"Well, no matter," the chief shrugged. "We will find the spot on the back trail." Already—Helsed, the eager newsbearer, had dashed off without waiting for details—they were surrounded by a growing audience, afire to know more about Torcred's almost unheard-of exploit.
Torcred, dazed, found himself sitting atop someone else's machine, relating his battle with the aero to an enthusiastic mob of his fellow-warriors. The terrapins lost their customary reserved poise and grew festive; while Torcred almost choked on the lies with which he ended his narrative, they pressed food and drink on him and made him go back over the most stirring parts. Then Hiyik the poet had his turn, and retold the story in improvised verses, his chanting voice mingling with the hiss and clangor of the workshop in the midst of the circle on whose rim the warriors were gathered.
But the hero of it all sat moody, well-nigh oblivious, his brow wrinkling painfully from time to time. The thoughts he was thinking hurt. For what he was planning was treason, what he had already done was treason—more than that, sacrilege, abomination, a trampling of the laws that kept the diverse races of Earth eternally apart.... Lesser breeds might hold such laws lightly—but not the proud terrapins. For them all other peoples were enemies, or prey, or vermin beneath contempt.
The bird-folk were enemies. And the crime of giving aid and comfort to an enemy deserved the ultimate in punishment.
Torcred's mouth tightened grimly at the thought, and the logically following reflection that he, Torcred the Terrapin, must have gone quite insane. But even here, in the midst of his noisy comrades, he could not forget the glimpse of a strange beauty that had fallen out of the sky to destroy him—if not by the swift vengeance of outraged tradition, then by returning and returning to haunt him all his days.
With a chill he realized that the chief was watching him thoughtfully, and he strove to give his features a dignified impassivity appropriate to the modesty of the feted hero.
The face of Helsed, hugging the spotlight as always, was at his elbow, wearing a vapid smile which Torcred's hypersensitized suspicions saw as a knowing smirk. And in reality, he knew, the fat terrapin's air of loud thickheadedness masked a sharp scheming brain—and Helsed hated him. Helsed had talked and toadied his way into the graces of the council of elders and the chief, and he had hopes—the latter's successor must be chosen soon from among the younger men. And in the taciturn Torcred he saw his most dangerous rival, for the young warrior's deeds spoke for him.
Sunk in thought, Torcred hardly realized the passage of time or that the gathering was breaking up. Hiyik had ceased his recitative. One by one the terrapins yawned, stretched, and moved off toward their own vehicles; it was late, and tomorrow, first full day of the great hunt, would be hard. The noisy labor in the camp's center went on unabated.
Torcred forced himself to yawn and stretch as elaborately as the others, to rise unhurriedly to his feet. His plans, such as they were, were complete; during the next day's farflung maneuvers and attacks on the trailer herd, he should be able to slip off unnoticed and, traveling fast, reach the vicinity of the aeros' nearest eyrie. There he would leave the bird-girl. Whatever her fate then, she would be alive among her own kind; and perhaps later she would be grateful to the terrapin who had befriended her. Beyond that his thoughts did not go....