Kirk looked up the hill. Officers were running from the huts below the gaunt, dead Ship. They didn’t look so different from the Hans, only they were built a little taller and lighter, less bowed and bunchy in the shoulders, quicker on their feet.
Kirk stepped behind Randl to shield him from the wind. His voice was only a whisper, but it had a hard edge. The baby’s thin, terrible wail was still in his ears.
“Is it true, Jakk? Do you know? Because if they are....”
Randl laughed and shuddered with a secret, ugly triumph. “I crawled up on the peak during the last darkness. The guards were cold and the wind made them blind and deaf. I lay in the rocks and watched. And I saw....”
He coughed. The Officers’ voices rang sharp through the wind. Compact groups of men began to run, off toward the
