The Lenape warriors secured their prisoners without hurting them unnecessarily.  They knew how to take prisoners in times of war.  Of course, when they took native prisoners, they got assimilated into the tribe.  These Englishmen would not.  But damaged people were likely to be more of a burden than a help to the tribe, so they were naturally careful, even with the wounded men, even knowing that they would eventually go back to their English settlements.

Lockhart still held the sonic device.  He stepped up to the riverbank and spoke across the river.  His voice carried like a man speaking into a public address system, so more than well enough.  “Lars.  All settled here.  You can bring your people over.  You need to decide what to do with your prisoners.  Some are wounded.  Unfortunately, Doctor Miller can’t help them.  He was a servant of the Masters—Mister Muller from Hans’ day, so he got shot.”

Lockhart’s wristwatch communicator went off and interrupted his thoughts.  “Should we bring the horses down or stay here?” Lincoln asked.  “Nanette wants to know if there are wounded people that she and Sukki might help.”

“I don’t have my magic,” Nanette interrupted.  “But I can help.”

“I don’t know if we will be permitted to help.  Sometimes, the Kairos says the chips have to fall where they will.  Anyway, come on down, and bring Louis and Commander Takar with you.  I better say something about the commander.  Out.”

Lockhart picked up the sonic device when there was already movement on the far bank.  “One more thing,” he got to say before a scream and death wail went up from the other side of the river.  Something rose out of the mud on the far bank and swallowed a man’s whole leg.  It did not bite off the leg at first.  More like a snake than a worm, the mouth began to grow wider.  The worm wanted to swallow the man, whole.

An energy beam of some kind came from the rise in the path—a good shot.  The worm bit down and began to squirm, flinging mud everywhere.  Another, much stronger beam of power came from Elder Stow’s weapon.  The top half of the worm turned to ash.  The dead worm, the leg inside, fell into the water and began to float downstream on the surface.  The man on the shore also caught a bit of Elder Stow’s weapon, but the burns hardly mattered.  He had already passed out and would be dead in a minute without ever regaining consciousness.

Lars and his people, after some arguing and yelling, fetched the worm out of the water and dragged it up on the riverbank where the travelers and the prisoners waited.  Lockhart met them there and a tall, blonde, young man said, “Just one, I hope.”

“A sanguar,” Lockhart identified the worm.

“How did it get here?” Lars wondered.

“Lars?”  Sukki asked.  The young man nodded and hugged her but kept his eyes on Lockhart.

“Commander Takar from a Kargill prison ship stopped here to make repairs.  He said one escaped.  He said only the one.  He is an Alzarian and should be here shortly.”

“Ahluzarian,” both Sukki and Lars corrected him, and Lockhart continued.

“The commander said this world was marked no-go but also a sanctuary planet.  What do you mean, sanctuary?  When did we get that designation?”

“Since Elizabeth and the formation of the Men in Black, though really it goes back to Catherine of Aragon.  You remember the Galabans from Galabar.  They really were refugees, but they tried to take advantage of that status and plant a colony here.  When you met them, they already had supply ships and more colonists on the way, hoping to plant a second colony.  Catherine—Alice diverted the ships to a new home world and found transport to take the ones off the Earth.  People caught in a war, especially innocent bystanders, are welcome here temporarily, like in Hideko’s day.  There is no fighting allowed on this world, or in the atmosphere, or in orbit.  In fact, there should be no fighting in this solar system.  If the people are discrete, they may come until we find a new world where they can hopefully be safe.”

“You worked this out with the Kargill?” Lockhart asked as Lincoln and Commander Takar walked up.

“Basically,” Lars hedged. “I pretty much told the Kargill this was how it had to be.  He needed to send Mister Smith, the Zalanid, to contact the nearest Men in Black office whenever an alien intrusion was detected, and he had to help the Men in Black deal with it; refugees, friendly visitors, hostiles, or whatever.  The Kargill raised no objections.  The Kargill honestly prefers peace and letting people develop as they will in their own way without interference.  The Reichgo interfere with everyone, which is why I am glad the Kargill has two Genesis planets and the Reichgo have none in their area of space.”

“Lars?” Lincoln asked.

“Moonwalker,” Lars said and finished his thought with Lockhart.  “Jax had to deal with one group in the early nineteen-eighties, just before he retired.  You might not have been privy to that.”  He turned to the Ahluzarian and spoke bluntly.  “You do not belong here, and you have no business being here.  You need to mark in your records that if repairs are needed, you need to go to Mars or one of the moons of Jupiter, or even Earth’s moon, but not Earth.”

“It is much more difficult to make repairs on a planet without some sort of atmosphere,” Commander Takar said.

“It is,” Lars agreed. “So, make sure you don’t need to make repairs around Earth space.  The Kargill police and the other Kargill forces I won’t name don’t belong here.  We have no need for interstellar police and certainly no penal or prison ship should ever come here.  Earth does not need to be overrun with nasty, evil, or dangerous people and creatures. We have enough of our own.”

“I will make a note,” Commander Takar said.

“For all the good it will do,” Lars said without explanation.  Still, he seemed satisfied and turned to Lockhart. “So, where is Katie?”

Lockhart turned away from the river and the others followed.  “She found two vials on Doctor Miller’s person.  I think Elder Stow is analyzing the contents.”

They only waited one minute to hear Elder Stow’s report.  “Really quite remarkable given the age and the available technology.  Bacterial suspension.  Really quite virulent and contagious if you have no immunity.  I imagine one drop in food, soup, even water, especially water would be sufficient to start, and the disease would spread naturally from there.  The viral suspension is even impressive.”

“What are we talking about?” Katie asked before anyone else could ask.

“Ah,” Elder Stow held up the vials.  “The C is for cholera, a particular nasty bacterial disease if, as I said, you have no immunity.  The S is for smallpox.  That is quite well done since as you may know, all pox and pox-like diseases are alien in origin.  Measles, chickenpox, smallpox, and all.  Smallpox is a virus and quite deadly.”

“Hardly needed,” Lars said.  “There are enough natural carriers among the English and French, the Dutch and so on that have come to these shores.  The native population has already been through several episodes of these diseases, and other diseases, and been devastated.”

“I guess the Masters were not satisfied with letting nature take its own course,” Lockhart said.

“Is there a way you can make the diseases inert?” Katie asked.

“This time we can’t just throw it in the river,” Elder Stow said as he nodded.  “That will just spread it like wildfire, but there is a way we can kill these samples.  I will start working on it.”  Elder Stow paused.  “You know, my people have tried again and again to resettle this planet—to remove you sapiens or enslave you in some fashion, but even in our worst, I don’t know anyone who ever suggested biological warfare.  It takes real evil to consider using disease in that way, and despite what you may think, even the worst among the Gott-Druk would not stoop to such evil… Well, there was the Spanish Flu…”

“The Masters don’t appear to have any such compunction,” Lincoln said.

“Makes me wonder what planet the bubonic plague came from,” Sukki said, offhanded.  She still had nightmares from Prudenza’s day.

“Actually,” Lockhart got everyone’s attention.  “The Masters are noted in the Men in Black records as spreading the plague at several key points in history.”

Katie turned to Sukki.  “While you were melting cannons outside Constantinople, we were dumping that doctor’s vials of pneumonic plague in the sea.”

“Oh yes,” Sukki said.  “I had forgotten.”