ettlement, knowing they had only controlled Mongol scouts to watch for.
And to penetrate enemy territory under those conditions was an old, old
game the Apaches had played for centuries.

While they waited for the signals from the peaks, a camp was established
and a Mongol dispatched to bring up the rest of the outlaws and all
extra mounts. Menlik carried to the Apaches a portion of the dried meat
which had been transported Horde fashion--under the saddle to soften it
for eating.

"We do not skulk any longer like rats or city men in dark holes," he
told them. "This time we ride, and we shall take an accounting from
those out there--a fine accounting!"

"They still have other controllers," Travis pointed out.

"And you have that which is an answer to all their machines," blazed
Menlik in return.

"They will send against us your own people if they can," Buck warned.

Menlik pulled at his upper lip. "That is also truth. But now they have
no eyes in the sky, and with so many of their men away, they will not
patrol too far from camp. I tell you, _andas_, with these weapons of
yours a man could rule a world!"

Travis looked at him bleakly. "Which is why they are taboo!"

"Taboo?" Menlik repeated. "In what manner are these forbidden? Do you
not carry them openly, use them as you wish? Are they not weapons of
your own people?"

Travis shook his head. "These are the weapons of dead men--if we can
name them men at all. These we took from a tomb of the star race who
held Topaz when our world was only a hunting ground of wild men wearing
the skins of beasts and slaying mammoths with stone spears. They are
from a tomb and are cursed, a curse we took upon ourselves with their
use."

There was a strange light deep in the shaman's eyes. Travis did not know
who or what Menlik had been before the Red conditioner had returned him
to the role of Horde shaman. He might have been a technician or
scientist--and deep within him some remnants of that training could now
be dismissing everything Travis said as fantastic superstition.

Yet in another way the Apache spoke the exact truth. There was a curse
on these weapons, on every bit of knowledge gathered in that warehouse
of the towers. As Menlik had already noted, that curse was power, the
power to control Topaz, and then perhaps to reach back across the stars
to Terra.

When the shaman spoke again his words were a half whisper. "It will take
a powerful curse to keep these out o