unarmed man, not loud enough to be heard by the
Gerns:

"Cliff--you and Sam Anders come here. Tell the rest to fade out of sight
and get armed."

Cliff Schroeder passed the command along and he and Sam Anders
approached. He looked back at the Gerns and saw they were within a
hundred feet of the--for them--unscalable wall of the stockade. They
were coming without hesitation----

A pale blue beam lashed down from one of the cruiser's turrets and a
fifty foot section of the wall erupted into dust with a sound like
thunder. The wind swept the dust aside in a gigantic cloud and the Gerns
came through the gap, looking neither to right nor left.

"That, I suppose," Sam Anders said from beside him, "was Lesson Number
One for degenerate savages like us: Gerns, like gods, are not to be
hindered by man-made barriers."

The Gerns walked with a peculiar gait that puzzled him until he saw what
it was. They were trying to come with the arrogant military stride
affected by the Gerns and in the 1.5 gravity they were succeeding in
achieving only a heavy clumping.

They advanced steadily and as they drew closer he saw that in the right
hand of each Gern soldier was a blaster while in the left hand of each
could be seen the metallic glitter of chains.

Schroeder smiled thinly. "It looks like they want to subject about a
dozen of us to some painful questioning."

No one else was any longer in sight and the Gerns came straight toward
the three on the steps. They stopped forty feet away at a word of
command from the officer and Gerns and Ragnarok men exchanged silent
stares; the faces of the Ragnarok men bearded and expressionless, the
faces of the Gerns hairless and reflecting a contemptuous curiosity.

"Narth!" The communicator on the Gern officer's belt spoke with metallic
authority. "What do they look like? Did we come two hundred light-years
to view some animated vegetables?"

"No, Commander," Narth answered. "I think the discard of the Rejects two
hundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There are
three natives under the canopy before me and their physical perfection
and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing."

"They could be used to replace expensive machines on some of the outer
world mines," the commander said, "providing their intelligence isn't
too abysmally low. What about that?"

"They can surely be taught to perform simple manual labor," Narth
answered.

"Get on with your