Elva fluttered her lashes. “Not that much. Really.”

“My oldest boy’s promised to take care of you. He’s not such a bad fellow as you seem to think. You only have to go along with his whims. I’ll see you again, in thirty years.”

“When I’m gray and wrinkled. Why not kick me out in the street and be done?”

“You know why,” he said ferociously. “You’re the first woman I could ever talk to. No, I’m not bored with you! But—”

“If you really cared for me—”

“What kind of idiot do you take me for? I know you’re planning to sneak away to your own people, once we’ve landed.”

Elva tossed her head, haughtily. “Well! If you believe that of me, there’s nothing more to say.”

“Aw, now, sweetling, don’t take that attitude.” He reached out a hand to lay on her arm. She withdrew to the far end of the couch. He looked baffled.

“Another thing,” he argued. “If you care about your planet at all, as I suppose you do, even if you’ve now seen what a bunch of petrified mudsuckers they are …remember, what we’ll have to do there won’t be pretty.”

“First you call me a traitor,” she flared, “and now you say I’m gutless!”

“Hoy, wait a minute—”

“Go on, beat me. I can’t stop you. You’re brave enough for that.”

“I never—”

In the end, he yielded.

553 A.C.C.

The Missile which landed on Yuvaskula had a ten-kilometer radius of total destruction. Thus most of the city went up in one radioactive fire-gout. In a way, the thought of men and women and little children with pet kittens, incinerated, made a trifle less pain in Elva than knowing the Old Town was gone: the cabin raised by the first men to land on Vaynamo, the ancient church of St. Yarvi with its stained-glass windows and gilded bell tower, the Museum of Art where she went as a girl on entranced visits, the University where she studied and where she met Karlavi—I’m a true daughter of Vaynamo, she thought with remorse. Whatever is traditional, full of memories, whatever has been looked at and been done by all the generations before me, I hold dear. The Chertkoians don’t care. They haven’t any past worth remembering.

Flames painted the northern sky red, even at this distance, as she walked among the plastishelters of the advanced base. She had flown within a hundred kilometers, using an aircar borrowed from the flagship, then landed to avoid possible missiles and hitched a ride here on a supply truck. The Chertkoian enlisted men aboard had been delighted until she showed them her pass, signed by Commander Golyev himself. Then they became cringingly respectful.

The pass was only supposed to let her move freely about in the rear areas, and she’d had enough trouble wheedling it from Bors. But no one thereafter looked closely at it. She herself was so unused to the concept of war that she didn’t stop to wonder at such lax security measures. Had she done so, she would have realized Chertkoi had never developed anything better, never having faced an enemy of comparable strength. Vaynamo certainly wasn’t, even though the planet was proving a hard-shelled opponent, with every farmhouse a potential arsenal and every forest road a possible death trap. Guerrilla fighters hindered the movements of an invader with armor, atomic artillery, complete control of air and space; they could not stop him.