The baron straightened haughtily and began a slow advance, a towering figure of icy dignity in the sun that filtered through the foliage.
"... but I want to take care of this one first." The renegade waved the gun toward Meikl. "You, Baron, you can have it slower--a needle in your official rump."
Ven Klaeden, a figure of utter contempt, continued the slow advance with the sword. The officer's lips tightened. He squeezed the trigger. Ven Klaeden hesitated, jerking slightly, then continued, his hand pressing against his abdomen, doubling forward slightly. The officer fired again--a sharp snap of sound in the glade. The baron stopped, wrestling with pain ten feet from the pale renegade.
Suddenly he flung the sword. It looped in mid-air and slashed the man's face from chin to cheekbone. He tripped and tumbled backward as ven Klaeden slipped to his knees on the moss.
Meikl dived for the gun. By the time he wrestled it away from the officer with the bloody face, ven Klaeden was sitting like a gaunt Buddha on the moss, and the body of Letha lay nearby, while a confused Evon clutched his hands to his face and rocked slowly. Meikl came slowly to his feet. The renegade officer wiped his face of blood and shrank back into shrubs.
Scarcely knowing why, the analyst jerked the trigger, felt the gun explode in his fist, saw the renegade topple.
There was a moment of stillness in the glade, broken only by ven Klaeden's wheezing breath. The baron looked up with an effort, his eyes traveling over the girl, then up to the figure of the child of Earth.
Evon lowered his hands, stood dazed and blinking for a moment. He glanced at Meikl, then at the girl. He knelt beside her, staring, not touching, and his knee encountered the blade of the sword.
"You have brought us death, you have brought us hate," he said slowly, his eyes clinging to the sword.
"You will never leave. A party of men is wrecking what you have done. Then we shall wreck your ships. Then we...."
The native hesitated. Slowly, his brown hand reached for the hilt, and fascination was in his eyes.
"You know what it is for?" the analyst asked.
Then it was in his hand, fingers shaping themselves around the hilt--as the fingers of his fathers had done in the ages before the Star Exodus. His jaw fell slightly, and he looked up, clutching it.