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he felt ashamed. He was a man now, out in the world at last. That was what he had wanted, was it not? He was going to be a ranger like his father. He just had not expected the world to get quite so rough quite so soon, that was all.
    Bagshaw had stripped off his armor, down to his underwear. He was just as sweaty as Cedric, and he had pulled a blanket over his shoulders. From nowhere that Cedric could see, he produced two cans of beer.
    Beer at that time of day? Cedric accepted one and drank greedily. The ranch hands had slipped him beer a few times, but he had never cared for the taste much. Until now. It went down good. How many people had died? The sky was still brightening slowly, and a fine rain was falling, smoking off the rotor edges. Towers and streets rolled by below.
    “You said twelve stories.” Cedric had not meant to talk, and he wondered why his mouth had spoken without warning him it was going to.
    Bagshaw was not as sassy as he had been. He sat morosely on the bench, hunched under his blanket. He was immensely thick all over, like a weight lifter. Despite his globular belly, he probably carried more muscle than flab. The dermsym ended in a ragged edge at the top of his chest, yet as far as Cedric had been able to see, the man was completely hairless even where he had skin.
    “I said twelve for that make of percy. Mine is a bull suit. They’re better, but they do take practice.” He drank, then wiped his lips. “I knew I could do forty-five meters in a bull suit. That wasn’t much more than forty-five.”
    “The hell it wasn’t.”
    Bagshaw shrugged. “The tricky part was catching you. There’s no routine for that.”
    Cedric shuddered convulsively. “No routine…that was you?”
    Thick lips parted in a leer. “Just me—my eye, my judgment. Glad I got it right? You’d not have been very interesting after the first bounce.” He held out his arms, which were turning bruise colors. “I never caught anything going quite that fast, though.” The waldoes had not shielded him totally.
    “But you faked me!” Cedric said. “You slowed it down until I got to the window, and then you stopped it. I thought it wasn’t going to happen. Then you went and did it to me anyway.”
    Bagshaw turned to study him for a moment. “I had to. First, I had to get ready. Second, a percy couldn’t jump the ledge. If you’d hit the sill at speed, you’d have come out spinning, cart-wheeling all over the sky.”
    Cedric grunted and looked away.
    The flight continued. The sky grew paler yet, sick-looking. They were flying over patchy woodland and gullies, for Nauc was a conglomeration of many cities, not yet continuous. Here and there Cedric noticed buildings being thrown up in haste. Despite the falling population, the whole world was in a building frenzy.
    “You never went over a hundred,” Bagshaw said softly.
    “Huh?”
    “You’ve got a real slow heartbeat at the best of times, but even coming down the sky, it never went over one hundred. A guy could brag about that a little, I guess.”
    Cedric shivered in early morning chill and reaction.
    “How many deaths?” he asked. “How many died?”
    “I don’t know. We didn’t start it.”
    “Just to kill me? Just to spite Gran and get on the evening news?”
    Bagshaw shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they didn’t even know who you were. Just knew there was a big force on their turf, thought they could scare us into surrendering. Then they’d have taken us apart and decided who we were and what use we might be.”
    Cedric shivered again.
    “It wasn’t your fault, lad.”
    For a while Cedric just watched the condensation collecting on his beer can. He knew that Bagshaw was watching him.
    “No. It wasn’t my fault,” he said finally.
    “You saying it was mine?”
    Of course it was. Bagshaw had invaded enemy territory with an unnecessary show of strength. He had wasted endless time in taunting Cedric for his own amusement. He had told him to shave