Dune

Again Gurney scanned the horizon. He had to respect the possibility that there were Fremen here and he was trespassing. Fremen worried him, their toughness and unpredictability. Many things about this business worried him, but the rewards were great. The fact that he couldn’t send spotters high overhead worried him, too. The necessity of radio silence added to his uneasiness.

The factory crawler turned, began to descend. Gently it glided down to the dry beach at the foot of the ridge. Treads touched sand.

Gurney opened the bubble dome, released his safety straps. The instant the factory stopped, he was out, slamming the bubble closed behind him, scrambling out over the tread guards to swing down to the sand beyond the emergency netting. The five men of his personal guard were out with him, emerging from the nose hatch. Others released the factory’s carrier wing. It detached, lifted away to fly in a parking circle low overhead.

Immediately the big factory crawler lurched off, swinging away from the ridge toward the dark patch of spice out on the sand.

A ’thopter swooped down nearby, skidded to a stop. Another followed and another. They disgorged Gurney’s platoon and lifted to hoverflight.

Gurney tested his muscles in his stillsuit, stretching. He left the filter mask off his face, losing moisture for the sake of a greater need—the carrying power of his voice if he had to shout commands. He began climbing up into the rocks, checking the terrain—pebbles and pea sand underfoot, the smell of spice.

Good site for an emergency base, he thought. Might be sensible to bury a few supplies here.

He glanced back, watching his men spread out as they followed him. Good men, even the new ones he hadn’t had time to test. Good men. Didn’t have to be told every time what to do. Not a shield glimmer showed on any of them. No cowards in this bunch, carrying shields into the desert where a worm could sense the field and come to rob them of the spice they found.

From this slight elevation in the rocks, Gurney could see the spice patch about half a kilometer away and the crawler just reaching the near edge. He glanced up at the coverflight, noting the altitude—not too high. He nodded to himself, turned to resume his climb up the ridge.

In that instant, the ridge erupted.

Twelve roaring paths of flame streaked upward to the hovering ’thopters and carrier wing. There came a blasting of metal from the factory crawler, and the rocks around Gurney were full of hooded fighting men.

Gurney had time to think: By the horns of the Great Mother! Rockets! They dare to use rockets!

Then he was face to face with a hooded figure who crouched low, crysknife at the ready. Two more men stood waiting on the rocks above to left and right. Only the eyes of the fighting man ahead of him were visible to Gurney between hood and veil of a sand-colored burnoose, but the crouch and readiness warned him that here was a trained fighting man. The eyes were the blue-in-blue of the deep-desert Fremen.

Gurney moved one hand toward his own knife, kept his eyes fixed on the other’s knife. If they dared use rockets, they’d have other projectile weapons. This moment argued extreme caution. He could tell by sound alone that at least part of his skycover had been knocked out. There were gruntings, too, the noise of several struggles behind him.

The eyes of the fighting man ahead of Gurney followed the motion of hand toward knife, came back to glare into Gurney’s eyes.

“Leave the knife in its sheath, Gurney Halleck,” the man said.

Gurney hesitated. That voice sounded oddly familiar even through a stillsuit filter.

“You know my name?” he said.

“You’ve no need of a knife with me, Gurney,” the man said. He straightened, slipped his crysknife into its sheath back beneath his robe. “Tell your men to stop their useless resistance.”

The man threw his hood back, swung the filter aside.

The shock of what he saw froze Gurney’s muscles. He thought at first he was looking at a ghost image of Duke Leto Atreides. Full recognition came slowly.

“Paul,” he whispered. Then louder: “Is it truly Paul?”

“Don’t you trust your own eyes?” Paul asked.

“They said you were dead,” Gurney rasped. He took a half-step forward.

“Tell your men to submit,” Paul commanded. He waved toward the lower reaches of the ridge.

Gurney turned, reluctant to take his eyes off Paul. He saw only a few knots of struggle. Hooded desert men seemed to be everywhere around. The factory crawler lay silent with Fremen standing atop it. There were no aircraft overhead.

“Stop the fighting,” Gurney bellowed. He took a deep breath, cupped his hands for a megaphone. “This is Gurney Halleck! Stop the fight!”

Slowly, warily, the struggling figures separated. Eyes turned toward him, questioning.

“These are friends,” Gurney called.

“Fine friends!” someone shouted back. “Half our people murdered.”

“It’s a mistake,” Gurney said. “Don’t add to it.”