ay. How about your
three wounded buddies: Wasson, Clark, and Thomason? Badly cut up aren't
they? Clark blind. Wasson with no arms.

"Couldn't they use the two hundred thousand?"

Neilson was coming ashore. A sudden resolve hardened his face, and his
blue eyes were dark and angry. His jaw jutted through the sandy fairness
of his draggled beard.

Treb felt his vitals knot at what he sensed in Neilson's expression.
He'd gambled on the essential fairness and sympathy of the Andilian's
character. But now....

"I'll do it," Neilson said tonelessly.

"I hope you'll never regret what you are doing, Harl."

"Aw, lock valves!" snarled Neilson. "Get ready to go while I finish
shaving."

So that was the way it was to be. Treb turned wearily away. He went back
through the screen of flowering shrubs and trees to where the coals of
their fire turned gray.

The grenades and the three cartridges, his own and Neilson's, he buried
in a hasty hole under a tree's sprawled roots. Afterward he tamped sod
back into place and spread leaves.

His needle-knife he laid on the turf. From his pocket he took a long
strip of cloth and some of the tough nylon cords from the net. Then he
let his trousers drop about his ankles and set about anchoring the
needle-knife securely to his upper leg.

When he had finished the keen blade projected a foot below his knee-cap.
And around it, carefully, he wound some of the cloth. He donned his
battered trousers again. The concealed knife was well hidden, although
it did impede the freedom of his stride.

Then he went down to rejoin Neilson.

Neilson was just finishing hacking at his hair with the short-bladed
safety razor. He scowled at Treb, his eyes on the carbine that the man
from Baryt yet carried.

"Not taking any chances, eh, Treb?"

"Just in case you change your mind, Harl."

"My friend--my very dear friend--Gram Treb!" Neilson laughed. "What
trust--what a faith in human nature!"

"Yes, Harl. Your friend."

They left the lake behind, Neilson in advance. Directly ahead, beyond
the outer ring of trees, the locks to the upper levels waited. They had
less than a third of a mile to traverse.

The rusting shattered debris of a machine gun, with a spilled clutter of
empty shell cases, lay just off the trail.

"Harok Dann died here," said Treb. Neilson did not turn.

"The big man, Manross, was killed by Dann's fire even as he threw the
grenade," he added.

Treb was watching the broad-sho