* * * * *

When they reached the pass, they all stopped as the son of Kalvar Dard
turned and looked back. Dorita stood beside him, looking toward the
waterfall too; she also knew what was about to happen. The others merely
gaped in blank incomprehension, or grasped their weapons, thinking that
the enemy was pressing close behind and that they were making a stand
here. A few of the smaller boys and girls began picking up stones.

Then a tiny pin-point of brilliance winked, just below where the
snow-fed stream vanished into the gorge. That was all, for an instant,
and then a great fire-shot cloud swirled upward, hundreds of feet into
the air; there was a crash, louder than any sound any of them except
Dorita and Varnis had ever heard before.

"He did it!" Dorita said softly.

"Yes, he did it. My father was a brave man," Bo-Bo replied. "We are
safe, now."

Varnis, shocked by the explosion, turned and stared at him, and then she
laughed happily. "Why, there you are, Dard!" she exclaimed. "I was
wondering where you'd gone. What did you do, after we left?"

"What do you mean?" The boy was puzzled, not knowing how much he looked
like his father, when his father had been an officer of the Frontier
Guards, twenty years before.

His puzzlement worried Varnis vaguely. "You.... You are Dard, aren't