"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting. He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside. Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies. The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned, but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to kill attacked a man....