tment. Looks like you were wrong when you said
most of your remedies were useless--they seemed to work well on me."

His voice died off as Rhes shook his head in a slow _no_, lines of worry
sharp-cut into his face. Jason looked around and saw Naxa and another
man. They had the same deeply unhappy expressions as Rhes.

"What is it?" Jason asked, feeling the trouble. "If your remedies didn't
work--what did? Not my medikit. That was empty. I remember losing it or
throwing it away."

"You were dying," Rhes said slowly. "We couldn't cure you. Only a
junkman medicine machine could do that. We got one from the driver of
the food truck."

"But how?" Jason asked, dazed. "You told me the city forbids you
medicine. He couldn't give you his own medikit. Not unless he was--"

Rhes nodded and finished the sentence. "Dead. Of course he was dead. I
killed him myself, with a great deal of pleasure."

This hit Jason hard. He sagged against the pillows and thought of all
those who had died since he had come to Pyrrus. The men who had died to
save him, died so he could live, died because of his ideas. It was a
burden of guilt that he couldn't bear to think about. Would it stop with
Krannon--or would the city people try to avenge his death?

"Don't you realize what that means!" he gasped out the words. "Krannon's
death will turn the city against you. There'll be no more supplies.
They'll attack you when they can, kill your people--"

"Of course we know that!" Rhes leaned forward, his voice hoarse and
intense. "It wasn't an easy decision to come to. We have always had a
trading agreement with the junkmen. The trading trucks were inviolate.
This was our last and only link to the galaxy outside and eventual hope
of contacting them."

"Yet you broke that link to save me--why?"

"Only you can answer that question completely. There was a great attack
on the city and we saw their walls broken, they had to be moved back at
one place. At the same time the spaceship was over the ocean, dropping
bombs of some kind--the flash was reported. Then the ship returned and
_you_ left it in a smaller ship. They fired at you but didn't kill you.
The little ship wasn't destroyed either, we are starting to raise it
now. What does it all mean? We had no way of telling. We only knew it
was something vitally important. You were alive, but would obviously die
before you could talk. The small ship might be repaired to fly, perhaps
that was your plan and tha