Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed

"About Lex," Riddent said. "I thought so. He's doing something dangerous, isn't he?"

"Yes," Emily said, admiring Riddent's control. "You mustn't be angry with him. He didn't want to worry you until, as he said, it was time to worry. He asked me to tell you after he was gone."

"Where?" Riddent asked, her heart beating a bit burpily, but calm on the exterior.

"Into Empire," Emily said.

"He'll come back," Riddent said, smiling.

"Of course."

"I don't think I want to know any more," Riddent said. "I think I'd rather not know because if I know then I'll worry more, I think. As it is, I will just pretend that he's on some simple spying mission or something—"

"Everything possible has been done to make it a successful mission," Emily said. "There is danger, of course, but if advance planning can eliminate danger, then it has been done. Lex is a brave and fine man, girl."

"Yes," Riddent said. "More coffee?"

"Thank you, no." She rose. "If you feel, later, that you'd like to talk about it, please call."

"Yes," Riddent said. She had known. He had been strangely possessive of her the previous evening, before leaving in the dead of night, holding her, taking her with great passion while being careful of the baby. And there had been all of those trips into the desert. At first she'd been angry, thinking that he was leaving her merely to play games with his comrades, but then, noting his seriousness, she'd come to believe that something special was happening.

"I won't worry," she said, walking toward the door with Emily, "but when can I stop worrying?"

Emily smiled. "Three weeks from this morning."

Three weeks. Three eternal weeks. During the third week the baby kicked for the first time, a strong, male kick which caught her by surprise and made her gasp, then laugh happily. She patted her distended stomach and said, "Easy there, you little beggar." And then she cried, for she wanted, so much, for Lex to be there, to place his big, rough hand on her skin and feel his son beginning those life-preliminary exercises.

Emily Lancing had been working on the micro-electronic techniques revealed by the two instruments which had come to Texas inside the skulls of Lex and Arden Wal. Texican spies had been searching for more indications of a hidden Empire technology and had come up with nothing. The mind monitors were, it seemed, the most closely guarded secret in Empire. After a few weeks the instruments themselves held no more secrets, could be duplicated easily on Texas, had there been a need. Thus, when Lex had come to her some weeks past, the building of a monitor to monitor she monitors was a simple thing and with some little burning of midnight oil a way had been found to make the monitors operative through the simple connection of electrodes to shaved spots outside the skull, rather than inside the bone structure. Thus, when the two-thousand-man fleet of converted airorses left Texas, one man in a hundred wore, or would wear at the proper time, Empire monitors. They were all of the local broadcast type found inside Wall's head, the type which, it was predicted, were to be found inside the heads of all top commanders in the Empire fleet. That was an example of the advance planning about which he'd hinted to Riddent.

As she flew home to San Ann to join her husband, who was standing by watching the progress of the airors fleet by reading the Empire monitors, which, in Addition to the signals detectable by Empire on a local basis, broadcast a beam receivable only on Texas, she felt a moment of doubt. Had she participated in a plan which would result in the death of hundreds of young men? She shook her head. No. She had confidence in them, those young men. There was a strange aura of strength about Lex Burns. Moreover, she believed in their mission. She was one of a pessimistic few, among whom Arden Wal was a standout, who felt that in a face-to-face battle Texas was destined to lose. She believed in the mission. Had she been given the opportunity, she would have been out there with them. Into the periphery.

She could read their position on the larger star charts. Their signal was loud and clear and moving in leaps as they blinked deeper and deeper. Toward far Centaurus, hidden now and then as fields of force blanked the signal, emerging ever deeper into Empire space.

It was decided, in the second week, to explain to worried friends and relatives why two thousand Texicans, mostly young, were missing from their regular stations. The Empire fleet was still running practice missions over in the galaxy, ever building, and the population was bored with reports which said that the situation was still tense, critical, but showed no change. The nation, Belle Resall decided, needed some positive news for a change.

"We can now announce," she said on a planetwide trid broadcast, "that steps are being taken to alleviate the tense situation in which we find ourselves. Numbers of our young men are in secret training to strike a blow to the very heart of our enemy."

The announcement was brief and cryptic. There was a Texican spy on Earth itself. There could, therefore, be Empire spies on Texas, or in near space. But saying that the blow would be struck at the heart of Empire would throw the enemy off guard, had he detected the blink signals of the airors fleet which, at that time, was boring deeper into the galaxy. Saying that the men were in training would make the enemy think that the blow would be long in coming, rather than imminent, as it was.

A planet buzzed with speculation. Hearts swelled with pride as families and friends realized that old so-and-so's unexplained absence meant that he was a part of the strike force.

Meanwhile, a mobilized planet put aside the things of peace and prepared for the ultimate battle. All production capacity was geared for war. Every able-bodied man was in uniform. Women manned the factories. Always a thinly populated, community-conscious world, the planet was drawn into even closer empathy among its people. There was a spirit of shared danger. People smiled and spoke on the streets. Teenage girls manned detection stations. Neighbor helped neighbor. Some luxury items fell into short supply as the resources were spent in the building of more and more ships of the line. But there was a plenty of food as city dwellers turned out en masse to harvest crops. The birthrate began to rise as thousands of baby male Texicans were born, Belle Resall's horde, they were called.

Now and then, as he blinked, cramped, living on wakers, eyes feeling as if they were full of desert sand, Lex thought of one future edition of himself, an unborn member of Belle's horde, his son. And he thought of his wife and of Texas and, in brief periods of sleep, alone in the small dome of his Zelda , his muscles cramped and already being shaped by the long period of non-movement, he dreamed.

He didn't like his dreams. He told himself that they were the result of his physical discomfort, for his dreams had always been pleasant ones.

But now they were anything but pleasant. One recurring nightmare never failed to break through the fatigue and bring him awake, grunting, moaning. He saw a beloved, familiar figure, clothing soiled and torn, a vile red stain covering all» limbs bent unnaturally. He saw blood. And he saw Riddent. Riddent dead. His urge was to turn around, forget the mission, but he found a strength which pushed him on and on.

Chapter Nine

The total mass of two thousand airorses would not equal that of one Empire Middleguard. Spread over a volume of space limited only by the necessity to keep in voice contact the airors fleet became mere motes in nothingness, detectable only by the signals sent ahead by the power of the blink generator. These could have been easily detected by any Empire ship, were, in fact, detected numerous times by the Emperor's patrol ships. However, the signals were being generated, when first detected, deep within Empire space and investigation proved space to be empty.