occupied and carrying a clipboard. She stopped when she saw
them, and Sweeney’s heart constricted on the thawing slush
inside its stiffly pumping chambers.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I thought . . . Is there something
wrong? You both look so grim”
“There’s something wrong,” RuUman said. He looked at
Sweeney.
A corner of Sweeney’s mouth twitched, without his willing
it. He wondered if he were trying to smile, and if so, about
what.
“There’s no help for it,” he said. “Dr. Rullman, your colo-
nists will have to revolt against you.”
The starshell burst high, perhaps three miles up. Though it
was over the western edge of the plateau, enough light spilled
down to the floor of the Gouge to checker the rocking, growl-
ing halftrack.
The sound, however, was too faint to break through the
noise of the turbines, and Sweeney wasn’t worried about the
brief light. The truck, pushing its way north at a good twenty
miles an hour beneath the wild growth, would be as difficult to
detect from the air as a mouse running among roots.
Besides, nobody would be likely to be looking into the
Gouge now. The evidences of battle sweeping the high-
lands were too compelling; Sweeney himself was following
them tensely.
Mike was doing the driving, leaving Sweeney free to crouch
in the tool- and instrument-littered tonneau by the big alum-
inum keg, watching the radar screen. The paraboloid basket-
work of the radar antenna atop the truck was not sweeping;
it was pointing straight back along the way he and Mike had
come, picking up a microwave relay from the last automatic