By then the tug motors were warmed, and I got it up on its ground effect. Brant was standing over me at that point, not sure what I was going to do. I eased the tug carefully past the crowd and back to the one port entrance where the other skimmer had come in and where others might follow it. Then I set the tug down with its tail facing into the entrance. As the next car burst through I was ready and waiting foi it, with the tug sitting firmly, ground effect off. Under that condition I could feed about half power into the forward thrust jets without moving the vehicle. As a second skimmer came into line with the jet, it was picked up as though by a giant hand and rose nearly forty meters into the air, flipping as it went. Nobody had to stomp it as it came down.

  I looked around then, and Brant was grinning. He was a heavy man, with a lined face; every line creased with dirt. He looked alive and the grin was as fierce as it was happy.

  "Think you could handle this post?" I asked him, putting all the authority I knew how to put into the question.

  "You show me how just once more, I'll handle it," he said.

  I took ten minutes to check him out. I wasn't sure when I left that he completely understood my method, but I made him go over the sequence until I was sure he had it pat. If determination would do the job, he'd do it. So I climbed out and began looking for the big man who'd first accosted me. He seemed to be in charge.

  In the soft light, with a large number of people around, one would think I'd have a trouble finding one man, but I didn't. I wandered until I found a youngster who was looking around for his next job. "Where's the big man in charge?" I asked.

  "Bill?"

  I nodded and he seemed satisfied. "This way," he said and took me straight to the man. It seems he was one of the runners. •

  I walked straight up to Bill. "I need pilots for these tugs," I said, as though I were in command, not he.

  "Nice job with the tug," he commented. Then he turned to the youngster and gave him a list of names I didn't bother listening to. I pointed out a tug. "Have them meet me there," I said and turned to leave.

  The big man's hand clamped down on my arm, and I turned back, ready for trouble.

  "I don't know how good any of them are as pilots," he growled down at me. "If you've got a way of checking them out, check them out. They're the best we've got, but we haven't had tugs to practice on much, you know."

  I nodded, then added lightly, "We don't really have a space academy here to choose from, do we?"

  Instantly his face became hard. "Don't underrate 'em, mister," he said fiercely. I thought for a moment that the hand on my shoulder was going to shake me like a rat. "A slummer can't get into the academies; all he can get into is a colonist's berth. But that don't mean he can't handle a skimmer and translate on out from that, with enough drive behind him. I'm sending you the guys that have had the drive."

  "I'm not underrating," I said, "but I'm not planning to mess up the tugs before we get the Glacier loaded, either."

  He nodded then as though I'd satisfied him, and released my shoulder. I don't think it was a shove he gave me as he let go, but his hand was so powerful that it shoved when it was being gentle.

  The men that reported, as fast as they got the message and could get to me, were actually beyond my expectations. Two of them I'd already seen on the Glacier and on the lander coming down. In spite of what Bill had said, they'd all actually handled the tugs at one time 01 another, when the corporation had needed more than the one or two pilots it kept on hand. I checked each one out; I kept most of them, foi I needed twenty and I didn't have many more than that. I proved wrong about one, but I didn't find that out until he got one group of passengers safely aboard the Glacier and was landing for his next set. He may have known what he was doing; it may have been a malfunction. It was also possible that somebody in the tower had managed to readjust one of the short-range lasers and had done some damage. I saw the machine stagger while it was still two hundred meters in the air and then veer off course,

  I speculated later that it might have been sheer luck or real guts on the part of the pilot, but I'll never know. After the tug staggered and veered off course, it dropped a little and gained speed. When it passed through the executive tower it must have been doing a thousand kilometers an hour; it was probably as much the sonic wave in front of it as the actual mass of the ship that blew the tower apart.

  I understand the colonists officially decided later that the pilot was a hero and had done it on purpose, but I've never really been able to make up my mind. He could even have been dead of a laser shot before the sequence of action took place, though it seems unlikely that ship was guided.

  By then the revolution was basically a mopping-up operation, and my part in it had settled into a routine of getting passengers and all the luggage they could carry into tugs and into the Glacier. I decided to leave the tug guarding the gate where it was, just in case. That left us with eighteen freighters plus Gallagher's lander, and we kept them moving. It was probably more to the credit of the people who had taken over the traffic control system of the port than it was to my own efforts that we were able to keep the tugs moving, one after the other, at a slow but steady pace. I don't yet know whether it was days or hours later when we began loading the tugs more and more with equipment and less and less with people.

  I began to get foggy and was shoved aside to a corner to sleep for a while. When I woke, the job was still going on, and I started doggedly back to it.

  One of Suzie's girls barred my way. "Not yet, Cap-tain," she said. "You go over there and go through that chow line first."

  In astonishment I saw tables and fires. Food was being served with hot drinks, by Suzie's girls. They were efficient and cheerful. There were deep circles under their eyes, as well as bandages on their bodies. One girl was on a crutch improvised out of a board and some rags for padding; she was working right along with the rest. I realized that Suzie's girls would have been the ones best organized on the planet, the ones handling the mechanical details, such as food and record keeping. Next to the food area was a group on old boxes with notebooks and paper.

  There were- few refugees left on the field, and they were trickling one or two at a time into the continously loading tugs. But now the tugs were taking mostly heavy equipment, ton after ton of it: mining equipment, air powered drills, self-propelled atomic supplies, bulldozers and graders. There was both deep-mining and strip-mining equipment, to say nothing of ton after ton of ropes, explosives and less-complicated machinery that would be useful in settling a planet.

  Eventually, I turned to check what was to be loaded on the next ship, and found there wasn't a full load left to go. I got the loading started and then put in a call to Port Control. I told them that no more than two of the tugs aloft were to be allowed to come back. The rest were now ordered to secure themselves onto the Glacier after they unloaded. We weren't going to strip the port completely. One of the two tugs I allowed to return was to remain with the one still sitting at the gate.

  Aboard the last tug we loaded the remaining personnel: the control-room men, the loaders themselves and three of Suzie's girls who hadn't gone up yet. Gallagher had gone up some time before. I looked around for Suzie.

  She and Seth were at a distance, working over something on the ground; it looked like a radio antenna .of some sort. I called to them. Suzie waved absently, intently standing over Seth, who was pushing down on something that seemed not to give. Then it gave, and at the same moment my attention was distracted by a number of explosions in the port area.

  I ran towards Suzie and Seth, who seemed to be gathering whatever piece of equipment they'd been working on.

  "The war's started up again," I shouted even before I was near enough. "We're too few down here now. Come on."

  Seth already had most of the equipment in his arms, and was trailing Suzie as she turned, to go past me, walking fast and hard. I turned with her, and she looked up at me.

  "That wasn't more war," she said, her eyes bright. "That was us. We've just destroyed the evidence of how the spontaneous uprising was engineered."

  That startled me, but I didn't have much time to think. Suzie and Seth ducked into the hatch of the final tug, and I was turning to climb in when I realized, more by instinct than anything else, that there was one person left behind.

  I turned to wave at the tug sitting next to the skimmer gate, to see, through the gate, a group of about twenty skimmers come roaring down the lane towards the port. Apparently some of the company finks had realized that nearly everyone was gone, and that, as we were evacuating the last of the people, we would be vulnerable. They were out to make the most of it.

  There was nothing I could do but watch and hold my breath. Then, as the first of the skimmers came op-posite the tug, it went hurtling into the air from the blast of the thruster, and I found myself breathing again, though the air had an acrid sting of smoke. The paint of the tug behind me was scorching, and I realized that the corporates had had time to refocus their lasers. One after another, six of the skimmers, going too fast to stop, were hurled into the air; they landed in a heap. The other skimmers managed to stop.

  The tug I was beside began maneuvering to put its blast towards the gate, but not on it, for that would have isolated our tug. The rest of the skimmers saw it and were backing away. The hatch of the tug by the gate flung open; a figure emerged from it and started to run towards me.

  Brant was almost beside me before I turned to climb into our tug and stumbled over the scorched and crumpled body of one of the girls.

  I stood and stared. The laser shot must have missed me by micrometers. I almost wished it hadn't. She looked like a small doll, thrown into the fire and lying, half consumed, beside the ashes.

  Then Brant was pushing me from behind. I stumbled on into the tug, sick with rage but knowing that my job was to get the last ship up.

  The trip to the planet that the colonists decided to call Refuge was rough, but uneventful. Yet it had one detour that came as a complete surprise to me.

  It was rough for the refugees, but they seemed to think the discomfort a small price to pay. I did not hear a single complaint; the management that they organized kept the complaints to themselves, if there were any. At Gallagher's suggestion, we left them alone. "They've got to handle their own problems," he told me. "Best they start right now." We went down together, about once daily, on inspection tours, but that was all.

  Suzie's girls had a smallish compartment forward of the big holds and aft of the bridge. I had wondered vaguely what the relationship between the girls and the other women would be when they were all together in the hold and was rather relieved at the separation. I gathered, too, that the girls' compartment was closed to business, which seemed quite sensible on shipboard. Some problems, I told myself, have to work themselves out in more spacious areas.

  I had a lot to learn.

  Suzie herself shared Gallagher's cabin, and Seth bunked in with me. Seth was Suzie's right hand man, and her devoted servant. It was a strange relationship; more that of a dog to his mistress than anything else, and I'm rather sure it wasn't anything else. He was the brawn for her brain, and quite content with the role. I think it fulfilled him far more than any other relationship could have done.

  Gallagher was setting our course; Suzie was in the copilot's couch. I was in what might have been termed the navigator's couch, a couch with just a place for writing, without controls. Seth was in the tiny galley fixing coffee. We were all bushed, but far too exuberant to relax.

  Suzie was lighting a cigarette as she said quietly to Gallagher, "Set your course for Durango."

  He looked at her in surprise. "Thought we'd get the colonists to their planet, then you and the girls would take some time off at Betsy Ann with me," he said. "It's time for a vacation."

  Suzie shook her head. "Durango," she said. "We're going to escape from you. You forced us to go along when you evacuated Stellamira, so there'd be no witnesses. But we found some guns and stuff and hijacked you and made you drop us there."

  He nodded slowly. "It's a good story," he said, "and you'll be welcomed, because the local talent isn't much and it isn't many, and it isn't set up like you set up. I worked on Durango as an electrical engineer for several months a while back. But why bother? We can whomp up a good story when you're ready. Anyhow," he added savagely, "one revolution ought to be enough for any one or all of you. You could—"

  She smiled. "That one," she said, "was for my husband. The next one will be for my baby, and then there are all the other kids we might have had. The company killed them as surely as they killed Jack and the baby. The rest of the girls feel the same way. It's not a single corporation we're after, it's the system. It's the system that killed our men and our way of life. It's the system that's got to go.

  She went on, and her voice had a dreamy quality to it. "It's not even that the system has to go. It's the system we're going to kill—us—with our bare hands if we could. With our bare asses since we can't. We're murderers and we're pragmatists, but the murderer part comes first, with each and every one of us."

  I was staring at her, dumbfounded, as she leaned back, seemingly relaxed, smoking. She was slender and quite beautiful in her intent way.

  "Dublin," she said quietly, "you're just a revolutionist. You're a revolutionist because you don't like the system, and because revolution is more fun than any other game. You're not a killer, but one revolution won't satisfy you, any more than killing one company—and the Stellamira Company is dead. Its assets," she chuckled, "are disbursed. It won't be able to come back, though another company will take over. Until we kill the system, other companies will take over.

  "Killing the system will satisfy you. You're just a revolutionist. One revolution will only whet your appetite; it's addictive. But you'll be satisfied when the system's licked.

  "That's the difference. You'll be satisfied and turn to something else. We, all of us, will be finished, when that happens. What you do after you're finished is something I haven't started to think about yet. Maybe I'll come to Betsy Ann then. It's a long then; don't wait for me."

  "Oh, I won't wait," Gallagher answered lightly. "Maybe I'll even let you finish this one off before I kidnap you out and make you fight 'em my way."

  "Hell," Suzie said. "Your way's fine, but it's not nearly as efficient. You're envious because you aren't equipped to be as efficient at the revolution business as we are, and the idea of women running the show still shocks you a bit." She started to laugh, and Gallagher started to laugh. Then Seth's voice came from the galley.

  "Gallagher could get into your revolutions the way I have," he said. There was laughter under his slow voice. "There's always room for a man in a house."

  At that they began to laugh, deep, satisfying laughs. It wasn't funny to me. It was bloody, horrible and sad, and we'd just left a real blood bath in which people had been killed. It was killing Suzie was avenging. It wasn't funny.

  But underneath I could hear Gallagher's voice from my memory, It takes a free man to laugh, and it takes laughter to make a man free. Perhaps that was it. But they weren't free; they were bound to a life harder than any I had dreamed of, a life of revolution and murder. It wasn't funny.

  Then I put my oar in. "I guess I'd better go down to Durango with you," I said. "I could have been kidnapped the same way you were, and helped with the hijacking. Then I could get a ship back to Earth and report to the Space Commission…" I trailed off, for the laughter had stopped and they were all looking at me kindly, like parents interrupted in a grownup discussion by a childish question.

  "Harald," Suzie said gently, "you'd be clapped into prison the instant you set foot on Durango. They'd signal your company, and the company would reply, and you'd be in irons. You haven't the—talents—we have to make you welcome any other way."

  "But how am I going to get to Earth and report so that this whole situation changes?" I asked. "That's the real job that's got to be done."

  Suzie opened her mouth, then closed it again. Seth started to speak, but while he was organizing his words, Gallagher interrupted. "Time enough," he said with a finality in his tone that ended the discussion. "Time enough, when we get to it."

  V

  We dropped Suzie and her gang at Durango and the colonists at Refuge. We were driving for Beta Antolaris.

  They call it Betsy Ann. That's the name of the second system that was explored by Dr. Antolar's original survey, back when the Antolaric drive was first invented. It's also the name of the planet, the one that Gallagher colonized.

  Beta Antolaris is a nine-planet system, comparable in most respects to the Sol system itself, including a large ring of asteroids in the fifth orbit. It surprised me that Gallagher didn't go directly in to the third planet on approaching the system, but instead put us into orbit around one of the outer giants and radioed for a taxi.

  "But why orbit so far out?" I asked, "and why not use your own landing craft?"

  Gallagher frowned at me. "Since when have you tried any interplanetary jumps with a landing tug? They're not designed to do anything but very minor maneuvers in space. It would take too long to get it in, and you know it. Anyhow, the taxis are running fairly regular, and it won't take one much out of its way to come past and fetch us.

  "As for orbiting out here," he went on quickly before I could interrupt, "why, the Glacier wouldn't have a life expectancy of two years, if I orbited her often around a standard planet." The phrase startled me, coming from Gallagher, despite the fact that it's the usual term for a planet in all respects similar to Earth. "It would melt?"