he was pretty well all alone; there's got to be a rotten apple in the best-picked barrel and these boys were smart. The only sensible thing to do was staring them in the face, and it didn't take them long to see it.

"We'll take you back with us," Huey's friend told me. "When we get to a safe place we can sit down and talk this out."

I wanted to insist on finishing my supper right where I was, but there's such a thing as playing a little too much for the grandstand. Instead, I was herded into the center of the group, and we marched off into the jungle.

Only it wasn't a march; there was no attempt at order. For a while we used the trail, and then straggled off it and went single-file through masses of trees and bushes and leaves. Being in the center of the line helped a little but not enough; the spines kept coming through and I got a few more nice scratches. The trip took about half an hour, and when we stopped we were in front of a cave-mouth.

The band went inside and I went with them. There was light, battery-powered, and what seemed to be all the comforts of a small, ill-kept town jail. But it was better than the naked jungle. I was still porting my knapsack, and when we got into the cave I unstrapped it and sat down and opened it. The men watched me without making any attempt to hide the fact.

The first thing I took out was an instant-heat food can. It didn't look like a bomb, so nobody did anything. They just kept watching while I came up with my call-radio.

Huey said: "What the hell!" and came for me.

I stood up, spilling the knapsack, and got ready to stand him off; but I didn't need to, not then. Three of the others piled on him, like dogs on a bear, and held him down. Huey's friend was at my side when I turned. "How come?" he said. "Who are you planning on calling?"

"I said I wanted to help you," I told him. "I meant it."

"Of course," he said smoothly. "Why should I believe it?"

"I know the spot you're in, and I—"

He didn't give me a chance to finish. "Now, you wait a minute," he said. "And don't touch that box. We've got some talking to do."

"Such as?"

"Such as how you managed to get here from Ancarta, and why," he said. "Such as what all this talk about helping us means, and what the radio's for. Lots of talking."

I decided it was time to show some more independence. "I don't talk to people I don't know," I said.

He looked me up and down, taking his time about it. Huey had quieted down some, and our conversation was the main attraction. In the end he shrugged. "I suppose you can't do any harm, not so long as we keep an eye on that box of yours," he said. He gave me his name as if it didn't matter. "I'm Hollerith," he said. "General Rawlinson Hollerith."

I gave him the prepared story automatically; it rolled out but I wasn't thinking about it. He'd given me my first real surprise; I'd thought Hollerith had been killed at Andrew's Farm, and, as far as I knew, so did the Government. Instead, here he was, alive and kicking, doing a pretty good job of working with a guerrilla gang. I wondered who Huey would turn out to be, but it didn't seem like the time to ask.

The story, of course, was a good one. Naturally it wasn't proof of anything, or even susceptible of proof right then and there; it wasn't meant to be. I didn't expect them to buy it sight unseen, but I'd planned it to give me some time until I could start the next step.

James Carson, I told Hollerith, was a reasonably big wheel around Ancarta. He wasn't in sympathy with the Government, but he hadn't fought in the revolutionary armies or been active in any overt way.

"Why not?" he snapped at me.

"I was more valuable where I stood," I said. "There's a lot that can be done with paper work in the way of sabotage."

He nodded. "I see," he said. "I see what you mean."

"I worked in one of the Government departments," I said. "That enabled me to pass information on to Sergeant's men in the