d been turned aside. They proved invulnerable to any
weapon the Rovers had. Men who made suicidal rushes to use sword or
battle ax hand-to-hand had fallen, before they were in striking
distance, under spraying tongues of fire from tubes the aliens carried.

Rovers were not fearful or easily cowed, but in the end they had fled
from the five invaders, gone to ground in their halls, tried to reach
their beached ships, only to die as they ran and hid. The slaughter had
been remorseless and entire, leaving Jazia in the hill shrine as the
only survivor. She had hidden for the rest of the day, seen the killing
of a few fugitives, and that night had stolen to the shore, launched one
of the ship's boats which was in a cove well away from the main harbor
of the fairing, heading out to sea in hope of meeting the homing
cruisers with her warning.

"They stayed there on the island?" Ross asked. That point of her story
puzzled him. If the object of that murderous raid had been only to stir
up trouble among the Hawaikan Rovers, perhaps turning one clan against
the other, as he had deduced when he had listened to Torgul's report of
similar happenings, then the star men should have withdrawn as soon as
their mission was complete, leaving the dead to call for vengeance in
the wrong direction. There would be no reason to court discovery of
their true identity by lingering.

"When the boat was asea there were still lights at the fairing hall, and
they were not our lights, nor did the dead carry them," she said slowly.
"What have those to fear? They can not be killed!"

"If they are still there, that we can put to the test," Torgul replied
grimly, and a murmur from his officers bore out his determination.

"And lose all the rest of you?" Ross retorted coldly. "I have met these
before; they can will a man to obey them. Look you--" He slammed his
left hand flat on the table. The ridges of scar tissue were plain
against his tanned skin. He knew no better way of driving home the
dangers of dealing with the star men than providing this graphic
example. "I held my own hand in fire so that the hurt of it would work
against their pull upon my thoughts, against their willing that I come
and be easy meat for their butchering."

Jazia's fingers flickered out, smoothed across his old scars lightly as
she gazed into his eyes.

"This, too, is true," she said slowly. "For it was also pain of body
which kept me from their last snare. They stood by t