognized the voice. He stood up and called: "Over here, Basom! What's the trouble?"

A minute later, Basom came running through the trees, his feet crashing through the underbrush.

Blejjo sat up abruptly, an angry look on his face. "Basom, you scared my fish away."

"Fish, nothing," said Basom. "I ran all the way here to tell you!" He was grinning widely and panting for breath at the same time.

"You suddenly got an awful lot of energy," Blejjo said sourly.

"What happened?" Anketam asked.

"The invasion!" Basom said between breaths. "Kevenoe himself came down to tell us! They've started the invasion! The war's on!"

"Than what are you looking so happy about?" Anketam snapped.

"That's what I came to tell you." Basom's grin didn't fade in the least. "They landed up in the Frozen Country, where our missiles couldn't get 'em, according to Kevenoe. Then they started marching down on one of the big towns. Tens of thousands of 'em! And we whipped 'em! Our army cut 'em to pieces and sent 'em running back to their base! We won! We won!"

III

The battle had been won, but the war wasn't won yet. The invaders had managed to establish a good-sized base up in the Frozen Country. They'd sneaked their ships in and had put up a defensive system that stopped any high-speed missiles. Not that Xedii had many missiles. Xedii was an agricultural planet; most manufactured articles were imported. It had never occurred to the government of Xedii that there would be any real need for implements of war.

The invaders seemed to be limiting their use of weapons, too. They wanted to control the planet, not destroy it. Through the summer and into the autumn, Anketam listened to the news as it filtered down from the battlegrounds. There were skirmishes here and there, but nothing decisive. Xedii seemed to be holding her own against the invaders.

After the first news of the big victory, things settled back pretty much to normal.

The harvest was good that year, but after the leaves were shredded and dried, they went into storage warehouses. The invaders had set up a patrol system around Xedii which prevented the slow cargo ships from taking off or landing. A few adventurous space officers managed to get a ship out now and then, but those few flights could hardly be called regular trade shipments.

The cool of winter had come when Chief Samas did something he had never done before. He called all the men in the barony to assemble before the main gate of the castle enclosure. He had a speech to make.

For the first time, Anketam felt a touch of apprehension. He got his crew together, and they walked to the castle in silence, wondering what it was that The Chief had to say.

All the men of the barony, except those who couldn't be spared from their jobs, were assembled in front of Chief Samas' baronial castle.

The castle itself was not a single building. Inside the four-foot-high thorn hedge that surrounded the two-acre area, there were a dozen buildings of hard, irridescent plastic shining in the sun. They all looked soft and pleasant and comfortable. Even the thorn hedge, filled as it was by the lacy leaves that concealed the hard, sharp thorns, looked soft and inviting.

Anketam listened to the soft murmur of whispered conversation from the men around him. They stood quietly outside the main gate that led into the castle area, waiting for The Chief to appear, and wondering among themselves what it was that The Chief had to say.

"You think the invaders have won?"

Anketam recognized the hoarse whisper from the man behind him. He turned to face the dark, squat, hard-looking man who had spoken. "It couldn't be, Jacovik. It couldn't be."

The other supervisor looked down at his big, knuckle-scarred hands instead of looking at Anketam. He was not a handsome man, Jacovik; his great, beaklike nose was canted to one side from a break that had come in his teens; his left eye was squinted almost closed by the scar tissue that surrounded it, and the right only looked better by comparison. His eyebrows, his beard, and the fringe of hair that outlined his bald head made an incongruous pale yellow pattern against the sunburnt darkness of his face. In his youth, Jacovik had been almost pathologically devoted to boxing—even to the point of picking fights with others in his village for no reason at all, except to fight. Twice, he had been brought up before The Chief's court because of the severe beating he had given to men bigger than he, and he had finally killed a man with his fists.

Chief Samas had given him Special Punishment for that, and a final warning that the next fight would be punished by death.

Anketam didn't know whether it was that threat, or the emotional reaction Jacovik had suffered from killing a man, or simply that he had had some sense beaten into his head, but from that moment on Jacovik was a different man. He had changed from a thug into a determined, ambitious man. In twenty-two years, he had not used his fists except to discipline one of his crew, and that had only happened four times that Anketam knew of. Jacovik had shown that he had ability as well as strength, that he could control men by words as well as by force, and The Chief had made him a supervisor. He had proved himself worthy of the job; next to Anketam, he was the best supervisor in the barony.

Anketam had a great deal of respect for the little, wide-shouldered, barrel-chested man who stood there looking at the scars on the backs of his hands.

Jacovik turned his hands over and looked at the calloused palms. "How do we know? Maybe the Council of Chiefs has given up. Maybe they've authorized the President to surrender. After all, we're not fighters; we're farmers. The invaders outnumber us. They've got us cut off by a blockade, to keep us from sending out the harvest. They've got machines and weapons." He looked up suddenly, his bright blue eyes looking straight into Anketam's. "How do we know?"

Anketam's grin was hard. "Look, Jac; the invaders have said that they intend to smash our whole society, haven't they? Haven't they?"

Jacovik nodded.

"And they want to break up the baronies—take everything away from the Chiefs—force us farmers to give up the security we've worked all our lives for. That's what they've said, isn't it?"

Jacovik nodded again.

"Well, then," Anketam continued remorselessly, "do you think the Chiefs would give up easily? Are they going to simply smile and shake hands with the invaders and say: 'Go ahead, take all our property, reduce us to poverty, smash the whole civilization we've built up, destroy the security and peace of mind of millions of human beings, and then send your troops in to rule us by martial law.' Are they going to do that? Are they?"

Jacovik spread his big, hard hands. "I don't know. I'm not a Chief. I don't know how their minds work. Do you? Maybe they'll think surrender would be better than having all of Xedii destroyed inch by inch."

Anketam shook his head. "Never. The Chiefs will fight to the very end. And they'll