His inspection of the compact room took only ament. As he shook hands with Vorgens and they both sat down facing each other, Sittas could see that the Watchman had changed.
It was nothing obvious, but Vorgens looked somehow different. He seemed well and hearty enough, but there were tiny lines around his eyes, and his face was slightly thinner, tauter. There was a different air about him. The Watchman was no longer a troubled, bewildered youth thrown into the middle of a world he could not understand. He was a Star Watch officer, in command of the Terran forces on this planet. He had accepted the responsibility of command, and had discovered at last that he could, to a degree, take that world into his own hands and begin to shape it for himself.
“I hear you were attacked on your way to join us,” Vorgens said, hunching forward slightly in the webbed chair.
Sittas shook his head. “You could hardly call it an attack. Your troopers discovered a lone Komani warrior following our van. They fired a few beams at him, and he shot a small missile at us, which a trooper disposed of with another beamgun. Then the Komani dropped out of range.”
“But he continued to follow you?”
“Yes. Until we reached the scoutcars at the perimeter of your encampment.”
Vorgens laughed. “We’re not camped here. Sittas, we’re merely stopped for a few hours. I’ve been keeping the Mobile Force on the move constantly since we broke out of the valley.”
‘Then it is true that you have assumed command.”
“I had to,” the Watchman answered, serious now. “Aikens would not listen to reason. There was no one else to whom I could turn. I decided that I had more information about the situation than anyone else, so I took charge.”