The compliment was in order.

So what was bothering her?

She played the message back another time. Then, abruptly, she had it.

Luther had given her name correctly. Luther wouldn't have done that. None of them would.

To them she was "cutie" and nothing else. Except "honey," or possibly "monkey." That alone was irrevocable, because it was unconscious.

Luther had not sent that message.

That galvanized her. She almost leaped into the "tack" chamber and grabbed several slabs of hardtack. She gulped down water. Then she took a survival pack, stuffed the hardtack into it, and another package of water, and slung it over her shoulder.

She almost danced over the bodies, heedless of the tacky blood her toefingers encountered. She plunged out of the port and ran across the glade, adjusting her pack. She flung herself into the foliage at the edge of the slope.

She continued on up the mountain, her ears alert for the approaching scoutship. It should take it a while to arrive, since it had to orient on her ship, and its crew might not have been ready for an instant takeoff. But she had to cut the risk as much as possible.

She made it to the ledge where the plasma tube lay, in half the time she had taken before.

The weapon was undisturbed. There was no sign of activity at the defunct battery; evidently it was after all only a minimal complement, with no reserves for the unexpected. That was a break for her.

She hefted the tube in its harness; it was now cool. She carried it back toward the ship, but not along the precise route she had taken. She located an outcropping that overlooked the site of the ship. The ship itself was not visible; they had of course parked it under the cover of overhanging trees at the far edge of the glade. The lengthening shadows covered any other evidence of the landing. But she had a fair notion where it was.

She set up the tube, aiming it down toward the ship. Then she waited.

After about fifteen minutes she saw it coming, flying low and somewhat clumsily. It came in for a landing some distance from her own ship.

As its motion ceased, she reoriented the tube and touched the firing stud. The arriving ship went up in a fireball, and the sound smote her. The range was almost too close for such a weapon!

Now, belatedly, she experienced doubt. Suppose she had misread the situation, and Luther really had used her proper name? Had she just murdered the rest of her mission?

Feverishly she descended, leaving the tube behind again, and her pack of supplies with it.

She was tired, but the route was now familiar; it seemed only a moment before she was there.

The first thing she saw was part of the body of what looked like a monstrous weasel, evidently blown from the other ship.

She had not been mistaken. That was a Khalium!

Obviously there had been an enemy agent on the other ship too. Not only had he stopped the mission, he had contacted the Khalia and turned the ship over to them, together with its invaluable radio. That was why they had been able to answer her coded message. Had she not been tipped by that single failure of sexism, she would by now be captive again, or dead. Instead, she had reversed the ploy, and taken them out.

She was, then, the only survivor of the mission. She would have to pilot the ship herself, and try to do the job the other ship had not done: take out the second enemy battery. Well, she was a qualified pilot, and she knew the approximate location of the battery. She could do it.

Or could she? That battery would not be caught off guard; the destruction of the first one would have alerted it. Any alien vessel approaching it would be vaporized in short order.

She considered a moment. Then she got into her ship, went to the pilot's cubby, and activated the system. She started it moving, and taxied it out into takeoff position. She set the autopilot for the destination, with a two-minute delay before implementation. Then she got out, and ran for the mountain again.

The ship took off without her. In moments it was airborne. It rose to low cruising height and oriented; then it flew directly toward the battery.

Quiti climbed the mountain. She had hardly made progress before she heard the boom of the exploding ship. The battery was alert, without doubt.

With luck, the Khalia would assume that that was the end of her. It would seem that she had lured them into a trap, destroyed the other ship, then set out to finish the job on her own—

exactly as she had considered doing. They might send a crew to clean up the mess in the glade, but they would not set out in pursuit of her, because they thought she was dead. She hoped.

Now she was alone, without a ship, stranded on a foreign planet. What was she to do?

She knew the answer. She had a mission to complete. She had to take out that other battery, before the Fleet passed this region. She had one charge left in the plasma tube.

But the battery was a hundred and fifty kilometers away. She sighed. She would simply have to walk.

First she slept, for night was closing and she knew better than to waste her strength traveling blind. Then she walked. She hauled the plasma tube down the mountain and through the jungle at its base. Away from the glade the vegetation closed in solidly with brambles, spiked yuccas and thorny vines. She had to don her shoes to protect her feet, but then it got worse and she realized that she could not make progress of the kind she had to, through this mess. She had no more than a week to reach that battery and take it out with her final plasma charge; that meant she had to cover at least twenty kilometers a day.

On a flat plain, carrying only her travel supplies, that would be a significant hike. On that plain, carrying half her weight in the mass of the awkward plasma weapon in addition to her supplies, it would be a savage workout. Across this tangled, ragged morass of jungle, it was practically impossible. She was healthy, not superhuman.

An enemy aircraft flew over. She ducked under cover. That was another problem: The closer she got to the battery, the more enemy surveillance there would be, hindering her progress.

She rested, panting. There had to be a better way! She would have to eat ravenously just to maintain her strength, and her supplies were far too limited. She should have brought out all the hardtack, before sending the ship on its doom flight. She was making mistakes, and she couldn't afford them! She would have to forage—and she had not been briefed for that for this planet, as no such trek had been contemplated by the brass.

The brass spent too much time on their fat posteriors, and not enough in the field! Foul-ups and emergencies were always possible; she should have been briefed for every contingency. If she had been in charge—

She shrugged. Such speculation was pointless. They would never let a woman be in charge of anything. She was here, and she had a job to do. How was she to do it?

If she couldn't trek to the battery in time, was there another way to take it out? Yes; all she needed was to establish a line of sight. From the ground, that meant getting close, but if she fired from an elevation, she could do it from here. All she needed was a suitable mountain.

The trouble was, there were too many mountains here! She would have to climb the tallest, so as to see over the lower peaks. She had taken out the first battery from the lower ledge of a mountain close to it, but the farther one was much more of a challenge. She dreaded hauling that heavy tube up the steep slopes! The added weight of her supplies made it that much worse.

But if the vertical distance was small, she could make separate trips for supplies. And if there was a spring or river in the vicinity, she could go frequently to it for drinking water.

And if there were edible fruits, or animals she could laser and cook, she could forage.

There was an advantage in operating in a set location; foraging would be much easier.

She could even make temporary trails, or at least she could memorize the local characteristics of the terrain, so that she would not blunder into anything bad.

There would still be a lot of work, but at least it was feasible. She felt better. Now she could afford to eat and look about.

That afternoon she found her mountain. It was not the tallest in the vicinity, but it was taller than most, and had a fairly nice ridge along the side away from the direction of the battery.

That meant there would be few brambles or tangled masses of foliage to drive through. At the base was a spring; she had found it because of a faint animal trail leading to it. That meant that the water was potable, and that no civilized creature used it. (She was assuming for this purpose that the Khalia and their minions were civilized.) Near it was a tree bearing unfamiliar fruit; the presence of scattered rinds and seeds near it suggested that animals ate the fruit, which meant it was unlikely to be poisonous. Nothing was certain, of course, on an alien planet, but the odds were in her favor. At any rate, it was a gamble she had to take. The fruit was fleshy and juicy; she would eat it here, and save the dry and solid hardtack for the upper reaches, as it was structured for traveling.

Next day she hauled the plasma tube to the base of the mountain, not too close to the spring. There was after all no sense in making her presence obvious. Then she returned to the region the ship had been, because she needed the cord that Henry had used to tie her with. It should come in handy in the difficult upper region of the mountain. Also, it occurred to her that the less evidence of what Henry had tried to do to her, and how she had escaped, the better. She doubted she would ever have occasion to use such a pin again, but others of her sex might.

She knew by the smell when she got close. The rope was there, as was Henry's body and that of the Khalian. Flies were feeding, very like the ones on her home planet, and indeed, like those of any planet; the little winged predators seemed universal, with only their insignificant detail differing. She got the rope first, untangling it and coiling it about her arm and shoulder, then went to inspect the enemy more closely. She had seen mockups of the Khalia in training, but this was the first actual body she had encountered. She was surprised to discover that it did not look like a monster, but more like a slaughtered pet.

Only the hind section was here; the head and forelimbs had been torn off in the explosion.

It was furry, with short legs, like a magnified weasel, and about one small ankle was a metallic bracelet.

Military identification? Or jewelry? Could this have been a female, like herself? Soft like a woman? That bothered her, and she turned away. She felt no grief for the traitor Henry, who had mercilessly killed her companions and tried to rape her, but the concept of the alien female got to her.

She knew better than to bury the bodies, of either species, or even to disturb them. That would only make evidence of her survival, and the lack of such evidence was her greatest protection. So she left them, breathing easier as she got away, and not merely because of the clearing air.

Then she heard something. She ducked under cover and waited.

It was a party of creatures, not wild ones. The enemy was coming to this site!

She drew her laser pistol. If they discovered her, she would have to fight.

They passed close enough to alarm her, but evidently were not aware of her. One Khalium, walking somewhat awkwardly on its short hind legs, and two of what were evidently the natives: man-sized humanoid bipeds with feathery scales. The Khalium was clothed only in its fur, but the natives wore uniforms of some sort. But the only one to carry a weapon was the Khalium; that made the relationship clear enough.

For a moment she was tempted to laser the Khalium. She could so readily kill it from this ambush! But she refrained, partly because she didn't like one-sided slaughter—she had seen too much of that recently!—but mostly because she intended to do nothing that would give away her existence. She would kill if she had to, but not unprovoked.

The party went on into the glade. There was a burst of alien chatter. Evidently they had found what they sought: the remnant of the violence here. They were simply an investigatory party.

Quiti used the opportunity of their distraction to remove herself from the vicinity. The encounter was reassuring, actually; it seemed to confirm that the enemy had no awareness of any human survivors. Her ploy with the scout ship must have been successful.

She brought the rope to her mountain base camp, then ate some more fruit and settled into a tree for the night. That was one thing about this perilous mission. The nights made her feel right at home!

Next day she started the hard work. She hiked up the ridge, carrying her supplies and rope.

She used hands and feet to grasp the projections of rock, and to get her safely across a fissure that had a solid fallen trunk as a natural bridge. She was not merely climbing, she was scouting out the best route for her next trip. When she was uncertain of a particular path, she climbed back down and tried another. What she could do when lightly loaded did not necessarily establish what she could do with the heavy load. How glad she was for the bug repellant in the survival kit, a cloud of flies followed her constantly, now.

When she found a suitable landing that she deemed to be at the reasonable limit of her hauling capacity, she fixed its location in her mind. Then she left her supply pack, and started back down, carrying only her laser pistol. She did not intend to be caught defenseless again.

Back at the bottom, she ate more fruit, drank deeply, and curled up in her tree for the night.

She had to conserve her strength for the next day's effort. She had used three days getting properly set up, she hoped to complete her mission in three more, with a leeway of one. It was always best to have a margin for the unexpected.

In the morning she hefted up the plasma tube in its harness and set out. She had planned well, and made good progress at first. Then the heat of the day and her own exertions caught up with her, draining her strength. She sweated profusely, but had no water, that was in the spring below, and at the camp above. All she could do was rest briefly, cooling a little, then go on.

The tube had been heavy at the start. It grew heavier as she went. It overbalanced her, making her steeper ascents dangerous, she was afraid she would reel and fall and injure herself, ruining everything. Sweat made her hands and feet slide, and her grip weak. She felt like an ant carrying a spaceship up a vertical cliff.

Then a storm came up. At first this was a relief, for it brought down gusts of cool air. Then the wind intensified, as if trying to pluck her from the slope and hurl her down. Then the rain splashed across, making the entire mountain slippery. But she plowed on, knowing she had no alternative.

She reached her camp behind schedule, it was almost dark, and her fatigue had drained her of hunger. She forced herself to eat a little, and to drink a little, and slept. Perhaps an hour later she woke, and ate and drank a little more. She had to restore her body for the next day's effort.

Somewhere in the night she decided to take a gamble. She needed to find the final site on the next day. That meant she could leave the pack here, because she wouldn't need to worry about eating after she fired the plasma tube. Food was just to sustain her for the great hauling effort. She could travel faster without the pack, and would save more strength.

At dawn she woke, ate quickly, and moved her sore body on up the slope, making the next path and carrying her supplies up. Her stiffness eased as she got into it, but another thing developed itching eyes, blurring sight and frequent sneezing. She was allergic to something growing here!

No, it was probably worse. All this hard exercise and complete exposure to the planetary atmosphere was causing her shot to wear off sooner than otherwise. She was losing her adaptation to this environment. It struck first in the breathing system and the eyes, most exposed to it, but it would progress inevitably into her system and do more damage there.

If she rested, that might slow its progress—but she couldn't rest, because she had to complete her mission.

So she gritted her teeth, this time for real, and plowed on. The implacable slope continued, never ending, always draining her diminishing energy—and she hadn't even started carrying the plasma tube yet on this stretch. The very thought of it increased her fatigue, why couldn't they have made it weigh five kilos instead of twenty-five!

She spared her eyes by looking ahead, noting the situation, and climbing through it with her eyes closed. But she couldn't do the same with her breathing. She had less trouble when she breathed exclusively through her mouth but what was she doing to her lungs?

She didn't know, but decided to operate the best way she could for now, and damn the consequence. If she got—when she got the tube in place and completed her mission, then she could relax into terminal asthma. Not now.

Tomorrow was her last scheduled day, to haul up the tube. Today she had to find a suitable site. If she couldn't get the tube there tomorrow, then she would use her reserve day. If that wasn't enough...

The afternoon was progressing, and there was no sign of the top. She was climbing pretty slowly now, conserving her strength, trying to take the very best route. But the mountain loomed monstrously before her, she could not possibly reach the top today!

But maybe she didn't have to. If she circled to the other side, and looked, she could ascertain that minimum elevation required to sight the battery over the mountains between them. That would prevent her from wearing herself out trying to climb higher than she needed. She should have realized that before, evidently her thinking was suffering too.

Yet her thinking had not been all that great before. Why had she stood idiotically frozen while Henry lasered down her companions? If she had only acted properly then!

But further thought absolved her somewhat. She had reacted as any person would have stunned by the suddenness and the awfulness of it. The men thought Henry was joking, had they realized the truth, all three could have gone for their weapons together, and one of them surely would have gotten him. She had been no worse than they. The difference was that they had been immediate targets, because they were competent males, while she had not, because she was an incompetent female. Had Henry respected her ability, he would have whipped his laser around and sliced her throat too. So it was contempt that had saved her—and perhaps her sex appeal. Soft like a woman. A justified epithet, it seemed.

She found an almost level ledge and followed it around What a relief to stop climbing!

She had made progress. The mountain was smaller here, so that she circled it much faster than she would have at the base. Soon she was looking from the other side.

The way to the battery was blocked by an adjacent mountain. Its peak rose high enough to cost her another two days of climbing. That was hopeless.

But this mountain was not only taller, but broader than that one. Maybe she could see around it, if she continued to the side. She went on—and realized that a third mountain was overlapping the second, its slope rising as the slope of the second descended, blocking off the necessary line of sight. Damn! The two might be many kilometers apart, but the effect was solid.

But she kept on. When her compass indicated that the bottom of the effective cleft between the two other mountains was in line with the battery, she resumed her climb. Every few feet she blinked the allergic tears out of her eyes and made another sighting. How much farther did she have to go?

On the third such sighting, she spied a glint. With wild hope she climbed just a few more meters, squinted desperately, and verified it. She had sighted the barrel of the huge laser cannon! How nice of the Khalia to keep it polished! The slanting sunlight highlighted it, otherwise she could have missed it.

Her tiredness receded She set down her laser pistol to mark the exact spot, and started back down. She wanted no extra weight at all, on the morrow! She would barely make it to the tube before dark, but now she could do it. She could take out that battery!

When she slipped and started to fall, and barely caught herself, she realized that she was pushing too hard. Her vision was blurry, and her nose was running so persistently that she had simply stopped wiping it and was letting it drip on the ground. But she had to pay attention to where she was going, and not assume that what she didn't see couldn't hurt her. She had to make sure of every grip, for this was no cakewalk.

She slowed, and darkness did indeed catch her before she reached the tube, but it hardly mattered because her vision was so bad. She pounced on the pack and gulped water and gobbled hardtack and dropped almost instantly into sleep.

All too soon dawn intruded. Quiti consumed most of the rest of her supplies, and slapped on more repellant. This preparation would have to do; she would not be back here unless she completed her mission.

The last day's tube haul had started with a mass half her weight that had seemed to grow to double her weight. This time it started at double. She staggered, and doubt assailed her like the forming swarm of gnats. It was as though each tiny fly was a formulation of doubt: Could she make it? "Yes I can! I will!" she exclaimed, making a small snort of determination—and mucus dribbled from her nose. She would have laughed, had she had the energy, had it been funny.

The harness settled into the accustomed sores on her back and sides, and she plodded on.

She was proceeding on hands and feet, like a pack animal; the angle of the slope facilitated this, and so did the weight and balance of the burden. So did her dripping eyes and nose; the drops fell cleanly to the ground now, instead of down her chin. She was making progress; that was all that mattered.

But her strength was fading. She knew that she wasn't going to make it to the necessary site; the seeming heaviness of the tube was crushing her steadily down.

She would have to do what she had hoped not to do: draw on her last remaining reserves by hypnotizing herself. In her weakened state it wasn't safe; her body might function, but her mind could start going, perhaps hallucinating. But it was that or failure.

She did it, and in a minute slipped into a semitrance. Now the weight of the tube diminished to its proper amount, and she picked up speed. She felt better, but she knew it was illusory.

She dared not squander any of this energy; when it was gone, she would be done for.

She reached the ledge and started the horizontal trek. This should have been easier, but it wasn't; her muscles were reaching the point of absolute fatigue that even the trance could not overcome.

Then she heard voices, and knew that her mind was starting to go. It was as if the protein required for her physical system were being drawn from her brain, depleting its sanity. She listened; there was no way not to.

"So you fell for our little charade, eh, cutie? Too bad for you!" It was the voice of her superior officer, the one who had assigned her to this outfit and this mission. "I never did have much faith in you, sweet thing, but the regs say I had to give you a chance, so I did. I sent you out on what we call a sheep-and-goat mission, wherein we ascertain which is which, if you see what I mean."

The trouble was, the voices would seem increasingly real as her strength diminished, until finally she believed them. Then she would do what they told her to do, and that might be anything. For the sake of her mission, she had to hang on to the single shred of reality that guided her to the completion of her mission.

"So here's this soft li'l thing, all dulcet and rounded, and they made book on how and when she'd catch on. They were all in on it, of course; only one can be proven at a time, for obvious reasons."

She didn't believe the voice yet. That was a good sign.

"So when they land, they go into the act. The designated spy draws his mock laser pistol and makes his move. Will she react in competent military fashion, or will she go to pieces, woman fashion? Alas, she does neither; she merely stares. So he shoots them, and they twitch their chins and open up the catsup vents. Does she act now? She does not. She just stares."

She was rounding the mountain. She still knew reality from illusion, but her certainty was diminishing. The mission—a mere test?

"So he gives her one more chance," the voice continued. "He goes into the Rape Sequence.

This is so phony she has to catch on. A real spy would immediately radio his cohorts, of course..."

Quiti grimaced. She was starting to believe. What was she doing here, hauling the tube up the mountain, when she had failed her examination at the outset?

No! That blood had been real! That attempted rape had been real! She had to believe that; otherwise...

"The radio, cutie," the voice said. "How do you explain that? Why didn't he call?"

She didn't answer. Once she started answering, she would be locked into the phantom reality, unable to extricate herself. That was another trap of a deteriorating mind.

Then she reached the apparent cleft between the other peaks. It was late afternoon; the day had passed in a seeming instant, but she was close, very close. The voice had tried to distract her from reality; it had succeeded to the extent of distracting her from the horrendous struggle of the climb.

Now came the hard part: climbing the last short distance. Her arms and legs were leaden, and the voices were yammering at her. Was it worth it to continue? Why hadn't he radioed?

Obviously the other agent in the other ship had; at least one Khalian had joined him. He should have radioed; that way he would have had the other ship there before he raped her, and—

There it was! He had said he would not see her again, after he turned her in. So he had waited to make his report, so as to give himself time to have his business with her. The Khalia would not have cared one whit for his illicit passion; he had to take it first. And that had cost him his life. Then, when she had blithely radioed, they had realized what had happened, and tried to catch her anyway. The Khalia would have used a translator to speak, not knowing her nickname. So he, too, had lost the gambit.

And now she was there; she saw her laser pistol marking the spot. She eased herself down, so tired despite the hypnosis that she had to do it slowly lest she collapse and not be able to recover. She removed the harness and propped up the tube. The last glinting of the sunlight reflected from the laser cannon in the distance; she knew her target.

"Of course you realize you are stranded," the voice said. "We aren't going to waste a good ship trying to pick you up. Everyone thinks you're dead, anyway."

Maybe she would be, soon. Certainly she lacked the strength to climb back to her pack, halfway down the mountain slope. She had no supplies, no water, and sweat had dehydrated her. She had taken a calculated risk, and she had won: She would complete her mission. She would also lose her life, but she had known that. Better to sacrifice it this way, than by having to blow up her ship and herself with it! She oriented the tube, blinked her eyes madly to clear them for just this moment, and caught the cannon in the cross hairs.

"Let them explain this, spook!" she exclaimed. And pressed the firing stud.

She remained conscious long enough to see the fireball form. It was a direct hit! Then she faded out.

"Suck on this, cutie," the officer said, putting a free-fall drink-tube to her mouth. "Slowly; don't choke on it." Then, after a moment. "Uh-oh, I shouldn't call you that, should I! My apology, Quiti."

"Call me what you want, spook," she muttered. "I'm dying, but I completed my mission. You can't hurt me or it, now."

"She's delirious, sir," another voice said. "But we got her in time; her vitals are good. She's one tough lady."

The restorative fluid was acting on her. She opened her eyes. She was in a ship, on a bunk, and her superior officer was holding the squeeze bottle for her. Therefore she knew it was a terminal fantasy. But she liked it; phantoms weren't all bad.

"I don't expect you to assimilate this right now, Quiti," he said. "But I feel obliged to tell you myself, before I go, because I have some culpability in the matter."

She sucked on the bottle, content to listen to the spook as the strength of the phantom elixir flowed through her. Her dream would have it that she had slept a day or so and recovered somewhat, and that now she was recovering faster. Anything was possible, in illusion.

"It was a setup, but not the way you may have supposed," he continued. "You see, the Khalia were able to convert some of our personnel to work for them. We don't know what inducement they used; that's part of what we wanted to discover. We didn't even know who the agents were. But we had narrowed it down to a few units, and this was one of them. So we put all our suspects on this mission, and—"

Even for a vision, this was getting outrageous. "I was a suspect?" she demanded.

He nodded. "Not too many from your planet in the Fleet; we weren't absolutely sure of your fundamental loyalty, or of the pressures or temptations you might have. Also, the matter of being an attractive young woman in an all-male complement—there are those who might get resentful." He had scored there! She shut up.

"Every one of you was bugged. Even Ivan, the only one on your ship who was in on this.

When the spy revealed himself—or herself—Ivan was to activate the stun box in his pocket and render all of you unconscious until he disarmed and confined the spy. But as it happened—"

"He never had the chance," she finished. "Henry fired too soon. Ivan was holding the plasma pipe when—" She stopped. Now she was believing the vision!

"None of you had a chance," the officer agreed. "On either ship. Except that one of them did wound the spy, there, so that he had to be put away by the Khalia when they arrived; they have no use for spies whose work is finished and who are likely to be a burden."

"Bugged?" she asked, catching up to an earlier reference. "You heard it all?"

"We heard it all—up to your broadcast," he agreed. "The bugs fed into the radio unit, and it was programmed to emit a coded ball at the same time as it was used for any other purpose. So we got your whole story up until that time." He smiled. "Once the second battery blew, we extrapolated the rest, and came for you in a hurry. It was safe after that, you see; they had no battery to hit us with. Had we tried before—" He shook his head.

"You mean—this is real?" she asked, amazed.

"And I'll tell you something else, Quiti," he said. "Off the record, until it's official. You did a man's job, no affront, and restored the viability of the whole plan. You'll be getting a double promotion, and next time there's a mission like this, you'll be in command. They already have a code name for it: 'Soft Like a Woman.' Others won't know exactly what that means, which is part of the point. There's a new respect for your planet spreading through the higher echelons, and for the capacities of women in the service. No one will call you cutie anymore."

She lay back dazedly. "Oh, I think I'll keep it. I don't mind it now."

He stood. "I have other business; got to go. But you know, you are awful cute. I never saw a prettier recovery of a lost mission; it will go down in the textbooks."

"Oh, I thought you meant—"

He winked. "That too. Now get some sleep."

"Soft like a woman," she repeated, liking it. Then she did sleep.