they don't want us.
They don't cut off our little fingers anymore, but we have to wear our
special black uniforms when we go into United territory under penalty of
a quick death. Humane, of course, they just put us to sleep gently and
for keeps. And they've got a stockpile of ionic bombs ready at all times
in case we get out of hand. We don't have ionic weapons, that's part of
the agreement and they watch us. They came close to using them down
there in the frozen waste of Menelaus XII, but thirty thousand of us
died without ionics. We killed each other. They liked that, even if they
didn't like what happened.

* * * * *

Do you know what it means to be lost? Really lost? I'm lost, if that
means I know I'll never go back to live on Earth. But I know that Earth
is still there to go back to, and I can dream of going home. Yuan
Saltario and the other refugees have no home to go back to. They can't
even dream. They sat in that one ship that escaped and watched their
planet turn into a lifeless ball of ice that would circle dead and
frozen forever around its burned-out star. A giant tomb that carried
under its thick ice their homes and their fields and their loves. And
they could not even hope and dream. Or I did not think they could.

Saltario had been with us a year when we got the contract to escort the
survey mission to Nova-Maurania. A private Earth commercial mining firm
looking for minerals under the frozen wastes of the dead planet.
Rajay-Ben was in on the contract. We took two battalions, one from my
Red Company, and one from Rajay-Ben's Lukanian Patrol. My Sub-Commander
was Pete Colenso, old Mike Colenso's boy. It all went fine for a week or
so, routine guard and patrol. The survey team wouldn't associate with
us, of course, but we were used to that. We kept our eyes open and our
mouths shut. That's our job, and we give value for money received. So we
were alert and ready. But it wasn't the attack that nearly got us this
time. It was the cold of the dead planet lost in absolute zero and
absolute darkness.

Nova-Maurania was nearly 40 percent uranium, and who could resist that?
A Centaurian trading unit did not resist the lure. The attack was quick
and hard. A typical Lukanian Patrol attack. My Company was pinned down
at the first volley from those damned smoky blasters of the Lukanians.
All I could see was the same shimmering lights I had learned to know so
well in the War of Survi