ff-worlder.

She raised her good arm and chopped down with the edge of her hand.

It caught Skop a hard blow on the biceps and his arm jumped
spasmodically, his hand leaping from Jason's throat.

"What are you doing?" he shouted in strange terror to the wounded girl
who fell against him. He pushed her away, still clutching Jason with his
other hand. She didn't answer. Instead she chopped again, hard and true,
the edge of her hand catching Skop across the windpipe, crushing it. He
dropped Jason and fell to the floor, retching and gasping.

Jason watched the end through a haze, barely conscious.

Skop struggled to his feet, turned pain-filled eyes to his friends.

"You're wrong," Kerk said. "Don't do it."

The sound the wounded man made was more animal than human. When he dived
towards the guns on the far side of the room the crossbows twanged like
harps of death.

When Brucco went over to help Meta no one interfered. Jason gasped air
back into his lungs, breathing in life. The watching glass eye of the
viewer carried the scene to everyone in the city.

"Thanks, Meta ... for understanding ... as well as helping." Jason had
to force the words out.

"Skop was wrong and you were right, Jason," she said. Her voice broke
for a second as Brucco snapped off the feathered end of the steel bolt
with his fingers, and pulled the shaft out of her arm. "I can't stay in
the city, only people who feel as Skop did will be able to do that. And
I'm afraid I can't go into the forest--you saw what luck I had with the
stingwing. If it's all right I'd like to come with you. I'd like to very
much."

It hurt when he talked so Jason could only smile, but she knew what he
meant.

Kerk looked down in unhappiness at the body of the dead man. "He was
wrong--but I know how he felt. I can't leave the city, not yet. Someone
will have to keep things in hand while the changes are taking place.
Your ship is a good idea, Jason, you'll have no shortage of volunteers.
Though I doubt if you'll get Brucco to go with you."

"Of course not," Brucco snapped, not looking up from the compression
bandage he was tying. "There's enough to do right here on Pyrrus. The
animal life, quite a study to be made, probably have every ecologist in
the galaxy visiting here."

Kerk walked slowly to the screen overlooking the city. No one attempted
to stop him. He looked out at the buildings, the smoke still curling up
from the perimeter, and the limitless sweep of