were shredded and
dried, they went into storage warehouses. The invaders had set up a
patrol system around Xedii which prevented the slow cargo ships from
taking off or landing. A few adventurous space officers managed to get a
ship out now and then, but those few flights could hardly be called
regular trade shipments.

The cool of winter had come when Chief Samas did something he had never
done before. He called all the men in the barony to assemble before the
main gate of the castle enclosure. He had a speech to make.

For the first time, Anketam felt a touch of apprehension. He got his
crew together, and they walked to the castle in silence, wondering what
it was that The Chief had to say.

All the men of the barony, except those who couldn't be spared from
their jobs, were assembled in front of Chief Samas' baronial castle.

The castle itself was not a single building. Inside the four-foot-high
thorn hedge that surrounded the two-acre area, there were a dozen
buildings of hard, irridescent plastic shining in the sun. They all
looked soft and pleasant and comfortable. Even the thorn hedge, filled
as it was by the lacy leaves that concealed the hard, sharp thorns,
looked soft and inviting.

Anketam listened to the soft murmur of whispered conversation from the
men around him. They stood quietly outside the main gate that led into
the castle area, waiting for The Chief to appear, and wondering among
themselves what it was that The Chief had to say.

"You think the invaders have won?"

Anketam recognized the hoarse whisper from the man behind him. He turned
to face the dark, squat, hard-looking man who had spoken. "It couldn't
be, Jacovik. It couldn't be."

The other supervisor looked down at his big, knuckle-scarred hands
instead of looking at Anketam. He was not a handsome man, Jacovik; his
great, beaklike nose was canted to one side from a break that had come
in his teens; his left eye was squinted almost closed by the scar tissue
that surrounded it, and the right only looked better by comparison. His
eyebrows, his beard, and the fringe of hair that outlined his bald head
made an incongruous pale yellow pattern against the sunburnt darkness of
his face. In his youth, Jacovik had been almost pathologically devoted
to boxing--even to the point of picking fights with others in his
village for no reason at all, except to fight. Twice, he had been
brought up before The Chief's court because of the severe beating