ttacked the leader of the searching
party, and he dropped the mind control and so it was broken. Then I
rode. Blue Sky Above knows how I rode. And those others are not with
their horses as are the people of the Wolf."

"When did this happen?"

"Three suns ago."

Travis counted back in his mind. Her date for the failure of the machine
in the Russian camp seemed to coincide with the crash landing of the
American ship. Had one thing any connection with the other? It was very
possible. The planeting spacer might have fought some kind of weird duel
with the other colony before it plunged to earth on the other side of
the mountain range.

"Do you know where in these mountains your people hide?"

Kaydessa shook her head. "Only that I must head south, and when I reach
the highest peak make a signal fire on the north slope. But that I
cannot do now, for those in the flyer may see it. I know they are on my
trail, for twice I have seen it. Listen, Fox, I ask this of you--I,
Kaydessa, who am eldest daughter to the Khan--for you are like unto us,
a warrior and a brave man, that I believe. It may be that you cannot be
governed by their machine, for you have not rested under their spell,
nor are of our blood. Therefore, if they come close enough to send forth
the call, the call I must obey as if I were a slave dragged upon a horse
rope, then do you bind my hands and feet and hold me here, no matter how
much I struggle to follow that command. For that which is truly me does
not want to go. Will you swear this by the fires which expel demons?"

The utter sincerity of her tone convinced Travis that she was pleading
for aid against a danger she firmly believed in. Whether she was right
about his immunity to the Russian mental control was another matter, and
one he would rather not put to the test.

"We do not swear by your fires, Blue Wolf Maiden, but by the Path of the
Lightning." His fingers moved as if to curl about the sacred charred
wood his people had once carried as "medicine." "So do I promise!"

She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded in satisfaction.

They left the pool and pushed on toward the mountain slopes, working
their way back to the pass. A low growl out of the dark brought them to
an instant halt. Naginlta's warning was sharp; there was danger ahead,
acute danger.

The moonlight from the moons made a weird pattern of light and dark on
the stretch ahead. Anything from a slinking four-footed hunter