Dragging it out into the main room before the great droning generators, he squatted down, a tatterdemalion gnome, eyes like blued metal, face tautened into a savagery of concentration, and got to work. Through a visual blur, the guard stared in uncomprehending terror. The dog watched him steadily, with sullen malevolent hope that he would try something. It was embittering, to hate all the world save one being, because only that being understood—

* * *

False dawn glimmered wanly over the land, touching houses and fields with wandering ghost fingers, glittering briefly off the swift-flowing river before deeper darkness returned. Hammer’s gang woke with the instant animal alertness of their kind, and stirred in the fog-drifting twilight. Their scant clothes were heavy with dew, they were cold and hungry—how hungry!—and they looked down at the moveless mass of their goal with smoldering savage yearning.

“Fair is the land,” whispered Hammer, “more fair ’n land’s ever been. The fields ’re green t’ harvest an’ the fog runs white over a river like a polished knife—an’ it’s our land, our home.” His voice rose in hard snapping command: “Joe, take twenty men an’ circle north. Come in by the main road, postin’ men at the edge o’ town an’ the bridge over the river, then wait in the main square. Buck, take your fifteen, circle west, an’ come in the same time as Joe, postin’ men outside town an’ in that big buildin’ halfway down Fifth Street—that’s the machine shop, as I recall, an’ I hope you c’n still read street signs. Then join Joe. The rest follow me straight no’th. Go as quiet as you can, slug ’r kill anyone you meet, an’ be ready f’r a fight but don’t start one. O.K.!”

The two other groups filed down the hill and vanished into misty dusk. Hammer waited awhile. He had previously divided the gang into bands assigned to his lieutenants, reserving the best men for the group immediately under him. He spoke to them, softly but with metallic rapidity:

“Accordin’ t’ what I remember o’ Southvale, an’ to what I seen elsewhere, they don’t expect nothin’ like this. There’ve been no bandits here f’r a long time, an’ anyway they’d never think a gang had the skill and self-control t’ sneak through the fat lands farther south. So there’ll be no patrol, just a few cops on their beats—an’ too sleepy this time t’ give us much trouble. An’ nearly all the weapons ’re gonna be in the police station—which is what we’re gonna capture. With guns, we’ll control the town. But f’r the love of life, don’t start shootin’ till I say to. There may be armed citizens, an’ they c’n raise hell with us ’nless we handle ’em right.”

A low mutter of assent ran along that line of haggard, bearded, fierce-eyed men. Knives and axes glittered in the first dim dawn-flush, bows were strung and spears hefted. But there was no restlessness, no uncontrollable lust to be off and into battle. They had learned patience the hard way, the last sixteen years. They waited.