At last, leaving a tangle of cliffs and ravines, he looked out across a broad stretch of nearly level snow and saw, for the first time, the men he was following. Four tiny dots, so far that they seemed motionless, strung out in single file. Instantly, he crouched behind a swell in the surface and dragged Brave down beside him. One of them, looking back, might see him, as he saw them. When they vanished behind a snow-hill, he rose and hastened forward, to take cover again. He kept at this all day; by alternately resting and running, be found himself gaining on them, and toward evening, he was within rifle-range. The man in the lead was Vahr Farg’s son; even at that distance he recognized him easily. The others were Southrons, of course; they wore quilted garments of cloth, and quilted hoods. The man next to Vahr, in blue, carried a rifle, as Vahr did. The man in yellow had only an ice-staff, and the man in green, at the rear, had the Crown on his pack, still in the bearskin bundle.

  He waited, at the end of the day, until he saw the light of their fire. Then he and Brave circled widely around their camp, and stopped behind a snow-ridge, on the other side of an open and level stretch a mile wide. He dug the sleeping-hole on the crest of the ridge, making it larger than usual, and piled up a snow breastwork in front of it, with an embrasure through which he could look or fire without being seen.

  Before daybreak, he was awake and had his pack made, and when he saw the smoke of the thieves’ campfire, he was lying behind his breastwork, the rifle resting on its folded cover, muzzle toward the smoke. He lay for a long time, watching, before he saw the file of tiny dots emerge into the open.

  They came forward steadily, in the same order as on the day before, Vahr in the lead and the man with the Crown in the rear. The thieves suspected nothing; they grew larger and larger as they approached, until they were at the range for which he had set his sights. He cuddled the butt of the rifle against his cheek. As the man who carried the Crown walked under the blade of the front sight, he squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle belched pink flame and roared and pounded his shoulder. As the muzzle was still rising, he flipped open the breech, and threw out the empty. He inserted a fresh round.

  There were only three of them, now. The man with the bearskin bundle was down and motionless. Vahr Farg’s son had gotten his rifle unslung and uncovered. The Southron with the other rifle was slower; he was only getting off the cover as Vahr, who must have seen the flash, fired hastily. Too hastily; the bullet kicked up snow twenty feet to the left. The third man had drawn his negatron pistol and was trying to use it; thin hairlines of brilliance were jetting out from his hand, stopping far short of their mark.

  Raud closed his sights on the man with the autoloading rifle; as he did, the man with the negatron pistol, realizing the limitations of his weapon, was sweeping it back and forth, aiming at the snow fifty yards in front of him. Raud couldn’t see the effect of his second shot—between him and his target, blueish light blazed and twinkled, and dense clouds of steam rose—but he felt sure that he had missed. He reloaded, and watched for movements on the edge of the rising steam.

  It cleared, slowly; when it did, there was nothing behind it. Even the body of the dead man was gone. He blinked, bewildered. He’d picked that place carefully; there had been no gully or ravine within running distance. Then he grunted. There hadn’t been—but there was now. The negatron pistol again. The thieves were hidden in a pit they had blasted, and they had dragged the body in with them.

  He crawled back to reassure Brave, who was guarding the pack, and to shift the pack back for some distance. Then he returned to his embrasure in the snow-fort and resumed his watch. For a long time, nothing happened, and then a head came briefly peeping up out of the pit. A head under a green hood. Raud chuckled mirthlessly into his beard. If he’d been doing that, he’d have traded hoods with the dead man before shoving up his body to draw fire. This kept up, at intervals, for about an hour. He was wondering if they would stay in the pit until dark.

  Then Vahr Farg’s son leaped out of the pit and began running across the snow. He had his pack, and his rifle; he ran, zig-zag, almost directly toward where Raud was lying. Raud laughed, this time in real amusement. The Southrons had chased Vahr out, as a buck will chase his does in front of him when he thinks there is danger in front. If Vahr wasn’t shot, it would be safe for them to come out. If he was, it would be no loss, and the price of the Crown would only have to be divided in two, rather than three, shares. Vahr came to within two hundred yards of Raud’s unseen rifle, and then dropped his pack and flung himself down behind it, covering the ridge with his rifle.

  Minutes passed, and then the Southron in yellow came out and ran forward. He had the bearskin bundle on his pack; he ran to where Vahr lay, added his pack to Vahr’s, and lay down behind it. Raud chewed his underlip in vexation. This wasn’t the way he wanted it; that fellow had a negatron pistol, and he was close enough to use it effectively. And he was sheltered behind the Crown; Raud was afraid to shoot. He didn’t miss what he shot at—often. But no man alive could say that he never missed.

  The other Southron, the one in blue with the autoloading rifle, came out and advanced slowly, his weapon at the ready. Raud tensed himself to jump, aimed carefully, and waited. When the man in blue was a hundred yards from the pit, he shot him dead. The rifle was still lifting from the recoil when he sprang to his feet, turned, and ran. Before he was twenty feet away, the place where he had been exploded; the force of the blast almost knocked him down, and steam blew past and ahead of him. Ignoring his pack and ice-staff, he ran on, calling to Brave to follow. The dog obeyed instantly; more negatron-blasts were thundering and blazing and steaming on the crest of the ridge. He swerved left, ran up another slope, and slid down the declivity beyond into the ravine on the other side.

  There he paused to eject the empty, make sure that there was no snow in the rifle bore, and reload. The blasting had stopped by then; after a moment, he heard the voice of Vahr Farg’s son, and guessed that the two surviving thieves had advanced to the blasted crest of the other ridge. They’d find the pack, and his tracks and Brave’s. He wondered whether they’d come hunting for him, or turn around and go the other way. He knew what he’d do, under the circumstances, but he doubted if Vahr’s mind would work that way. The Southron’s might; he wouldn’t want to be caught between blaster-range and rifle-range of Raud the Keeper again.

  “Come, Brave,” he whispered, looking quickly around and then starting to run.

  Lay a trail down this ravine for them to follow. Then get to the top of the ridge beside it, double back, and wait for them. Let them pass, and shoot the Southron first. By now, Vahr would have a negatron pistol too, taken from the body of the man in blue, but it wasn’t a weapon he was accustomed to, and he’d be more than a little afraid of it.

  The ravine ended against an upthrust face of ice, at right angles to the ridge he had just crossed; there was a V-shaped notch between them. He turned into this; it would be a good place to get to the top….

  He found himself face to face, at fifteen feet, with Vahr Farg’s son and the Southron in yellow, coming through from the other side. They had their packs, the Southron had the bearskin bundle, and they had drawn negatron pistols in their hands.

  Swinging up the rifle, he shot the Southron in the chest, making sure he hit him low enough to miss the Crown. At the same time, he shouted:

  “Catch, Brave!”

  Brave never jumped for the deer or wild-ox that had been shot; always for the one still on its feet. He launched himself straight at the throat of Vahr Farg’s son—and into the muzzle of Vahr’s blaster. He died in a blue-white flash.

  Raud had reversed the heavy rifle as Brave leaped; he threw it, butt-on, like a seal-spear, into Vahr’s face. As soon as it was out of his fingers, he was jumping forward, snatching out his knife. His left hand found Vahr’s right wrist, and he knew that he was driving the knife into Vahr’s body, over and over, trying to keep the blaster pointed away from him and away from the body of the dead Southron. At last, the negatron-pistol fell from Vahr’s fingers, and the arm that had been trying to fend off his knife relaxed.

  He straightened and tried to stand—he had been kneeling on Vahr’s body, he found—and reeled giddily. He got to his feet and stumbled to the other body, kneeling beside it. He tried for a long time before he was able to detach the bearskin bundle from the dead man’s pack. Then he got the pack open, and found dried venison. He started to divide it, and realized that there was no Brave with whom to share it. He had just sent Brave to his death.

  Well, and so? Brave had been the Keeper’s dog. He had died for the Crown, and that had been his duty. If he could have saved the Crown by giving his own life, Raud would have died too. But he could not—if Raud died the Crown was lost.

  The sky was darkening rapidly, and the snow was whitening the body in green. Moving slowly, he started to make camp for the night.

  It was still snowing when he woke. He started to rise, wondering, at first, where Brave was, and then he huddled back among the robes—his own and the dead men’s—and tried to go to sleep again. Finally, he got up and ate some of his pemmican, gathered his gear and broke camp. For a moment, and only a moment, he stood looking to the east, in the direction he had come from. Then he turned west and started across the snow toward the edge of the Ice-Father.

  * * *

  The snow stopped before he reached the edge, and the sun was shining when he found a slanting way down into the valley. Then, out of the north, a black dot appeared in the sky and grew larger, until he saw that it was a Government airboat—one of the kind used by the men who measured the growth of the Ice-Father. It came curving in and down toward him, and a window slid open and a man put his head out.

  “Want us to lift you down?” he asked. “We’re going to Long Valley Town. If that’s where you’re going, we can take you the whole way.”

  “Yes. That’s where I’m going.” He said it as though he were revealing, for the first time, some discovery he had just made. “For your kindness and help, I thank you.”

  In less time than a man could walk two miles with a pack, they were letting down in front of the Government House in Long Valley Town.

  He had never been in the Government House before. The walls were clear glass. The floors were plastic, clean and white. Strips of bright new lumicon ran around every room at the tops of all the walls. There were no fires, but the great rooms were as warm as though it were a midsummer afternoon.

  Still carrying his pack and his rifle, Raud went to a desk where a Southron in a white shirt sat.

  “Has Yorn Nazvik’s ship, the Issa, been here lately?” he asked.

  “About six days ago,” the Southron said, without looking up from the papers on his desk. “She’s on a trading voyage to the west now, but Nazvik’s coming back here before he goes south. Be here in about ten days.” He looked up. “You have business with Nazvik?”

  Raud shook his head. “Not with Yorn Nazvik, no. My business is with the two Starfolk who are passengers with him. Dranigo and Salvadro.”

  The Southron looked displeased. “Aren’t you getting just a little above yourself, old man, calling the Prince Salsavadran and the Lord Dranigrastan by their familiar names?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those were the names they gave me; I didn’t know they had any others.”

  The Southron started to laugh, then stopped.

  “And if I may ask, what is your name, and what business have you with them?” he inquired.

  Raud told him his name. “I have something for them. Something they want very badly. If I can find a place to stay here, I will wait until they return—”

  The Southron got to his feet. “Wait here for a moment, Keeper,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He left the desk, going into another room. After a while, he came back. This time he was respectful.

  “I was talking to the Lord Dranigrastan—whom you know as Dranigo—on the radio. He and the Prince Salsavadran are lifting clear of the Issa in their airboat and coming back here to see you. They should be here in about three hours. If, in the meantime, you wish to bathe and rest, I’ll find you a room. And I suppose you’ll want something to eat, too….”

  * * *

  He was waiting at the front of the office, looking out the glass wall, when the airboat came in and grounded, and Salvadro and Dranigo jumped out and came hurrying up the walk to the doorway.

  “Well, here you are, Keeper,” Dranigo greeted him, clasping his hand. Then he saw the bearskin bundle under Raud’s arm. “You brought it with you? But didn’t you believe that we were coming?”

  “Are you going to let us have it?” Salvadro was asking.

  “Yes; I will sell it to you, for the price you offered. I am not fit to be Keeper any longer. I lost it. It was stolen from me, the day after I saw you, and I have only yesterday gotten it back. Both my dogs were killed, too. I can no longer keep it safe. Better that you take it with you to Dremna, away from this world where it was made. I have thought, before, that this world and I are both old and good for nothing any more.”

  “This world may be old, Keeper,” Dranigo said, “but it is the Mother-World, Terra, the world that sent Man to the Stars. And you—when you lost the Crown, you recovered it again.”

  “The next time, I won’t be able to. Too many people will know that the Crown is worth stealing, and the next time, they’ll kill me first.”

  “Well, we said we’d give you twenty thousand trade-tokens for it,” Salvadro said. “We’ll have them for you as soon as we can draw them from the Government bank, here. Or give you a check and let you draw them as you want them.” Raud didn’t understand that, and Salvadro didn’t try to explain. “And then we’ll fly you home.”

  He shook his head. “No, I have no home. The place where you saw me is Keeper’s House, and I am not the Keeper any more. I will stay here and find a place to live, and pay somebody to take care of me….”

  With twenty thousand trade-tokens, he could do that. It would buy a house in which he could live, and he could find some woman who had lost her man, who would do his work for him. But he must be careful of the money. Dig a crypt in the corner of his house for it. He wondered if he could find a pair of good dogs and train them to guard it for him….

  * * *

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