“Not enough,” said Cabot. “I could wreck the controls before the bullet could do its work. The pinqui would arrest you. And then where would you be? Yuri, the traitor, in the toils at last! It would be the Valley of the Howling Rocks for you, my friend.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said the prince. “With you out of the way, methinks I could reconquer Cupia, even from a prison cell. In the past, whenever you have been out of the way, I have always won, and I could do so again.”
“Maybe you could,” the earthman mused aloud. “So I think I had better remain alive for the present.”
Accordingly he turned to the left at the next crossroad as he had been directed.
As they approached the battlefront, they were often halted by Cupian sentinels. To each of these Cabot revealed his identity, and was permitted to pass. And each time he was sorely tempted to turn Yuri over, even though this would probably mean his own instant annihilation.
What deterred him? Not fear of death, for he had faced death so often on the silver planet that he and the dark angel were well acquainted. Perhaps it was caution, due to uncertainty as to the outcome. If he could but be sure that Yuri would not get the better of the sentinel, that the sentinel would not yield to the temptations which Yuri would undoubtedly offer, that Yuri would not be able to work his way back into power even from the cell of a mangool, that the courts would condemn Yuri to the Valley and then enforce the sentence—if Myles could have been sure of all this, he would have willingly given his life for his adopted country.
Yet would he? For his fatalism assured him that he could risk his own life, and yet come out on top, as he had done before.
Finally there occurred Cabot’s last opportunity. They were in a little ravine, almost at the front. The sentinel who halted him refused to let him pass on to no-man’s land without permission of the officer in charge of that sector; so the sentinel called another soldier to guard the kerkool and went to summon the officer, who proved to be a young bar-pootah, a stranger to Cabot.
“Excellency,” said he, “it must be important business which leads you to risk your life out there, for yonder lie the forces of Formis. The moment that you emerge from this ravine you will be under fire. May I ask what takes our regent into such danger?”
The revolver muzzle of the man crouching hidden beside Cabot, ground into his ribs as a reminder.