INTRUDER IN PURGATORY

"Here you are, John Lampart, king in your own little kingdom! That's you. Leo Brocat said, 1 will make you a superman,' and yoo jumped at it My father said, 1 will give you a whole planet,' and you jumped at that too. A sword? Whafs the next thing you have to make, a crown?"

She drew a huge breath and hurled words at him like weapons. "You, king of Argent! That's it, isn't it? Live here . . . a whole world to yourself! But then I came, didn't I? I've spoiled it for you, and now you're trying to scare me away!"

John Lampart turned away a moment, came back with the monstrous lizard leg and tossed it on the planet-station's table in front of her. "Now tell me I made that up!"

KING

OF

ARGENT

by

John T. Phillifent

DAW  BOOKS,  INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

COPYRIGHT ©, 1973, BY JOHN T. PHILLIFENT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED COVER BY DAVID B. MATTINGLY

FIRST PRINTING, MARCH 1973

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

MM               mmm^    f%     DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

1 j£\\Af&n\\ U.S. PAT. OFF. MARCA REOISTRADA,

B O &K «•                           BECHO EN WINNIPEG, CANADA

PRINTEDIN U.S.A.

PART ONE

Flight

ONE

On a planet that strained several scientific theories merely by existing, a man sat all alone, waiting for sudden death to creep up on him, and thought about other, far-off things. Creeping death, in the shape of a lizardlike beast resembling a badly designed cross between a crocodile and a giant toad, approached him along a narrow ledge barely wide enough to accommodate its bulk. It came at about seven miles per hour, which was almost as fast as the dim-witted creature could move on its six stumpy legs. Soon, when it rounded a sharp bend and could see him again, it would break into a frenzied speed, about half as fast again, intent on eating him up. He could only wait. The ledge ended abruptly just here in a vertical wall, and he had his back to it All he had by way of defense was a spear of sorts and a clumsy double-edged sword, both of which he had made himself. The thing on his trail was armored from snout to tail-tip and was generously equipped with teeth and claws, but he refused to worry about it until he had to.

Apart from a pair of barefoot sandals, clumsily made from the underbelly of a lesser specimen of the same beast, and a well-worn plastic belt with toggles to hold his small pouches of equipment, he was utterly naked, and he refused to worry about that either. In the thirty days he had been here on this planet he had adapted to the point where he felt natural and comfortable in just his bare skin. Although it was the "cool" of the night just now, he knew the air temperature was around thirty centigrade, the equivalent of a scorching hot summer day on Earth. And that air, he knew, was only by courtesy entitled to the term. It was sixty percent argon, twenty-five

percent oxygen, and the rest was a mixture of water vapor and trace gases, mostly nitrogen. His consciousness of body weight, as he sat with his back to the wall, was normal and comfortable, although he knew, academically, that the surface gravity here was almost half as much again as on Earth. He had adapted to all that, too.

From where he sat, he could see out over a flat mesa, fringed all around with jagged mountain peaks beyoud which were valleys and jungle of sorts, none of which he had been able to explore to any great degree as yet. The mesa itself was a vast rolling openness of silvery, gritty sand. Overhead, his sky was a perpetual tumult of scudding clouds in every shade of blue and purple and red, through which shone the great lamps of the star system, major and minor, making the scene almost as bright as any Earth day. All was completely alien, and he could accept that. He had grown to like it, to appreciate the primitive unspoiled savagery of it What he couldn't accept was that he was no longer human.

He knew it with the rational surface of his mind, knew that the gold-bronzed arm, wrist, and hand that loosely held the spear, and the corded thigh and calf and foot casually drawn up at ease, were not "human" flesh and sinew. He knew, in the* same way, that an ordinary man in his position would be gasping to breathe, laboring against the drag of extra gravity, and due to collapse of heatstroke after only a few hours, especially when this planet's sun was flung up into the sky to drive the temperature into the centigrade seventies. But to know it and to feel it were two different things. He felt normal, himself, no different. John Lamport.

"If I'm not John Lampart," he demanded of the emptiness around, "then who the hell am I? What am I?" There was no distress in the question, just a deep curiosity. Once, it seemed long ago now, he had been a scout, that most lonely of space professions, and had developed die habit of most solitary men, of talking to himself and pondering deep and abstruse questions. In the vast spaces between the stars a man has time, time to think, to read, to get to know himself, and John Lampart thought he knew himself as well as any man. And yet he couldn't "feel" different. He remembered everything that had happened, all the twists and turns that had brought him to this curious position, yet even when he thought back, replaying the details in the theater of his memory, the differences were of degree rather than kind.

Thinking it through once again, he knew that the logical starting point ought to be that moment when he had found this planet in the first place, but it wasn't like that to him. Finding planets, stray hunks of rock, asteroids, anything that might bear enough metal to be worth mining and hauling back to a metal-hungry Earth, that was just routine. Perhaps once in a thousand times one found something worth recording. Then it was merely a matter of striking an orbit and using the battery of instruments the ship carried for that very purpose, their gleanings carefully stored in a cassette marked with coordinates so that the strike could be found again. And then, at the conclusion of a tour, to splash down in the Florida Base of Interstellar Mines and turn in the results, collect his salary to date, and somehow pass the time until his ship could be made ready for another tour. Quiet, introverted, inoffensive John Lampart liked being a scout, being alone, was happy in his quiet way to be a respected and efficient member of that branch of Interstellar Mines.

He didn't get on well with people, not for very long. He knew it and considered himself fortunate to have found a job that paid well and suited him ideally. If he had been asked, at that time, how he contemplated his future, he would probably have declared himself satisfied to go on until retirement age, and then, hopefully, to find himself some solitary occupation on any one of the new and struggling stellar colonies made possible by the "chance" discovery of the distance-canceling Lawlor Drive principle.

So discovering this particular planet wasn't anything that stood out in his mind. What had really upset the even tenor of his existence was the summons from Carlton Colson. He could see the message all over again in his mind now, re-feel the dismay he had felt. He knew of Carlton Colson only in the way a minor employee knows about his remote boss. As far as it was possible to be, Interstellar Mines was a one-man show, owned, managed, and run by Colson himself. The last of the great tycoons, one of the richest men alive. Lampart knew all the stories that circulated, but not the man. Colson was notoriously a recluse, shunning personal publicity. To have a summons directly from the great man was, therefore, a shock in itself.

The nonhuman man shook his head now in wonder at that one-time figure. John Lampart, traveling urgently by air to keep an appointment with destiny, battered by contact with raucous humanity, plagued with inner doubts, "What have I done wrong?", eventually arriving at the forbidding wrought-iron gates of a vast estate in upstate New York, almost to Albany. "I was scared stiff!" he remembered with affectionate contempt. "Scared of losing my job, scared, too, of meeting a living legend, a man of power."

But the thud and grunt, pad and scrape of six clawed feet grew loud enough to warn him that the lizard-thing was just around the corner now, and he abandoned the past, prepared for the immediate future. The spear he now lifted and gripped had not so long ago been the branch of a tree, "branch" and "tree" being the only terms he had to describe something only faintly resembling either. This particular tree grew offshoots that were arrow-straight tubes. Cooking and roasting, in certain ways, leached out all the living fiber and converted the rest to an alloy that was tougher than anything in his extensive records. But that was the whole key to this planet, tentatively named Argent. The crust was so rich in metals and associated ores as to be practically worth its whole weight in gold. That spreading silver-glitter sand, alone, was a fabulous compost of silver and tin, iridium and platinum, vanadium and other trace metals.

By the same theory that argued the unlikeliness of a planet at all in this star system, life couldn't possibly exist and evolve on such a crust. But, not for the first time, the theorists were wrong. Local life was now showing a shovel-like snout around the bend, following that with some ten or twelve feet of barrel-body, knobbled and spiked. Lampart saw its turretlike eyes swivel and come to an agreement. The shovel-snout yawned wide to reveal a cavernous gape lined with teeth that could, and quite often did, chew through rocky bits in search of some hoped-for tenderer morsel. He settled the butt of his spear against the wall at his back and waited. Weight for weight, a hollow tube is several times stronger than a solid rod, as this dim-witted thing was going to discover. It came on, wheezing and snorting, clashing its jaws long before it was within reach.

Timing was important The thing had a trick of swaying its head from side to side with its forward leg movements. He aimed the spear tip, saw it go in, held on to it as teeth clashed on it for a moment, held it steady now as the beast surged forward to its own destruction, heaving itself onto that needle. It had no brain to speak of, only a ganglion knot at the junction of head and body. He strained as hard as he could to steer the lethal spike in that direction. You'd think the thing would have sense enough to back up, but not this one. In all probability its hind end didn't yet know that its front end was mortally wounded. It came on, and he drew back his feet, ready to leap up and over it if necessary, choking and gagging on the stench of its breath, his wrist and arm drenched with the purple of its blood. And now, terrifyingly, it became aware of pain and screeched a deafening swan song, heaving and swaying massively in a vain attempt to ease the burn in its head. He was flat to the wall now, with only inches clear, between him and the dying monster.

The frenzied gyrations had their inevitable effect A stumpy leg slipped from the ledge, then another. The beast fell, massively and unwillingly, taking his spear with it, wrenching it out of his hand, turning over in mid-air before bouncing shudderingly from a lower projection, and yet another before hammering to a stop in the gritty sand. Lampart grabbed his sword, checked his little bags of gear, and set away hurriedly down the ledge to get to that corpse before the scavengers could start on it. He wanted some more of that soft underbelly hide. There had to be some way of tanning it soft, he felt sure. And he wanted a leg, at least, for his pot As he went scrambling and lithely leaping, he could spare a thought for other people, and laugh. If Colson could see him now! Or Leo Brocat. Or, indeed, the three men in that monitor up there in geostationary orbit overhead.

They believed him to be a tough, rugged character who had volunteered to come down to this surface in a specially prepared ship and to stay here for as long as it might take to do a detailed assay of the surface and select those areas, if any, that could profitably be mined with automatic equipment The agreed estimate for that was around two years. They probably believed him to be some kind of crazy man. They for sure believed that he was using specially designed power-assist suiting and protective clothing against the hellish conditions, and even with all that they wouldn't have taken it on for two days, never mind two years 1 Once every five days, routinely before sun-up, they called on the special radio link to ask if he wanted more supplies, more food or water or materials, or anything. Colson had passed the order that he was to be given literally anything he asked for that would make life bearable. Those men probably admired him. They certainly wouldn't have swapped places with him. And Lam-part found that amusing, for he was happier here than anywhere he had ever been before. He had already begun to think of it as "his" planet.

As he sprang down the last few feet to the sand he surprised a score or so of the scavenger things. Their fur was more like fuzz, dark blue, and their ears didn't show. Like everything else he had met so far, they were six-legged, adequately equipped with teeth and claws, and they looked strangely like rats, but as big as small dogs. They scattered back to the rocks and shadows, green eyes like tiny lamps watching him as he started hacking at the fallen lizard to free his spear. Sparks flew from his crude sword blade as it met the horny outer hide, sparks that glowed fugitive green in the air. Green again. Everywhere he had so far been on this planet, which wasn't far, he had seen no green at all except in the feral eyes of beasts, and these sparks. All the other colors were there, every possible shade and combination of red and blue and yellow, but no green. He counted it a flaw. In his solitary wanderings from one strike to the next he had carried the green hills of Earth as a symbol of home in his mind.

But this was his home now, of that he was convinced. Chopping lustily through sinew and meat to shatter the spine and at last get his spear free, he let that notion warm him. Home. All mine. My planet He dried off the spear by chafing it in the gritty sand, then set to work to hack off a front leg, and grinned again as he tried to imagine what "they" would think could they see him now. Would they even recognize in this self-reliant savage the timid John Lampart he had been? Yes, timid. He pinned that word firmly on his mental images. Just dismounting from the auto-cab and coming face to face with those massive wrought-iron gates, old-fashioned symbols of wealth and privacy, had made him quail inwardly. He remembered it well.

Tall, black iron gates.Beyoud them a dignified stand of trees. Past those a snatched glance of extensive lawns and flowerbeds. The inner sourness of indignation that one man could hold so much open space to himself while not so far away equally worthy people were living in boxes on top of each other. Then brief indignation had to yield to nerves as he approached the smaller side gate and the guards. Two of them, conceding to current fashion by wearing cloak and leather kirtle in the Roman style, looking ridiculous and knowing it, but reassured by the belts and pistols they also wore, completely incongruously. He caught an eye, made an uncertain sign.

"What d'you want?" the man who approached made no attempt to be polite. "You don't look like any house-party guest to me!"

"Guest?"Lampart spared a moment's thought for his cheap, dark paper, disposable suit, and understood the doubt "I don't know anything about any party. I have to report to Mr. Colson."

"That will be the day!" the guard was already turning away, but Lampart had retrieved from a pocket a waterproof pouch, to open and show the actual cable, and a rectangle of peculiar blue-glow plastic. The pouch was scout-habit a routine for preserving important matters against any sudden emergency, but the blue-glow card was something quite different. It brought the guard to heel, transformed his arrogance to servility, had him opening the smaller gate and inviting Lampart to come in and wait just a minute "while I buzz the house and check up." He came back from his small lodge with the look of a man who has had the buck passed to him.

"Sorry about this, Mr. Lampart. Any other time I would summon a runabout to take you up to the house, but there's a house party on right now, and all the runabouts are immobilized."

'That damned chariot race!" The other guard spoke from Lampart's left growling his disgust. The first man filled in hurriedly.

"You're going to have to walk it. Straight along this road. It does a dog leg through the trees and then it's straight on up the hill about half a mile. But keep your eye peeled. The kids have a chariot race lined up."

"Real chariots?With horses?"

"You'll seel" the guard predicted gloomily, and within five minutes' walk, on the other side of the row of trees, Lampart did see, and marveled. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to produce six faithful replicas, gilded wood and iron wheels, bars and webbing, of the Roman racing chariot The real thing. The contrast between those works of art and devotion and the untidy gaggle of blur-edged'youngsters who surged around them was so stark as to be shocking. In this giggling, shambling crowd Roman decadence was pathetically displayed as "fun." For the women loose, transparent robes swirled, glitter jewels looped, gem-crusted leather strips made pretense of holding, while the men tried to swagger bare-chested and kilted, in sandals and brass wrist-bands, and there was not one really impressive person among them. Overdone cosmetics, drenching perfume, the distinct stink of hashish, staggering affectations. Lampart felt an instant and overwhelming contempt for the whole pack.

Then, as he tried to sidle an unobtrusive way past the crowd he was compelled to revise one assumption. There was one dominant figure present. In a chariot a little apart from the others, standing, shouting, waving her arms to attract attention, was a tall, amazon-like black-haired girl. Lampart had just turned the phrase in his mind "the only noble animals present were the horses" when her drink-roughened shout caught his ear.

"Shut up, damnit, and listen! I'm going to drive off in a minute. You all know the route. Straight up the hill, bear right then around the house,, around again, then back to here. Give me a count of five, and anybody who catches me can have me!"

There came an immediate howl of derision and mingled phrases of disparagement that made it clear no one was impressed by the prospective reward. She didn't appear to be offended at all. But then came a cry, and then another.

"Give us a chance, Doll! What about a handicap?" She heard. Black brows came down in a furious frown.

Lampaxt watched her in fascination. Unlike the overdressed rest she wore only a strip of gold doth passed between her thighs and looped to dangle from a slim chain belt in front and back. She probably imagined she looked like a "slave" girl, but there was nothing servile in her manner as she scanned the upturned faces in search of a solution. Then her eye, followed by her pointing hand and arm, fastened on Lampart.

"You!" she shouted. "Whoever you are, get up here with me. A passenger. Extra weight. How's that for a handicap?" She threw it at the crowd and got a squeal of agreement Lampart held still, shocked. Her flashing eye came back. "Come on!" she insisted. "I can't wait all day! Shove him along, some of you!" Many willing hands laid hold of him, bustled and pushed him along, boosted him up to stand on the slat floor by her side, heedless of his protests. The dark amazon was even more overpowering at these close quarters, as magnificently bodied as a tigress. She spared him only a glance and a word.

"Hold on tight. Leave the rest to me." There was a brass breast-bar to grip, and barely room to stand beside her. Leathers looped her left wrist, the stumpy handle of a long-lashed whip filled her right hand. She braced herself, gave one last look around, then emitted a bloodcurdling screech and lashed out with the whip. Lampart's wits had caught up by now. He saw the paired horses prancing and fretting, confused by the uproar. He knew that if that whip so much as touched them they would bolt. It didn't come anywhere near, expending its feeble crack somewhere in mid-air, but the hideous screech was enough. He held on for dear life as the horses reared and broke into a clattering gallop up the road. That road was blacktop and perhaps twelve feet wide, but it had been built with a camber to facilitate drainage, and in a matter of yards the iron wheels of the chariot had slid to foul the grassy verge on one side. The bump threw him violently against her and she snarled instantly.

"Keep out of my way, stupid, you'll have us over!"

The accusation was so patently undeserved that he was speechless for the moment it took the chariot to be dragged back into the middle of the path. Then, as it slid inevitably to the other side, he ventured to point out,

"That's not the way to do it) You have to check and hold them!"

"Mind your own bloody business!" she yelled, struggling to recoil the whip for another strike. "I want them to go fast, you fool!"

The wheels struck the verge again, lurching both of them in the opposite direction this time, he against the chariot wall and all her weight bearing on him for a moment. He felt the floor tilt and reacted instantly and powerfully, shoving her violently away as the chariot hung perilously on one wheel. In the next instant the free wheel clashed back to the road and she went headfirst across to the other side, dropping reins and whip as she tried desperately to save herself from going over and out Lampart was just in time to hook his fingers in her slim chain belt and hang on, hauling her back from disaster. Red in the face, she scrambled back to stand, grasping the bar, glaring at him.

She screeched something at him but he missed it, catching sight of the reins just in time to grab them as they curled up over the breast-bar. He hauled, got two hands to them, strained hard, leaning back with all his weight and power, and he might as well have tried to halt an avalanche.

"We've lost them!" he shouted. "We'll just have to let them run off some of their steam!"

"We7" she shrilled. "You tried to shove me out damn you. I ought to beat your brains out!" and she stooped, trying to retrieve the fallen whip. The pair in front were thoroughly spooked by now, their one thought to outrun the crazy clattering thing at their heels. The crest of the hill was in sight The chariot skidded away to the opposite verge again, but by now Lampart was getting a grasp on the pattern. Another foul on the verge at this speed would have them over. There was only one thing to do. As she stood up with the whip he grabbed her in a full hug-hold and hurled both of them backward against the inboard side, straining to counterbalance the impact and sudden tilt. For that moment all her curves were tight in his arms, her face close, her wide, dark eyes hard on his in rage. Then the chariot clattered level again, he released her, and she swayed free and brought the whip handle viciously across his head.

"Don't you lay hands on me, ape I" she snarled, as he saw stars and heard bells for a moment. "You just wait till this is over. Ill have your skin for gloves." Even as she spoke, the runaways crested the hill and bolted down the other side into a sweeping right-hand turn that swayed her against him again, face to face. Lampart was all reaction now, everything else forgotten. A scout has to learn fast and react fast, or he doesn't survive long. And this was a matter of survival. He shoved her violently away, followed to hurl himself on her and bend her backward over the other side, snatching and twisting the whip from her grasp and hurling it away.

"Stupid yourself," he growled. "Do as I say, or I'll beat your pretty face into pulp. Hold . . . still . . . nowl" The chariot went into a screeching, sliding skid around the long bend, one wheel spinning perilously in mid-air. Then it fell level again with a bone-jarring crash as the road swung straight. "Nowl" he took her by the throat, not gently, holding the breast-bar with his free hand. "Which way does the road bend next? Come on!" He shook her angrily. "Which way?" Her hands clawed furiously at his wrist. He squeezed harder, and her dark eyes showed fear for the first time. "Which way, damn you?"

'To the left!" she choked.

"Fair enough. Listen. When we get there we lean over, both of us, to the left. To counterbalance. It's our only chance. Do you understand what I'm saying, or are you completely stupid?"

'Til get you, whoever you arel"

"You should live so long!" He released his hold in contempt and turned to face the breeze, the long, straight road ahead. The reins were long gone, and the horses were into headlong flight now, sheer speed keeping the chariot to the crown of the road. Half his head and the side of his face felt dead. He was vaguely aware of the blur of a long building, windows, a verandah, passing on the left, and green gardens, the glitter of glass houses, on the right He had the curiously detached feeling of not really being present, a dreamlike sensation that had come to him many times before in moments of desperate danger. He didn't even care what the girl at his side was thinking or was likely to do. It didn't matter. At this bulleting speed only one end was possible. They had no chance at all of taking the bend at the end of the road. He could even find time to wonder at himself. He had actually laid violent hands on a member of the upper set, and a female at that!

A green wall of bushes came rapidly closer. The chariot squeaked and bounced and clattered. She stirred, moved close to him, her hand coming alongside his on the breast-bar.

"Who the hell are you, anyway?" she asked, and the bend was on them. He looped her waist, strained himself hard away to the left, bringing her with him, but it was all in vain. He had a blurred memory of the two horses stumbling and scrambling in a mad effort to get around, the chariot slewing wildly, an almighty crash and bump, a blow on his feet that threw him up in the air, and the sudden sparkle and glitter of a pool on the other side of that hedge. Then he was casting free, twisting and turning to right himself, striking the water hard, knocking out all his breath, plunging deep into coldness.

He surfaced in quiet afternoon sunshine, shook water from his face and looked around. The pool was deserted. By the broken hedge a single chariot wheel spun idly. The horses were away. A rapidly receding clatter told him that. But where was the slave girl? Gulping a big breath he went under again, searching the clear water. There— slumped and limp, black hair like weeds, eyes shut—he grabbed her chin and stroked for the surface, then made for the nearest tiled edge. Hauling her out of the water was no simple matter, nor could it be done with any kind of dignity, but he managed it, and rolled her face down so that her head hung over the edge. He had seen the angry bruise on her forehead. He hoped she had been knocked out fast enough to avoid breathing too much water. He stripped out of his paper tunic, which was ruined anyhow by now, and wadded it to make a pad under her diaphragm. It wasn't enough and there was no time to waste. He snapped her chain belt and tore free the clofh-of-gold strip of her "slave" garb, added that, then braced himself astride her to pump out whatever she had swallowed.

Now, for the first time, he had a moment to catch up and wonder. Who, and what, was she? And why, among all the rest, was she such a striking person? The skin under his spread fingers was silky smooth, honey-tanned. She was all woman, and yet there was power, no flabby fat, in her lines. A magnificently made woman, and beautiful with it, if one could subtract her sneer. He could make his judgment impersonally enough. This wasnt his kind of woman, at all. Given the choice, he preferred the truly feminine, dependent, rose-pink and curves kind. Not that it mattered, he thought wryly, maintaining his regular rocking. When does a scout ever get the chance to develop an acquaintance with a decent woman? And Lampart was fastidious. Not for him the easily available, for-hire fleshpots of the space stations and repair ports. A man who cares for and respects his body and its fitness cares equally what he does with it, and Lampart cared for his health and fitness almost to fetish point. A man all alone cannot afford to fall ill or to be weak when a fast and violent reaction can mean the difference between life and death. For that reason alone he was able to appreciate what a wonderful body he had here, between his thighs. But to her—as a woman—he reacted not at all.

She began to stir now, to wrench and cough. He caught a glimpse of movement and looked up to see a fat and staring servant shambling around the tiles toward him. Sandaled feet flapped to a stop by his side. He looked up.

"You know how to do this?"

"Me? No."

Lampart wasn't surprised. In this overmachined age, servants were easy to get. Service was virtually the only opportunity left for the deficient and unskilled. But the quality was uniformly low. Anyoue with any measurable drive and intelligence could find other things to do.

"Gonna be a row about this. Know who she is?"

"No, should I?"

"Thought everybody knew Doll Colson. Where you been, mister?"

Lampart ceased his rocking, straightened up and stood away. She was all right now, anyway, to judge by her choking noises. Doll Colson! Where Carlton Colson made a thing of being unknown, a recluse, his sensation-mad daughter had exactly the opposite drive. Even one so regularly remote from civilized news as Lampart had

heard her name and the tale of her exploits. Nothing, no depravity or scandal, sensation or thrill, was too extreme for her to try at least once, and make headlines doing it He sagged, suddenly aware of weariness and a hammering ache in his head. Now he was really in bad. Whatever the old man wanted to see him about could only be worse confounded once this escapade got to his ears. Her version, at any rate.

TWO

Lampart hacked through the last ligament that held the lizard leg, and hoisted the hunk of meat to impale on his spear so that he could carry it over a shoulder. He had really been scared that time at Colson's, so scared that his one idea had been to run, except that he couldn't, not in just a sodden pair of paper pants and no money to pay fares. That had all been used up in getting there. His next thought, a better one, had been to head indoors and somehow get to old Colson before she did. And so he had left her in the dubious care of the slow-witted servant. He strode out now across the gritty sand and laughed at himself as he had been. A timid, terrified man, awed by wealth and status. But now ... he cast an eye upward to the turbulent sky, to the great lamp of Merope winking through the clouds as bright as any moon, and chuckled. He scanned the broad sweep of the mesa, his own moun-taintop, and approved it. He stared ahead to the distant upright of his ship, standing close in under a great cliff, and thought of it as home. My planet, he thought. Status? Colson might be the richest man alive, but did he own a whole planet?

"King of Argent, me!"Lampart shouted into the desert and laughed again. "Right now, Colson probably believes he owns this place, and me with it, but he doesn't know, never will, not if I can play it right. A whole planet of metal ores, so rich that there aren't enough zeroes after the sign to make it come out right for anybody. That's what he wants. To mine and scar and gut it, and get rich. Not me. I'm going to keep it just as it is. All mine!"

For all his jubilation, his senses were alert. Ahead of him 21

now, only three paces away, was a bright pink blob of jelly lying on the sand. It was football size and motionless, but he gave it respectful berth. In the almost thirty days he had been here he had learned constant vigilance. That thing, so innocent-seeming, was alive in some incredible way, could move by exuding pseudopods and hauling itself along them. It was virtually neat acid and. existed by dissolving and digesting anything and everything in its path. He had brushed one just gently, in his second day, and had been in constant agony for the following three days until the scars mended.

The ship was nearer now. This isolated spike of rough rock he was passing was almost exactly a mile clear of the ship and the cliffs. Another quick glance at Merope told him it wanted something just under an hour to sun-up, and while he could endure the full white-hot glare of Alcyoue if he had to, he preferred to be inside in the shade in the daytime. The ship itself was no beauty, nor did he want it to be. Originally a six-man freighter, it had been replated, reinforced, re-engined, and equipped to serve his every foreseeable need. Food and drink and comfort were more than adequately provided for, and he had a workshop, a laboratory, test benches, and a vast computer store full of information of every possible kind.

"They" probably thought he ventured out in strain and effort to collect his rock samples, and then spent the rest of the time recuperating in the cool and ease. "They" would be shocked if they knew that his hatches stood open at all times to the environment, that he drank the local water, and intended to eat this leg of lizard just as soon as he could get it chopped and into the high-frequency oven. "They" would be astonished if they knew there was life here anyway. He pondered that, striding along. The planet had no business here anyway. The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters of the old astronomers, was a comparatively young star group. There was still dust and gas in the spaces between the stars. It had been a fantastic long shot that had impelled him to search here for planets anyway.

But life, that was something else. That fitted in with a theory all his own, one he would work out in greater detail someday. There was plenty of time. He had all the rest of his life for it He let that thought go and sharpened his attention as he drew close to the ship. Green eyes skulked in the shadows under the tube vents, in and around the gangway foot, blue-black shapes hovered by the landing feet. More of the dog-rats, only these were a larger breed, almost wolf size, and not likely to scuttle at his presence. He trod more lightly, feeling his nerves tingle and brace. Up there, too, perched on the notches and spikes of the cliff edge, were jagged-shouldered flying things, all spear-sharp beak and clattering membrane wings. Lampart showed them his teeth in a welcome as savage as theirs was going to be.

When he was close enough to make it practical he hefted the spear and threw it, meat and all, high up there to the platform heading the gangway. As it thumped into place, several wolflike forms started out, snapping and yelping, and he ran at them, his sword swishing in the air as he clove a path to the gangway foot. The battle was short, and though the odds looked uneven, all the advantage was on his side, for as fast as he could chop a ravening beast into helplessness so its fellow fell on it in ferocious hunger. He won through to the bottom step with only minor tooth-scars on his shins and one arm, leaving the sand strewn with hacked bodies and quarreling gorgers.

"You're learning," he told them, mounting three steps and turning to look back. "There were fifty of you the first time, at least. Now only a dozen or so, and even you aren't all that keen, are you?" He proved the point for himself by making a sham rush and shout down the steps, to see heads come round and bodies back off warily. "Youll learn to stay away. Who knows, I might even tame one or two of you yet"

He went on up and in, collecting the trophy in passing, a touch of his hand breaking the low-voltage field that guarded his door just in case some creature grew the nerve to get that far. The interior was no more glamorous than the outside, but suited him by being strictly functional. Bearing left, he went first to his oven and dumped the lizard leg therein, then on second thought lifted it out again and stuck it under a faucet for a rinse-off. Germs, he thought, and grinned as he put it back in the oven and switched it on. Going on past his cook-nook he entered his workshop, went through to the assay lab, and made a start on his current collection of samples. This was his trade now, and he worked swiftly and methodically, noting down results as they came up. Much to his relief he had a good batch this time. Not too rich.

It would have been the simplest thing in the world for him to have picked up samples for transmitting "up there" that would have made Colson's eyes pop with their richness, but that was the one thing he didn't want to do. For himself he had chosen the tightrope task of gathering genuine samples, each one noted and marked on a reference grid, each one rich in metal ores by any ordinary standards, but just not quite rich enough to satisfy the peculiar requirements of this unique operation. Really poor ore would have made "them" instantly suspicious. They had his own general planetary survey to go by and knew the place was a "gold mine." What they didn't know, and what he was here ostensibly to find out, was where the really rich stuff was. If they ever suspected the truth, that they could send diggers down virtually at random and lift a fortune out of the crust with every scoop, his job, his whole reason for being here, would cease to exist And Lampart didn't want that at all.

The succulent aroma of broiling meat tickled his appetite as he completed the last test, made the last note. He felt pleased. He had enough here to meet his quota when the shuttle came down again, which wasn't for two days yet. Two days all to himself. A chance to explore. He went to prod the meat, now dark and shriveled, to add various liquids and spices from the stores, to set the coffee-maker bubbling. Leaving that for a moment he moved to a vat lined with polypropylene, in which he had several strips of lizard hide soaking. He reached in to feel, and shook his head in disgust. No good at all. He would have to try a different brew. He put his newly won patch of underbelly safely aside in a cool-box and moved on farther to a long, low oven, touching it gingerly until he was satisfied it was cool enough to be opened. This was better. Risking scorched fingers, he drew out a blade from its nest and admired it This was a considerable improvement on his first effort, both in balance and edge, and if his calculations were correct it would slice through any armor this planet could grow.

The coffee-maker pinged for his attention, and he put down his new sword, attended to his meal, relishing it, reviewing in his mind just how far along he was to being able to live without assist from above. If only that damned hide would cure properly! Clothing he could forego, but foot cover he needed for his forays over the rocks. And belting and supports for weapons and equipment. For food he was almost independent. He had found a few roots that boiled up to be edible, and some fruit that was surprisingly palatable. Meat he had. Water he would never be short of. Power was the one remaining thing he had yet to provide. As long as he had the ship and could demand far more fuel and powerpacks than he was using, he had reserves. But Lampart was thorough. It had to be nothing less than total survival on his own, with no help at all. That was the dream that was his alone, known to no one else at all.

But now a change in the air, a lift in temperature, and familiarity told him dawn was near, and he hurried to make ready for it, dumping his platter in the sink and cleaning his knife. Dawn on Argent was a spectacle that had come near to stunning him the first time he had experienced it, and it was something he had never since missed, not once. As he went out through the unused air lock and down the gangway the stirring breeze already stroked his skin, promising the gusts to come. There were no wolf-things now. They knew the time of day as well as he did. He circled the ship clockwise, halting when he was facing a great broken notch in the cliff wall. That was where Alcyoue would appear in a few moments. Already the red and purple cloud masses were boiling, lit from below with vivid glare, laced with jagged lightning discharges. Hot gusts of wind brushed his skin, whooped among the jagged spikes. The glare grew paler, orange-fire, intense yellow, and then the first spearing shaft of white as the star reared up beyoud the crags.

Lampart shut his eyes to the blinding glare, felt the heat of it on his face, waited for what he knew would happen next. His ears brought him a distant mutter and hiss like waves on an angry shore. The hot glare dwindled rapidly. Then the rain came, rain such as he had never before believed possible. Hot water cascaded from the skies in steady sheets, hissing, battering, blotting out all else, filling his nostrils with vapor, nibbling away at the sand where he stood, drenching him instantly and incessantly.

In the space of five gasping breaths he was ankle-deep in swirling wet sand-wash and still it came down, like standing under a waterfall, a hammering wall of precipitation that marched in advance of that flaring white-hot sun every morning. He knew it would last no more than ten minutes or so, yet while it was drowning him it seemed that it would persist forever, and it came as a renewed surprise and relief when, as suddenly as it had started, the fantastic downpour stopped, threw down a last random drop or two, and gave way to a swirling white glow of evaporation. As if in fury, Alcyoue struck its beams at the water, boiling it into instant vapor, sucking every last drop back into the air. The steam clouds swirled and writhed in ghostly shapes and were gone, and he felt the scorch heat of the star on his face in all its power. And he felt renewed, inspired by the elemental simplicity of it all. "New every morning is the light," he thought, and wondered where the line came from.

Squinting through his squeezed fingers he could just bear to look at the star, to marvel at it White-hot, spinning so furiously that it shed thin limbs of plasma either side, it was already several seconds of arc into the purple sky. Lampart turned and went back inboard, to make one last mental check over everything before climbing the central stairway to the cabin deck above. Through the heat of the day he would sleep, trusting to his mental alarm clock to wake him about an hour before sundown. Of the six cabins, he was using only one to live in, the others for storing spare power packs, sealed cartons of cereal and protein powder, spares of cotton bodysuits, lengths of plastic-protected cable, and all the other odds and ends he fancied might come in useful someday. On the inside of his sleeping-cabin door a full-length mirror gave back his image, and he paused to study it curiously, wondering again just who he was, if not John Lampart The likeness was still there.

He saw a man of just under six feet broad-shouldered and lean, well-muscled, and without hair anywhere except on his head and face. That shock of hair and beard had once been black as night but was now a fiery red like fine copper wire. It lay against a smooth skin, all over, that was only faintly different in hue from pure gold. It was an odd combination, not unpleasing. He peered closer now, noting the pearly sheen in the whites of his eyes. That same pearl texture showed in his teeth, in the nails on his fingers. Brocat had told him in advance that these changes would come. They were only details, and apart from them he was still the John Lampart he had always been. But not human. The idea intrigued him into wondering just how one would define human to exclude a creature like himself. It was a vain exercise, for there had never been anyoue quite like him before. Brocat had told him that, too.

Relaxing on his bunk, ready for sleep, he let his memory drift back to the moment he had first met Leo Brocat. And then further back still, only a few minutes more, to the moment when he had fled in panic from Dorothea Colson's painful recovery from drowning. Following the servant's stolid instructions he had shoved through the broken hedge and along until he could find a stairway up to the verandah.

"You're a guest, sir?" One of the house servants materialized at his elbow, staring in disfavor at his half-naked wetness.

"No. This is me." Lampart thrust the magical blue-glow card at the man, and saw his disapproval change magically to cooperation.

"Yes indeed, sir. You're expected. If you'll cross the ballroom and take that stairway there, turn left at the top and continue to the Blue Room."

"Ballroom" rang archaically in his ears. It was certainly not being used for anything so old-fashioned at the moment. The gate guards had called it a house party. They could have said "Roman orgy" and been closer. The costumes, what there was of them, were probably authentic enough, and the debauchery was utterly genuine, but the people were dismal failures physically.

Trying not to let his opinions show in expression or movement, Lampart trod a delicate path around period furniture and copulating couples until he reached the staircase and started climbing. "What a feeble lot!" he thought. The women long-legged and slimmed down to the bone, except for their inflated breasts, the men just as skinny, probably drained by the energy needed to grow such masses of hair and to satisfy the urgencies of their paramours. "Say what you will about the old Roman style," he thought, "but they were at least men!" It made him wonder even more about that girl he had just abandoned. Colson's daughter she was, therefore this was her "set," yet she no more belonged here than a brassy tulip would fit in a cluster of snowdrops. Perhaps, he guessed, she gathered these weeds around her so that she could be seen to dominate, to glow by contrast.

Reaching the top of the staircase he turned left as advised, feeling his pants shredding into pulpy ruin at each further step. Whoever was waiting for him in the Blue Room would take one strong look, and write him right off. He felt sure, now, that he wasn't going to meet Colson. Not here, not in this freak-out It would probably be some empowered lieutenant that would tell him what crime he had committed. His head throbbed. Any minute now that arrogant bitch would be up and functional, spreading the story of his iniquity . . . her. version would surely make it that way.

The Blue Room had to be on the inside of that blue door. It was, a whole muted symphony in shades of blue, where only the woodwork was different was polished plain. Curious contrast struck at Lampart again. The entire house, what he had seen of it had this kind of grace and dignified proportion, and the human element just didn't belong, at all. But now he saw that there was someone already present, a man, seated over there, intent on a video screen.

Closing the door after him, Lampart went closer, recognizing in a moment the entertainment in progress, gaping a little at it Captain Storm and Star Queen, here, in this house? That hokum? As regular as the rising sun, some crazy scientist alien or human, it didn't matter much, came up with some new fiendish device that would destroy or enthrall the greater part of the human race; just as regularly, Captain Storm and his special task force got dragged in to cope with it; inevitably, predictably, they got caught in some hopeless impasse, and then Captain Storm, filled with reluctance, would summon Star Queen to his aid. Lampart had seen possibly a score such episodes. Once he had been silly enough to pack a whole carton of the cassettes on a trip. This was one he had not seen before, but he knew, by the music, that the point was fast approaching when Storm would make bis regular confession.

"This looks like it, men . . . unless Star Queen can help us!"

Lampart shook his head wonderingly. Leaning over backward to be fair, one had to admit that the technical aspects were very well done, and the man who played Storm, a really big man named Alan Arundel, fitted the part like a glove. Big and strong, amiable and competent, he managed to look as if he really knew how to command and fly a ship. But the excruciatingly banal stories . . . surely no adult could really take them in?

Now here came Star Queen, right on cue, and Lampart forgot all his sour disparagement. How much was Linda Lewis, and how much was skilled makeup and camera work he didn't know, nor did he care. He knew only that as she faded in, materializing out of a pearly glow into a radiant flesh-and-blood woman, she was the ultimate embodiment of what he wanted as the ideal woman. The story line had it that she was the last remaining member of an ages-old superwise race that had once ruled our sector of the Galaxy but had long since departed elsewhere. She remained because of her spiritual love for Storm, and none of that mattered a whit to Lampart, although, looking at her, he could almost believe it. That she could make such a travesty believable was entirely due to her own magic. Now, as always, she smiled kindly on Storm, her only "costume" a sheen of light that, by some trick of the camera, seemed to emanate from her flesh. Any other woman in the same spot would have looked naked and sexily suggestive. She managed to create the impression of innocence and great wisdom, both at the same time.

Lampart waited, enjoying her, until the story ran out to its standard successful conclusion, and the man in the chair got up to switch off. And saw that he was not alone.

"Oh!" he said, frozen for a moment in surprise. "I'm sorry. Have you been waiting very long? You must be John Lampart."

"That's all right. I can always watch Linda Lewis anyhow."

"Yes. A fascinating person. One wonders what she is like in reality. But, bless my soul, you're soaking wet, and in distress. Keep still!" The stranger advanced with all the air and confidence of authority, putting out his hand to touch Lampart's head. He was bearlike, broad of shoulder, shorter by some two inches than Lampart with a halo of white hair and amazingly clear blue eyes, and his silky tunic-coat, as it slid back at the loose sleeve, revealed an arm that a wrestler might have envied. His expression modulated into concern as his fingers explored delicately.

"That's a bad bruise, my friend. It needs treatment And you must get out of those wet rags. Please do so at once. I will be back in just a moment. Put this on." The burly stranger paused by a cupboard to draw out a tunic-coat like his own and toss it to Lampart

"Just a minute," Lampart ventured. "Who are you anyway? I'm supposed to be meeting somebody ..."

"You have been met my friend, don't worry. As for who I am, it will come to you perhaps, in a while. Or I will tell you. Does it matter?" The burly man smiled like an angel and moved away to pass through a far door, leaving Lampart to stare at the robe, and wonder. He had never worn anything of such a rich texture before. It felt heavy, luxurious in his hand. He draped it over the chair arm and stood as he struggled to draw off what was left of his pants without casting shreds all over the thick blue carpet That man's face kept nagging at his mind, ringing a bell too faint to tune in on. Somebody he ought to recognize, obviously, but who? He had just completed his peeling when the outer door clicked, swung open, and there she was. Fury surrounded her like an aura, so that he wondered, irrelevantly, why the drops of pool water on her bare skin didn't boil instantly into steam. She was as naked as he was. She must have stormed right through the house like that. As her dark eyes focused on him, drilling holes right through him, he backed apprehensively away.

"You!?" she exclaimed. "You? What are you doing here, in my own home, you dangerous maniac!"

"Me?" he gasped indignantly. "How was any of it my fault? If you don't know how to handle horses ..."

His stammered words seemed to trigger something explosive in her. She stormed at him, swinging her hand and arm like a flail, rocking him with a flat palm to his face that stung like fire, dazing him with the twin of it on the other side. Shocked silly, he raised his arms to hide his face and she punched viciously at his midriff, folding him into gasping distress.

"You dare to backchat me? I'll cripple you, you blasted ape, that I will I" She hit him again, savagely low, and was bracing herself for more when a bull voice bellowed them both into stillness.

"Stop that!" It was the burly white-haired man again, coming now at an urgent trot from the far door in mighty wrath. "Dorotheal Have you gone mad? Stop it! Behave yourself!"

"You don't know what he did, Uncle Leo!"

"Not all, perhaps, but I know this, that he pulled you out of the pool and revived you, just now! For this you beat him?"

Lampart blinking tears of pain away, saw her fury dissolve to confusion.

"I didn't know that How do you know?"

"I have just been told. There will be more to it, of course. There always is. One of these days, you silly child, you'll kill yourself, or someone else. And then it will be no use at all to cry 'Help me, Uncle Leo!* Now, stand still and let me look at you. No, I do not want to hear another word. Stand still!"

Lampart watched the old man examine her as he had done himself only a moment or two before, and the bells began to ring louder now. In excitement the old man had a hint of accent European of some kind. And the name Leo . . . and he was so obviously a medical man. Dr. Leo . . . The memory came, and with it great awe. Dr. Leo Brocat.

"Bruises!"Brocat declared. "Nothing more. You are fortunate. Before this day is done there will be worse. You silly people. Hooligans! Come!" he turned imperiously to call Lampart. "Stand here. I may as well deal with both of you at once." He had brought a professional-looking black bag with him. He clicked it open now and produced an aerosol and started spraying Lampart's head.

"It will sting for a moment only. There is a trolley on the way ... ah, here it is now!" The door clicked open again to admit a blond girl pushing a trolley laden with coffee and other drinkables. For one awkward moment

Lampart was uncomfortably aware of his nakedness, but the girl seemed to take it all as a matter of course, looking to Brocat for instructions. Her own uniform was no more than a length of gauzy white cotton, looped over one shoulder, caught at the opposite hip to leave her breast and arm bare, and ending barely below her hips. Lampart had been aware of such freedoms academically, but the real thing and at such close proximity was quite another thing.

"Leave it, please." Brocat ordered. "You can come for it later. You are a coffee drinker, Lampart?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Very well. I'm finished with you now. Pour three cups, half full. The rest from that Bacardi bottle. And I will give you a tablet, in a moment. You will bring your leg forward, Dorothea, please!"

Lampart watched silently as the old man crouched and sprayed her leg, saw her face twitch as the stuff stung a long raw bruise there. Her eyes met his, and burned with silent meaning. He remembered her awful threat, to have his skin for gloves. By the smolder in her eyes, she hadn't forgotten, either.

"There!" Brocat straightened up. "Now the coffee, and a tablet to take care of the shock. And then you must go, my child. Go mingle with your guests and friends, and try not to do anything too foolish." He sighed as she snatched the tablet from him, gulped it, and strode out of the room as naked as she had come in, slamming the door after.

"Accept her apologies from me, Lampart." He turned and gestured to a chair. "She is a good girl inside. I know. I have known her since she was very small. A good girl. A clever girl, with a really good brain. And, you will agree, a beautiful girl. But spoiled. The deeper psychological insights I leave to those who are expert, but I think her trouble is that she should have been a boy. Still, here we are and we have business to talk over, just a little."

"You're Leo Brocat, aren't you?" Lampart held his coffee cup in both hands and spoke with some awe. "The gene-map man?"

Brocat made a curious gesture of mingled deprecation and pride. "I am known that way. Do not let it bother you unduly. I merely wish to examine you a little. Only a little. Indeed already I have seen most of what I want to see, and I am familiar with your medical records."

Lampart frowned now. "I don't get it. How do you come to be in with this lot? None of my business, of course," he added hurriedly, "but I thought you had retired, given up your researches. Why would Interstellar Mines hire you?"

"Not hire, my friend. Carl Colson and I are old friends. When we were young together I was a lonely rebel, speaking out against current medical ideas and practices. He was almost the only one who believed in me, helped me. Now I am in a position to help him. Tell me, you have been a scout now for how long, ten years?"

"Nearly that I didn't get my final ticket until I was twenty-one, and I'll be thirty in three months, so it's close enough."

"And being alone never worried you at any time7 Not once?"

Lampart shrugged. He had been asked this question, in one way or another, many times, and had never been able to devise a convincing answer. Why did it seem so strange to other people? "No," he said. "I like being on my own. Sure, there are times when I want to talk to somebody, but every time I try it I find I'm not getting across. I don't think the way other people do. I'm always curious about things, about what's happening ground me. The way I see it, most people are forever thinking about themselves!"

"Most of us are egocentric, indeed." Brocat smiled understanding^. "You do not think you are somebody important, then?"

"Who, me? I can't see it I try to stay alive and healthy, certainly, and I try to do a good job, but I don't expect the sun and stars to spin around my head! What goes on outside me is vastly bigger, more interesting, and it will still be there long after I'm gone. Won't it?"

"I'm not debating, my friend." Brocat smiled again. "Merely asking. You are healthy, that much is obvious. And I think that is all I require of you, at this moment."

"You would know," Lampart said humbly, and Brocat nodded.

"Put on the robe, help yourself to more coffee if you wish. I will be back in a few minutes, to take you to Carl."

"You mean I'm really going to see Mr. ColsonT"

"That is why you're here. I will be back soon."

The room seemed empty and overpoweringly huge to Lampart left alone. He was in utter confusion now. He could isolate pieces and understand them, but he couldn't fit them together at all. Miss Colson, for instance, he could see as a high-spirited and spoiled daughter of a fabulously rich man. That went with her imperious ways and unthinking cruelty. But it didn't fit with her obedience to Leo Brocat, her calling him "Uncle Leo" like that Brocat in a paterfamilias kind of role just didn't square with Brocat the crusader.

Lampart sipped the laced coffee and mused over what he knew about this legendary man. At a time when organ transplantation was the "fad" thing in medicine, the young Brocat had spoken out violently against it. However successful, however spectacular, he had stated, it was still folly to try to introduce foreign tissue into any organism. It was the wrong way to approach the problem of repair. That far, he had some measure of support from the fraternity, but when he went on to explain the method he had in mind, his learned colleagues promptly dismissed him as a charlatan and quack. The popular press promptly followed suit and the uncritical public learned that this arrogant young man had nothing less in mind than to map the gene patterns, to experiment, to "tamper" with the DNA code in such a way as to persuade an otherwise healthy body to regrow a limb or an organ that was injured or diseased I

Lampart remembered it well, all the acrimonious arguments to and fro, the epithets, the attacks, all the old bogeys faithfully dragged out for air, the most popular one being the instinctive antipathy toward "experiments on people." But that was all long ago. By sheer bull-headed determination, utter conviction, and a dash of genius, Leo Brocat had survived to see his critics eat their words, to know that his partial gene maps were now used in every major hospital, that his techniques were being used, and improved on, every day. There was a vast amount still to be discovered, and none declared that more firmly than the man himself, but at least the principie was proved. It could be done, if the circumstances were favorable. Lampart realized with a start that he had been thinking of Leo Brocat as "history," dead and gone, whereas the man himself had been here only moments ago, alive and friendly.

"Mel" Lampart muttered. "Mel He spoke to me, treated my bruises, called me friend. Leo Brocat. But how the hell does he fit in with Colson?"

That was the third and least tractable part of the puzzle. The public image of Carlton Colson was that of a mystery man with one single drive, a lust for wealth and the power that went with it Lampart had his own personal reasons for believing that image to be accurate. With a strain he could just imagine Colson spawning a daughter, a virago, a man-eater, but not by any stretch of mind could he yoke Colson with Brocat And yet the fact stared him in the face, completely overshadowing his earlier bewilderment. That came back now with extra force. What in the world had Colson summoned him here for?

The nonhuman Lampart hovered on the billowy edge of sleep, his mental train fading with the burly image of Brocat coming back to get him, to take him along broad passages and into remote regions of the great house. It all faded and became, somehow, a jog-trot and then a headlong flight. Long, dark caverns loomed ahead. His feet pounded, ached, his breath burned in his throat as he fled from someone who pursued. She was after him. She, black-haired and with dazzling white teeth, arms out fingers clawed, her depilated nakedness an obscene loveliness of spectacular curves and voracious appetites. She would swallow him, eat him up, destroy him ... if she caught him. So he fled into darkness, and struggled to cry out in his fear.

And awoke sweating and disturbed, to the familiarity of his cabin. It took a moment for the dream panic to abate, for him to growl at himself in scorn. "Damned nightmares again. That bitch!" He sat up, let his legs dangle, and tried to reason with himself. "What's the problem? All right so she did chase me, try to catch me, to master me, so what? She didn't succeed . . . and she never will, not now. That's all over and done with, man! It's all past Damnit, if she could see you now she wouldn't want to know anyway! You are no longer human, remember?" He tried the argument again, in the shower stall on the cabin deck, and then went down to make himself a meal before setting out on his exploration trip, aware that he hadn't convinced himself. The trouble was that he didn't know, for certain, just what the hook was that held her in his mind. Was it fear?

"Sure I was afraid of her," he told himself as he pottered about the cook-nook making gruel and waiting on coffee. "She's bright. She had the education I never had, and she was in the habit of having her own way. And I was right there to be shot at. So I was scared. Then! But not anymore surely?" He sat, spooned his gruel to cool it a little, tasted it, took up another idea to examine. Sex fantasy? Hardly. He had had those. What healthy and normal solitary male doesn't? But never in nightmare form. Certainly she had tried all she knew to seduce him. That had been painfully obvious. She had the equipment for it, and the outlook. What she couldn't know, possibly couldn't have understood if he had told her, was that the mere suspicion that she was "using" her sexual attractiveness to get something else was enough to stop him cold. It had always been that way with him. So she had been no threat there.

"So why the hell am I so scared of her, in that nightmare?" he wondered. And then dismissed it as something beyoud his power to work out. The gruel was a scientifically prepared and balanced meal, and he was supposed to live on it almost entirely, but true to his own secret scheme he had been cutting down on it and making up the difference in local produce. So far he felt no ill effects, but he was sane enough to know that such things can take a long while to show. He was in no hurry. If Colson was prepared to gamble two years, then so, too, was John Lampart, nonhuman. He rose to dump the bowl in the sink and go for his new sword. It needed a grip, something to wrap the handle. There had to be some way to cure lizard hide, he insisted to himself. But it would do as it was, for now. Other preparations took him only minutes, and Alcyoue was sliding down the distant sky as he strode out and down the gangway and away, circling, heading for that notch in the cliffs, and the gorge he knew lay on the other side.

Timing, again, was important here. For obvious reasons he couldn't risk traveling so far away from ship and home that he couldn't get back by dawn. He had no idea what it would be like to be caught in the morning waterspout down in that jungle there, but he imagined it would be strenuous, to say the least, and he couldn't risk it, not yet. Soon, though, he promised himself, he would be able to expand his range, just as soon as another scheme of his came to the pay-off. He marched now, steadily and economically, sunlight scorching his back and casting long shadows ahead of him. Closer to the deft the sand was finer, almost fluid, and slowed him down considerably, but there was a keen breeze to help keep him fresh. As he toiled up the gentle slope he reviewed what he was after, and what he hoped to find, the background of his thoughts in constant wry amusement at the furore there would be if science ever came to learn of this planet

With the near-accidental discovery of the Lawlor Drive effect, that curious stress field that could find loopholes in Einstein's continuum, that had to be fed with vast investments of energy but repaid almost all of it at the conclusion of the jump, space had been thrown open to man's curiosity. To all those who could find the original investment, anyway. Some of the superstitious magic of vast distances had been dispelled, but other wonders filled the gaps adequately. There were planets, uncountable in their number. There were some, indeed, that were passably livable, for those willing to make the effort do the hard work that goes with any kind of pioneering. And everywhere, so far, it had been found that life, in various forms, had evolved from the same few chemicals that were common to all earthly life. It had come to be an accepted rule that wherever life could possibly occur, there you'd find it But no one would have expected life on a crust like this. And yet, he challenged the idea mentally, why not?

Even on Earth, Lampart drew it from the astonishing store of ragbag information he had picked up in his reading, even on Earth there were plants that had learned how to thrive in metallic soils. He didn't remember all the names, but there was astragalus, for one. It could isolate and tolerate selenium. And a kind of viola that was fond of zinc; and silene cobalticola, so-called because

it had a fondness for cobalt. And not just plants, either. What about those people who could "eat" arsenic? And fish so impregnated with mercury that they were dangerous to eat, but were alive themselves? He had tried to suggest the possibility to Colson, purely as a safety factor.

"Weapons," he had mentioned. "I ought to have some kind of defense, in case there's anything alive down there that could be hostile."

But Colson had squashed that notion inflexibly. "I hire experts, Lampart, when I need them and because they are expert. And I assure you there is not the slightest prospect of animate life, nor yet vegetate life as we conceive it, on that planet. Man, the temperature range alone, to say nothing of the turbulent ionosphere, puts it out of reason."

But that was later, when Colson had revealed himself as a narrow man, short on imagination, impatient with any idea that ran against his personal intentions. A little man, Lampart thought, with all the wisdom of hindsight. A little miserable man, for all his wealth. But it hadn't been like that at first, when Brocat had led him into the presence.

THREE

It was a small room, austere and windowless, paneled in pale wood. Colson sat in the far corner, behind a large uncluttered desk that was flanked by read-out terminals, so that he gave the impression of crouching in a box. An overhead light revealed the scantiness of his hair over a domed head, drew dark shadows to hide his eyes as he looked up from a document he was reading. Lampart went on unsteady feet to face him, aware of a drop in his stomach and sweat in his palms. He heard the door click shut at his back.

"John Lampart." Colson's voice was dust-dry and impersonal. "I knew your father. Lawrence... Larry Lampart and I were . . . shall we say . . . partners, long ago. We were a triad. He, myself, and one other, one Stavros Kyrios. Of course you knew that?"

"I knew." Lampart's voice came out with difficulty, choked with what he fervently hoped would be understood as nervousness. "Dad told me, a bit."

"I understand he is dead now, that he died a comparatively poor man. To offer condolences would be an impertinence at this time, but I do have real regrets, I assure you. He was a good and clever man, expert in his line. But something of an idealist. Are you like him?"

"I don't know what you mean." Lampart struggled with the question. "I learned a lot from him. My qualifications ..."

"I'm aware of those, and your excellent record. You haven't wasted your time. I like to see that. But I need to know more. Perhaps my question wasn't clear. Draw up a chair. Leo, fix us a drink, will you?" Lampart put the plain-seated chair by the corner of Colson's desk, heard

Brocat operating the automatic drink dispenser, watched Colson in fascinated curiosity until the tall glasses had been handed over. The man was lifeless, as remote as an automaton. His scrawny neck, badly suited to the stark collar of his tunic, seemed barely strong enough to hold his head up. His mouth was no more than a gash, parting reluctantly to admit a grudging sip.

"I've said we were a triad. Three young men with vision. An Earth desperately short of metals, the door newly opening to the immensity of space, and that was our opportunity. Your father was to be the technical expert; Kyrios was the shipper, the logistics man. And I was to be the financial brain. And it worked. We prospered. Our gamble paid off. But we were ill-matched. Success," Colson steepled his fingers and peered over them, "is measured in many ways. Kyrios was a corner-cutter. Fast returns now, and no scruples about methods. Long-term solidity and reputation meant little to him. We parted amicably, however, and I understand that he is now the biggest of my competitors ... on the wrong side of the law. Someday his precarious edifice will collapse. Someday the law will get the evidence they seek, and Stavros Kyrios will be finished."

Lampart shivered at the passionless venom in that dry voice. He sipped at his glass, ventured a word. "You cut my father out of the business, too." He hoped it came out as planned, just a comment. Colson shook his head.

"No, no. I bought him out. As I've said, your father was an idealist. For him there were other measures of success than money. He didn't always see eye to eye with my aims. He wanted to help the colonies become self-supporting instead of selling their resources. He thought the quest was more important than the achievement. A romantic, one who would try gloriously, and count the failure worthwhile. For me, failure is just that. Success is all that matters. Intentions are nothing without results. When I hire a man to do a job, I expect him to do it, as specified. So, I ask you again, are you like your father, or not?"

"If you have some kind of job lined up for me," Lampart spoke slowly, carefully, "and I can do it, and I take it on . . . I'll do it. Or there'll be a damn good reason why not. Is that what this is all about?"

"Perhaps. Do you recognize this?" He dipped in a drawer and slid across the desk top a cassette of a shape and type very familiar to Lampart

"It's one of mine. That's my mark. I don't recall offhand which..."

"I wouldn't expect that. Let me have it back, please."

Lampart was puzzled now, watching Colson slot the taped report into one of the read-outs, but as the first reference figures showed on the screen he knew, and leaned back, shook his head. Colson must have had eyes like a hawk. His finger halted the spinning tape instantly. "You have an opinion?"

"On that strike?Certainly." His awe and nervousness abated a little. This was home ground, his own field. "In the first place that's a freak, that planet. When I took a jump into the Pleiades sector all I was hoping for was an asteroid or two, maybe some dust concentration worth dredging."

"But you found this planet, second of four of the star Alcyoue, and you took an orbital survey in the routine manner. I should inform you, at this point, that all scout surveys come directly to me. No one else sees them. I make that a rule, enforced by some highly sophisticated electronics. Those cassettes are not quite as straightforward as they seem. What I'm getting at is that no one except you, myself, and Leo here are aware of this planet ... or its unusual qualities."

"What of it?" Lampart's curiosity returned more strongly than ever. "Sure it's almost solid metal ores. I saw that, right away. But..."

"But what?"

Lampart knew sudden caution. "You mentioned, just now, my qualifications. I'm a mining engineer with planetary experience, and some know-how in lots of other areas. I was going to say you could get experts to tell you . . . but if, as you say, nobody else has seen that report, you'll have to believe me when I tell you . . . that planet can't be worked. It's not on."

"You've given the matter some thought?"

"In my job a man has plenty of time to figure out things like that."

"Very well. Explain to me, now, just why it won't work!"

Lampart the no-longer-human reached the floor of the cut, stood where he could see down into the purple shimmer of the gorge and jungle down there, and grinned at his rememberings. What a silly, pathetic little man he had been, simultaneously cocky and nervous. He was going to explain something to the boss, he was . . . but he couldn't be quite sure that the boss didn't already know, and was he going to look stupid when the rug slipped out from under! After all, Carlton Colson hadn't become the richest man in the world by being simple! But there he was, out on a limb and no way back. He remembered it as clearly as if it had only just happened.

"It's like this," Lampart started. "Look at the atmospheric and temperature and gravity conditions. To work in that, a man would need special gear, support corsets, power-assist suiting, and full atmospheric conditioned back-up. And no man can work usefully in that kind of armor for more than about three or four hours at a time. After which he needs a spell, a good spell too. For a minimum working unit you'd need, say, six power shovels and a roaster-smelter. There's seven men, right there, plus a ganger. Multiply by four to get a shift rota makes twenty-eight. Call it thirty for tolerance. Now you need somewhere for them to relax off-duty, so you need a pressure dome, and somebody to run it. There's two more. You need repair and maintenance, there's six more, at least. Medical back-up. Executives. You're going to wind up with fifty men at a time in a unit. And you are going to have to lift that unit off the surface for real relaxation at least once every four days, so you can treble that figure. You will need a helluva big monitor ship in orbit to make somewhere to rest, to grab the ore, to run the shuttles up and down, to ship to and fro to Earth. With crew, ancillary work, power men, supplies . . . you'll wind up with a work force around a hundred and fifty men, and the same again for support. Three hundred highly skilled men, and every grudging ounce of gear, fuel, food, and water, everything, to be jumped five hundred light-years from Earth! Even with the Lawlor, that takes time. And money. Even if the crust was solid gold . .. which it isn't... I doubt if you could lift enough to make the thing break even! That's the way I figure it."

Lampart halted there, leaving a silence that grew and ached, and then Colson nodded. "Good!" he said. "In fact your figures are a trifle optimistic. But you cant be expected to know how these things ramify. Or to remember a few other points. You appreciate, for instance, the supreme value of secrecy, of prior claim?"

"Say! That's right tool" Lampart gasped as the idea opened up new problems. "You'd have to interview and select, and you couldn't do that without giving something away . . . not all that many men! But you're making my point!"

"Quite so. That method won't work."

"That method? You have another one in mind?"

"What about remote-controlled operations? Telemetry, from a monitor in geostationary orbit?"

"Never in your life!"Lampart was scornful, aimed an arm at the screen to make his point, then withdrew it in sudden apology. "What I mean, if you look again at the planetary data you'll see. That ionosphere is wild! You might get a crude high-powered speech-com wave up and down, maybe, but nothing like the broad-band stuff you'd need for any kind of practical telemetry."

"Good again!" Colson nodded stiffly. "You believe in doing your homework, Lampart. I like that But there is another method, one you hadn't taken into account Listen now." He turned aside to the other screen and busied himself with the buttons for a while, created a schematic in light lines. "This," he said, "represents one man, on the surface, with all the necessary equipment the training, the ability. This is a monitor, geostationary over him, adequately manned. Say three. Crude voice communication link. A set of remote-controlled workhorse shuttles to and fro to ferry supplies and gear down, samples and data back up. The shuttle would be launched into approximate orbit under the ionosphere from the monitor, caught by the man on the surface and landed near him. And that process in reverse, of course. No ... let me finish. The man would remain there in that spot for a period, to be agreed, long enough for him to map, accurately, the local terrain and the location of suitably rich ore-beds. Accurately enough so that robot-controlled, pre-programmed machinery could be subsequently sent down and left to work without supervision.

"Once that area has been mapped, the man, his ship, and the monitor would lift and shift to a new location, and repeat the whole process. And keep on doing that

until an adequate and detailed survey of the surface  "

"Now hold on, hold on!" Lampart couldn't contain himself any longer. "Do you have in mind some kind of superman, like, say Captain Storm? Because that's what it would take. I told you, no man could work down there for more than three or four hours. What you're talking about could take... a year!"

'Two years," Colson corrected. "And a superman. I agree. Four men only. Three men I can trust implicitly, and one special man. Two years in secret, the data won, and perhaps six men to do the rest And precious metal by the everlasting ton, Lampart, think of that!"

"It's great!" Lampart was driven to be ironic. "All nice and smooth . . . only where is your superman?" Again there was a silence that grew, and ached, and became wire-taut. Lampart resisted the silent suggestion until he could stand it no longer. Scrambling to his feet, heart slamming against his ribs, he glared at Colson, then turned to peer at Brocat who had sat silently by all this time.

"Not me!" he shouted. "Don't look at me! I don't want any part of it!"

"Sit down and listen!" Colson's voice took on a rasping power. "We three here in this room are the only ones who know, who ever will know. That planet—I've named it tentatively, Argent—is worth so much in hard cash that I can't begin to guess at a figure. You say you want no part of it. I will assume you meant that rhetorically. I'm offering you a percentage of it One percent of the gross, whatever it is. Think about ft, Lampart. Two years of your life, in a job you can do, backed by all the resources of my organization without stint . . . and you'll be enormously rich for all the rest of your life. I do mean rich. Not like me. After all, I work for my wealth. I can make mistakes, and lose. I have overheads and responsibilities. You'll have none of that You'll have income, a vast income, for life! Think about it"

"What the hell's the good of thinking about it? I'm not going to even try to spend two years on that surface. Two years? I'd be crazy-beat in a week, dead in two. What's there to think about? It can't be done!"

"It can." Brocat spoke now for the first time, his quietly placid voice arresting Lampart's near-hysteria like a dash of cold water. "You know who I am. You know that I would not say this idly. You have spoken of a superman, like Captain Storm in that childish video program. That is fiction. Alan Arundel who plays the part is indeed a big, strong man, but a man just the same. He could not do what Carl is asking, you are quite right there. But I, Leo Brocat, can make you, John Lampart, into such a superman. I guarantee it."

The nonhuman Lampart chuckled now at his recollection of that awful moment. "Oh brother, was I scared that time! For sure, I thought the pair of them were crazy as corkscrews!"

He was through the cut now and scrambling carefully down the rugged bed of the gorge, aware of the gush of hot air from below, and the strange smells that rode on it. There was a body of water down there, right at the bottom. A large lake or a small sea, depending on who was naming it. But that was all of twenty miles distant, much farther than he dared go as yet. Someday soon he would be able to run down there and investigate. There might be fish. If lizards, why not fish? And other things, too. Soon now he came to curious scrubby grass, and struggling bushes, all angular and odd, yet with some attractions. One bush, particularly, he had to admire for its gem-red flowers. The tiny petals were as transparent as glass and almost as brittle. The stems, by some quirk of chemistry, grew in springlike coils, all except the extreme tip, which was straight. If you sat and watched patiently enough you would see a stem twitch, as if releasing some built-up tension, and away would go a sparkling flight of red petals, spinning in the air, each with its own seed tip.

And trees, now, also stark and angular, some with plane leaves in the shape of rhomboids, others with arrowhead tips. Some were branched and crooked like some old man with rheumatics, others soared in straight pillars with a gush of fronds high up. One that he was looking for purposely, started at ground level as a dark blue dome, from which emerged arrow-straight growths to make it look like some enormous pincushion. He stopped to stare at it as he had done several times before.

"Arrows!" he said. "You're my arrow tree, just as soon as I rind a way of roasting a branch to make it springy .. . and some kind of cord. Then I will really go hunting, you'll seel"

On and down, studying his surroundings, learning the various sights and smells, he came to a small side gully that he remembered from previous times, and turned to climb it, bringing himself to a glade where there was another kind of tree, this one in deep scarlet members with curiously regular disklike leaves . . . and fruit. He used bis spear to dislodge one or two sprays of the things, and retired to a fallen trunk to enjoy himself. The fruit, six to a spray, was golden yellow and exactly egg-shaped. Even the husks had an eggshell texture, and cracked to a sharp tap of his sword blade to make him free of the liquid inside.

"One of these days," he promised, not for the first time, 'Til rake in a stock of these eggs and try fermenting the stuff. If it's like wine now, what will it be with a bit of maturing?"

He sipped appreciatively and thought back to Brocat's staggering claim. And his almost superstitious fear of it, at first. But the old man had been quite calm and rational about the whole thing, patiently trying to explain it in simple layman's terms.

"You must realize, my young friend, that research does not have strict pathways. You go looking for one thing, you find others also. Some you can see a use for, some not. Some you talk about, others you keep quiet In a world where scientific knowledge is continually being put to use by imperfect beings in an imperfect society, a scientist cannot evade responsibility for what he sets free. So I have not released everything I know, by any means. You may be thinking 'If the old man can make me into a superman, why has he not already done it, for others?* Eh?" Lampartwasnt thinking anything like that. His mind was cringing away from the nightmare idea of dope and drugs and possible surgery, any attack on his physical integrity, the superb machine that was his body. But Brocat's next words caught his ear, made him suddenly intent and alert

"When I say I can increase your reaction speed by ten to fifteen percent, your physical strength by that much and more, that I can guarantee you immunity to a host of common bacteria and germs, increased life-span ... all that, at least. . . think what this would do to an ordinary man I My friend, the concept of a superman may be a wonderful thing in fiction, but in the everyday world it would not be tolerated for one moment, once it was known. There would be fear, the urge to destroy such a thing. A monster!"

'Ten percent?"Lampart plucked that phrase from the rest. "You can make me ten percent faster and stronger?"

"More than that How much more I do not know, but more."

"How? What would be involved? Would I be ... a monster?"

"Not at all."Brocat's placid certainty wavered by not one iota. "I have done it in my laboratory, to animals. To mice and rats, rabbits and monkeys and pigs. It is really a very simple thing to do, once the trick is learned. Listen to me . . . you may have heard or read of speculations about a life form based on silicon instead of carbon?"

"I've heard, sure. Read a little about it. It won't work. That's the impression I got. Silicon isn't versatile enough, or something."

"Good!" Brocat was impressed. "You are well informed. But now think of this. In my youth I campaigned against organ transplantation because it meant introducing foreign structures into the body, and the body has a very keen sense of its own integrity. Like a society, it will not comfortably tolerate alien beings, outsiders. But the body, again like society, can be infiltrated if one does it the right way. It can be fooled in many ways. The body does not know the difference, for instance, between good carbon and the lethal strontium ninety, a debased currency. Or, for another example, if you take heroin by gradual dosages, your body will not only accept it, it will adapt to it so that you eventually cannot do without it. And you become a drug addict. The body can be fooled, you see, on an atomic and molecular level. If you know how to do it."

"But you're not telling me anything!" Lampart was torn now between his instinctive revulsion and his temptation. To be stronger, faster, live long and free from sickness . . . what man who cares for his bodily health hasn't secretly dreamed of such a miracle? "How's it done?"

"For me," Brocat smiled, "it has meant years of experiment. For you, it is very simple. I know how to persuade the living body to accept . . . not a total substitution of silicon for carbon, but a partial exchange. Protoplasm, on this earth, is all carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen. That design has been successful, has never changed. But I know how to introduce silicon in there, in place of some carbon links in the chain. That is all, but the effect is impressive, like the effect of fibers in reinforcing other materials. Like the difference between soft iron and high-tensile steel. I tell you," he leaned forward now, caught by the wonder of his own ideas, "it makes no visible difference. Slight color changes, no more. But the efficiency effects are striking. And it is a true adaptation, a new design I"

Lampart thought about it, thought aloud as he had so often done in his long hours of solitude. "I would look the same, feel the same, live in the same way, but I would be faster, stronger, healthier.. . just like that?"

"Just like that!"Brocat chuckled. "So simple ... to you!"

"And then I would be ... in fact ... a monster, wouldn't I?"

"Ah, no!"Brocat shifted into seriousness at once. "This is a special case, this one. The methods and techniques I have hinted at, they must remain secret in my head, always. Even the knowledge of them must remain within the knowledge of us three, no one else. I would not have dreamed of even mentioning such an idea, not even to my friend Carl, had not the circumstances been ... as they are. Carl and myself, we talk, we exchange problems and worries that we could not share with anyoue else. I know nothing whatever about money, and he knows exactly that much about the bio-sciences ... so we cannot be tempted to steal from each other. And we are friends. So, when Carl came to me for a talk, and said that he needed one superman, just there ... he was jesting. But I saw a chance, a possibility. Just this once. Down there, alone, on that planet, for that purpose. But the process is reversible, and as soon as the purpose is achieved, the process will be reversed, and you will become an ordinary man again. This I promise. This, in fact, I insist! Such a secret must not become open to the world. You do understand that?"

Lampart only half heard him. Already, in a nebulous form, the great opportunity of his life had begun to glow in his mind. To be rich was one thing, not to be despised. But to be unique, different ... to escape at one stroke from the bubbling, jostling mass of humankind and have a planet, a whole world, all to himself, that fragile notion took his breath away, set his heart to beat in painful irregularity. It was a gamble. So many things could be wrong. The planet itself ... he knew next to nothing about it apart from his own orbital survey. But what a chance! What was the old fool saying, reversible? Not on your life! But he had to make one point absolutely sure.

"This is for me," he muttered, "isn't it? I mean, you're not going to try it on me first, and then convert a whole gang of others?"

"You forget, my young friend, the financial secrecy involved. That is the whole essence, as Carl told you. I am no money wizard, as I have just said, but even I can see that the key to the whole operation will be the data that you will obtain. With that, the wealth of the planet can be won. But not without it. So there will be, there must be, only one superman. Secretly. No one will ever know, apart from the three of us. Believe me, I have discussed this long and hard with Carl. Even the men who will support you, from the monitor, will know nothing except that you are a brave and hardy man. Nothing more. That is essential!"

Now Lampart was hard put to keep the glow out of his eyes. His wild dream was growing with every breath. He needed another drink, and asked for it, pretended he needed time to think. But he was sold, sold in a way the other two would never be able to understand.

"That was it, all right." The new John Lampart topped another wine-egg and sipped the contents gloatingly. "I took a gamble, and it's paid off. It's all mine. My planet!" He drained the fruit, tossed it away, looked around at his weird wild jungle, and laughed. "I won! It was worth it, that thirty horrible days of bone-breaking ache, the vats, the injections ... all that. I thought I was going to die at the time. Maybe I did, who knows? But it was worth it. Old Leo"—he sobered a moment, remembering the wise and kindly old man—"I think maybe he would understand, even if he didn't really know just what he did for me. Ten percent isn't anywhere near it!"

He flexed his golden-skinned arm, watched the muscles leap under the skin, and knew that he was easily the equal of any two strong men, possibly more. His laboratory workshop, back on the ship, had strain gauges of various kinds, and he had tried himself against them. Fifty percent would be more like it He'd had to learn to be careful with the ship's fittings, with things like door handles and switches and tools. He felt a certain regret about Brocat, remembering him as a gentle and kindly man, easy to talk to, full of wisdom. But for the Colsons, father and daughter, he felt nothing but contempt. Both had tried to buy him, own him, use him like a puppet But he would beat the pair of them in the end. He had already beaten her schemes.

He pushed away from his fallen log now and resumed his trek, dropping back into the gorge and making his way steadily down, sensing the increased heat, the changing nature of the strange forest on either side. That there were dangers and menaces here he didn't doubt for one minute, but he was willing to face those. What he wouldn't have cared to face again was her ruthless drive to break him, to eat him up and spit him out just as she had done with all the other men she had ever met.

A week. Once the deeds and covenants had been signed, Colson wasn't interested anymore. He had departed. The orgiastic house party had served his turn, had provided a cover against which no pressman would ever have suspected his presence. But Brocat had insisted on a week of preliminary tests and time in which to make ready his secret laboratory. It was like a scene from an inferior tape drama, but necessary. So Lampart had been forced to spend a dawdling week as guest on the Colson estate. And dark-eyed Dorothea, nursing an enormous grudge, plus frantic curiosity, had done everything she could think of to break him down, to open him up, in that time.

"She might have done it, too," he told the trees and bushes that he passed. "Only that John Lampart was nursing something so big that she didn't have a chance with him. Otherwise . , ." He grinned grimly at memory pictures, at Dorothea in many moods, smiling, charming, challenging, needling, probing into his past, trying him with music and dance, even to blatantly offering him her beautiful body in his solitary bed in a last, humiliating effort. A bit of dialogue came back to him, against the vision of her reclining invitingly on a couch, making him free of her depilated nakedness.

"Mata Hari," he said. "You'll have heard of her, surely?"

"Of course. Don't you think I could have played her part?"

"Maybe. But what I was wondering . . . it's always puzzled me . . . how did it work? I mean, did she say, Tell me what I want to know, and I'll give you a good time I' ... or what? See, once the man has had what he wants, that's it, isn't it? Why should he tell her anything afterwards? So she must have tried to do the deal beforehand, and what man could be so stupid as not to know that she was taking him for a sucker, with that kind of proposition? I mean, suppose he spills what she wants to know. What's to stop her, then, from changing her mind and telling him to go jump? He couldn't hold her to a deal like that." He had put it bluntly, obviously, and she had been furious with him. But there was also the time, the last evening, when she had really come down to gutter level.

The verandah, and moonlight, music whispering somewhere in the dark, and she in a silken drape so sheer as to be no more than a shadow between them.And then her fist unclenching under his nose to show him.

"Do you know what this is, John7"

"Yes." His reaction was swift immobility. "That's an aphrodisiac capsule. For those who need something like that."

'Tve only to press this tip, a puff of pheromones, and you know what will happen, don't you?"

"I know." He was thankful for the darkness that hid the sudden sweat on his face. "I can't stop you using it . . . and I won't be responsible for what my body does afterwards . . . but what will you prove, Dorothea? What good will it do you? You're not stupid. Whatever happens, it won't be me, will it? And that is what you're trying to beat . . . me! And you won't, not in any way.

Because I'm after something so much bigger and better than you could ever offer that you'd never come near it in a million years! So go ahead and push the button, but you won't win a thing. And you know it!"

She was far from stupid. His words got home. She didn't push the button. His last memory of her was a swirling mist of whiteness stalking off savagely in the gloom. He was never to see her again. But it had been a close thing.

"That joker who wrote 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!' had the right idea!" Lampart mused; then his restless eye fell on a tree, off to one side, quite unlike anything he had seen so far. All angular branching ribs, it stood in a clearing like some stripped umbrella. And it had fruit massive objects in brilliant blue, cucumber-shaped. "Something to take back and run tests on," he thought aloud, approaching, ducking under the rim of branches, staring up at the heavier ribs. He tried with his spear, but it was just not long enough, so he laid it carefully aside, swung his sword a time or two for aim, and sent it spinning up there, watching. It struck a branch and bounced away. Down came a clutch of the blue things, thudding on the ground like lead weights. And down, too, came fury in the shape of a massive catlike beast, landing on all six clawed pads, and snarling. Lampart froze for a moment. He had encountered cat-things before but never one this big, or this savage. Bright red teeth, tri-clawed pads, seven feet of blue-black furry body and lashing tail, and his sword was over there, beyoud the thing. He was barehanded.

FOUR

Green eyes burned at him from that writhing mask as the beast readied to spring. Lampart remembered the solid thump of that falling fruit, and launched himself in a desperate dive for it as the cat-thing leaped. They collided in mid-air, he with a sudden fire-bum of agony in his chest, it to land and whirl and spring again. But now he had grabbed the fruit, good heavy handfuls, and, rolling frantically to his feet, he hurled one with all his strength, saw it smash against that ferocious mask. Another, and the cat snarled thunderously as it fell short and pawed at its face, giving him time to scramble again, to his sword, to snatch it and whirl in readiness. His left shoulder and arm were numb, but no time to worry about that.

The thing came on again. He strode to meet it, stepping clumsily aside with the full-bodied effort he put into the slash of his sword arm. The shock of impact ran up from his grip, shook him. The cat-thing screeched deafeningly and revolved again, but now it, too, was clumsy, struggling to balance against one forelimb almost sheared from its body, purple ichor spouting. There was no time to think. Lampart trod in close, swung his sword again like a flail, and again, seeing the purple stuff gush out . . . and then, breathlessly, it was all over. He stepped back, shaking and sickened, trying desperately not to think of what could have happened, how close he had come to death.

Out of his confusion came one insistent thought He had to get back to the ship, and safety. Mustn't forget anything. He looked for the fruit, saw a spray of it then scorned himself. To hell with the fruit! Not nowl The

spear, though, was important. There it was. He shambled to it, stooped to pick it up, and fell flat on his face. Shocked, he tried to get up, and his left arm and shoulder screamed at him. He fought his way to his knees, strained his head down to examine himself, and what he saw there cleared his daze as nothing else could. One savage paw had gouged a triple furrow all the way from his shoulder, across his chest, almost down to his belly, and blood was dribbling out of him. He had no way of stopping it, not here. His mind worked now, assessing and weighing. The sword would go in his belt. The spear he would need, if only as a staff.

"Use only my right arm," he mumbled. "Give the wound a chance to clot. Got to get back to the ship, before I bleed to death. What time is it?" He craned his head back, and fell again, cursed, struggled to his feet, and almost fell again over the dead body of his recent enemy. Something caught his eye, something that glittered and was not bone. He fell to his knees and probed into a gash in the furry hide. His fingers brought out something hard and pointed, something that swam before his unbelieving stare. Spear point? Arrowhead? Something like that. Mumbling to himself, he pouched it and struggled once again to get to his feet. This time, walking with all the conscious care of a drunken man, he started away for the gorge, leaning on his spear, trying to keep the left side of his torso immobile.

"Got to get back," he told himself sternly. "That way. Up there I" He leaned into the slope, staggering and scrambling upward, breathing hard against the slow-fire agony that was now spreading from his shoulder. "Not poison," he argued with his fears. "Been bitten before. Never got poisoned yet. Just shock. Need a drink!"

Clarity came and went in waves. Reality narrowed in to arm's length, to the vital need to keep going, on and up. Phantoms came to taunt him. The nightmare crawled out of his unconscious. She was after him. Dark eyes. Black hair. Arrogant breasts. Lean waist and long, strong legs, shapely to lure the eye to the ultimate offering....

"Bitch!" he mumbled, refusing to look back. "Can't have me. I'm free. Can't get me here. My planet!"

The harpy image faded, became old Leo, in front, pleading with him to be patient Only a few more days and it will all be over, my boy.

"You didn't say it would hurt!" he shouted. "Melting my bones! Burning my guts, damn you! Do something ... stop the pain!"

He came out of a walking dream to find himself flat on his back with the spear across his chest and Merope high up there beyoud the rolling clouds. He struggled to sit up. There was no pain now from his shoulder and chest, just a dead numbness, but he was shocked at the weakness in his body. A moment's stare told him where he was and how much farther he had to go. The thought came, frighteningly, of rain, drenching, cascading dawn rain. It must not catch him here, in this gorge. He fought his way erect again and shambled on, stumbling and staggering, consciously ordering his limp legs to persist, one after the other.

He felt strangely dissociated now, standing aside from the feeble struggles of his wounded body, able to take an impersonal view. This was the price he must always be ready to pay. To be entirely self-dependent. No help could come, ever. Either he made it alone, or he was dead. But it was no new thing. It had been part of his way of life for many years. That aspect of his gamble had troubled him least of all. It wasn't the fear of death, so much as coming so close to a wonderful dream, and losing it by cruel chance. Who would have thought a cat-beast would lair in a tree? He had met others, lesser ones, and they holed up in caves, or in the hollow roots of other trees. This one . . . there must have been something odd about it. Something he couldn't remember now.

Clarity came again. He was in the cut. There was the mesa, ahead. And there was Merope, his timekeeper, driving away over the zenith and heading west. Dawn could be only minutes away. He drove himself into a last straining effort forward, plunged out of the cut and into the powdery scree that streamed down to the mesa floor. In three steps he lost his precarious balance and went rolling and tumbling, helplessly, painfully, down the slope, to fetch up with his mouth full of grit and white-fire agony catching his breath. But there was the ship, wavering and dancing on an unsteady floor. Go oni Walk! Walk!

He dragged himself, dreamlike, across the sand. And a sudden gust of hot air shook him. To his ears came the preliminary drumroll and surf roar of the rain-front. Too latel

Warning drops pattered on his skin, and then the drenching downpour fell on him, battering him down to the instant sludge. He prepared to be drowned, but to his surprise it seemed that new strength soaked into his body with the rain. His fuddled brain grasped at it, screamed at him. Fluid! You've lost blood! You need fluidl Drink, you fool, drink! He rolled over and lay, blind and passive, mouth open, gasping and guzzling as the hot downpour brought him respite. It was like wine. A reprieve! He gulped, wincing at the agony that started all over again with the rough wash of the rain but rejoicing in his renewed strength. He could stand. He did, tilting his head back and accepting the sky bounty greedily.

Then it was all over, once again, and he peered through the vapors intently, ready to dash just as soon as he knew which way. There ... he set off at a shambling trot through sludge that became mud, and then dirt, and dry grit by the time he reached the gangway. But he was home, and safe! It was a painfully tedious job pasting sealant dressings over his wounds, but it got done, somehow, and then there was a bowl of hot soup, laced with sedatives, to take his time over, and meditate on his narrow escape from disaster. Put it down to experience, he thought, but not in the report. Very little went into that report, except the laconic "All well, sampling and testing in progress." A glance at his wall dock and counter reminded him that he still had two clear days before contact with above. He tried his aching arm gingerly. It might be the sensible thing to do to just sleep off those two days and let this body of his have a fair chance to recover. Brocat had built well, better than he knew, but a set of gashes like these took time to knit Lampart shook his head slowly, musingly. That cat-thing would be gone into the voracious maws of scavengers before he could get back to it.

That blue-black hide, he tried to imagine it properly cured and soft as a rug for the deck, perhaps, or a trophy . . . but now who the hell would see it? What did he want with trophies? But the skin might make leather, and he needed leather for belting, for footwear. Trouble was, there was nothing in the computer store on tanning and preserving, and he had to go by memory and guesswork. But he would get one, maybe several, someday. Then, out of a little cavern in his memory, came the recollection of that thing he had found. That arrowhead I

"Delirium!" he scorned himself aloud, reaching into his pouch. His fingers came back with the small slug of metal, and his mind did painful arithmetic as he stared at it, turning it over. Impulsively, he licked it clean and scrubbed it against his thigh. And it had a dull gloss. It was about three inches long, roughly pointed at one end, and with a hole in the other. There was no possible way in which he could doubt that it had been made, probably cast in a mold, by intelligent hands. A child could have seen how it would fit over the end of a straight rod, to make a point. It had been made, deliberately. By a man! Maybe not an upstanding human-type man. Lampart haggled around the word for a moment then snorted it away in sudden impatience. Anything smart enough to make a thing like this was, in his book, a man, no matter what shape he came in. And that altered the whole shape of everything.

This man, whatever, was smart enough and nervy enough to tackle a cat that size, whether driven to it or by choice didn't matter much. The cat had treed to lick its wounds. Lampart strained to remember, but couldn't, what that wound looked like. Old? Recent? It mattered. It could give an indication just how close that man was. Those men. Maybe they already knew about him. Maybe they were out there right now. He shivered, tried to mock himself into careless disregard, and failed. People, here! Hostile, or amiable? How could he know? Everything else he had encountered so far had been instantly and viciously inimical. Why would intelligent creatures be any different? He studied the arrowhead again. He had read, somewhere, that you could tell a lot about the man who had made something by studying the thing made. All right. This was a kind of bronze. It had been cast, and then rubbed smooth. So these men had fire and knew that certain rocks would melt and mix. Here on this planet that wasn't strange at all.

He abandoned the process of deduction as a dead end, and got up to put the enigma on a shelf. Someday, he promised himself, he would find out. But meanwhile he would close hatches. The soup was all gone. He dumped the bowl, drained the dregs of his coffee, and felt suddenly weary. His wounds itched. Despite his experiences hitherto it was quite possible he'd been infected in some way. He thought about that, and took a moment or two to set up an alarm call half an hour before the next monitor contact was due. Just in case, he thought. He felt as if he could sleep for a week, and that wouldn't be a clever thing to do, at all. He made one final check around. The routine report was on his desk, needing only a mark for the days and his scribbled signature. Specimens were all properly bagged and stowed in an airtight canister. His request list! He rummaged for it, studied it. The usual staples, of course. Power packs. Fuel. He was amassing quite a stock of both because he wasn't using what they allowed him. And one last item. He lingered over that. He had spent some careful time working it out so that it would do what he wanted but without anyoue "up there" being able to guess what it was really for.

His eyes were heavy now. He clipped the papers together and set them ready, went away heavily up the ladder to his cabin, and flopped, asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. But not quite completely asleep. At least ... it was a very vivid dream . . . not a black-haired hussy, this time, but dancing little green men, mocking him, chasing him with spears, peering at him from behind trees and rocks, prodding him, never letting him be still, no matter how tired he became.

He awoke in a drench of sweat, itching all over his arm and chest, sandpaper dry in his throat, and heard the shrill squeal of the alarm he had set up. Stiff all over, he sat up, levered himself erect, and toiled downstairs to cut the alarm. But, apart from some creakiness in his arm, he felt fine. Knuckling his eyes, he tripped the coffee-maker and yawned. Two whole days! His belly felt empty, but as he stretched he knew his arm was whole. He peeled off the sealing bands and felt it, explored the pucker of knitted flesh, some tenderness still, but nothing else.

"Indestructible, me!" he chuckled. 'Tough as old boot leather. Leo, you certainly did a good job!"

Just before the appointed time, refilled and fresh, he

John T. Phillifent

59

toiled up the ladder again, past the cabin deck this time and on up into the radio shack. They would be on time, the radio voices, they always were. He wondered about them. He knew nothing at all about them except that they were three and that they spoke grudgingly, impersonally, only when they had to. He imagined old Colson had warned them not to talk unduly. Certainly he had no desire to chat with them. Careless talk might reveal things he didn't want known.

Prompt to time the speaker equipment gave a squeal and click and he flipped the link switch. "Ground to monitor. Receiving."

"Monitor.Day thirty. Check. How are you?"

"Day thirty, copy. I'm fine. Nothing to report." That had come to mean nothing unusual, and they both knew it

"Expect the shuttle at routine time, one hour prior to sunset, check."

"Check. Samples and notes will be ready, also request list Have you filled my last orders?" Everything had to be said slowly and deliberately to be understandable through the roar of interference.

"Requests taken care of and loading. Your attention, one item."

"Go ahead monitor, one item." Lampart frowned. What was this?

"Extra care advised when landing. Repeat, extra care. There will be one passenger aboard. Repeat, one passenger. Check."

"Check and copy, one passenger." Lampart repeated it automatically, before his mind had properly soaked it in. A passenger? What the hell . . . ? he started to shout, but the dials flipped back to zero to tell him the link was broken. A passenger? He glared at the mute equipment in astonishment that gradually gave way to rage. And fear.

PART TWO

Pursuit

FIVE

A passenger! That could mean several things. Lampart ground them to and fro in the teeth of his rage, hating every one of them. He ran down to his main deck, and out into the scorching sunshine, and stared vainly up there, cursing under his breath. A spy, that was for surel The total unexpectedness of it all temporarily robbed him of reason. He glared up at the wild tumult of red and purple and shouted,

"You can't do that! You can't send anybody else down here, only me. Me! Nobody else! This is my planet!"

Then, gradually, some measure of sanity came back, and he went inboard again, simmering. A passenger! A spy. A snooper. Betrayal! How could it be anything else? And who could it be? Old Man Colson? Not likely. What would be the point? He was no mining engineer. The hard reality of the job in the field wouldn't mean a damned thing to him. Besides, he was too self-important to take such risks. Leo? Just as unlikely. Why would he make such a trip? What would it prove? Damn, if he wanted a report of any kind, he could have it by mail, surely? No, not Leo. So there it was, on the line. Whoever else came down, the secret was blown and all Colson's words were empty ashes. Damn him! Lampart struck his steel-frame table with an angry fist, and it buckled, shocking him. He stared at it, then went down on a knee and braced himself, hammered it a time or two from below to put it straight again. Then he sat again, stared at his fists.

So somebody was coming down, coming to see what was going on. That much was too obvious to be missed. Colson wasn't satisfied. That, at least, made a kind of

sense. You didn't get to be rich like Colson without checking all the angles. And he would be an expert of some kind. That followed, all the way. He wouldn't ship somebody all the way out here and down to the surface unless that somebody was worth all the cost and trouble. So, an expert. A mineralogist, most likely. And that meant finish to Lampart's dream. Not a shadow of doubt about that. Anybody with the right kind of eyes and training would need to take just one good look ... at that sand out there, for just one instance ... or any random rock sample . . . and the whole charade would be blown. He would report back' something like "Send down the machinery anywhere, it doesn't matter. The whole blasted crust is rich, rich!"

Lampart breathed hard, forced himself to be calm, to make a pot of coffee and start again from the top. The message was "Extra care when landing; there will be a passenger." Extra care. So, whoever was coming down was not a qualified pilot. Lampart latched onto that thought, and it grew swiftly into a lethal possibility, something to keep in reserve as a last resort. Now, assume the snoop got down safely, then what? Would it be possible to hoodwink him? Lampart considered that grimly. He would be an ordinary human, heavily handicapped by protective suiting and assist mechanisms, and even then capable of exertion for only a few hours. He wouldn't be exactly keen to dash out and start sampling on his own hook. So there was just a bare possibility he might be constrained to stay inside the ship. That was worth thinking about. Lampart thought about it

All unwanted evidence would have to be removed, hidden away. All signs of weapons, all native growths, fruit, specimens of all kinds, the hoard of lizard meat now in cold storage. There must be nothing, nothing at all that the intruder might notice as odd, and return to talk about The spare cabins, he thought He won't want to see them. Room for just about everything up there. And there had to be proper samples for him to see, and run through the assay rig. Charts, grids, all the routine stuff, that could be fixed.

Lampart looked at his clock. He had several hours to prepare. And, if all else failed, if the blasted spy saw anything that shouldn't be seen, well then, that shuttle would have an accident on the way back up, and that would be that Lampart clenched his fist around the chrome-steel mug he used for his coffee and grinned savagely as it creaked and buckled into a distorted ruin. That would get rid of the snoop, positively. And then? Looking ahead wasn't easy. If Colson wasn't just taking care, if he was really suspicious for any reason, then the loss of his emissary would only confirm his suspicions. Which would be bad. But it would buy time. Time to up ship and away. To hide. A whole planet takes some searching. And Lampart was equipped, in his own unique way, to hide so they would never find him. At a pinch, and considerably earlier than he had counted on, he would even be able to abandon the ship and go native.

"My world!" he growled. "They'll never take me back, just let them try, that's all!"

And so he got busy, prowling the ship, racking his brains, going over everything time and again, removing everything suspicious, fixing everything he could think of so that the visitor would find nothing amiss. And all the time the question kept eating into his mind like acid. Why? What was the fool thinking of, sending a spy this way? Every time you divide a secret so you multiply the chances of it being lost. What had gone wrong? And minute by remorseless minute the time came nearer for the signal to come from above. No voice, this time, just the routine alert on the telemetry board. He was there and. waiting for it when it came, right up in the main control dome this time, under the transpex roof, where polarizing filters dimmed Alcyoue's stark glare to a bearable brightness. It was time. He sat tensely, waiting, reviewing everything. And there it was, the single red winker that said the shuttle was ready to launch.

He flipped the "accept" switch to tell them he was ready, and that was it for half an hour. In his mind he could follow it; the ungainly bulk of the shuttle ejecting away from a dark bay in the monitor's hull, dropping away, juggling in response to trained fingers in the monitor, down into an elliptical path, then corrected as accurately as possible before it plunged into the interference storm of the ionosphere and out of their ken altogether. From that point it was up to Lampart alone. It was for him to find it catch it on his radar, predict its path, and take control. If he could do it, if he was fast enough, he would catch it on the first pass. If not, he would have to wait until it had made one complete orbit, and catch it the second time around. It was possible to let it run a third time, but not advisable. The limits of accuracy would be strained. He might not get it at all. He thought about that, deliberately. He hadn't lost a shuttle yet, but there always had to be a first time. He thought about the helpless passenger inside, and found it hard to be moved.

"I'm not human, remember?" he reminded his abstract conscience. "Why should I worry? Let Colson carry the guilt!" But he shook his head, after a while. No, better to get the man down and see what it was he was after. What was Colson up to? That would be something to know, and the visitor would be under stress, laboring against heavy gravity, hot ... at a disadvantage. He could be made to talk. Lampart spun schemes, and watched. And, right on cue, there came the first fugitive blip against the grass on the screen.

It was a good one, high and central. He spun his dish antenna to get it in focus, triggering circuits to compute and predict the line of flight, just as he had done often before. Routine, this part of it, something he could do without thinking, while his mind strained to reach out and see the man in the straps. What would he be like? Who? What was he going to look for? Down came the trace, steadily center, hardening out from the ragged background, and he could switch to telemetry now, snatching a glance at his meters, seeing them shiver and lift.

"Got to be gentle," he told himself, touching a firing stud. "We don't want our delicate little human to get all bruised and bumped, now do we?" A few minutes more of gentle nudging and he could get the dropping speck on his visual scanner, just a tiny point of light up there, dodging in and out of the cloud wrack. "Straight as a die!" he murmured, eyes on the move between the picture and the plot, nursing the shuttle down along a line of light. "Fly, little bird, fly down to your nest, only the best for our honored guest. May you never know that I could do that . . . with one finger, and you'd never know what hit you!"

Ten more minutes and he could abandon the plot altogether, flying by feel, bringing the little ship in over the mountains and down, backed up on a tail of bright blue flame, down steadily now, light as a feather, to squat over that fire tail and squash it into extinction as it sat in the mesa sand, only half a mile away. Flexing his fingers, he brushed the panel into neutral, canceled, hit the switch that told them, up there, that all was safely gathered in, waited long enough to see the answering signal... and that was that.

"End of part one," he said. "Now comes the hard bit," and rose to trot down the circular ladder and prepare to go out His suit was all in readiness by the hatch. It looked conventional enough. Only a close inspection by someone who knew what to look for would reveal that it had been stripped of all its power-assist clumsiness. He buckled into it, grabbed up two canisters of stuff to go back up above, and went out through the airlock in the approved manner. Before he had gone three steps across the sand he was resenting the chafe and drag of the suit, the loss of his freedom. By the time he reached the motionless shuttle he was simmering.

"You'd better not stay long, mister," he growled. "I've had all I want of this charade already." The shuttle hatch was around the far side, and as he circled he saw that it was already open and the gangway down, a drab-suited figure slowly negotiating the steps. He chinned the intercom switch in his helmet winced at the rattle of interference, and said,

"Hello there. My ship is right over there, around and straight ahead. You go on. I have chores to attend to."

He saw an arm go up heavily in greeting and a voice over the roar said, "Thank you. I think I can manage. Will you be long?"

"About ten minutes. Have to unload and load up, get ready to send it back. Take your time."

The suit plodded away, laboring over the sand. Lam-part went inside to open the big hatch and toss out his stores. Two, three, four bladders of fuel, two canisters of stores and four power packs, nothing else. He stowed his own canisters securely, closed the cargo hatch, went out again, cycling the man hatch after him and jumping free as the telescopic ladder pulled itself back in. He spent a further few minutes dragging the fuel bladders and stores clear, then looped a cable he had brought for that purpose around two of the bladders and set away to haul them back to his ship. He could easily have taken one under each arm and walked with them, as he had done before, but that would have been out of character now.

"Damned charade!" he muttered, tramping over the sand. "He had better get fed up with this comedy good and quick, and go back home!"

He left the bladders by the gangway foot and went on up, fuming as he had to wait for the outer air lock to cycle, and then for the inner one. Once inside he shoved impatiently at his helmet, and gasped as the chill air hit his face. Catching himself in mid-step he went back to the thermostat and thermometer by the in-hatch. It had been reset for twenty centigrade and the mercury column was almost down to that already. It was the final prick to his already distended patience. "Oh, no, you don't!" he thought, and gave the dial a twist to set it back to sixty. 'This is my ship, mister, and I know how I want it. You didn't come here to be comfortable, that's for certain!" Dumping his helmet on the shelf by the hatch he marched on into his living space. The stranger was standing by the cook-nook, fiddling with the coffee-maker, helmet off and head protruding from the webbing neck of his suit. Lam-part boiled some more at this liberty-taking.

"Just a minute!" he said harshly. "Ill do that ..." and then he forgot everything he was going to say as the stranger turned to grin at him, even white teeth dazzling against glowing skin. Time seemed to stop, to hang and flow thick like honey, as a thousand unbelievable questions came and went in his mind, and all his preconceived angers crumbled into ruin. He remembered his mouth, closed it, drew an unsteady breath and opened it again to croak, "You! You? Here?"

"Little me!" she said pertly. "Who did you expect? Santa Claus?"

"You!" He couldn't think of anything else to say. His legs felt suddenly like rubber so that he had to sit, at his own steel-topped table, and goggle at her. His head was full of glue. Nothing made any sense, at all. It just couldn't be true, and yet, there she was. He shook his head, vainly trying to clear it, groped for words but nothing came except banality.

"What are you doing here?" he mumbled, with the accent on the final word. "Here?" He repeated it, foolishly.

Her grin hardened into scorn. "Did you really think you could get away from me, John Lampart? Did you? From me?"

"I don't understand!" He squeezed his eyes tight shut, opened them, shook his head violently, and she was still there. "I just do not understand. This is some crazy dream! A nightmare! It can't be true!"

"It's true," she said scornfully. "You'll get to it, in a while. No man puts me down, John Lampart! No man ever has yet, nor ever will. Not you, nor any man, see7 I'm here, and how do you like that?"

It was her tone rather than her words that finally burst through the wall of unbelief in his mind. Anger and arrogance. Outraged pride. Conceit! It began to dawn on him, no matter how he tried not to believe. He found words, shrill and ridiculous, in his own mouth.

"Do you mean to stand there and tell me that you came, all this way, from Earth all the way to here just. . . just because . . . because you thought I'd put your nose out of joint? Just to beat me down? Is that all? Are you completely out of your mind?"

"Thought you'd finally beaten me, didn't you? You thought you had it all to yourself, here. The big, strong, tough man, who thought he could beat met You could mock me, John Lampart. Snigger to yourself because you had a big secret that I couldn't know about. Run away and hide. Be a big man. Something to brag about. Defy me! You thought, didn't you? But you were wrong! Wrong!" Her words tumbled out, her face flushed with anger, little beads of sweat erupting on her brow and lip, her dark eyes blinking in rapid rage. As she stooped stiffly over him she seemed armored, her head emerging from the heavy webbing, and yet defenseless at the same time, cowering inside that suit. He had a sudden rush of caution, or disbelief, the need to buy time while he could think about it

"Sit down," he said. 'Take the load off. Til fix that coffee. I have to get something straight if nothing else." He walked around her to the machine, pushed buttons. "You're staying? I mean, more than an hour or so? I have to know. That shuttle has to go back up."

"I'm here, and I'll stay as long as I think fit." She snapped it at him over her shoulder. "You'd better accept it. Tit for tat, John. You came and stayed in my house without asking mel" He decided not to make the point that it was also her father's house. From the back of his mind came the reminder of his original desperate scheme, that the snooper could come down and do whatever he had to do, but he need never get back to talk about it. That the snooper was Dorothea Colson might complicate matters a bit was only a minor thing. He still had the master card, so why worry?

"Here!" He put the mug on the table in front of her. "Drink up. Make yourself at home, what there is of it. Not gaudy, but I wasn't in any mind to entertain anybody. I have to go and throw that shuttle back."

"I'll come with you. I want to see how it's done, everything you do." She stood, creakingly, and suddenly complained, "It's hot in here!"

"Take off your suit," he advised. "That's for outside." Malice prompted him to set down his cup, stalk past her to the rack by the wall, and slap the buckles that held his own suit. In a moment he was as skin-naked as he had been before, hooking the limp suit on its hanger and turning defiantly to watch her reaction. She was just extracting her feet, her white cotton bodysuit clinging to her shape in dark, sweaty patches.

"Oh!" She was momentarily embarrassed by his nakedness. "That's a bit extreme, isn't it? Or is it for my benefit?"

"This is how I live. Take it or leave it. I didn't ask you here." He led the way up the rounding steel steps, thinking furiously, tasting his suspicions. She hadn't come all this way just out of pique, that was for sure. It was a good act, but he didn't believe it. There had to be more to it than that. But why not let her think he did believe it? Let her talk herself into disclosing the real reason, sooner or later, why not?

"Cabin deck," he said, as they passed it, "Radio shack, and this is the main control. That's the telemetry board." He settled at it, livened it, sent a warning signal up to the monitor, got their acceptance, and set to work to take the shuttle up and away, explaining briefly what he was doing, as he did it. She interrupted only at one point, when she took the first mouthful of the coffee she had carried with her.

"This is foul stuff! There's something wrong with your water!"

"Rain water, that is. You get used to it after a while. Here we go kicking into high orbit, like this ..."

And then it was done and all he had to do was wait for the "safely arrived" winker from the monitor. He swiveled his chair to stare at her. She was slumped in a chair and her suit was black-wet now, sweat gleaming on her face. He had time to notice other things, details that had escaped him in the first few furious minutes. Her black hair had been cropped to pageboy brevity, and was ginger-red at the roots. Her fingernails had a pearly luster. As she sat, she was sagging wearily, but her shape wasn't, by any means. And she had walked up that staircase after him. It all added up to just one thing, and that addition made her story of pique and frustration utterly incredible, for him.

"It's hot!" she said again, aware of his stare and her saturated suit "Do you have a local thermometer?" She looked about saw it for herself, and heaved up to go and read it And whirl furiously on him. "Sixty! You . . . you turned it up, didn't you? What are you trying to prove, that you can stand it when I can't?"

"You can," he retorted. "You walked up the stairs without a suit. You're standing right now without assist All that sweat is mostly your imagination anyway. This is outside temperature. Normal, for here. And you can stand it, if I can. You've been through Leo Brocat's vats, haven't you? Converted. Like me!"

Defiant scorn came back to curl her lip. "I told you, didn't I? You can't put me down. What you can do, I can do."

"But why?" he demanded. "And how? I just don't get it What's the point of it all? What are you trying to prove?"

"The how was easy." She curled her lip more, took another sip at her coffee, made a face and glared at him. "Rain water? It rains here?"

"In its own way, yes. You were going to tell me how ... ?"

"Well, when you suddenly departed like a thief in the night, along with Uncle Leo, it was obvious that you two had gone off somewhere together, and I tried pestering my father to tell me where, and what. But he's not easy to twist. He's always so busy anyway, and I have never known anything about his business, except that he does a lot of it, and is rich. But then, eventually, Uncle Leo came back. And he is a different proposition altogether. I know how to twist him. So I did, enough to get him to tell me a little. And I used that to put the arm on my father. You should know, John." She gave him her eyes, steady and arrogant. "I get what I want"

"That I will grant you. But what, what exactly is it that you want? Not me, let me not have to believe that!"

For a moment there came a curiously defensive look in her eyes, and a twisted smile to her mouth. "You're a strange man. I don't think I've ever met anyoue like you before. That sounds like something out of a bad drama, doesn't it? But it's true. I can't get close to you. What makes you burn? What do you want? You told me, remember? You were after something so much bigger and better than me that I couldn't come near it in a million years! And you glowed. There was fire in you, that time. And I wanted to know what . . . what was it that could set fire to you, and that I couldn't know about. That's what I wanted!"

It rang so sincerely that he was disturbed for a moment And in distress too. She couldn't possibly understand, even if he told her the simple truth. That was easy enough to do. "Come!" he invited, getting up to cross the control room and mount to the rim platform. 'Take a look! You can see a little of it." She came to stand beside him and stare.

'This mesa is pretty high up, is a mountain top, is cool by comparison with the low lands. It's comfortable here" —he heard her indrawn gasp and added, hurriedly— "when you get used to it. It's a bit rugged and wild, sure, but it's clean and fresh. No people. No pollution. I don't mean what you think. I mean pollution of the mind. There's no cheating, swindling, lies, no conceit, no illusions, none of that nonsense about divine destiny and the cosmic importance of being human, all that inflated bleat about the 'scheme of things' with man the top creation, believing himself to be immortal and not knowing how to pass an idle half hour without some kind of artificial entertainment . . . none of that, not here! This place is clean. Raw and crude, maybe. Dangerous it certainly is, for fools. I got this lot," he tapped the half-healed scars on his chest, "by making a stupid mistake. But it's an honest place. It's real. The world of humans is mostly fake, mostly artificial, mostly rotten. I had the chance to get away from that. A chance in a lifetime. That's why you couldn't open me up, or break me down. This is what I wanted, and got. And I doubt if you have understood a single word of that."

"You're different, somehow." She turned to look up at him and shake her head. "Before, you were defensive, holding back from me. Now you're defiant. You don't give a damn anymore, about me. You're independent!"

'That's close," he admitted. "Close as you're likely to get. Now, I have things to do. I'll show you a cabin. Did you bring any luggage? How long were you planning to stay? The shuttle routinely flies just before sunset. That's the time of least turbulence. We have a five-day schedule, but I could call it down earlier, just as you please."

"There's some stuff of mine in a canister." She followed him down to the cabin deck. "As for how long I plan to stay, I hadn't fixed any hard date in my mind, but it would be ridiculous to come all this way just for a few hours, wouldn't it?"

"Whatever you say." He showed her the one cabin he had left clear just in case. It was next to his. "Shower stall at the end there. I have a stock of cottons, naturally, but you'll find they perish fast. It's the argon atmosphere, I think. It ages most of the costume plastics in no time at all. I'll go and bring in the rest of the stores, and your gear."

"I want to help," she declared. "I'm not going to be coddled, or waited on, nothing like that."

"Please yourself." He shrugged it off and went on down to the main deck to unearth his sword and belt from where he had hidden them. Then he canceled the thermostat altogether and hit the override switch that set the air-lock cycling open permanently, letting in a waft of air from outside. To his imagination it smelted fresh and clean.

"What are you doing?" she was shrilly indignant, staring at him.

"I'm going out," he said flatly, "to bring in the stores, as I told you. I just read you a boring lecture on how much I wanted to get away from people and sham, didn't I? Dressing up in a suit just to go out in the cool of the evening, that's part of the sham, isn't it? Depending on technology, leaning on artifice, that's all part of it, too, isn't it? So I try to do without it, as far as I can."

"Cool of the evening?" She brushed sweat from her brow with the back of her hand and breathed hard. "You're actually going out there just like that? Naked? And with a sword?"

"That's right. You said you wanted to help. Suit yourself . . . hah! Please yourself, I mean." He went out through the hatch, grinning grimly. He had the whip, and it amused him. She didn't know it yet, but she was completely at his mercy. At a pinch she might be able to operate the cook equipment and the shower, but nothing else. Without him she was stuck. No radio, no shuttle, no help, nothing. And when he was good and ready she would be told just that And then she would tell him why she was really here. All that blah about putting the screws on Colson. And going through the conversion process! Just to assuage her hurt feelings? Never in your life! But why else? He grappled with the problem as he strode out to the small cluster of canisters and fuel bladders, trying possibilities over in his mind. Could it be that Leo was working with Colson to produce more "converted" people, just to work this planet? Experimenting with his process to make it simpler, more effective? Lampart did fast arithmetic in his head. Thirty soul-destroying days he had spent in those vats. And four days on the jump. Thirty days here. She must have worked hellishly fast with her version of the story to be here this quick!

He reached the stores and turned to look back and see her toiling through the sand, laboring with each step. He knew the feeling from his own early experience, but it would pass off in an hour or two. However he disliked her otherwise, he had to admit she had iron down her spine. If only she had been anything other than a Colson, anything but a man-eater! For just a brief moment he had an "outside" perspective on this scene, of just the two of them, all alone, a modem-day Adam and Eve . . . and snorted at it Some men would call it a dream come true.

All he needed was a woman . . . and here she had been delivered to him, beautiful and available!

"Hah!" he grunted at the canister he hoisted up under his arm. "I need her the way a Trappist needs a phrase book!" But the idea left a trailing tingle to mark its passing. She was, no doubt of that, a beautiful woman. And they were all alone, much more alone than she knew. She came up to him, breathing hard.

"God! I feel like lead! How long does it take?"

'To adapt?A few hours. You'd better take the cans, they're not all that heavy. I'll bring the bladders." He took one under his arm, the other over his shoulder, and they set off back, side by side. "How long were you in soak?" he asked, apparently casual.

"Twenty-five days. Leo told me he had learned a trick or two from doing you. The process is almost automatic now. Say, it is cooler, isn't it? Or am I just getting used to it?"

"A bit of both."Lampart spoke off the top of his mind. The night temperature falls to thirty, about. Daytime it gets into the seventies."

"Wow!" She tramped doggedly on, then, "Will I go golden, like you, d'you think?"

"If you stay long enough, I suppose. It takes about four-five days exposure. Red hair, gold skin . . . really alien!"

"I don't feel alien," she said, surprising him. "Do you? I mean . . . different in any real way? I'm still me, so far as I can tell. Queer, when you think of it."

"Is it? In normal circumstances anywhere, all the atoms and molecules of a body are constantly changing and exchanging with the environment, all the time. That's what life is all about, really. The continuity of an abstraction that believes itself to be an entity."

"Whatever that may mean. What are you talking about?"

"It's like a regiment," he developed the idea for her eagerly. "It has a name, a colonel-in-chief, officers, troops, buildings, everything. But the colonel grows old and dies, the officers retire and are replaced, the men die in battle or take pensions, even the buildings fall down and are rebuilt . . . but it is still the same regiment, isn't it? The idea, the abstract identity, that's all that persists. The idea of you, and me, is all there is."

"That's too deep for me, but I suppose it must be right Well," she tried a breathless laugh, "evanescent or not my corporeal self is weary, and hungry, too. If you drink local rainwater, what do you eat?" They came to the gangway and he allowed her to go ahead of him, showed her where to dump the canisters.

"Go shower and clean up," he advised. "Ill cook, this timel"

"Big deall" she mocked instantly. "You'll cook? On an autochef?" "You'll see. Twenty minutes?"

He shook his head ruefully as he rescued his cold preserved lizard cuts and started broiling one. She had guts, plenty of spirit she was as bright as you could want good company for a man ... if only she didn't have that chip on her shoulder all the time, that obsession about winning. That it was genuine he had no doubt at all, but that her story was whole cloth as it stood, he doubted. It could be, he reasoned, that somebody else had seen a way of using her. Yes. That made a kind of sense. Old Man Colson had enough wit to figure that much out Lampart nodded, prodding the sizzling meat It made a good scenario. She was pestering to be let in on whatever secret was going. Colson would say to himself "All right my girl, you'll go. That will keep you quiet for a while. And, when you come back from there..." What?

The satisfaction drained from his mind as he realized she couldn't be allowed to go back and talk. Not ever! He whirled guiltily as she said, from the foot of the stairway, "That smells good! I take it all back. How do you get that kind of mouth water from an autochef?" She had put on a Cretan-style bolero top and brief skirt in pale blue, with ankle-high boots to match. Feeling his guilt on his face he mumbled, "You look like a party. I guess I ought to shower and dress too!"

"Not just for me, if you dont want to."

"Shower anyway. It won't take a minute. Fll finish this off when I get back. Coffee's coming along." He dodged past her and up the ladder hurriedly, and went to the shower stall. It held memories of perfume. He fought with himself, mentally, as he showered. She couldn't go back. He couldn't allow that, not now. Why not? What had she seen anyway? She was no expert at minerals! But the steak? And the fact that he was living "off the planet," obvious from his way of life, that would mean something to old Colson. He was no fool. In a deal like this, suspicion was enough. Her visit here had to mean that the old man was checking up, that he was already uneasy. Any further evidence would be fatal. Lam part switched to hot-air dry and added it up. She couldn't go back. She had to die. And that cold fact horrified him. This was how much he had changed. He had become un-

human. Tnhiimgn

Still hurrying, he entered one of the spare cabins and rummaged out a new cotton undersuit, dragged it on, the word "inhuman" circling his mind. She was inhuman too. She was like him. They were two of a kind, the only two. That had to mean something. He groaned to himself as he smoothed a velcro strip into closure. The choice was too big. Her life ... or his, and he had to make it. He groaned again, shoved the turmoil away, postponing it for another time, and ran downstairs. She was over in the cook-nook, where the appetizing smells were coming from. Hearing him, she turned with a big smile that made her radiant, and something in her fingers.

"Whatever is this, John? Have you been trying to make arrows?"

Somehow that seemed to settle it, to knock out his last defenses. He went to take it from her and sniff and examine the meal's progress. "You go and sit. Ill serve. And I'll tell you all about this thing, as much as I know. Youll be surprised."

The lizard steak cut up well, and its juices made a fine gravy when he added a little protein powder to it. He charged her platter, and his own, and sat opposite her across the plain, steel-topped table that had been his solitary own for so long, and shook his head at her. Brightly alert eyes, parti-colored mop of hair, red mouth and ready smile, the bolero lifting and enhancing her firm full breasts, light glowing on her arms and fingers as she prepared to eat. .. but she had to die. It was monstrous, but it was inevitable. And she didn't know it. Yet.

"I'll tell you," he repeated, "all about it, but first tell me something. The way you managed to work your way here, you put pressure on your father, broke him down. Him and old Leo, to let you come. But what happens, afterwards, when you get back? Did they say anything about that?"

"Not very much, no." She employed her knife vigorously. "Uncle Leo gave me all the guff about the process being reversible, which was obvious anyway. Wasn't it? And my father, well," she shrugged devastatingly, "he had his nose in some documents or other. He always has, you know. I will say I was a bit surprised that he caved in so readily, though. I was all set for a scene, an argument, but he just looked at me for a moment, then said, 'Yes, go. Why not? It will get you out of my way, won't it?' And that was that. No love lost, on either side, believe mel" She curled her lip in a characteristic sneer.

"He didn't say anything like 'Pay attention to what you see and hear, because 111 want you to tell me all about it when you get back,' nothing like that?"

"You don't know my father very well, do you? The day he gives one skinny damn about what I think, or see, or hear! John, to him I am just a thing, something he owns but without value. A doll. That's my name, after all. He would dearly love to stick me on a pedestal and brag about me, as a possession, his brilliant and beautiful daughter . . . you know? I found out about that when I was a tot, and I have been a disaster to him ever since! Besides, what could I tell him? What in the world do I know about what you are doing here, that anybody would listen to?"

"More than you think." Lampart nudged the arrowhead into the middle of the table with the wrong end of his fork. "You've seen . . . not exactly what I am doing, here, but how I'm doing it You've seen this. You've seen me go out there in just my skin. You've heard me go on about civilization, and sham, and not wanting to lean on technology. You could make the obvious addition that I am trying to live off the planet independently. Without human help. You could work that out Or other people could, from what you would tell them."

"Who would I tell?" she retorted sharply. "That's one thing my father did stress. I didnt mention it because it's obvious. That I don't tell anyoue else where I've been.

Even I know that much about a big strike, that you don't babble about it. And this is a big strike, isn't it?"

"The biggest. A whole planetary crust that is at least eighty-six percent metal ores. It's that big!"

"Wow!" she gave lip-service to amazement. "But there you are. I know better than to go blowing that all over . . . just a minute!" She stared at him. "Live off the planet? Live here, without aid? You can't do that?"

"Why not?"

"What are you going to eat? Nothing grows here! It can't! I mean, I talked about this with Uncle Leo. Not a lot, but enough. This is a hot young planet, and the conditions are wrong. There can't be life here! So what are you going to live on?"

"Now we come to this." He nodded to the arrowhead again. "I didn't make that. I found it. And I got these doing it." He unfastened his vest top enough to show her the white scars across his chest. "Made by a local creature like a tiger of sorts. Ill tell you all about it, now."

SIX

She was a good audience as he proceeded to tell her selected excerpts from his past thirty days, of perilous first encounters with grotesquely armored lizards; and the acidic "red blobs"; and glider birds with their clattering membranous wings and murderous beaks; the scavenging little dograt creatures; his overbearing need to have some kind of weapon ... "I know quite a bit about swords and armor, and bows, stuff like that A scout has plenty of time for reading and studying . . ."; and then his first cautious excursion over the crest and down the gorge to the forest; the strange trees and stranger fruit; and the cat-things ". . . that's the only word I have for them. They come in all shades* of blue, with all the teeth anybody could ever want six legs with three damned great claws on each, and in various sizes, from pussy-cat size to tiger . . . like the one that did this! And that is only the fringe of it. I haven't been all that far. What can a man hope to achieve in thirty days, on foot? And with a job to do meanwhile? But there's life here, sure enough. Plenty of it"

"And that?" Her tone was a neutral question as she brought him back to the arrowhead. He took it in his fingers and looked at it.

"That" he said softly, "shook me. That was made by someone, something, that had a fire. It's a cast, an alloy, made in a mold. Crude, yes, but it took thinking. Brains. Intelligence. I took that out of an old wound in the cat that damned near killed me. Four days ago. Not fifteen miles from here."

To his astonishment she started to laugh, a big and bountiful laugh that would have fascinated him at any

other time. When she could talk, she shook her head at him. "You never give up, do you? I have to hand it to you for ingenuity, though. Making all that up on the spur of the moment, just like that. Lizards and pterodactyls, straight out of the book . . . and why didn't you make them saber-toothed tigers while you were at it? Of course they would have to have six legs, just to make them different from prehistoric Earth! Oh, come on, nowl I've been to school! A lot of good money got spent on my education. On your own showing, this crust is eighty-odd percent metal ore. That's why you're here. On the astronomical data, which I do know a little about ... I told you, I discussed it with Uncle Leo . . . this planet is a freak anyway. This star system is young. Life has not had time to develop here." "Not on a freak planet?"

"So all right!" she snapped. "It's a freak. But you're talking about creatures, thinly disguised, that belong to Earth's past That's not very clever, is it? And it won't work, either, you and your little green men!"

"What d*you mean, won't work?"

"You're trying to scare me off, that's what. You are still at it! You just cant bear to think that I'm as good as you are, can you? You've been dead set against me ever since the first moment we met!" She was on her feet now, and so was he, the pair of them glaring at each other across the table. "You damned stiff-necked peasant! You with your pompous words about abstract continuity and your pious standards, your reach-me-down dignity and morals! I saw your face, that first day, John Lampart You were despising me and my friends. Looking down your stupid nose at me. Me!"

"You were tripped out of your tiny mind! You and your spineless friends, and that childish chariot race! You didn't know a damned thing about horses, or chariots for that matter. And you only pick that kind of friend so that you'll look good alongside them! On your own you're nothing but a conceited, spoiled bitch!"

"From you," she said between her teeth, "that is good. You've been running away from reality all your dim little life. A scout? A little god, you mean. And here you are again, king in your own little kingdom! That's you, John Lampart You're too good for ordinary people, you are!

Uncle Leo said, T will make you a superman!' and you jumped at it. My father said, T will give you a whole planet!' and you jumped at that, too. A sword? What's the next thing you have to make, a crown?" She drew a huge breath and hurled words at him like weapons. "You, king of Argent! That's it, isn't it? Live here ... a whole world to yourself! But then I came, didn't I? I've spoiled it for you, and now you're trying to scare me away!"

Lampart breathed hard, clenching his teeth on words that wanted to burst out. "All right!" he growled. "All right, you have it your way. You believe what you like. What do I care? I never invited you here. But you had better get this, just this once. I won't say it again, so listen. I have you, like that!" He extended his palm and clenched it around the arrowhead. "Don't ever forget it. You can't work this ship. You can't call the monitor. You can't bring down the shuttle, nor yet fly it back up. You are stuck here, dependent on me. If anything happens to me, you're dead. Don't ever forget that!"

'Temper, temper!" she mocked savagely. "The next thing, you'll be taking advantage of my helplessness!" She hunched her shoulders now into a catlike stance. "You just try it, that's all. You'll really have scars to show, and don't you ever forget that! Peasant!"

'Take advantage?" He had himself in hand now, could afford to sneer. "That is the least of your worries. I wouldn't touch you with a ten-foot pole! My standards are that pious, sure. As for me making it all up to scare you . . . you just hold still a minute! Right there!" He swung around and stalked away to his cold-store, came back with a complete lizard leg, stiff and hard, dropped it on the steel table in front of her. "Now tell me I made that up. Go on!"

She goggled at it, stretched out a hand gingerly to touch it, drew back again, and stared at him. "It's some kind of leg!"

"You don't say! Well well! And it's not one of mine. Nor yet yours. So I made it up?"

"You mean . . . there really are living creatures here?"

"What do you think you just ate?"

"Oh God!" She clutched at her mouth, and he snorted, watching her. But she fought her revulsion back with an effort, swallowed a time or two, then reached and touched the leg again. "A lizard? Truly?"

"Truly.And all the rest of it, little green men and everything. I don't know if they are little, or green, or men, but I found that arrowhead just the way I told you."

She sat heavily, her inner struggle plain on her face. "It's completely against all theory!"

"It happens to be fact. That's something a scout has to learn, Miss Colson. Facts come first, theories a long way after. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just put this away again, and get ready for work."

"Work?" She looked baffled now.

"That'shuttle will be calling back in four days. That's the routine, every five days. And I have to get samples and tests, to plot the area as much as possible before I shift to a new location. You'd better get some rest. The first day can be rugged. Help yourself to whatever you want from the auto-chef. It's all standard ingredients in there."

Her inner struggle came to an explosion. "Damn youl Fve never said it before in all my life, but, all right, I'm sorry! I was wrongl"

"Forget it! You were right in a lot of things. I like to be alone. I can't stand other people around, not for long. If that seems wrong to you, you've a right to say so, I suppose. It seems all right to me, that's the way I am. So we are different, and that's it!"

He stowed the meat away again, went past her and up the ladder to take off the ridiculous cotton coverall and stow that. His belt, with gear and pouches, was in his workshop. He went back down and got it, clasped it around his waist, consulted his chart to pick out a location mat had not yet.been investigated, and found her by his elbow. "Those dots," he said, "are places I've been, and the tally of what I've found here."

"Always around the cliff rim. Not in the sand of the mesa?"

"I don't have the equipment to dig down to bedrock there. All I can do is plot various veins, from around the rim, and do some guessing."

"And is it all that rich, really?"

"Depends on who's talking." Lampart was cautiously accurate now. "The samples I'm recording are rich, by ordinary standards, but this planet is a special case. To take the metal out is going to cost plenty just for equipment, so it has to be super-rich to make the venture worthwhile. As far as I can estimate, it's marginal. But I've only just started." He turned away from the chart and walked her back to the main space. "I've another sixty days to go here. Then I lift and shift and try somewhere else. And so on. A long job. Two years, about."

'Two years, all by yourself? And that doesn't bother you?"

"I was a scout for ten years. All by myself. I like being on my own. I don't expect you to understand that. I told you, we're different." He took up his sword now, and spear, and she touched his arm gently.

"Let me come with you."

"What for? What can you do?"

"Nothing, I suppose. Just watch. Talk to you. Try to understand. It's important to me, John."

"Please yourself. Here, you'd better have this." He offered her the spear. "I have another sword, the first one I made, but it's clumsy."

"Let me see it. I've done small arms stuff, archery, things like that, but I've never handled a spear."

"All right." He brought her his first blade, and she gripped and swung it experimentally, critically.

"You've too much weight forte . . . here," she said, indicating the blade just in front of the hand grip. "The thing should turn on a center of gravity about there, with the weight at either end. What they call balance!"

"I know that!" he snapped. "But it's not so simple to do. To make." He checked his irritation with an effort. "You know about archery?"

"A bit. Could you make up a laminated spring?"

"I could." He led the way out of the hatch and down the gangway, carrying the spear, sword in his belt. "But Td want to do it from local materials. This," he shook the spear, "is a tree branch that I cooked all the juice out of. It's as tough as any alloy I know of, but it won't bend. And I haven't found a tree, yet, that I can get flat strip from."

"You really do mean to live here, don't you? Independently?"

That's my way of being alone. Always has been. I've talked to other scouts, a time or two. They don't see it like that They take other people with them. You know, solidographs, books, tape-dramas, that kind of thing. And they sweat it out until they get back. Me," he grinned at the thought striding through the sand, "I have to sweat all the time I'm with people, until I can get back by myself again."

"You just don't like people, do you?"

"Not for very long, no. Maybe I've met the wrong kind. They are all stuck on themselves, egocentric, eternally preoccupied with what they are going to do next, making a show, putting up a front trying to justify their existence, I suppose. I could never see that I'm not all that important. All this," he gestured at the mesa, taking in the stars up there behind the boiling clouds too, "it was all here long before me, and it'll be here long after me."

That's horribly negative, isn't it?"

"Not to me it isn't The way I see it, I've been given a front seat at an enormous miracle, a spectacle that I will never see the end of, and all I can do is make the most of it while I'm here, see as much of it as I can, understand as much as I can, and marvel at the rest What sort of conceit is it for me to think that I am more important than all that?"

"You use that word 'conceit' a lot You called me conceited."

"So?" he said flatly. "Aren't you? You've always had all your own way, got whatever you went after. You've been lucky. But you had to have me, too. And that's wrong, the way I see it Nobody can 'have' anybody else. You're you. The only life you can live is your own."

"But that doesnt mean anything, John. What am I for, if not to relate to and mean something to other people?"

They veered now to skirt the solitary spike of rock that stood up from the hot sand. The cliffs were close enough now to tower up against the purple sky. He hesitated before answering.

"That sounds to me as if you're saying you're nothing by yourself, that you need other people in order to be somebody. You're a name that is a label that somebody stuck on you. You're the daughter of somebody else. You have wealth, a position, fame even. But what are you?"

"That's one of those silly questions that philosophers are always arguing about. I'm me. What else is there?"

"But are you," he insisted. "You talk about relating to others. How can you relate to anyoue else until you are somebody yourself, and know who you are? As long as you need other people to justify your own existence then you're not a whole person are you?"

"What do you think you are, then?" Her tone sharpened.

"Omar had the answer, for me, like this. ' Tis all a chequer-board of nights and days, where Destiny with men for pieces plays; hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, and one by one back in the closet lays.' Just that. Pieces in a game. The game plays itself, and we mean no more to it than pieces. It just happens, the way water rolls downhill, because that's the way things are. I'm just a piece of the game, and when the finger stops alongside my name, that will be that. Meanwhile, as I say, I've been given a front seat, and I want to see and do everything I can. If other people can't see it like that, it's their loss, isn't it?"

There were the dark blotches of caves now, and the first jagged spurs of rock. He took a slight lead, eyes everywhere, expecting to see what he did see within a few more paces. Putting his free hand back, he touched her. "Keep absolutely still now. Comes one of my imaginary lizards. He can't smell worth a damn, and he can't see us, either, if we don't move." The lumbering creature came out of a dark gap between two rocks, clawing the sand with stumpy legs. He felt her fingers slide into his hand and grip, tightly. The creak-and-grunt thing went by them no more than feet away, a good big one, about nine feet long.

"How in the world do you manage to kill a thing like that?" she demanded, when it was safe to move again. He went ahead of her, feeling his way from one ledge to another, answering over his shoulder.

"You have to hit him where he's soft, inside his mouth. That's what the spear is for. As soon as he gets close enough to see anything he thinks he can eat, he starts opening his mouth, ready. That's when you get him. Probably won't meet any more that size around here, only little ones. Those you grab, fast, and throw away. They bite hard, so don't miss."

"Are we likely to meet any other creatures here?"

"Birds maybe. What you called pterodactyls. These have membrane spreads on die middle set of legs, which gives them two sets of claws, and a beak like a javelin. But they can't fly all that well. Thing to do with them is grab, get hold of anything, and crunch it Break 'em up. This looks like a likely spot. See that vein of blue in the purple? Could be cobalt, but more likely copper with some tin and zinc." He got out his cracking hammer and started, she hunkering down beside him.

"Colors!" she remarked. "This is nighttime, isn't it? I mean, I know it's bright but it's still night. And I've never seen colors like this by nighttime!"

"That's because you're thinking of moonlight, which is polarized. We have no moonlight here. Those things up there aren't moons. That one," he aimed his arm by her cheek, "is Pleione, and next to it, Adas. You can see both of those, naked-eye, from Earth. Those are stars. In about three hours from now you'll see a real bright one. That's Merope, coming up from over there, beyoud the ship. That tells you it's three and a half hours to dawn." Her thigh brushed his and she put her hand on his shoulder as she turned to look, and then up at the vault overhead again.

"The furious clouds!" she said. "Like a perpetual storm. All those gorgeous colors. Is it always like that?"

"All the time, as far as I know. That's rain. This atmosphere is twenty-five percent water vapor. Humid. That's why you sweat so much, at first anyway. It'll ease off as you get used to it But it will ruin this stuff." He touched the texture of her bolero where it lay tight around the swell of her breast. "Heat sweat and the argon in the air. But you should see what it does to alloys when you roast them in it."

She moved away from him, to perch on a handy rock. All at once she said, "I envy you, John. You have so much ... so much . . . interest in things! All this, it means something to you, whereas to me it's just a lot of open, barren desert full of strange colors. It's dead. Oh, I know there's a kind of life, but it's ugly, and violent, and harsh!"

"Not all of it. You just hang on a bit, while I crack another spoonful or two, and maybe I can show you something pretty, even here."

He gathered fragments carefully, stowed them, and led on still up, higher, looking for color of a certain kind. "Here you are I" he announced at last, getting down on his knees by a patch of rubble that sparkled. "You take a look at these!"

Against a surface of blue-brown grit was a carpet of rainbows in miniature. She put her face close as he explained, probing with his fingers to break loose one specimen for her. "That," he said, "is a flower. At least it fills the same function. There's the stem, see, and all those little bubble spheres are seed spores." They were a tight, globular cluster, miliary clouded and tinted with every shade of yellow and red, the whole flower head no bigger than her fingernail. "Chrome, mostly, with impurities," he added, and took the stem again, from her palm. "Hold your hand still. Watch!" He shook the little thing briskly, and her palm was covered with tiny glittering spheres. "There's beauty here, if you look for it," he said.

She stared at her palm, and then at him. "They're wonderful. So very tiny, and yet alive. But"— she looked at her palm again —"doesn't it make you wonder, a thing like this? So beautiful, yet who's to see it?"

"You're making my point, about being egocentric. Who says it's for seeing? Beauty is our idea, what we think. I dare say old shovel-mouth down there is beautiful to another lizard. Depends who's looking."

"But what if no one is looking? What's the use in being beautiful if no one looks?"

"None whatever, if that's your aim in life, to be beautiful. You have to have an audience that will appreciate you."

"Now you're making my point, can't you see? What's the point in being or doing anything, if no one else is to know about it?"

"I don't know the answer ..." he said, and sprang suddenly on her, to grab and drag her aside and down between two rocks. Just past her head came the whir and whoop of big wings and an angry squeal. "Couple more coming. Get your back up against something, so they can't get you from behind. You know what I told you

. . . grab hold . . . crunch them!" He set her free and rolled away to sit up and then shuffle to a rock side. Ura-brella-spined wings whooped again and the dragonlike things whirled out of the air with claws dangling and sword beaks driving. He reached and grabbed, got a handful of bony screeching meat, crushing it and tossing it away, grabbing for another, wincing as a beak got him in the wrist There was a whole swarm of the harpies, squealing and flapping around. He smashed two more, then surged up, drawing his sword and whirling it around his head like a wreath of death, shearing them into fragments as they got in the way. She was half-hidden under two big ones, screeching and jabbing. He grabbed one and angrily crushed it reaching for the other. This time he needed care, for its claws were hooked in her hair and the blue stuff of her bolero. But the bones were like pipe-stems in his fingers.

"You all right?" he asked, as she took her arms away from her face and stared up at him. "Keep still while I look." Blood oozed from a hole in her neck, not too freely, and there were claw marks on her arms and breast. And her long legs. The clawings were minor, but that beak puncture looked bad to him. "Just a little more," he soothed. "Put your head back." He got his lips to the wound and sucked it gently, cleaning it, then looked at it again.

"What is it?" she asked. "It stings like crazy!"

"You got a beak jab, in the neck. It's not deep, but it's bleeding pretty freely. I'll have to stop that somehow. You'll have to sacrifice that jacket thing, I'm sorry."

"That's all right." She undid the clasp under her breasts and got it off, for him to rip apart and contrive a strip to bind her neck, making a pad of the rest.

"Best I can do right now. We'll go back right away. Here, use the spear to lean on. Come on."

They were almost to the solitary rock spire when he saw her starting to wander. "That'll do," he ordered. "We sit a while, take a rest."

"I'm all right!" she insisted, almost falling down.

"And you called me stiff-necked! Sit, or do I have to hold you down?" He watched her settle, then perched close. "You're working about twice as hard as you've ever worked before," he told her. "And while you have a magnificent body, you can't do that to it for very long. Besides, you didn't eat very much. When we get back inboard you are going to have a meal, and then go to bed, understand?"

"Yes, lord!" she said. "Whatever you say, lord!" and he felt foolish, and angry. And then he could see the funny side of it.

"That's the first time I ever saw you laugh," she said. "It's worth getting injured just for that"

"That's a hell of an ambition, to make me laugh!"

"How do you know what my ambitions are?" she retorted. "You make all kinds of wild assumptions about me, call me names, but you don't really know anything about me, at all."

"Only what I hear you say and what I see you do," he replied evenly. "There's another way in which I'm different. I don't wish to know about what goes on inside you. In the first place I don't have any way of doing that except listening to what you say and guessing how much I can believe. In the second place it's none of my business. It's your life, not mine."

"You really hate me, don't you?" She said it quietly.

"Not really, no. Why should I? You spoke about relating to other people, remember? I can relate. Fve worked with people, often. I get on all right, as long as the people I'm working with are aiming at the same end as me. That's called cooperation. There's a specified goal, and we aim at it. But to go to a lot of trouble and diversion to accommodate myself to somebody else's whim, just for the sake of it, strikes me as stupid. If I can manage alone, I do. If I need help, I'll ask for it"

"And if there's no help coming?"

"Then I manage, somehow, or suffer the consequences. Obvious, isn't it? Come on, you've had your rest Here, lean on me."

"I don't remember asking," she mumbled. "Damn you, did it ever occur to you that I might want to know who I am? That I'm trying to find out? That for the first time in my life I meet a man who can do things, who has his whole life in his own hands. Self-contained. A real man! And I can't get through to him, can't find out what makes him tick? Didn't that ever strike you?"

"You had a funny way of going about it."

"So I'm a funny person, John Lampart. I'm strange. I have no real friends, no ambitions, no talents, nothing. Nobody gives a damn about me, you know that? Not my father, not anybody. I'm a sensation, a name, a pest, a nuisance, all those things, but who am I? What am I? I'm not even human, not now. Think of that, will you? Because you're the same. Just the same as me, now. Two of a kind, the only two in the whole universe. We have to stick together."

She was heavy and warm against him, the flesh of her side soft in his arm . . . and she was talking delirium. He began to worry. Those beakbirds were carrion-eaters. Their bite might be infectious. If she had caught some bug or other he was really in trouble, for he had no guidelines in that area at all. Or maybe she was just bone-weary and suffering from shock. He kept quiet and let her babble on until they were back to the ship again, plodding up the gangway and inboard. Dropping his gear as he went he urged her straight on, upstairs and along to the shower stall, sat her down on the tiled floor. Her eyes drooped now and she looked hot and flushed. He cursed himself as he remembered this was her first day . . . and recalled how he had felt in the same case.

"You stay there now," he ordered, and switched on to a fine warm rain, then left her, to hurry downstairs and heat up some soup, adding a dash of what he knew to be a workable antibiotic. The blood clot on his wrist reminded him to take a similar precaution for himself. When he got back, the curtain was drawn.

"You all right in there?" he called.

"Get my robe, please."

"Right. It'll be on the hook outside. Hot soup in your cabin, soon as you're ready." He went and sat on her bed, eyed the cabin that she had already transformed with feminine oddments, and set the bowls down on her wall-table. Combs and brushes, perfume, the whole equipment, a bag open to show a burst of sheer materials and lacy things. 'That lot will be rags in three days," he predicted, and found something he gathered was a "robe," and put it where she could reach it.

"You smell nice," he said, as she drifted in. "Let me look at that neck wound." She tilted her head back. To his relief it looked clean. "You'll be all right, it's not infected. I've been chewed up quite a bit and never an infection yet, but you never know."

"Aren't you going to kiss it better, like you tried to do before?"

"I was drinking your blood," he growled. "You think about that, and hold still while I stick a seal on it. There, now sit and drink your soup, and you'll be as right as rain in the morning."

"Bedside manner and everything." She sat and sipped. "What's this, more lizard?" To his surprise he was laughing again, and she was joining in, warmly beside him. In a while she said, "I suppose you're up at the crack of dawn, like in all the tape-dramas?"

"That's right," he admitted. "Some dawn, too. Worth seeing. Shall I call you?"

"Why don't I keep my big mouth shut? Oh, all right, I might as well see everything there is while I'm here."

Her words shocked him. For a moment he had completely forgotten his earlier realization, that she could never be allowed to leave. He rose and moved to the door. "Yes," he said. "It's something to see. Til call you. Goodnight."

He went downstairs slowly, struggling with indecent thoughts. She had to die. There was no way around that "I am not going to give up all this for her!" he declared savagely, but even as he said it he knew he was breaking inside. He tried to imagine himself bidding her goodbye, soon, seeing her into the shuttle, casting it skywards . . . fumbling the controls deliberately to crash the little craft into destruction, and sweat stood out on his face as he knew he couldn't do it Going routinely through the chores of cleaning up and putting away, carrying his samples into the lab and stowing them, he struggled with the dilemma. "What the hell am I going to do?" He could draw several futures, and each one of them was a disaster for him. There was no way out. Once she got back to where ears could hear what she had to tell, he was dead in everything but the final act Colson could hate. Lam-part knew that only too well. His father had told him, was the living, and miserably dying, evidence.

The Colson millions had destroyed Larry Lamport's chances of an honest living, his name and reputation, everything. "And he'll do it again, easier this time, if he

as much as suspects that I've been cooking the books. And she has only got to open her pretty mouth, and that is it, brother!"

He slept badly. This time the nightmare was different-This time the black-haired temptress danced before him, mocking him, flaunting herself openly, defying him to come on . . . and beyoud her, out of his reach, was the blue and red and purple forest, with gemlike flowers and golden fruit. And she cackled at him, "You have to kill me first!"

SEVEN

He awoke thick-headed and soaked with perspiration, levered wearily to his feet and trudged next door to rap on the panel. When he heard her mumble he called, "See you in the hatchway in ten minutes, right?"

"All right."

"And put on a swimsuit, if anything.'* "A what? Why?"

"Because it is going to rain, that's why. You'll see."

She managed to make it to where he stood with seconds to spare, her eyes cloudy with sleep, fumbling to do up the hip-knot of her monokini. "You have no romance," she groaned, "calling a girl out of bed to come and watch the dawn ... in a swimsuit?" She stifled a yawn and added, "It's hotter than ever, isn't it?"

"Let me look at that neck." He reached out and tweaked away the seal, making her squeak in protest. There was a small white mark, nothing more. "You'll live. And sure it's hot. Dawn is upon us. Come on." He led her down and round the ship until they were facing the break in the cliffs. "Right there is where Alcyoue will erupt Just watch." This, at least, hadn't changed. The mighty clouds began to boil and burn with hot light as if bubbling from some vast invisible caldron, the colors growing brighter and more brilliant with every second. And there, scorching, came the white-hot rim of Alcyoue, stinging his face. He saw her wince and put up her hands . . . and then drop them again in wonder as the searing light suddenly dimmed.

"What happened?" she demanded, but before he could say anything there came the first sighing gusts of hot, moist air, the first warning drops, and then the great wash

of rain, smashing down in a solid sheet, making him stagger and hunch his shoulders to it. In the next minute he felt her hand groping for his, and she clung tightly to him, burying her head against his chest. But only for a moment, then she pushed free and moved away, still gripping his fingers so that he knew she was there, but couldn't see her. Intuitively he knew she was enjoying it, thrilling to it as much as he was. Cleansing. He needed it sorely. If only it would wash his problem awayl All too soon it was over, and there was the mist-world of vapor that grew brighter and brighter until Alcyoue had dried out all that prodigal downpour and all was hot and dry again. She turned her back to the sun.

That was tremendous 1" she whispered. "Is that what happens every dawn here?"

"I haven't missed it once, so far. Seems to start the day off right, doesn't it?"

"Oh yesl I feel all a-tingle now, glowing all over. Wonderful! Thank you! I'm beginning to like your world, John."

"Well, don't rush at it," he warned, pointing around the ship. "You can't take too much sun right away. Better get back indoors now. You'll be hungry. I know I am."

"I could eat... a lizard!" she said, and laughed, running ahead of him like a nymph. He followed at a more sober pace, sore inside, to get inboard and find her staring indignantly at the air-conditioner thermostat

"I went to switch it on," she explained, "just a little ... and it spat sparks at me and quit!"

"Hah!" He was almost glad to have something straightforward to grumble at. "Women! You jumped a breaker, I expect. Let me try." The switch was dead. So, too, were all the cook-nook points and the oven. He frowned at that, thought hard as he tried to recall the wiring, and to guess at the possible cause. "The cooler elements have probably corroded solid," he guessed. "After all, it hasn't been used all the time I've been here, except for yesterday." It took him only a moment to release the cover plate and look, and confirm his guess. "You'll just have to get hot and put up with it, that's all. This is shot. No good until I can get a new set of elements."

"Meanwhile," she said acidly, "what about breakfast?"

"You sound just like a wife!" he retorted, and she giggled. The happy sound went right down inside him and stung painfully. Damn it, she was nice! "That will be the main breaker," he mumbled. "That's down below, in the engine space. Here." He stamped on the hatch cover that lay just clear of the stairway foot, flush with the steel floor. "I'm going to open it up and go down. You be careful how you walk about Dont forget and fall down the hotel"

"Why would I be walking about?" she demanded. "Fm coming down with you. I want to see."

"You're out of luck." He strained on the sunk thumbscrews, loosing them one at a time. "There isn't going to be a lot of room down here for me, never mind you. And it's all corners and awkward bits." He set the cover aside, sat across the hole, lowered himself carefully inside, found the switch that lit the bulkhead lights, and looked around. Her voice came from above, wonderingly.

"God, you were right weren't you? It's packed down there. All those pipes and things." In another moment her feet were brushing his arm as she lowered them inside and sat on the edge. "You understand all of it of course, naturally!"

"You are being sarcastic now, I can tell. What do you think, I'm going to call a repairman?" He knew the complex system well enough to be able to repair almost all of it except the Lawlor unit itself. He slid himself carefully now between glossy curved cables and pipelines, under and around the drive tubes until he was at the bulkhead itself, and the outlet from the ring main that supplied his deck auxiliaries. It was a simple matter to inspect and shove the breaker home again. He heard her call out, "The pilot light just went on, on the auto-chef."

"That's it. All fixed." He started to turn and wriggle out, and stopped as something caught his eye that didn't seem right Just there, where the main cable trunk came down from above and fed into the servos on top of the main drive assembly, was a collar, a bulky coppery ring, of what? He scowled at it, wriggled closer, shook his head, trying to guess what it might be for. A booster? It couldn't be anything too powerful, as it was in segments, four doughnut pieces bolted together to make a ring. And shiny new, the bolt-faces still keen edged. And a slim cable coming out of it. He shook his head again. Cable? Instrument wire? It led up into the trunking sure enough, but it corresponded to no control that he could think of.

"What are you doing down there?" Her voice echoed among the metal.

"Dorothea? Do you know what a box-wrench looks like?"

"Hexagonal tube with a handle on it"

"There's a clever girl. You'll find some in a cabinet in the workshop, by the assay gear. Find one marked twenty, that's twenty mill... and bring it, will you?"

"I hear and obey, lord."

He started wriggling and was back at the hatch by the time she returned and knelt to hand the wrench to him. "Is it permitted, oh lord, to ask what you are playing about at, down there?"

"Wish I knew, Dorothea. I've found something I dont understand, some new fitting or other. I'm going to open it up and see. Won't take long. Make the coffee."

"Do this, do that! We might as well be married, at that!" She went away, and returned in a while, with a steaming mug, to see him with his head out of the hatch, and a look on his face that destroyed all her mirth. "What did you find, John?"

"This." He handed her a sausage-shaped object that was putty-soft and heavy in her hand. "You ever hear of detonite?"

"Heard of it, of course. It's an explosive, isn't it?"

"It is the most powerful explosive ever devised from chemistry. You have enough, right there in your hand, to blow this ship to scrap. Not to bother you. It won't go off."

"You're sure?" She stood quite still.

"Yes. I've used it enough to know. Put it down. That my coffee?" He hoisted up and sat on the edge of the hole and looked at her. "Down there, packed around the main stem inside a copper casing, is more of that At a guess there's forty-odd more slugs. And a cable lead, and an igniter, all in order. At the other end of that lead, somewhere, is a button. Do I have to draw you a diagram of the rest? One push on that button and there would be a bang, a hole in the sand, and no more ship, or us."

She stared at him, at the detonite slug, back to him, and drew a highly unsteady breath. "What are you going to do now?"

"Now?" He felt icily calm, cold as ice inside. "I'm going to eat, have that breakfast we were talking about Then I am going to get all that detonite out of there and bury it somewhere safe. And think. You do the same. And don't talk to me!"

He was too indrawn, too savagely concentrated on the thoughts inside his head to notice her reactions, or whether she reacted at all He ate deliberately, a tingle in his feet at the shocking thought of all that sudden death just down there. It had been there all the time, ever since he had first come orbiting down from the monitor, wide-eyed and uncertain of his new strength. There, right under his feet Put there, for a purpose. He was marginally aware of her hovering. He cleared his plate. He went back down the hole, squirming around the shiny pipes and cables, and drew out the puttylike slugs one by one until he had an armful, then it was back to the hole and there she was, neutral-faced, offering her hand.

"Pass them out to me, John. Can I help any other way?"

"No room down here. Stay where you are."

Fifty-two sausages of detonite, each weighing four kilos. The sheer quantity of it told its own story. Nobody could just draw that much from store, any store, without a hell of a lot of authorization. He filed that fact along with others, to let his unconscious work on it while he did the rest of the job. Out of the ship and across the sand, halfway to that lone rock-spike, dig a hole, a deep hole, and bury it. Heedless of the scorching sun, he toiled at that only peripherally aware that she was helping. Until it was all done, and only his memory knew exactly where the death was. And then he went back to the ship for the next part

He went down into the machinery bowels one last time, to study that cable and confirm its location in the main trunk. Then he had to trace it, slowly and tediously, by lifting inspection plates all the way up the main tube, step by step, searching for a copper cable that was just that little bit fresher and newer than the rest. Up to the radio deck. Into the console there, with its fantastic web of wires and connections. And, still slowly and deliberately, to pin it down to that thing. A trip, with its own bit of antenna, and side taps to the main. Booster. Power inlet All very neat, very deadly. He knew now, beyoud any doubt whatever, that somewhere up there in that monitor was a button that matched this. He had guessed that much instantly, but now he was sure.

He went back down to the main deck and approached the coffee-maker. She came to stand beside him. She had put on a white tunic-shirt, hip-short, over her monokini. Her eyes were wide and apprehensive.

"What does it all mean, John? Why would someone want to blow up this ship? I don't understand."

"You don't?" He looked at her as a stranger. "I do. I do, now. I underestimated your father, Miss Colson. He is a very sharp man indeed, the bastard!" She went back a step at the venom in his tone, then came forward again, cheeks glowing but striving to be patient

"You'll have to explain that I have a right to know."

"You do? You don't have any rights at all, but you can't see it yet. Maybe I can show you, and in the process show you what a bloody fool I am. Grab a cup and come and sit and listen to a classic example of the man who stepped out of his class, and paid the penalty. Me." Her face was stiff now, her eyes like deep caves of dark brown as she sat opposite him, watching him. Now he could really see her as beautiful, as rare as a carving, and as meaningless. A Colson.

"In the beginning," he said savagely gentle, "there was me. I found a planet, a whole world-sized gold mine. And then there was Carlton Colson, a man who worships only one god, money-power, who immediately determined to possess the wealth of that planet So he schemed. He played on the simpleminded weakness of an old friend, a clever man called Brocat 'Make me a superman,' he said, and when Brocat hesitated, he added, 'We will be the only ones who will ever know. We three.' Then he sent for me and dangled the bait in front of my hose. 'I will make you rich,' he said, 'if you will do this, and this. And no one must ever know. Only we three.' And I fell for itl"

"That will do!" she lashed him with scorn. "Say what you have to say, and say it plain!" "All right, how's this for plain? I am sent down here, supported and assisted, to work out the data for gutting this planet of uncountable millions in precious metal ores. Two years. Total secrecy. Even those men up there who are watching over me don't know what is really down here, nor what I really am. Two years, or as long as it takes to get what is necessary. And then? A finger on a button . . . and exit John Lampart and all evidence that he ever existed. And who's to know? Brocat? All Colson has to do is tell the silly old fool that there must have been an accident of some kind, how unfortunate! And Brocat will believe that Why not? And Carlton Colson will have it all for himself. So simple. Dead men don't talk, that's the oldest rule in the book, isn't it?"

"What about me?" she said, shoulders hunched and her hands flat on the table. "I know. I'm here!"

"You?" he sneered. "You're his flesh and blood. You're safe. You won't talk. You're in his pocket. You like wealth and luxury and power just as much as he does. You won't talk! It's obvious, isn't it? When they signaled me there was a passenger coming down on that shuttle I couldn't understand it I couldn't think what the old fool was up to, to let somebody else in on the secret. I thought maybe he was getting somebody to check up on me, some expert or other. I might have known it would be you, the only person in the whole world who could be relied on not to talk too loud!"

"I came because I wanted to, It was my idea!"

"Oh sure, I can believe that I can see him agreeing, too. Why not? You can't do any harm. Let you have your own way, keep you out of mischief for a while, have yourself a bit of fun, go back and forget all about it You'll never talk. You'll never tell anyoue that here is a whole planet of precious metal. You'll never tell anyoue that for a while, you were a superhuman person . . . a secret that Brocat would hate to have anybody know about. If you talked about this planet your old man would lose money on it. If you talked about being converted, Brocat would be pilloried, even haunted and destroyed as the man who could make monsters. Secrecy is the whole point, isn't it? And you're safe. You won't talk. That's why you were allowed to come here, and no other reason. And your old man took damn good care I would never live to talk about it, either. You don't think that load of detonite just grew in there, do you?"

Her hand came up off the table and across his face in a slap that rattled his teeth and stunned him for just a second. Then he swayed back, savage with rage, and swung the back of his hand at her in a swipe that knocked her staggering backward across, the deck with her hands up. He went around the table like a tiger, advancing on her, watching her fall and roll over and come up. Her teeth gleamed in a snarl as she came for him, in a stance and pose that rang warning bells only just in time. She waved a left feint, swayed and lashed out with a kick for his crotch. He jumped back, caught her foot, and threw it away, spinning her off-balance, strode in to thump her hard in the kidney as she spun, and add a kick to her rear to send her crashing against the bulkhead. Fending off with her hands she bounced away and turned, came in again, head tucked between her shoulders.

She feinted again, and he, on the lookout for another kick, moved right into her swift and savage arm lock and had to go over and away, or be broken. He fell spread-eagled onto the steel table, gasping as the edge winded him, grunting again as she fell on him from the rear, seizing a handful of hair and snaking her arm around his neck for a stranglehold. He had learned in a tough school. No doubt she had been taught by experts, but he had learned his actions from killers. He braced, expended all his strength to launch himself bodily backward, taking her with him, hooking his feet back to trap hers, tripping, falling flat with all his weight on top and her underneath. In a moment he was free and scrambling up, to crouch over her as she heaved for breath and tried to rise. With his flat palm he knocked her silly, down into a sprawl As she tried, dazedly, to struggle up again, he slapped her again, hard, and she went back down, on her back, propped on her elbows, her eyes glazed.

That's ft!" he gasped between labored breaths. "You got off . . . light . . . this time. Try anything ... like that . . . again . . . and I'll kill you! Now just . . . stay away from me ... all right?" He tramped back to the table, rescued his upturned coffee mug and went to refill it, not caring a damn what she did. There was no longer any room in his mind for any kind of caring, not for her or himself. There was no future at all, only the immediate and aching present In a while he was calm enough to go into his workshop and perform the meaningless routine of assaying his samples and grading them, discarding all but two as being too rich. Pointless, all of it. The whole stupid business didn't mean anything anymore. He felt weary, looked at his clock and sneered at himself. Daytime. It had been a long night He should be sleeping. Routine. Why not? He cleared the bench and went out, across to the stair and on up to the cabin deck. On a sudden thought he stopped by her door and rapped. "You in there?" "What d'you want?"

"Just a reminder, in case you were thinking of clobbering me when I'm asleep, or my back's turned . . . without me you're dead. Think about it." He waited a moment but there was no reply. He moved away to his own cabin and went in, sprawling on his bunk. He felt utterly empty. In a while he slept. And this time there were no nightmares at all.

He awoke just on sunset, knowing it without knowing how he knew. Showered and twinging a little from bruises he went down to the main deck, and she was nowhere to be seen. He made coffee and a bowl of mush from the machine, and sat to eat it trying to get his mind in order. What made it difficult to think straight was the overriding realization that he had been taken, all the way, for a fool. It was so obvious, too. Now. It was even funny, in a distorted kind of way. Here he had been diligently working and planning to diddle Colson, to furnish him with false data . . . perhaps not exactly false, but cooked anyway ... so as to make him abandon the planetary exploitation as not worthwhile. Call the whole thing off. Come back, Lampart! Forget it it's not worth the trouble 1 And then he, of his own choice, would contrive a fatal accident, and no one would ever know. And he would have won a whole planet all to himself.

Lampart chuckled sarcastically. What a schemel And all the time Colson had it fixed to do something similar, but slightly and lethally different. You had to hand it to the old devil for simple, straightforward, cold-blooded logic. Use Lampart to get the data, blind him with

science and the need for secrecy, and then ... get rid of him. So simple!

"I'm glad you think something is funny." She spoke coldly from the air lock, coming slowly in to stare at him. She had put on a clean white cotton coverall, and she had her fist clenched on something.

"Me," he said indifferently. "I'm the clown, the funny man, and I'm just seeing it I thought I was being smart, but your father was smarter, that's all. So it's funny, isn't it? Whafve you been doing, if anything?"

'Thinking." She came near, and he could see the traces of punishment on her face, felt a pang that he pushed instantly away. "You know what this means?" She opened her hand and flourished a small square of white, a handkerchief. He frowned at it then at her.

"You mean . . . some kind of a deal7 Between us?"

"The word I had in mind was truce." She sat at the end of the table, away from him. "We are two of a kind, John Lampart, whether you like it or not And we are both stuck here..."

"I can call that shuttle down any time you like!"

"No. That's not the answer. I said ... a truce!"

PART THREE

Trust

EIGHT

"You know what the word 'truce' means?"

"A mutual cessation of hostilities, yes."

"No, more than that. It means trust. We have to trust each other not to break whatever agreement we make. Why should I trust you?" He watched her face keenly, wondering what went on under it.

"What little I know of you," she said, "I know I can trust you to keep whatever word you give. I wouldn't have come here like this otherwise, stranding myself all alone on this planet with you. As for why you should trust me, there is always this. I am not my father. Whatever deal he made with you is between you and him. I had nothing to do with it. I know nothing about it. I do not share anything like that with my father. I've already told you, there is no love lost between him and myself. I came here"—she set her jaw doggedly to say it—"because of pride, because I had never met anyoue like you before, because I couldn't get you out of my mind. Because you angered and infuriated me . . . and because I envied you. Because you had something I didn't have. A goal, a reason, something to live for . . . and I wanted it, too!"

"But that's"—he caught back the word "stupid" and substituted hastily—"that's not possible! You have to live your own life, choose your own ambitions. Nobody else can do it for you!"

"Yes, I know. But," she hesitated, and he knew intuitively that this was costing her dearly, "at least let me share in yours. For a while. Can't we work together like . . . well . . . not friends, perhaps . . . but like pupil and teacher, maybe? Or partners? This place, it's harsh and

savage, even frightening sometimes, but it's real. And beautiful, too. You're able to see that. You've shown me a little. Those flowers. That dawn, and the rain, and there must be lots more. I want to stay and see it."

"You'd soon get fed up and bored with it."

"Maybe I will, in time. When I do I'll let you know, and you can call down the shuttle and I'll go away and never bother you again. Is that too much to ask?"

"You know what I'm trying to do here, don't you? What I have to do now, like it or not?"

She nodded. "That's what I've been thinking about. What I would do in your place. When the time comes, when they are all through with you, when you've done all they want of you, somebody will push the button . . . and, so far as they know, you'll be dead. Done with. Then you will have to manage on your own altogether. To live here."

"That's right. That's what I was planning to do anyway. You want to help with that?"

"If you'll let me, yes. Whatever I can do to help. It might not be much. You'll have to be patient with me." She made a smile that was obviously painful. "We can even argue, if you like, and get angry with each other . . . but let's not fight like that again. It was awful! I wanted to kill you!"

"Mutual!" he muttered, and made an effort, offered her his hand. "All right, you have a deal. We're friends, for as long as you feel you can stand it." Her clasp was strong and steady, and her smile radiant

"Thank you for that word, John. I didn't expect it. I'm glad. What's the next item on the program?"

"Nothing urgent." He grinned at her enthusiasm. "We eat. We need more samples for when the shuttle comes down. And I think we will go and take a look at the forest. I'll show you where that cat nearly got me, and where I found that arrowhead. And maybe, who knows, we'll meet some little green men among the trees."

It was an entirely different kind of thing, mounting an expedition to cross the sand and venture through that gap in the hills, into the gorge and down the far side, with company. She had been to some trouble deciding what to wear. "All my clothes are falling apart," she complained, "just as you said. Even my shoes. That belt of yours, with all the toggles and pouches, is there another of those?"

"Surely. It's part of a suit, and it's pretty tough stuff. Which gives me another idea." He showed her how to take the belts and straps out of a suit, and also the radio. "It's an independent unit. It can easily be fixed into a wrist strap. We better have one each in case we get separated. It'll be noisy, but we ought to be able to keep in touch up to a mile apart, maybe more."

"Do you have scissors?"

"I do, but you won't cut that webbing with them. What you need is a glass knife. I have one of those, too."

So now she strode along with him in ragged breeches that were the midsection from a cotton coverall, with webbing boots and a belt about her waist for carrying sample pouches. And his sword, while he carried the spear. She was all abubble with interest, keen questions, and chatter, as if some wall inside her had broken to release a completely new person.

"Will we be collecting samples this trip?" she asked.

"Well pick up one or two from the side of the cut, on the way back. Not from anywhere beyoud that. You'll see why when we get there."

The first view of the forest took her breath away. "When you said there were trees, a forest, I never imagined anything so vast as that And that glint down there, it's a sea, isn't it?"

"Sort of. I have aerial maps that I took on the way down. There isn't a proper sea anywhere, not that I saw. Just big lakes like that."

"But that makes it all the more incredible that there should be such abundant life here. I mean, we take it for granted that all life started in the sea, don't we?"

"On Earth, sure. But I have my own theories about that. For now, you see what I mean about samples? I don't know just how smart they are, whoever analyzes my stuff up there, but if they get so much as a hint of organic molecules in any quantity the rest will be obvious. I have no doubt whatever that Colson has all his experts sewn up tight, but to my knowledge you can't stop scientists from thinking, and talking, and if it ever gets out that there's any kind of advanced life here, the researchers will come in droves. And that will be the finish of this planet just as sure as I've stood here telling you."

"Can we get as far down as that water, now?"

"Not this trip. That is all of twenty miles, maybe more, and all the way back up. And it's hot down there, remember. And don't forget the rain, either. Imagine being caught here in that downpour! Come on, and keep your eyes working."

He took her down by easy stages as far as the fruit grove, and was impressed by her alertness and obvious delight at every new bush and tree. She was really bowled over by the golden eggs, and the wine within.

"We must take a supply of these home with us. This is delicious! And what a pleasant place, too."

"I like it. I often sit here and think awhile, before going on. It's a good place for thinking.''

"You think a lot, don't you?"

"Talk to myself, too!" he admitted, grinning.

"Well don't Talk to me instead." She sat beside him on the log, holding an egg full of wine. 'Tell me your theory about the sea."

"It's nothing very outrageous, really. Life didn't start in the sea, not even on Earth. It started around the edges, in small pools. That is the only way you can get a strong enough concentration of molecules to load the possibilities of the right combinations getting started, and that has to be the first stage. Life probably developed in the sea, sure. But was that such a good thing? Maybe that's why evolution was so slow!"

"What's that mean? I'm not with you."

"Well look, they say it's a matter of competition, and survival, and all that stuff. But, on Earth, no matter where you look, there's life of some kind. Does that sound like it's so tough? Maybe there was competition all the time for top dog in any class, but there was also plenty of room for seconds and thirds. Life has millions of solutions on Earth. In the sea . . . four fifths of all Earth is sea. Plenty of room there for all kinds of solutions, good and bad. And on land, too. What I'm trying to say, so long as the living is easy, who's hurrying to improve it? The dinosaurs had it made for three hundred million years! They weren't in any rush. So maybe that's why evolution took such a long time, because life was easy all the way. Any fool creature could survive, after a fashion, and did. But here it's not so easy. You have to pick the right answer out of just a few possibilities, or die. So it's faster. Does that make any sense?"

"It sounds reasonable enough," she admitted. "And here it all is, in any case. Are there any other fruits like this?"

"I've seen several different ones. I can tell you which ones are not fit to eat . . . all those I haven't tried! You mind that. Don't eat anything until it's been tested, and only a little even then. Come on, I'll show you my arrow tree."

But she showed him something much better, before they got that far. Her sharp eyes spotted a new shape back away from the gorge wall and they went to look, and found a plant type quite new to him. From a stumpy lump in the ground came large striplike blades, almost like palm fronds, but huge and pale pink. Peering close, he said, "This is the same construction, with a twist A lot of small tubes side by side. Neat."

"But try to bend one!" she urged, following her own advice. When he tried it he was astounded, and intrigued, at the rigidity. Then he caught the concept from her, and beamed.

"You're a very smart girl. By God ... a bow!"

"And a sword blade!" she crowed. "We must take a lot for experiment and trial. How far is the arrow tree?"

"Not much farther. Well get a load of those too, and then well get back. It will be slower when we're loaded, so let's not take any big chances. There'll be other times."

They got back to the ship, weary but jubilant, about an hour before dawn was due, and nothing would satisfy her but that he show her how to set up resistance coils and cook the juices and organic fibers out of the "leaves" they had carried back. "Slowly at first," he explained, "to dry out and then consume the carbon fractions. Then you can turn up the amperage and get them red hot. Make a note of all your settings, so you can repeat, or modify. Mind you don't burn yourself, and don't be in such a hurry! You can't temper metal alloys fast it can't be done!"

He had his routine with sampling and grading. Dawn almost caught them unawares. When they dashed out to enjoy it, he saw her stripping off her ragged cotton to be ready for the drenching, and when he could see her again after the swirling mist she was as naked as he was, a look of awe on her face. But then she scampered away ahead of him and up to her cabin, and when she came back, as he was busy grilling lizard, she had put on a clean white cotton coverall.

"Bedtime," he said, "when we've had this. A good day's work, and a lot of fun, too. Tonight well go chasing lizards, and get some more samples. We're low on meat. And I mean to have another try at tanning some hide. I know your footgear works, but I mean to make my own, just the same."

"And at least two of those bow strips ought to be cooked by then. What can we use for strings?"

"Why not what the real primitives used? Gut. Those lizards have sinews and tendons of some kind. We'll see."

"You know." She held a chopped egg-fruit in her hand and studied it. "These are too good to throw away. Why not our own crockery, too?"

As he stretched out on his bunk, ready for sleep, he realized with surprise that he was smiling. That he was happy I The thought gave him pause. It was all wrong. She couldn't become a permanence in his life I Sooner or later she would go away again, that was inevitable. But not for a while, he told himself firmly. She was good people to have around, and the future, whatever it was, would have to take care of itself.

Catching a lizard turned out to be more difficult than he had at first anticipated. As they prowled cautiously among the rim rocks they saw several, all much too big, and froze to let them drag past. "We want a little one," he told her, "if we're going to handle it on the fiat. I've killed a big one or two, but only by jamming the spear against a rock and letting him impale himself on it. That's risky to do. We want one no more than six feet or so."

They disturbed some scavengers, sent them howling and yipping, and once a flapping flight of beak-birds thought there was a chance for a meal but changed their minds when the prey ran into the open, on Lampart's instructions. "I don't know why," he told her. "All I know is that they won't tackle anything on the flat. They like to get you among the rocks."

They did, eventually, stir up a small lizard, while they were chipping samples halfway up a rugged slope. "All right now," Lampart told her, "you lead him off down that way. Ill just finish this bag and join you. Just keep in front of him, hell follow, until you have room to turn around. Then you know what to do."

"I do? You won't be long, will your*

"Ten minutes at most Go on now, he's only a little one!"

Well inside his estimated time he finished assorting and bagging his bits of rock, and heard a fiendish squealing and snorting down there where she had gone. He held still to listen, then shook his head and went, fast. He found her in trouble, struggling to keep hold of the spear end while a furious lizard-beast clawed sand to get at her, shaking its head and dragging her to and fro with its strength. It could have been funny, but it could also be serious, and he wasted no time. Running across the sand, he came up alongside the- wounded beast and delivered a mighty chop at the join of head and body, so that sparks flew for a moment. It took two more before the beast shivered and lay still.

"I couldn't dig him hard enough!" she puffed, and he grinned.

"That's all right. You should've seen my first try. You didn't let him get close enough, I expect It takes nerve. You have to let him get right up to you, and then jab, right for the top inside of his mouth, and hard! Never mind, no harm done. We'll drag him just as he is, as soon as I get the spear out"

They dragged shoulder to shoulder, leaning into the load, and he almost trod on a red blob before he saw it. This was something else new to her, and he took the opportunity to explain. "It's a kind of landgoing jellyfish, in a way, and a good thing to keep away from. You get a touch of that baby and youll know. Stings and burns like the devil."

"Whatever does it live on?"

"Anything and everything, I reckon. It's practically pure acid, a crawling stomach."

"What would it do to lizard skin, d'you think?"

"I don't know." He frowned at her, then shrugged. "We can find out easily enough. Start dragging." Between them they dragged the lizard carcass across the shivering red mass and on for several cautious feet then struggled together to roll the body over and look. The underbelly was pale blue, except where the jelly had touched it, leaving a long scarlet smear. "Hard to tell," he said, "whether that's just a mark, or the thing itself. Keep on dragging. We'll look at it again when we get home."

When they looked again, at the gangway foot, the scarlet had spread all over the soft underside. He eyed it thoughtfully. "We have to be careful now," he decided. "I do not want any red blob loose inside the ship, and that is for sure. So, while you stay out here and make sure the little dog-rats don't have themselves a feast day, I will go and prepare something. Only a minute or two." He returned with the glass knife and proceeded to cut carefully all around the reddish patch. It didn't look alive, at all, but he was taking no chances. He had also brought a small portable vise, and as soon as he could pry enough skin free he clamped the vise on it and instructed her to hold it, and pull, while he sliced away at the meat underneath. "There's probably a better way to skin it than this," he told her, "but this is the only way I can think of. And it certainly looks as if the red stuff hasn't soaked through, which is a good sign."

"What are you going to do with it when you have it all off?" she asked, maintaining the tension.

"I've prepared a dish of strong alkali. It can soak in there for a while. That will take care of our red blob friend, at least."

The rest, hacking away the legs and dissecting the carcass, took a lot longer, was a messy business, but got them meat and some tendons.

"Well just have to dry this lot out," he decided, looking dubiously at the slippery, tangled mass, "and see what happens."

"Shouldn't we hang weights on the ends, so they stretch?" she suggested, and they did that, after a lot of struggling.

"You're full of bright ideas," he said, grinning at her.

"I'm in a mess," she retorted. "I'm going to shower, and then check on my sword blades and bows. Do we just leave that lot outside?"

"The local cleaners will take care of it Do you want a glass of wine?"

"There isn't going to be any left to ferment if we drink it alll"

"Yes, ma'am!" he said humbly. "Ill make do with coffee. But if that juice goes sour, like vinegar, 111 never forgive you."

And so another evening passed, and another dawn came with its refreshing miracle. The blades turned out only partly successful. One bent and stayed bent, another was so brittle it snapped, the other two were nearly but not quite resilient enough.

"We're burning out too much carbon," he reasoned as they ate breakfast together. "We need to adjust the setting a little in the first roast. But that skin, it's as soft as velvet. Let's hope it's still like that when it dries. What made you think of the red blob effect? Don't try to kid me, now, you were hoping for something like that, weren't you?"

"Just a guess," she said. "When you said acid, and everything here has metal in it, and that thing dissolves things ... it was worth a try."

"And it works. But how the hell do we use it? As a principle, I mean? How do I trap and keep a red blob?"

"Find something it can't eat holes in. Like, maybe, a fuel bladder or glass?"

"You," he said sternly, "will bear watching. All these bright ideas. I'm supposed to be the smart one around here. Teacher and pupil, you said, remember? But a fuel bladder might work, at that. Those things are as tough as they come."

He was still puzzling over the problem when they joined each other again at sunset. She surprised him with a query. "We are getting low on these cotton suits. There are only three or four left. Can we get more?"

"No problem," he told her promptly. "The shuttle will be down, day after tomorrow. I usually make up a list of anything I want, grub, powerpacks, fuel, anything . . . and they send it down next trip. You make out a shopping list, anything you want..."

"But that will be six or seven days! What am I going to wear in the meantime?" Her anxiety was patent and genuine. He forebore to demand why she was bothering at all with clothes, deciding it was none of his business, and gave his mind to the problem.

"Couldn't you wash some, use them more than once?" he wondered. "I can whip up a detergent solution easily enough. I have the stuff. That cotton stands up to this atmosphere a bit better than plastics. Enough to get you by, anyway, till a supply comes down."

"I've never done any washing," she said, in such a helpless way that he had to chuckle.

"There's no great trick to it," he told her. "In fact, what am I saying? You can do it in the showerl Switch to foam,' keep it going for a while, hot as you can, and then 'rinse' and then 'dry,' while you have it on." He thought a moment, then shook his head. "No, maybe not, not the drying bit. But the rest would work all right. Or if you want to do it the regular way, 111 knock out some suds for you, and all you do is dunk your dainties in a bowl of hot water, add the suds, slosh it about a bit, rinse in clean water, hang out to dry. That's all."

They stayed home that night He kept tactfully out of the workshop, which was the only place there was a bowl big enough, apart from the disposal unit and she rejected that, and while she had her first encounter with laundry work, he busied himself with the lizard hide, which had stayed soft and supple on drying. There was enough of it he figured, to make shoes for both of them, if only he could work out a design. For inspiration he resorted to the computer store, and finally found what he wanted by the roundabout route of asking for the history of footwear. As soon as the picture of an Amerind moccasin came up on the screen he knew it was exactly what he wanted.

Back in the main space once more, he spread the hide on the table and studied it. Shape of the foot Draw an outline. Extend that by three inches or so. Pierce holes all the way around for a thong. Then an oval piece to cover the instep. He estimated how much that would take, as a block, and scowled. There wasn't going to be enough, after all. Barely enough leather there for one paid

"Hey!" she came out of the workshop with her hair lank against her forehead and three dismal strips of soaking wet white over one arm. "What are you doing with my skin?"

"Your skin?" He raised his brows at her. "Oh, all right. I was going to make you a pair of shoes. Why?"

"Oh!" she looked confused for a moment. "But it is mine. I thought of it. The red blob, I mean. And I caught it. Anyway, I was going to make it into a skirt!"

"Were you now?" he looked at her critically, then back at the skin. "Do you reckon it's big enough for that?"

"What d'you mean?" she retorted hotly. "Of course it's big enough. Are you insinuating I've got a fat bottom?"

"Whoa nowl" he raised his hands in surrender. "Your skin. You do what you want with it. I just thought shoes would be the most practical, that's all. Do you know how? To make a skirt, I mean?"

"Of course I Look, help me hang this lot up somewhere, will you, and I'll show you." He shrugged, unreeled a length of patch cable, and soon the washed cottons were dripping periodically on the deck by the suit rack. She took more of the cable to measure her waist, used the length to make estimates on the skin, borrowed his talc marker, as he watched her working with curious eyes. Two pieces? And strips of some kind? Then, as she knotted two of the strips together, passed the result around her waist, and knotted the other two, he saw. It was a kind of double apron, back and front.

"That's a skirt?" he demanded, and she glared at him.

"It's better than wandering around in long Johns all the time! I feel such a fool!" She tugged and smoothed at the pink hide, looked up to see his amused grin, and snapped at him again. "Don't you have something to do somewhere?"

"Sure!" he said meekly, and went into the workshop. He heard her trot on the stair and shrugged resignedly. Women! But then he forgot her odd ways as he touch-tested a fresh batch of blades, to find them cool to his fingers. Drawing one out of its coil bed he flexed it, hopefully, and his heart leaped as it resisted his strength, but with a hint of spring to it. In a moment he had it clamped by one end in his bench vise and both hands gripping the far end, heaving cautiously, dreading the idea that it might snap. But it didn't It bent reluctantly, fighting back. When he let it go again, it was as straight as before. In quick order he tried the rest All were good. On the rush he went back to where she had been snipping at that skin, and gathered up precious patches, studying them, visualizing various ways of converting them into some kind of hand grip. He heard her tread on the stair and whirled enthusiastically.

"The blades!" he said. "They're fine, just fine! Come

and see." She was with him in a moment, as breathless as he was.

"The two long ones for bows!" she declared. "They need notching at the ends, for the string. And these"—she hefted one experimentally—"are almost perfect as they are. The pommel this end."

"I was going to use these scraps for some kind of grip."

"That's right. Cut it into long thin strips, like string, and bind it around the end. You'll have to shape it first, file it down or something like that."

"Of course!" he said, shaking his head. "Why didn't I think of that?" and he slapped her on the shoulder as he passed her to switch on a grinding wheel. 'This beats filing. I'll shape that handle right away, and then while I'm binding you can do your notches and smooth off the rough edges. Hey, what happened to the skirt7 Why aren't you wearing it?"

"Don't ask silly questions now. Oh, I hope those tendons have dried out tough! Go on, show me how that grinding thing works!"

And so passed another night, at the end of which they had a sword that felt alive in his hand, with an edge like a razor, and another to be finished off. They had two bows that hummed like cellos when he plucked the strings, and which he secretly despaired of ever being able to draw, the gut strings cutting into his fingers when he tried. But she dismissed his uncertainty with the confidence of one who knows.

"I'll show you," she promised. "We'll need tabs, of course. And I think it would be better if we could split some of that tendon and then plait it, but we'll have to see about that. But you'll be able to draw these all right, when you know how. It's nearly dawn, isn't it?"

Again, as they stood at arm's length and waited for Alcyoue to come, he saw her peeling out of her coveralls, and again, as the mist cleared, she was there, scoured, clean, radiant, and somehow subdued. And once again she ran before him inboard and up to her cabin, leaving him to start breakfast, to switch on the coffee, and wonder at what he didn't understand.

NINE

But this time, when she came soft-footed down the ladder, he began to see, a little. No long Johns now. No grotesque webbing boots. She was barefoot. She had done something to her hair, put it up somehow. And she had done something to the skirt, too. Now the knots on either hip had fringes, as did the brief hem. It looked professional. She looked "dressed." In a groping kind of way he understood what she was trying to achieve, and appreciated it "That looks greatl" he said. "Suits you." And her smile made it all seem worthwhile.

And he had a surprise for her, too. When she saw the goblets on the table she stared at them, then took one up, and looked at him in wide-eyed wonder. "It's beautifull" she said. "How did you do it?"

"I ruined the first two," he admitted, as she sat and turned the thing in her hand. "Just cook 'em in a fierce heat first, to get rid of the inner pulp and rind, but you have to time it just right, or they melt The metal is as thin as eggshell. Nothing to it really. The flat on the bottom just happens. Part melt."

"It actually looks like fine gold-plate!"

"It's more than that. I assayed some of the snips. It's about sixty-five percent platinum. What do we do tonight, go and get some more of those, and some arrow branches? Or catch us another lizard, this time a big one? You name it."

"But what about your work? You need some more samples, don't you7"

"All right, we'll do that And if we see a big lizard well get him. And I've figured out a way, maybe, of catching me a red blob, too. You'll seel"

120                         KING OF ARGENT

K

Again, as he stretched out on his bunk to invite sleep, he knew he was happy, but this time he didn't spare any thought or worry about it. Tomorrow could take care of itself, he decided. For now, if she wanted to dress up, he would get her the biggest lizard skin there was. Or maybe a cat hide. Maybe they could process that dark blue fur the same way? And tableware to make her eyes shine. Those goblets weren't all that good. He could do better!

This time, just to be different, he tried the rock wall close by the ship. It was forbiddingly steep and he had no real hope of flushing a lizard, but this was one of the few points he hadn't yet marked on his grid, so there was an excuse. She was in one of her laundered cottons and webbing boots, but she had the new sword and he had the spear this time, also an empty fuel bladder.

"We're all prepared," he said, "so we won't find a damned thing, you'll see."

She stared up at the cliff wall as they neared it and turned to shake her head at him. "We can't climb that, surely?"

"There are one of two small ledges, here and there. You know, I've many a time thought that if our little green men do know we're here, and they wanted to be real unkind, they could throw rocks down on the ship from the top, it's that close."

"That's a thought to disturb my sleep. Would they, d'you think?"

"No way of telling until we meet them. All the intelligent life we know calls itself human. This lot is bound to be different in some way. If my theory of evolution has anything going for it, they could be a real surprise." There was a surprise of a different kind waiting for them. He had hardly begun to chip at a likely little outcrop, about eight or nine feet above sand level, when he tensed to a ferocious screech and a shower of grit fell on his head from above. Scrambling aside and peering up be saw a vast shovel-head moving, craning over, trying to get a focus on the source of the noise.

"Must have felt the vibration," he called, as she crouched back on the skinny ledge on the other side of the falling dirt. "A really big one. Let's see if we can lure him down out of it."

It took them an exasperating hour of taunts and thrown rocks and arm-waving to finally decoy the great creature down to sand level. "He wants to, all right," Lampart told her. "He's just too stupid to be able to figure out a way to turn around on that ledge. Left alone, he would just barge along it to wherever it came out. He's not built for backing up. There's only one way. I'll have to get up there in front of him and have him chase me." And that was not as easy to do as to say, and even when he did manage to get close enough to the lizard to be sure he was seen, the monster seemed unwilling to move at first. Eventually it could resist taunts and challenges no longer, and started for him. After that, it was merely a matter of backing away and leading it until they came to a ledge winding down to the sand. Lampart was so intent on his prey, and the high priority on keeping his foothold, that he didn't miss her until he hit the sand and had time to look around, and wonder where she was.

And then there was no time at all, for the furious creature came scrabbling after him now, scooping its bulk along through the sand with paddling claws at a fair rate. He backed away, glancing over his shoulder at intervals to keep his bearings, smiling wryly to himself as he realized that, with luck, he was going to have his enemy deliver itself almost to his door. In fact the massive bulk of the ship was the only solid support anywhere near that he could hope to use as a backstop for his spear. He found just another moment to wonder where the devil she had got to, and then the moment was at hand. The slant-upright column of one landing foot was at his back and the lizard approaching at a furious ten miles per hour. He went down on his knee and lost interest in everything and anything except that fearsome muzzle and the business in hand.

Turret eyes jerked and came to a focus. Great jaws gaped and showed teeth, the mighty head swaying in deadly rhythm to the rowing feet. He let the spear lie flat in the sand, waiting for the precise moment. Even this dim-head wouldn't charge onto a seen point. It had to be done at just the right time. Now . . . while the upper jaw obscured the direct stare ... he lifted and leveled, backing the butt end against high-tensile steel, aiming for the roof of that yawning mouth and holding on, watching the point go in and strike, feeling the shock and shiver in his hands as the massive beast plunged onward to its own destruction. But it kept on coming, unable to stop its forward momentum. Only the fact that the landing leg was inclined saved him from being crushed. At the last moment he parted his feet, felt the lower jaw pass between them to meet solidity, as the upper jaw pressed into his chest and bent him backward. And stopped.

He could only just breathe. The pressure on his chest was fearful. He groaned, got his hands against the slimy jaw and shoved, but he might as well have tried to push back the cliff wall itself. Panic spurred him for a moment into tendon-cracking effort, then he got a grip on himself and stopped trying the futile. The thing was dead, no doubt of that, but he was all the more trapped thereby. Dead weight doesn't move. Striving for calm, he thought of his wrist radio, and managed to trip it and get it to his face. "Dorothea I Do you hear me? Where are you?" Interference sizzled impersonally at him for a while, then her voice over it.

"I hear you, John. Up here on the ledge. It wasn't a him, it was a her. There are eggs. At least that's what they look like. I'm bringing some down. They might be edible."

"All right, but don't be all day. I need your help." He left it at that, not wanting to scare her into anything rash. Apart from the load on his chest he was in no immediate danger anyway. Except for the dog-rat predators, perhaps. He kept a sharp lookout for those, and was relieved when he saw her white-clad shape coming hurriedly across the sand.

"Good God!" she gasped, when she was close enough to see. "What... are you all right?"

"So far," he told her. "The damned thing is leaning on me and I can't shift it. What you do, you follow the angle of the jaw, chop away until you get to the muscles and tendons, and cut them. Then the other side. And then well see." It took a long while, longer than he liked. The temptation to struggle was great, the urge to breathe deep even greater, and he had to fight both and wait while she hacked and slashed and panted with her efforts, but at last he felt slight movement in the solid weight that leaned on him. "You're getting there!" he called, and gathered his strength for one mighty heave, feeling the muscles of his back and shoulders strain and bum with the effort.

But the great jaw moved, lifted up and away so that he could slip out from under and sprawl into the sand, and lie there, and just breathe, slowly and gingerly against a great aching pain. He felt her hands on his chest, her face stooping over him full of anxiety.

"You're hurt!" she cried, and he tried to laugh.

"Bent, maybe, but nothing's broken. I'll be all right in a minute. What about those eggs?" He managed, with care, to sit up and look at the leathery balls she brought. They were big enough to fill his palm, each of them, and unique in that they were distinctly green. She explained.

"They were in a hole, half-covered with fine sand, a whole lot of them. About thirty or so. I only brought these four. D'you think we can eat them?"

"Ill have to run a chemical test on one, to see if I can find any poison indications, while we boil the rest. Green! That's the first green things I've seen. And I don't know all that much about lizards, but as far as the book goes they do not nurture their eggs, they just leave 'em. So that's a difference too."

She hunkered down in the sand beside him and stared at the egg in her hand. "Is that right, about lizards? That they don't care for their babies at all?"

"Right.Fishes and reptiles. They just lay eggs and leave 'em to get along on their own. That's why they are not such a success, on Earth anyway. How can they learn anything to pass on? It's not until you get up to mammals that you get nurture. That's what mammal means, a creature that takes care of its young, can feed it, with mammary glands. And teach them a thing or two in the process."

"Oh!" She thought for a moment, then looked down at herself, at the ample curves of her cotton suit. Again he wondered what she was thinking, decided tactfully not to press the subject, and instead led the talk away along another line.

"When we carve this one up we'll have to look a little closer, see if we can find any signs of mammalian development" He managed to climb to his feet, stretching and flexing painfully. "I'll have some bruises to show for this, I reckon. But come on, let's get started. There's my timekeeper showing over the cliffs."

It was a tremendous advantage having the prey right by the ship. It meant they could salvage great quantities of the flesh, not just legs, and the underbelly strip of hide was huge, almost twelve feet long and more than four feet wide for most of that. "Skirt, shoes, and something for me, too, out of this," he said, struggling with the slimy stuff. "Now I have to catch me a red blob. If my theory is any good, that shouldn't be too difficult Can you manage on your own for a bit?"

"I have to finish cutting out these tendons," she said, smearing her face with bloodstained fingers in an effort to brush her hair back. "What are you going to do7 Don't take any siHy risks, will you?"

"Don't worry. I don't take any chances with those things. Ill not be far away anyway. You give me a call if you get scavengers. They can be vicious." He went away with an empty fuel bladder from which he had cut away the feeder top and thus had a long sack-shape capable of holding some twenty gallons of concentrated power. Whether or not it would hold a red blob he hoped to discover soon. He was back within the hour, all jubilant grin and dragging the bladder carefully after him. She had just made the last chop on a long sinew and was gathering it into a kind of bundle for carrying. She aimed her stained sword at shadows that lurked not too far away.

"They've been sneaking up on me," she told him, "for some time, but they seem scared to come too close."

"They've learned," he laughed. "I've been rough with them a time or two. They can smell meat. So can this thing. I figured it had to have some way of sensing food nearby, so, when I found one, I dug a damned great hole close by, put the bladder in it, then lured our friend with little dabs of lizard until he fell right into it. No problem so far. The next bit could be tricky, though. I had planned to pour him out on the hide and then spread him around on it, but what with?"

"How about a bone?" she suggested. "We have plenty of those now."

"Sounds good. Let's see." When he had selected six or seven long bones and laid them handily near, he dragged the bladder to the spread-out hide and upended it, shaking, until the red jelly-thing slithered out on to the skin. "Got to be quick now," he muttered, seizing a bone and prodding the thing, to have it stick immediately to the bone and cling. He bore down hard, rubbing to and fro, shaking it, until, all at once, it seemed to burst and flow, and he chased the flood frantically, spreading it over the skin, the bone visibly shortening in his grasp. He tossed it well away, toward those lurking, yelping shadows, and took up another.

"No, let me!" she hovered by his elbow anxiously. "You go and get something to wash it off, before it eats a hole right through!"

"Right!" he handed her the bone and grabbed the bladder again. "Ill be as quick as I can. Keep it moving around!"

As he got back to her with the bladder almost full of a strong solution of ammoniacal liquid she was scrubbing furiously, and every once in a while casting a glance over her shoulder at the hungry scavengers.

"We have a problem," he told her. "They know the dawn isn't far off, and they want to eat before then, or start all over again. Look, I'll do the rest of this. You grab everything we want and take it inboard, those eggs, the tendons, any meat you can handle, and the spear. Stow it for the moment anywhere, we can sort it out later. And then come back. We are going to have to defend this hide. We can't take it inside the way it is."

By the time dawn was imminent the dog-rats had closed in. A score of them were yapping and snapping at the remains of the carcass, while the less fortunate others darted and yowled at the two who with drawn swords defended a patch of precious hide. But then, as if by some mighty command, there came a gust of hot, moist air and the skulking creatures turned and fled instantly. The two nonhumans, weary and stained with the night's work, faced each other with smiling relief and then turned, together, to greet the ever-new spectacle of the sun hurtling up into the sky, to feel the powerful wash of the deluge draining away all their aches and weariness, drenching them clean. As the mists came, and cleared, Lampart stooped and felt the skin, rubbing it in his fingers. Her naked feet came to stand by him. She squatted down, touched the hide, felt it It was soft.

"Are we crazy, John?" she breathed. "All that effort, just for something to wear?"

"If that's what you want," he said, "it's worth it. For me you'll never be better dressed than you are right now."

He laid his hand on the smooth muscular swell of her thigh, gripped it just once, and took his hand away again. "But if you want to look good, your way, that's all right too. Come on, we better get this inside before it gets fried stiff!"

Over breakfast, she in her little double-apron skirt again, he reminded her. "In about half an hour they will be calling me about the shuttle and my report. You want to see how it's done? There's no great trick to it, except that we need a special radio deck to punch a way through the interference, and there's not a lot of scope for chatting. Just the messages. This is the time, if you want to go back up, for me to tell them, so they can lay on a specially rigged harness for you."

"You know I don't want to go back... yet."

"No. Not yet But just as soon as you do . . . this is the time to let me know. They don't fit shock harness as a regular thing, not when there are just supplies on board. I was thinking, maybe I could manage to get a request through all that static for some more cottons for you right away. But you don't want those now."

"When you spoke about a list of things, before, I had all kinds of ideas in mind. But now"—she shook her head —"I can't think of a thing I want. Isn't that strange? You know," she was suddenly very serious, very intent on him, "I don't think I've ever been happier than in the past two or three days." He was aware of a something in the air, a breathlessness that tied his tongue . . . and then a shrill bleat made him start and turn angrily.

"That's them!" he muttered. "A remote relay from the radio room. Come on, see how the thing is done."

It seemed like a lot longer than five days since he had sat here to receive the shocking news that he was to be visited. It was difficult to think himself back to that moment, to the dismay and the murderous ideas he had hatched. Now she sat beside him, warm and lovely, skin golden, her hair grown longer and bright red almost to the tips, and he couldn't believe that he had ever, seriously, contemplated killing her. But the voice from above was as impersonally laconic as before in reply to his.

"Ground to monitor. Receiving."

"Monitor.Day thirty-five. Check. How are you?"

"Day thirty-five, copy. I'm fine. Nothing to report"

"Expect the shuttle at routine time, one hour prior to sunset, check."

"Check. Samples and notes will be ready, and request list. Have you filled my last order?" As he spoke the words slowly and distinctly, Lampart remembered one special item in his last list, something he had almost forgotten. The reply came unmoved.

"Requests filled, will load. Check and out" The gauges subsided. He moved switches to shut down.

"And that's it," he turned to smile at her. It was easy to do, and getting easier every time he did it. She wrinkled her brow.

"That didnt even sound like a human voice, somehow."

"In fact it wasn't. The way this thing works . . . it's not easy . . . put it this way. We can only make so many different noises, right? In talking we run them together and shave variations from them, and that is what helps you to know that it's me talking, when I say 'Hello I' or something like that. But you would recognize the word if it were someone else saying it, even a small child, right? So what this circuit does is analyze the basic pattern, and transmit just that. It is reconstituted at the far end by a similar circuit. That is easier than sending the whole works, just as it is easier to send a printed message of a speech than the whole speech with all the inflection and intonation and everything. But never mind that." He studied her, the whole lovely picture she made, just sitting there beside him, and shook his head.

"What's wrong?" she asked wonderingly.

"Nothing.Nothing at.all. I'm just trying to remember how the hell I ever thought this place was so good, before you came, that's all."

He saw the blood come into her cheeks, darkening the golden glow of her skin as she dropped her eyes. That warm flood spread downward over her throat and breasts, making him feel suddenly warm just watching. All at once she rose from the chair and stepped away, then turned.

"We have a lot of chores to do, John. We'd better turn out early tonight, hadn't we?"

"Right," he agreed, rising to follow. "I have my samples and stuff to prepare, and a list to make out. There's those tendons to dry out, all that meat to cut up properly and stow, the other sword, the bows ... a whole lot of things. I'll call us out about two hours before sundown, that will give us some time." He followed her down to the cabin level. She halted outside her door to look at him.

"How do you do that?" she asked. "Wake up at any given time?"

"I don't know how. I just do. It's something you have to leam, when you're on your own all the time." She seemed disposed to linger.

"You must have seen all sorts of wonderful things in your time, all the strange sights of space, new stars, strange planets ...?"

He shook his head at her. "It's not like that, Dorothea. Oh, I used to think like that too, once. The romantic writers always have made a big play about glories and wonders, but those are only words. The facts are different Space is mostly empty. Stars are just lights in the sky until you get close, and then they are too bright to look at usually. A planet doesn't mean much until you get down on it, which a scout doesn't often do anyway. And there is just so much wonder the senses can accept. We can only see the range of the visible spectrum, after all."

"You make it all sound so prosaic," she complained.

"No, I didn't mean that. What I'm getting at is that we don't see with our eyes, we see through them. If we see something glorious, or wonderful, or beautiful . . . it's because what we see means that to us. When I see something that just doesn't mean anything to me, it's just that only a sight, a something. But when I see something that does things to me, that makes my heart beat faster, makes me catch my breath, that's because it does mean something. Then it can be glorious. But I don't have to travel space for that, at all." He hesitated, wanting to go on and say what was in his mind, that she was one of those wonderful things. Quite suddenly, almost without him realizing it, she had become wonderful in his eyes. But while he was struggling with strange new words she turned the catch of her door, nodded to him, and went inside.

He was puzzled with himself as he lay down to sleep. He was not in love with her, of that he was certain. He had only to shut his eyes to bring up the heart-aching image of his ideal woman, as epitomized by the girl who played Star Queen in that comic tape-drama . . . Linda

Lewis, was it? She was his kind of woman, if he had to choose.

But he felt something for Dorothea, no doubt about that, either. Admiration wouldn't cover it, not properly, although it went a long way. That she was beautiful was too obvious to be a point He had seen her physical perfection right from the very first moment and not just her shape, either. He had seen many other women with good lines, a lean waist, long legs, full breasts ... all that But set them to move and they spoiled it She didn't. She had the grace of health and balance. She moved like a queen, a dream, a poem. All of that And she had nerve, and a brain, too. Call it admiration . . . and respect . . . and that would be coming closer. But he wanted another word, and couldn't find it He went to sleep still without it. He still didn't have it when the clock in his head called him to wake up.

"DamnitI" he muttered, as he rolled out and stretched. "I like her. She's a good friend. What's wrong with that?"

PARTFOUR

Escape

TEN

He had suggested that she might be ready in the air lock to start out for the shuttle as soon as it touched down, but she didn't want that.

"I want to watch you," she said. "See what you do when you fly it down. I may have to do it myself someday, if anything ever happens to you and I need help."

He didn't object. He liked to have her near. He fore-bore pointing out that before she could have a hope of remote-flying a craft she needed to know how to do it the direct way, and that wasn't something to be learned in ten minutes. What he did admire was the direct way she could look at possible disaster without flinching away from it

"And that's thatl" he cleared the board, then flipped the switch to report "safely arrived" to the monitor. "That red light," he pointed. "Wait. .. there," as it went out "They know it's down and safe. Come on, let's see what the mailman brought this time!"

"Do you ever get any mail?" she asked, as she went out with him and across the hot sand, squinting against the scorching sunset

"Who, me?Never. Who would want to write to me? My mother died when I was four, my father when I was fifteen, and nobody else gives one damn about what happens to me."

"Haven't you ever been in love with anyoue, or at least fond enough of anyoue to want to maintain a relationship?"

He gave her a sidelong glance, and chuckled. "You are committing the big sin, the one crime that a solitary like me can't stand. You know?"

"I'm sorryl" she was immediately withdrawn. "I didn't know. Of course, if you'd rather not..."

"Not like that! I'm not being offensive, not with you. With anybody else I wouldn't bother, but I can try to explain to you. If youTl listen?"

"I can't stop you talking," she said pointedly.

"You can. You just did." He let it go at that, and there was no more said until they reached the shuttle. They were carrying four canisters, two with samples and charts, the other two with tight-packed fuelbladder empties. He slapped the switch that opened the hatch and ran out the ladder, then heaved his two burdens inside and went in after them. The interior was just a box, subdivided into three.

"Gimme your two," he demanded, and rolled them into a corner as she heaved them up. "Now stand clear while I toss out the new ones." Four more canisters went down into the sand, and then four bladders. Then he ducked through a hole into another subdivision, and there it was, his special request And a problem. How to get it down to the sand outside? To the eye it was a solid block of alloy about four feet a side and three feet thick, with odd flanges and bolt holes and no obvious purpose. With ft, lashed safely against dispersal, was a collection of alloy angle strips of various sizes. That bundle could go out. He warned her again to stand clear, then pitched them clatteringly down to the sand. Then he went out and down himself.

"I need your help," he told her. "I have something big and heavy in there. There's a chain-block rig over the door, that's how they loaded it in, and how I'm going to lower it out. Ill want you to steer it down to the ground and unhook when it gets there, that's all. Ready?"

As he applied muscle to the hoist chains it struck him that it must have been easier loading on the monitor, where they could adjust their gravity almost at will. Here that engine block weighed at least a ton, and he knew his first misgivings as to whether it would work or not Once it was settled and unhooked, and the block raised again, he went looking for something else that had to be there, and found it tucked away in a corner; a sack of nuts and bolts, and two fresh power packs. Down on the sand again he ran the ladder in, sealed the hatch, and turned to see her curious stare.

"What is it?" she asked. "And how do you propose carrying it over to the ship?"

"Hahl" he chuckled. "This time it's different. I am not going to tell you, because this is meant to be a surprise for you. If it works I"

She was still a little chilly. "There are times," she said, "when I find you distinctly childish. If you need help, you can call me," and she started away, leaning against the cable she had brought, towing four canisters after her. He watched her go, grinning, then squatted down beside his prize, studying it carefully. This was a new, very up-to-date model, and there could easily be some changes he hadn't seen before. But no, the control gear was under a plate in the top, which he lifted back. And there was the slot for the power pack ... and a pack already in there 1

"Now!" he said anxiously, wiping his palms and setting his hand on the control wheel. "We will see, won't we?" He used a finger to flip the recessed switch to ON and saw the small gauge move, registering power, felt the control wheel rise under his palm. All right so far. He turned the wheel gently, slowly, in a clockwise direction, almost holding his breath, and the block of the machine shivered as if settling in the sand. Then it lifted, just a little. He wound the power up more, slowly, and felt the thing lift steadily, floating in mid-air. He took it up gradually until it was eight or nine inches above a depression in the sand that was half as big again as would be expected from the size of the block. That sight gave him great relief. He had spent long hours calculating that effect, hoping he had got it right It was a chance he had to take, that the loose aggregate of the sand would just disperse and move away under the thrust. But the computer store had given him a lot of data on compacting, and the behavior of sand under pressure. This justified all his hopes.

"Isn't that just beautiful?" he demanded, looking at the seeming miracle. "And all done without mirrors. Now, how much load will you stand, my lovely? Let's see." He placed both hands on the block and tried to shove it down. It bounced a little, but gave not an inch that he could see. And by the gauge he had it only on a third of its full power. He grinned hugely, let go again and studied his assembly of angle strips. Those he could rest across the top, and the fuel bladders on top again, if he took care. The whole pile seemed not to worry the incredible floating block in the least He peered now across the sand, could just see her nearing the ship. He chuckled to himself and, holding one of the angle strips, started to trot easily across the mesa, pushing the levitating block before him.

"I could use a coffee, after that" he said, strolling in on her as she was breaking open a canister and extracting the contents.

"It's almost ready." She looked up warily. "I suppose I have to go and help you drag that thing, whatever it is7"

"That's all right Anything special in the cans?"

"Protein mix, cereal mush, the usual stuff. Wire, chemicals, power pack large ... a cassette pack?"

"That will be the current updating on metallurgy." He drew off two steaming mugs of coffee and moved to set one down beside her at the table.

"Oh yes?" she said, holding one. "Selected extracts from Captain Storm and Star Queen? That's metallurgy? Don't tell me you watch that awful drivel 1"

"You're minding my business again," he warned, taking it from her. "I will just go and throw the shuttle away again. Oh, and no need to worry about that machine, and the rest of the stores. That's all done!"

He went away up the ladder quickly, grinning to himself. She was by bis side before the shuttle was off the ground, but had the sense not to interrupt until it was safely away into orbit and out of his control.

"Now!" she said, fronting him with hands on hips. "Now, John Lampart, come on, talk! I've been out there and seen, and you never . . . never . .. dragged that heavy great thing all that way so fast. Never!"

"No, I didn't," he admitted solemnly. "I flew it!"

"Oh well!" she snorted. "Be like that! Stupid, childish games!" He came up out of his seat in a rush and caught her by surprise in a bear hug, grinning down at her furious face. "I like you when you're mad!" he said. "You have color. Your eyes shine like stars!"

"Let me go!" she cried, wriggling angrily.

"You promise to be patient, be a good girl, come and help me .. . and I will show you something that will make all the difference to us here, I promise. You promise?"

She wriggled more, not too hard, then went still. "Oh, very well. I promise'" He released her and she stood clear, breathing hard, all on the alert for more tricks. He hesitated a moment, then turned to the telemetry board and flipped the switch to cancel the monitor signal. It occurred to him, belatedly, that he should have kissed her, and wondered how she would have reacted to that.

"Come on," he invited, "and 111 show you."

"Why can't you just tell me?" she suggested, as she sat on the last but one step of the gangway and watched him busy assembling angle strips.

"Why not? I'll tell you. This is going to be our chariot, our transport On this we will be able to travel fast and far. We will no longer be held down to the distance we can walk and get back safely."

"A chariot" she repeated, as one who humors a child. "And those are the wings, or should they be called sails?"

"No, just a framework. A chassis, if you like. No wings."

Then it's hardly a chariot, is it? More like a raft, from where I'm sitting." Her description was not too fanciful. He had so far bolted two long strips from the block to stretch ahead, two stretching backward, and was now fixing cross members, to make the shape of a solid cross some twenty feet long by ten feet wide. She cocked her head at it critically. "A kite frame?"

"Maybe the word 'chariot' was wrong," he admitted cheerfully. "But a sled doesn't sound nearly dramatic enough. Still, we can work out a name for it later. First we ride on it Then you learn how to drive it."

"Ride? Drive? That thing? With no wheels?"

"No wheels. No horses, either!" and he looked sharply at her, met her angry stare. "You were a real bitch that day, Dorothea."

"What makes you think I've changed?" she snapped. "I know you're just aching to pay off, to get your own back!"

He fixed the last rim member, jerking the bolts up tight, and now he had a diamond-shaped framework, with the engine unit in the center. In front of it ... or what he had designed to be the front . . . was a small cross-piece for their feet. It was all plain metal, and crude, and he knew it but that was something for another day. He approached her, feeling slightly light-headed with his suppressed excitement. He essayed a bow to her.

"My lady," he declared, placing his hand to his chest, "will you honor me by accepting my humble invitation to partake in the inaugural flight of a craft or contraption for which I have not yet devised an adequate cognomen but which, I assure you, will move of its own volition?"

She sat still a moment, then giggled all at once, and he shivered at the sound. She rose, came down one step to the sand, grasped at imaginary petticoats to spread them, and sank into an uncertain curtsey. "You do me honor, sir, but I think I like not your cushions and seats!"

"I understand your reluctance, ma'am," he caught the thread quickly. "I will confess I have been badly let down by the tradesmen in that respect But it will be all to your liking just as soon as I can fix it. In the meanwhile, will you allow me?" He offered his arm, conducted her into the framework, used an imaginary kerchief to dust off a spar. "Sit there, put your feet on that bar, and well be off." He sat opposing her, at the other side of the engine, and moved the switch. She watched curiously. He spun the wheel, and the framework stirred, creaked, and rose into the air. Her eyes grew huge as she stared at him, clutched his wrist.

"It works!" she gasped.

"Of course it works!" he shouted. "What did you expect?"

"But how?" she demanded. "What's keeping it up?"

"Ah!" he said. "Wilbur Wright and Werner von Braun —if they were alive and here—they'd understand; that's the oldest question in the book. D'you know anything about electricity and magnetism? How an electric motor works?" She shook her head blankly. "Oh well. Take it from me. This is what is called a linear motor. To distinguish it from the kind that spins around. In that kind you have a rotor, and magnetic fields such that the rotor tries to shove the outer ring away from itself, and shoves itself around as a result. Here the outer ring has been stretched out straight, is the ground, and there are two fields going, both shoving in opposite directions, so we get shoved upward. Right, so far? These things are used regularly in machine shops, for lifting and moving heavy masses over a metal floor."

"I believe you," she said weakly. "But why don't they use this kind of thing, whatever it is, on Earth, for cars?"

"Because the crust of Earth doesn't happen to be metallic! This crust is. Never mind that, pay attention. This is the on-off switch. This wheel is a multi-control. You saw me turn it just now. I'll do it more." The curious craft rose higher, began to shiver, and he checked it. "We have a ceiling of about three foot six. If I take it any higher well start wobbling, and burn up too much power anyway. Down again. Eight inches is quite good enough." He spun the wheel gently backward. "Now, we have a stable height so we can leave that alone. Watch me, now."

He put his flat palm on the wheel and shoved down on it until it clicked, and showed her that the central boss was now an inch or two clear of the rim. "See that? To reverse that, just press down on the middle and up comes the rim again. Right? Ill just do that again. Now we can move. It is absolutely simple. This central column is now a joy-stick. To go forward I just push it forward, like that," and the craft slid obediently away, gliding slowly through the air. "Or stop," he said. "Or go backward. Or either side. Or rotate. So simple. Try it!"

She had good hands. He had noticed that long ago. They were lean, long-fingered, intelligent hands, obeying her senses. Even if the rest of her had been haglike hideous she would have been beautiful just for those hands. She put the sled through its paces cautiously at first, and then with confidence, and the delight in her face was reward beyoud all he could have wished.

"You sit there," he said. "I want to try something." He scrambled carefully over his assembled framework until he was as far forward as he could get, right in the front peak. He stood there and called back to her, "What's it like? Any tilt?" He bounced up and down daringly, felt the frame moving, and called again. "How was that?"

"It tilts and wobbles . . . but only a tiny bit, nothing really. Can I drive it now, while you're up front7"

"Why not? Run us out as far as the spike!"

She did better. He felt the breeze fan his face as she put on speed, and they were up to the solitary spike in seconds. But not to stop. Instead he had to hang on tight as she put the craft into a swooping turn around the rock and back to the ship, bringing it to a halt briskly. He scrambled back to her in jubilation.

"Now we can really go places, Dorothea! Good, hey?"

"It's marvelous, John! Why don't we go right away? Over the hill and down the gorge, right down to the seal We can do it now, in this. Can we? Please?"

"Whoa now!" he smiled at the eager face so appealingly near. "We need a thing or two first. Like weapons, and a sack or two to bring stuff back with us. But with those, why not?"

Less than ten minutes later they were equipped and side by side on their new carriage, starting out for the deft in the cliffs. Lampart sat with his hand on the control and his face straight, concealing a doubt that disappeared as they glided into the rocky gap between the mountains and hit the first downslope. Their magic carpet still worked. He confided in her as they slid down the gorge, the sled tilting and rocking like any boat over the uneven flooring. "It was a gamble. I've never done any tests this far away. Only the ash assays on the growing stuff. That mesa sand is almost pure, but I couldn't be sure about this terrain here. Still, it's all right"

She frowned into the breeze that lifted her hair. "John, I'm no expert, as you know, but surely, if there's enough' metal in the crust to hold this thing up, even here, then it doesn't really matter where anyoue digs . . . and there's no point in your work. Or have I missed something?"

The old and crucial question reared itself again in his mind, but now he could answer it honestly. "Your father doesn't know that My job, right from the start, has been to stop him from finding out, to send up the poorest, thinnest samples I could find, good enough to keep him hoping, but ... in the end ... to make him change his mind and decide that the planet isn't worth working at alL To go away and leave it altogether."

"That's dishonest, isn't it?" she turned to him. "That's cheating!"

"'At first yes. But when you come to look at it," he gestured to the mighty standing groves of red and purple that lined the gorge, "all this . . . and what would happen to it if the machines ever came down ... is it so bad a cheat? To save a world? Can you imagine all this ripped up and gouged and scarred, the atmosphere reeking with fumes, everything ruined and spoiled?"

"That's sophistry, a rationalization, even if it is true."

"That detonite is true, too, Dorothea. And that was planted long before either of us knew what the surface was really like."

They were well down the gorge now, far beyoud their previous visit, and the air was noticeably warmer, but despite the fine sheen of sweat on her skin, she shivered, looked ahead again. "You must really hate my father," she said.

"Because of the detonite?" he slowed their progress now to a gentle drift. "Not for that, my dear. For that, in a way, I can admire him. It's the simple, clean-cut answer to a problem. No, I think I hated him a long time before I came here. I can tell you, though I've never told anyoue else, he killed my father and mother. Oh, not with his own hands, but he did it. He and one other, a man called Kyrios. Stavros Kyrios, my father, your father, were partners long ago. They started Interstellar Mines. My father was the technical expert, the mining engineer and metallurgist Kyrios was the man who knew about ships and transport. And your father was the financial expert, the businessman. Kyrios was a crook through and through, a natural robber. He got along fine with your father, until it came to a push between them for who was going to have the biggest say. That kind of thing happens in any business." Lampart shrugged, gazing up at the new and strange trees sliding by.

"It ended by Kyrios getting out, taking some capital with him. He's still an operator. I know. I almost took a job with him, until I found out that he operates on the shady side of legality, one jump ahead of the law. As I said, quarrels are commonplace at that level of business. My father had his disagreements with yours, inevitably, until the day came, suddenly, that he found himself out... cut. .. finished. Your father had fixed it with the help of Kyrios. He was broke and finished."

"So he lost out on a business deal?" she turned troubled eyes on him again. "I don't condone it, John, but ... as you said ... it happens!"

"That's all right. No heartbreak there. But Colson didn't stop there. He blacklisted my father, made it impossible for him ever to get a reputable job again. It's not too difficult to do, if you have the financial power, and a crook like Kyrios to help. It's not too difficult, either, even in this day and age, to be skinflint poor. Believe me, I know. My mother died of malnutrition, can you believe that? That was the medical verdict. They don't have any such diagnosis as broken heart, or despair. Malnutrition. I almost went the same way. I've been hungry, Dorothea, really hungry. I hope that never happens to you. It is probably why I make such a thing about being fit and healthy. And why, in a quiet, useless kind of way, I've always hated your father. Even though I worked for him for ten years, and did a good job!"

"I am not my father," she said, very softly.

"I know." He reached and took her hand, gripped it firmly. "I know. If I got nothing else out of this, I got that I'm glad you came."

"Let's get on!" she said suddenly. "What are we hanging about for? I want to see that sea!"

"Yes," he said. "All right," and moved the control forward again, so that the sled picked up speed and began to skim once more, making a breeze. The rugged walls were high now, looming on either side, twisting and turning in the general direction of down. It was really hot, and he was glad of the breeze. Next time, he thought he would bring a thermometer and measure the temperature, just for the record. It must surely be close to the boiling point! But then he corrected himself, remembering the atmospheric pressure that was higher than Earth. "I'm still thinking in human terms!" he reprimanded himself. The sled swooped around a sharp corner, there came the muffled echoes of a lot of noise going on somewhere ahead, and then, all at once, they broke out into utter bedlam and a scene that made both of them gape with astonishment.

The gorge ended here, debouching into a great open space almost a mile across, roughly circular, walled on three sides by precipitous cliffs, on the fourth by a dense wall of trees and matted purple vegetation. It was a vast amphitheater for a drama as old as time itself. Lampart cringed from the steam-whistle screeches that came from an enormous lizard-thing, incredibly bigger than he would ever have believed possible. His stunned mind estimated it as at least a hundred and fifty feet long from stumpy tail to the vast shovel-head that was, at this moment, questing up against one cliff. But this monster was a different breed from the toad-crocodile things he knew. This one came with an enormous barrel girth that had four tree-trunk legs, and that grew into a huge, long, snakelike neck, from the same mighty shoulders that supported its forelimbs, and they were frail by comparison, like loathsome arms and three-toed hands. The whole angry-red mass of the beast was trying to climb up the steep cliff, struggling with its stumpy clawed feet, stretching that long neck, the hideous shovel-head weaving from side to side ... and constantly that ear-splitting screech of rage.

She saw the reason why a split second before he did. "John!" she shrieked. "Those are men up there!"

They certainly moved like men. On his second, more rational stare, he saw that this particular cliff wall was pockmarked with caves, like dark spots of night against the blue rock. There were ledges, galleries, and scrambling, shambling figures, all keeping well clear of the monster. But some, occasionally, stood to hurl things. Spears! Others, higher up, threw rocks, pitifully futile against the armored colossus. He took his gaze up the wall to the cliff top, and shouted, and grabbed her arm. "Look, up there! They've done this before!"

It was the first thing that flashed into his mind. Up there along the rim were little creatures that ran and danced and gibbered at the lizard-beast, hurling at it anything they could lay hands on . . . but there were others there, too, who labored mightily with a stone that looked huge, even at this distance, struggling and sweating to urge it to the edge and poise it To Lampart's staring eyes the whole scheme was apparent in one glance. That rim was about seven or eight hundred feet up. The thick-witted monster had not the ghost of a chance of reaching anything more than a hundred feet or so, even if it managed to lever up half its barrel-body against the wall. But they could keep it trying, by screeching and taunting. They could keep it there, even maneuver it into the right spot And then drop the rock on it

"And they didn't do all that on the spur of the moment!" he growled. "They've had that laid on, waiting for when it came back again."

The simple and obvious chain of reasoning made him ache inside. The thought of the courage, and the suffering, and the refusal to give way in the face of a vastly superior enemy made him itch. At this distance he could see only dashing movements and small size, but they were intelligent, and they were fighting back the only way they knew. And they could plan and execute, as he now learned all over again.

Suddenly, as if by some word of command, part of the uproar subsided, leaving only the repeated furious screeching of the beast, and Lampart saw that all over the cave wall the little people had drawn clear and were silent, watching. Only those few on the top still danced and mocked, yelling at their foe. He held his breath, watching. The beast stretched, great shovel-head straining to reach, and the huge rock tilted, tumbled, fell and bounced, spun in the air lazily, and it struck. The impact shivered across the amphitheater as that hideous head went one way and the shattered rock the other.

"It won't work!" he shouted, feeling her hand gripping his arm. "It bloody well won't work. They've hurt the thing, but not killed it!"

The mighty head drooped and fell, sweeping across the rock until it almost touched the ground, and he thought he was wrong for a moment. But then it heaved up again, bellowing and screeching harder than before.

"I knew it!" he groaned. "The thing hasn't any brain there anyway!" He turned to her impulsively. "Hop off, Dorothea, and wait here. I'm going to chip in, give them a hand!"

"What can you do?"

"I can stick a spear in its eye, that's what. Then they'll have a bit of a chance. I can run. rings around the thing with this sled!"

"If you're crazy!" she cried, "so am I! .I'll take the spear. You can drive. Come on!" She went scrambling away to the prow of the sled before he could argue, taking the spear with her, leaving him with the sword. He, grinned fiercely, moved the control, and they went sldmming out into the arena, to join in.

That screeching head was no longer straining upward, but, in rage and hunger, was questing over the slant surface, gnashing at anything that moved, and little creatures were fleeing in terror in all directions. He took the sled right up and alongside the vast girth of the thing without it being aware of their presence. This close, the enormous knobbed bulk, the mighty armor of the thing, made him shake his head. But there might be the same soft underbelly here, if only he could get at it

The sled ran on and he saw that where it was straining upward still there was a gap under its neck, a space between body and rock. He spun the control carefully to nudge the sled into that gap, halted it stood to balance precariously and then to slash furiously and with all his strength at the great upsweeping pink surface of flesh, trying to get at the folds of muscle by one forward limb. The flesh split and spouted purple blood all over him, but he hacked on savagely until he sensed movement and flung himself back to the control knob to get them out from under. She had been jabbing madly with her spear. She waved it back at him now bloodthirstily, and he grinned.

Swinging out into the clear and spinning around, he saw that angry head start moving, questing for the author of the pain, swooping down through the humid air at the end of its long columnar neck, and he shouted at it

"Here we are, stupid! Try and catch us, if you can!" and he set the sled backing as that shovel-mouth gaped and snapped, daringly keeping just clear of it There had to be a limit to how much that neck could bend, he reasoned. Probably enough to enable those dainty forelimbs to manipulate food into its mouth, but no more. He watched it warily, backing, keeping close in to the body-bulk, until that neck was bent like a bow and could bend no more. The four tree-trunk legs started into action now, dragging the bulk of its body into a lurching, grotesque dance as it tried to catch the tempting morsel that kept forever just out of reach.

"We've got him chasing his tail!" he shouted to her. "Now's your best chance to poke his other eye out" For he had seen the ghastly wreckage done by that huge rock. One turret eye and a good portion of the armored skull were shattered and crushed, and purple blood pumped from the wounds. But the other eye still functioned and the gaping maw was just as savage, as vastly toothed, just as hungry.

The steam-whistle screeching was deafening now, the hot gush of its breath enough to choke, and he wondered how Dorothea could stand it, up there in the bows. But she didn't seem to think of anything but a chance to get in a blow. She knelt, craning forward, the spear in her hand, trying to get aim every time those jaws clashed shut. Lampart felt the sweat streaming down his face as he tried to nudge the raft close enough, but not so close as to get between those mighty jaws. He had to watch those feet, too, as the thing kept lurching around in its crazy waltz. She made a stab, and the spear struck hard armor and glanced aside, so that she tottered and almost fell over, long legs and bare bottom wiggling furiously as she dragged herself back inboard. He backed off, breathing hard. The snapping head inched after him. This time, determinedly, she stood up, feet astride, both hands clutching the slim spear, watching that fearsome jaw come clashing down. Then she leaned forward and drove down, straight and true, right into that turret eye-socket And overbalanced altogether.

Shocked into helplessness, Lampart saw that hideous head lift up high, taking her with it, still frantically clutching the spear. In the next moment he was up and scrambling madly, insanely, out of the sled, leaping from it to the enormous bulk of that armored body, scrambling and stumbling, leaping and running along the knobbly spine, thinking of nothing at all but the mad urge to kill, to destroy this thing somehow. He came to where the mighty neck grew out of the same shoulders that held those flexible, grasping arms, and started, furiously, to hack his way down through, chopping and slashing at the neck, striking sparks, feeling the shock of impact up his arms as he sent pieces of armor and hide flying off in all directions.

Warily he saw one curving arm coming back and over, and leaned back to slash savagely at it, so crazily that he almost cut it right through at a blow, and blood spouted, drenching him, making his foothold slippery. In desperation he went down on one knee and hacked more, then reversed his weapon and used it like a knife, driving it deep into the wound he had already made, again and again, his arms aching with the strain of effort, sweat and blood covering his face, his arms, his chest. He could feel the spasms that ran through the great bulk under his feet, and that heartened him so that he found more strength and drove harder, sobbing for breath, plunging and hacking away.

And now he was aware that the great neck was no longer upraised in front of him. It had gone down, sagging. As he raised his head to look, it fell the rest of the way like a giant log, to bounce once and then lie still. And he saw her stand up, dazedly, and then scramble and jump down to the sand. She was still alive! As far as he could see, she wasn't even hurt! Gripping his sword, he scrambled hurriedly down from the huge inert body and ran to her.

"You're all right!" he cried, and she nodded, put out her arms, and clung to him like a child, shaking and gasping.

"I've never been so scared in all my life!" she breathed, hugging him tightly. "I just hung on. I didn't dare let go, right up there. It was trying to shake me off! And then it just fell. Dead! Oh John!" she put her head back to look up at him, grimy and bloodstained but suddenly intent. "I killed it! Didn't I?"

"It's dead anyway," he said, hugging her again and then slipping his arm about her shoulders as they turned to stare at the vast bulk of the thing. "Wants a bit of believing, a thing that size, but there it is. Food for a month, for our friends."

"Where are they all?" she wondered, turning to gaze up at the cave walls, now suddenly and breathlessly silent.

"Watching us, I expect. Wondering what we're going to do next. I'll bet we scared the pants off them! There must be quite a lot of them about How can we let them know we're friends?"

"Suppose," she said slowly, "suppose we make them a kind of peace offering, a symbol of some kind?"

"We've already done that," he grinned at her. "We've left them all this meat, tons of it."

"Yes, but . . . suppose we deliberately cut a bit off, let them see . . . John!" she gripped his arm again. "Where's the sled?"

"Hell!" he gasped. "It's around the other side ... I hope! I'll get it. You'd better rescue that spear!" He ran anxiously, along and past and around that fallen head and sagged in relief as he saw the sled drifting in mid-air about ten feet clear of the monster's side.

It took him only a moment to catch it and scramble aboard, but it was a moment in which he had time to realize how weird the sight must seem to those silent watchers. It was going to be no easy task to strike an approach with them, if indeed such a thing were possible at all. "Maybe we hadn't better," he thought. "It's their planet. What have we got to offer them that they want?" But then he sent the sled skimming back around the head, noticing in surprise that the spear was still embedded in that eye-socket Where had she gone this time? He paused long enough to drag the weapon free and sent the sled on its way. And there she was, up on the shoulder of the beast, on her way down.

"I didn't kill it," she accused him. "Did I? You did it!"

"We both did it, Dorothea. Both of us. Together. You poked its eye out, and I broke its back. I had to. When I saw you go away up there ... I thought you were dead, for sure! I . . . had to kill it somehow. I didn't think of anything else. Look, let's do something about that peace-offering notion of yours."

He spun the sled and sent it skimming back to the head end, bringing it to a halt by the join of the neck. "How about one of the front arms?" he suggested. "That one is almost off anyway." He left her to command the sled while he scrambled up and completed the dismemberment then together they lugged the limb over the sand to a flat-topped rock that was clear and conspicuous, and laid it there. They stood a moment side by side to look at the enigmatically silent cave wall.

"You can't understand a word I'm saying!" he shouted. "But maybe the gesture will make sense. This is for you, with all our love!" They waited a while longer. Nothing happened. He turned to her, suddenly weary. "Let's go find that sea," he said. "It can't be far away now. I need to clean up. We both do. Come on!"

Getting to the water was easy. The giant lizard had obviously come from that area, and had crashed a path through the trees and vegetation doing it. The track was easy to follow. In a matter of moments the open water showed ahead of them, and they ran out on to a blue sludge that marked the boundary between forest and lake. There were ripples, little brisk Ones, and there were insects too, the first he had seen. They rose from the edge

of the sludge in crackling swarms, making her cry out and beat at them, until he saw that they didn't seem to like the water itself, and urged the sled on through the swarms until it hovered above dear water.

"Now we go very easy," he warned. "If this beach shelves suddenly we could get dunked in the water, and I'd rather not try that until we know just what lives in there. This is far enough. Take a can lid and bail some out over yourself. You won't make the floor wet, that's one blessing."

He held the sled steady while she leaned over and dipped up water and sluiced herself, peeling off her double apron and obviously enjoying the process of getting clean, even to dunking the apron itself and washing the blood from it. Then it was his turn, while she held the controls. The water was warm and strongly salt He saw no sign of any fish life, but that didn't mean very much, in the circumstances. When he was clean again, he went back to sit by her and examine the insect he had caught It was surprisingly heavy.

"They don't fly," he told her. "I didn't think so back there even. They hop and buzz like mad to gain a little distance before they fall back again. That's why they don't come into deeper water. They'd have a hard time crawling back out onto the mud. Six wings. More like paddles. Dorothea, d'you suppose those things back there were men, people like us?"

ELEVEN

In a while, dry and clean again, they made their way back to that huge clearing, taking the sled slowly into sight so as not to scare anyoue. But the cave-people must have had sentries posted, for all was as silent and deserted as when they left Only the token offering was gone. "We'll have to come back," he said quietly. "Probably many times, before they get used to us. If they ever do."

He wheeled the sled around and aimed it for the gorge entrance and they went away, heading homewards, taking it easily. "Your program," she said, out of a companionate silence. "How long are you supposed to stay here?"

"The general plan was for thirty-day intervals, depending on the circumstances. After this first one, I mean. This one was planned for twice that. Sixty days. For getting into the swing of it Thirty days after that. Lift and shift and move west about fifteen degrees, again depending on the terrain. That way it would take me all the way around, three hundred and sixty degrees in two years, in thirty-day spells."

"And this is day thirty-five. I heard you say that So we have twenty-five more days here. And then move."

"I know what you're thinking," he stared ahead at the winding gorge and the reds and blues of the trees on either side. "This is a nice spot. I've grown to like it And those people back there, whatever they are . . . but I refuse to believe this is the only place on the planet where there's intelligence. There'll be others. There'll be better places than this."

"But it won't be the same," she said, and passed her hand across the engine block to rest on his, and stay there, gently holding. 'This is where we first met each

other. Really met each other, I mean. Where you knocked all the stupid armor off me and showed the thing that was underneath!"

"Don't say it like that," he objected. "You weren't to know what I had on my mind then. To start with, I resented just anyoue coming here, at all. I had already started to think of it as my planet, my world!" He laughed at the thought. "That's a nerve, isn't it? Me, owning a whole world? And then when I saw who it was . . . and the way you had tried to break me down, before . . . and I felt sure that I had gotten away from you. Except in nightmares. You were always in them, chasing me."

"Oh John!In nightmares ... me?"

"But I don't have them now, Dorothea. Not since you came. You've been good for me, a good friend, a partner, something I never thought was possible for me. You've made a hell of a difference. When I look back I have to see myself as a dull sort of person altogether."

"Oh no!" she protested, smiling. "You were never that. I can remember, right from the start, that you had something, a quality ... I can't describe it properly ... as if there was such a lot more of you inside." Her hand gripped his as she stared ahead thoughtfully. "All the people I had met, until then, were all on the surface. You could see and know all about them in a matter of minutes. A set of postures, attitudes, a few stock phrases and values . .. and that was all. But you . . . you always gave me that impression there was more, whole worlds more, shut away inside, that you were keeping all to yourself. And that made me furious, that you had so much, and I had nothing at all." She turned to him suddenly, her dark eyes glowing in soft appeal. "Does that sound silly, John? Me, rich and spoiled . . . but I had nothing, really. I had to live from one moment to the next, always seeking something new, another interest, another thrill. And none of them lasted beyoud the moment, you know. None of it mattered a damn! But since I came here it's been different. I've done things, I've helped, I've been worthwhile, even if only in a small way. Even this thing"—she reached and took up the lizard-leather skirt from where it hung on the rim spar—"is something unique to me. I made it myself. Incidentally," she giggled in that way that made him jump inside, "your seating arrangements are a little hard on my bottom, but this might help." And she stood, balancing on the foot bar, to fold it and arrange it into a pad, and then to sit on it. "That's a bit better. I'm not knocking!" she added hurriedly. "This sled is marvelous! How you could conjure up something like this, just from an idea, beats me. But that's what I've been saying. You have such a lot inside."

"I don't deserve half of that," he said uncomfortably. "I've been places and done things, and I have a good memory, that's about all it comes to. This thing, though." He studied the sled critically. "It needs a lot done to it. With some kind of flooring we could carry stuff in it like a boat. And it needs seats, as you say. I could maybe rig uprights, like masts, and put a canopy over, in time. There's always something to be done, if you look at it that way."

They lapsed into silence again, just watching the rocks and bushes going by. In a while he turned and scanned the rearward sky, and shook his head. No sign of Merope yet They had been through a lot, in a very short space of time. He thought again about the giant lizard, dwelling on its strangeness now, reviewing his own theory about the pressure of evolution, wondering what kind of "men" those were that they had helped, glowing again at the thought of their courage in fighting back against so enormous a foe.

"Can we call in and get some more lemon fruit?" she demanded, calling him back from reverie with a start

"Why not? We have plenty of time. There's my arrow tree. The grove can't be far ahead now." He kept an eye out for it, swung the sled aside into the gully and ran it as far as it would go; then they dismounted and he heaved it a little farther, shutting off and settling it down securely over a rocky outcrop. "Not that anybody is likely to run off with it," he grinned, "but habits are hard to break."

In a very few minutes later he had knocked down several sprays of the golden eggs and they sat cheerfully side by side on their fallen log to drink the juice. She had put on her little skirt again, and sight of it put an idea into his head, one he developed with inner mischief. "That big hunk of bide," he said casually, "would make a good floor for the sled. Or some kind of upholstery for the seats. Or maybe both. But of course you'll want it for a dress, won't you?"

"Why would I want it for a dress?" she challenged, as solemn as he.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I dont claim to understand women, at all. I couldn't see why you had to have a skirt out of that piece there. I thought shoes would be a lot more practical. But that's what you wanted, that's what you got. And it looks fine, I'll admit that"

She smiled suddenly, in a way that struck a dimple in her cheek, one he hadn't noticed before. "Who ever told you you didn't understand women?"

"Nobody. I just don't that's all. You remember," he forgot his intended mischief as an idea took him, "you asked me whether I had ever been in love, or cared for anyoue very much?"

"I remember, John."

"Well, I've always had this thing about women, that I could never really care a damn about a woman, or a man for that matter, unless I could respect her and admire her first as a person. And maybe I've been unlucky, but all the women I ever met . . . not all that many, come to think of it ... all had one idea, sooner or later. The only relationship they were interested in with me was me on my knees, literally or metaphorically. They would be boss, one way or another. Getting what they wanted because they were female, as if by some right I remember taking along a tape once, all about the female liberation movement, way back at the end of last century. And studying it. Equality they wanted. To be treated like people. Equal opportunity, all that, and it sounds fine. But what have they ever done with it since? They still try the old game, of leaning on the fact that they are women and, so, en-tided to special considerations." He sneaked a glance at her to see how she was taking it but she had drawn up a knee and, clasping it, seemed to be studying the vista among the trees.

'That puts me right off always. I can't respect somebody who says, 'You have to change the rules for me, because I'm femalel' So I've never been any good with women, at all. But I've been in love."

"Oh!?" her head came quickly round, her eyes wide.

"Oh yes. I still am, in fact. You can go ahead and laugh, when I'm done, if you like, but I have an ideal woman. For me, anyway. You saw that cassette, of extracts from Captain Storm and Star Queen? That's her . . . I don't for one minute suppose the girl who plays the part is really like that, but that's her. Feminine, soft, blond, and beautiful . . . and somehow clean, if you know what I mean? She's the only woman I ever saw who could be just naked, all over, and look absolutely right. You can laugh now."

She turned to face him, very close, her eyes huge and glistening. "I'm not going to laugh, John. Why should I? I see nothing funny in a man having an ideal . . . and knowing it's an ideal, not a real thing. That's about as sensible as anyoue can get. That's about the only good way to be in love, I would think, in a way that can't ever go wrong, or stale, or sour. Love isn't something that happens very often, in reality. Most people have to make do with the next best thing, you know. If you polish brass a lot, it looks like gold. And it wears better, too."

She looked away again, then rose, and seemed to hesitate before settling down in the wiry turf at his feet, laying her cheek alongside his knee. "You're doing very well as far as this woman is concerned, John. You let me have my own way without asking questions or understanding why, and that's a perfect score. Shall I tell you why I wanted a skirt rather than shoes, and why I came to loathe those awful long-john things?"

"If you want to." He moved his hand to caress her hair and she rubbed her cheek against him again.

"No woman should ever tell a man the whole truth, unless she is sure of the consequences, but here goes. You were quite happy to be naked, and it was right for you, it still is, because you're sure of yourself. I was not so sure of me. You had shaken me up, broken my self-image. I didn't know what I was. I suppose I wanted you to respect me as a person, although I didn't think of it like that. Yes . . . that's right . . . respect. Me, just as I was, without the Colson label, or my past record. But those long Johns made me look neither one thing nor the other. A mess. So I wanted something that would be mine, but that would be feminine, too. So, a skirt. Is that difficult to understand?"

"No. I know the feeling. I felt like that when I sueceeded in making a sword. I could have knocked one out from ship's metal, if it had been just a weapon, but I wanted it to be mine, made with my own hands, from local materials. It was a mess, that first one ... but I felt proud of it. You made that skirt yourself, with your own effort. So it meant something to you." He stroked her hair again affectionately. "Don't think I'm knocking that; I'm not. But you're all wrong, you know, in thinking it wouldn't be right for you to be naked. It's not just your shape, either, perfect as it is, but the way you move. All of a piece, like harmony. No woman ever needed a skirt less, believe me!"

"But that's where you're wrong, John!" she started up from the grass suddenly, moved to stand in front of him. "I know my shape. I know how I look. God knows, I've spent enough time on it, in the past. And used it And I didn't want to use it on you, not like that I wanted your respect your admiration, for me as a person, yes. That's absolutely right But not just as a female, naked. At least" her voice went away to a whisper, "not until now. I needed this little skirt so very much, but now I don't need it any longer. Do I?" She undid the two knots with a simultaneous touch of her two hands, letting the insignificant patch of leather fall to the grass, standing there with her eyes full of questions, and anxiety. Without knowing quite how, he was suddenly close to her, clasping her shoulders, appealing to her eager eyes and mouth uncertainly.

"I'm not in love with you, Dorothea. You know that. I just told you that. Yes, I respect you. Admire you. You're a hell of a person. I'm glad you came. I'll be sorry when you have to go away again." The words were thick in his throat as her hands came to touch him, to caress him, her lean-fingered sensitive hands. "It's not love!" he muttered.

"I know," she whispered. "But it's real. It's what I want. It will make no difference to your dream . .. but it's now, us, here." She put up her face, offered her lips, and he was shaken by the savagery in her kiss, by the fire it lit in him. They found the grass together, straining close.

They lay still for a while, content just to be together. He found it difficult to think, now, didn't want to, because it might spoil the placidity. But then, all at once, he realized he was staring over her shoulder at a great white lamp in the sky, and he stirred, nudged her. "Hey, princess, there's the timekeeper rising high. Time we were heading homeward. Let's gather some fruit to take."

They got back to the ship with about half an hour to spare before the dawn ceremony. This time it had a special meaning for him. This, he knew, was the beginning of a new era on Argent. The torrential downpour brought him renewed strength, a vigor that tingled through him. They were at the extent of their arms apart from each other, only their fingertips joining them, but as the hot mists swirled and cleared away he knew that she felt the same transformation as he.

"A new day," he said, as she came naturally into his arms to be kissed. "I called you princess, back there. I meant it. You're not Dorothea Colson anymore. That's all gone and finished. You're princess from now, for me."

"I don't want that, John. A title doesn't mean anything. Still, I do need a new label. I'm certainly not Doll Colson anymore. Not that I ever was, in fact." They wandered inboard to sit at the well-worn old table and eat, and he wondered at what she had said.

"Did it mean anything, you saying you never were Dorothea Colson? You don't usually say things just to hear yourself."

She smiled. "That's my John, always interested. I'll tell you. It isn't anything to be proud of, and nobody knows except me, and Carlton Colson, and possibly somebody in an office somewhere. He isn't my father, not my flesh and blood, I mean. You can't really imagine him ever falling in love and procreating with some woman, can you?" The unspoken bitterness in her quiet words struck down deep into him. She went on, her lip curling just a little. "No ... it was about the time of the great debate on population, when they were just perfecting the annual sterility shot and trying to shove it through World Congress as a worldwide law that everybody should have one. No procreation without qualification ... all that propaganda, remember? Not that I remember," she shrugged, "but I've read it up. It was the great cry then that two children per family had to be the outside limit, that one was better. Carlton Colson used that as an excuse to buy me. Good for his image, you know?"

"You mean he adopted you?"

"That's the technical term for it, yes. But he bought me, in fact. He had my ancestry thoroughly researched and checked ... no, I'm putting it badly ... he had all sorts of possible people checked out, and picked the best ones to produce me, then bought me when I was six months old. He had me raised by experts. I'm a product, a possession, something he can show off as his. He told me all about it when I was ten years old, that I belonged to him, that I could have anything and everything I wanted, except freedom to belong to myself. That I must always try to be the top, the best, at everything, it didn't matter what, as long as I was in front of everyoue else. I'm not trying to excuse myself, John, but do you wonder I was such a thoroughgoing bitch, after all that?"

"You don't have to excuse yourself, not to me. You're

real and I wouldn't change a thing. But I wish I had

known------ "

"Oh no!" she cut him short. "If you'd known, none of this would've happened!" She shook her head. "I'm silly. I keep feeling frightened . . . that something will happen ... to spoil it!"

TWELVE

It seemed to Lampart that time gathered momentum. There were so many things to be done, so many excitements, little things to bring a laugh to her lips and a glow to her eyes, the sharings in things discovered, seen, and marveled over, precious trimmings to his hitherto spartan life, that he began to grudge the time spent in sleep, and in procuring and tabulating his futile rock samples. Day forty came and went, with the routine shuttle, supplies they didn't need, messages they didn't mean, and they completed two formidable bows and a vast sheaf of arrows so slim and rigid that, when she had drilled him in how to hold and draw and aim and loose, he could launch one glittering in the air to hit and drive through a dried lizard armor stuffed with sand nine times out of ten.

"Handle," she taught him patiently. "Always grip it in the same way. Nock the arrow always in the same place. Anchor point, up to your chin . . . that's right Now, nothing must move. You are a launching platform. You sight your line from your eye, to the mark on the handle, to the arrow tip, to your target .. . and let go." And he found it easy, in a short while.

They finished swords, one each, then short knives. They labored together, and happily, to make sheaths, belts, shoes, wrist braces, and tabs. They won themselves another huge hide and made of it a carpet for their living space. They shifted their routine by degrees until they were out and about, actively, in the bright daytime, retiring at night. And day forty-five came, and went and it seemed to him that this full and crowded life was slipping

by much too fast. Once, in a quiet moment, she took him back over his words in gentle mockery.

"You quoted Omar at me, remember? Well, my man, I can quote the old tentmaker too, now. Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou . . . beside me, singing in the wilderness, and wilderness is paradise enow . . . and what do you say to that?"

"What can I say, princess? If there is a paradise anywhere, we've got it. I've got it, right in my arms."

She said, "It's not all perfect, John. I've wanted to say it, hated to, but now perhaps I can, like this. You have something on your mind. You've been having nightmares again." He paused in his adoration of her golden curves, kept quite still.

"What kind of nightmares?"

"I dont know! I cant see inside your head. But you cry out and struggle sometimes. Last night. Two nights ago."

"What did I say, princess? Can you remember any words?"

"Nothing that made any sense, no. It sounded like 'You can't go. You mustn't go. They'll kill you!' Just like that"

And just like that, all in one spin of his mind, he saw the entire picture that his rigorously logical unconscious had built up for him, knew it was true. So obvious.

"I'm a fool!" he said, with utter conviction.

"Why? What's it mean?" She gazed up at him curiously.

"Just what it says. My unconscious knows what it's talking about. You can't go back, princess. Not ever!"

She sat up to face him, squatting knee to knee with him. "We've done that one, John. I have to go back. I don't fancy it anymore than you do. But I've thought about it, and thought about it, and the only answer I can come up with is to go back, just for the purpose, and tell my father that I want to stay here with you."

"And tell him why ... and how?"

Tragedy darkened her eyes. "I'd have to tell him something, some kind of story that he would believe. I won't give you away. I know not a damned thing about mineral samples, you know that. For the rest, I can invent some tale ... that I'm in love with you and want to be with you, no matter what. He would believe that. And I would come right back again."

"No," he shook his head at her. "You wouldn't. You'd never get the chance. If Colson had really been your father, that might have made some difference, I don't know. But you're not, and I should have seen it right away. I'm a fool. Look"—he met the bewilderment in her eyes—"if you know me at all, you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. What I'm trying to get to is a fact, not anything of my doing, just a fact. Princess, you saw that detonite in our ship. You know what it was meant for. To destroy me when he was through with me. And I told you that was logical on his part. No one would miss me, or suspect anything, because this whole deal is a secret anyway. And I said it was because he would then not have to pay me, or trust me not to talk. And that was right, but it was only a part. There's more." He shook his head, still at his own stupidity in not seeing it before.

"I'm not human anymore, that's what it is. And neither are you."

"I know that!" she exclaimed, with such an odd intonation that he frowned at her in wonder.

"But do you know, princess? Do you know, at all, what Leo did to you in those vats of his? In any detail?"

"He made me stronger, healthier, because this is a rough place to live on. I don't know the fine detail, no!" He stared at her in wonder for so long that she grew restless. "Don't look at me like that! I'm no biochemist. All I knew was that it had to be done if I was to follow you!"

"I'm glad you did, but . . . how can I explain? Stand up, come on. Now, pick me up. Right off the ground!" She grappled him about the waist and hoisted him from his feet, put him down again. "Right, now, what d'you say my weight is, at a guess?" She was patient, as always when he was beset with some idea. She made a show of feeling his muscles.

"A hundred seventy pounds, maybe?"

'That's dose. In fact, if this was Earth, I'd run about one hundred ninety. Here, though, I weigh two hundred eighty-five and more. That's what you just lifted. You now . . . you're about one forty, on Earth. Here you're two hundred ten pounds." She was shaking her head in obvious nonunderstanding. He cast about for another lead, thought of her bows and a test he had done in a quiet moment. "You're an archer. You talk about a bow having a pull, in so many pounds? All right, your bow, what would you say the pull is?"

"At a guess," she shrugged, "about fifty pounds. It's also called the weight, which is why it's in pounds. About fifty, maybe a bit more."

He grinned at her. "I tested yours on a gauge of mine, just to see, and the figure I got was two hundred thirty-five!"

"But that is ridiculous!" she declared. "Nobody could pull a bow like that! It's not possiblel"

"You do it. You do a lot of things that a big, strong, healthy Earthman here and now couldn't begin to do. He'd have a job just to stand up. Or to breathe against this atmospheric pressure. Or to stand this temperature. To us it feels fine. Princess, we are not human. We are superhuman. And that is why you can't go back. That's the secret that Colson dare not leak, nor take any chances on. A mineral-rich planet is just one thing, that's business. He can buy silence on that. But you, back there among ordinary people, would be a monster, a freak. Coming this way was one thing. You came straight from Leo's laboratory. You were under heavy sedation, which didn't start to wear off until you landed here. I know. I was the same, but Leo explained it to me, because I asked him. Even he, who made me this way, was afraid of me, of what I might do, unthinkingly." She was caught now, staring at him.

'Try to imagine it," he invited. "You go back up to the monitor, you gorgeous gold-colored creature with your flame-red hair. You shake hands with someone, and squash his hand to a jelly. You grab a door handle, and bend it, or tear it off. You have the long ride back to Earth, then to Leo's place . . . you'd be rumbled a hundred times. Superwoman! Monster! Ordinary honest folk would be scared of you. Crooks would be after you to use for hostage until they could steal the know-how and do the same for their own ends. Come on, princess, think! You know it would be like that. That's why Colson has to rub me out. And that is why he has to get rid of you, too. He has to!"

The dismay on her face was a pain to him. He folded her into his arms and she clung to him shiveringly, halfway convinced but not quite. "I'm not like you, John," she confessed, "not in that way. I can't take logic like that and believe dreadful things about people. Horrible things, those I can believe, but not dreadful things, like somebody deliberately wanting me dead."

"I don't blame you. I would just as soon not believe it myself. That is why it came up in nightmare. My unconscious knew. It has known all along that you couldn't go back. Princess"—he pushed her gently away from him and studied her uncertain face—"now I've spoiled something maybe, have I?"

She shook her head, and the uncertain look disappeared, gave way to the warm smile that he knew and tingled to, every time. "No, John . . . not that . . . not between us. Nothing can alter that Not now, not ever. The rest of the world can do what it likes, the worst it can think of, but here we're safe. Here... it's just us."

But the ghost had been raised and it lingered in the wings, never quite banished. As day fifty-five drew near, he raised the subject again, deliberately.

"We have to get this thing settled, princess, one way or the other. You need some kind of proof, some evidence more than just my reasoning, and I don't blame you at all for that So I've thought . . . suppose, when the regular shuttle message comes through tomorrow, suppose I ask for a special to lift off one passenger? Just to see what they will do7"

"But I don't want to go back, not yet, not until I have tol"

"I didn't say you were going back. I said I would ask for a special. You won't be on it. You changed your mind at the last minute, that's all. But then we will see how they react up there."

She didn't like it but she agreed to the experiment That afternoon saw the successful trial of a new style arrow that he had been working on for some time, one with a slow twist in it yet still perfectly true from nock to point. He had derived the idea from the computer store's data on aerodynamics. Retching, or feathering, the arrows had been a constant problem Life on Argent had not produced anything analogous to a feather. They had managed with plastic cannibalized from store items, and then with shaped membrane from beak-bird wings, but in

all cases it was a tedious chore to fit the flights. This way, he hoped and predicted, the arrows would acquire spin and fly true all by themselves. The trial vindicated him to the hilt. They stuck a stuffed lizard carcass up on the rock spike in the mesa, and she was the first to shoot at it, pacing off the regulation hundred yards.

"It feels fine," she observed, as she drew it to her chin and aimed. And loosed, and the arrow flew with a shrill scream, cleared the top of the target by a good yard and kept on going, so that he had to spur to the sled and chase after it. And then use his wrist radio to call her.

"I make it two hundred yards, at leastl" he told her jubilantly. "Now will you believe my ideas work?"

"You and your ideas!" she scoffed. "You realize, don't you, that with these streamlined things we are going to have to start learning all over?"

But there was only banter in her voice, and the usual, but heady, admiration in her eyes as he sped back to her in the sled and ran to join her.

"I'll make more," he promised. "They are simple to do, now I know how. And coming down on aim shouldn't be too difficult, just an adjustment."

"You know," she said thoughtfully, when they had done enough practice and made their way back into the ship for a meal and rest, "I've often wondered why we can't give those people things like this. There's so much we can do for them, one way or another."

"I've thought about that, too," he admitted, filling goblets for them both. "But I don't know so much. Why upset them? If they've got what it takes, they'll get there on their own anyway. And we have to go away and leave them anyway, so why start something we can't finish?"

"I suppose you're right" She sipped the fermented juice—it made a sharp-edged wine but with warming power—and puckered her brow in thought. "I wonder what our next place will be like? I've sort of imagined a valley, a river of sorts, plenty of grass, and maybe we could have a garden. And grow flowers as well as things to eat."

"Why not?" he said cheerfully.'Til keep a lookout for something of the kind. This is a mountaintop we're on now. Down in a valley would be a pleasant change. But I doubt if well find a river, you know, not in this kind of temperature. Well see. We might even be able to catch ourselves a young cat and tame it!" and she laughed at him.

"That's a lot to do in thirty days!"

"Yes." He shrugged. "I can dream just as easily as you can. I have a different kind of vision, of covering the whole planet, just the way it's been planned, and then, when your . . . Old Man Colson finally decides the game is not worth it, and pushes the button, then . . . we'll head for the place we liked the best, and make a permanent home there."

"That sounds great," she agreed, then eyed him thoughtfully. "John ... when that button gets pushed, and they go away . .. we'll really be alone. All on our own. Does that ever bother you, at all?"

"Not me, no. It never has. But I can understand it bothering you." He eyed her steadily, soberly. "It's something to think about, princess. When the day comes, youll be stuck with me, for the rest of our lives. It's all very fine and marvelous just now, but it has only been . . . what . . . twenty-five days? People have longer honeymoons than that, so I understand. What will it be like after twenty-five years?"

"I don't know, John." Her eyes were as level and candid as his own. "All I know is that for some insane reason I have to keep telling you things that no woman in her right mind would ever tell any man . . . that twenty-five days with you has been like a lifetime, and yet no time at all. That on the inside I am nothing at all but a warm, silly fluid mass that heaves and melts and boils when I look at you, when you look at me, when I think of you . . . and that I tell myself, over and over again, a hundred times every day, that this is really all mine ... all mine! And still I can't believe it!"

"Does it ever scare you?" he asked softly. "It does me. I wonder what I ever did to deserve you ... or, on the other hand . . . what I'm going to have to pay when the reckoning comes."

That dawn's deluge seemed to him to be another new step, another milestone. Both of them were sobered, knowing that momentous things could happen, and though they pointedly avoided the subject, she was at his elbow

when he went up to answer the shuttle signal from the monitor.

"Ground to monitor. Receiving."

"Monitor to ground. Day fifty-five. Check. Are you all right?"

"Day fifty-five, copy.Nothing to report. One request." After a pause came the laconic, "Proceed with request"

"Arrange routine shuttle to convey one passenger, ground back to monitor. Repeat passenger from ground to monitor."

Another pause, a long one.Lampart kept his eyes on the circuitry as he waited. Then came the single word, "Waitl"

"Whatever that may mean," he muttered. "While they scratch their heads, report back to Earth, what?" "Can they report back to Earth?"

"Not unless they have invented something new in the way of radio that I haven't heard of. A ship with Lawlor can get there in a week, but a radio call still takes four hundred years. Hold itl" The twitch of needles had caught his eye.

"Monitor to ground. Expect shuttle at routine time, one hour prior to sunset. Shuttle with facility for one passenger, as you request. Check."

'Thank you, monitor. Suggest extra link for information on safe arrival of passenger. Concern for well-being."

"Monitor, copy and understood. Extra care. Information will be given."

"So much for that!" he growled, as the console went inert again. "Maybe I was wrong, after all. Maybe I owe somebody an apology."

"Not yet," she said generously. "And not me, anyway. You were concerned for me, I understand that. A nice word, concern. It fits you. Quiet, gentle, considerate, concerned ..."

"Youl" he said, and snatched at her, but she was gone like an eel, down the stair before him and out into the sunshine, laughing. Absurdly, he felt like laughing too, even though his suspicions were not yet allayed. He stood at the head of the gangway and shouted, "You come back here, there's work to do. Washing up, cooking, sewing, rugs to beat... 1"

"Do not trust him, gentle maiden!" she carolled, in a clear mocking lilt, and he laughed again, waved and went inside, through to his workshop. The work was minimal, just routine. His chart now was well spotted with sample points, and he frowned at it, wondering if there was any pattern there that other eyes could see and suspect. He had found a pattern to suit him, right enough. With little or no effort he could put his finger on several more spots where the mineral trace would be minimal. "If I had to," he said. "But five days will see us up and away out of here anyway. Funny about that shuttle, though. Maybe I did figure it wrong, but I don't see how," and he was still scowling over that as she came quietly in with a mug of coffee for him, sat beside him at his test table.

"What shall we do today?" she asked.

"Let's go for a ride to the far side, that way, and take a look at the other jungle. Maybe we can find a way through, or over, maybe some new kind of fruit, roots, something."

They had been that far often, but always stopping short at the cliff foot. This time, armed with bow and arrows each, and able to use them, they secured the sled at a reasonable spot and tackled the climb vigorously. The effort turned out to be worth it.

"This is different!" she said, as they reached the rim rocks and could stare out over the scene below. "It doesn't even look like the same kind of forest!" Below them the cliff fell steeply away for about a mile or so, then eased out into long rolling slopes patched with bushes and carpeted with grassy growth so pale blue as to remind him of home skies. It had the curious effect of brightness under the never-still boiling of the red and purple clouds. The plains, for that is what they reminded him of, ran on into the haze of distance, with only the ghost of peaks far away to draw an edge.

"I suppose it would be different," he mused, with his arm around her, "when you think of the prevailing weather pattern, the regular morning drive of the rainstorm. Our jungle is on the upslope of it, and what little nutrient there is in the soil will tend to get washed back down, to that lake. Here the rain must run away more slowly, passing over the land. You'd think there ought to be some kind of grazing animals. It seems to be designed for it."

"How far can we see from here?"

"I'd have to guess it, princess. Without knowing our exact elevation above the mean horizon I couldn't calculate it anyway. About sixty-seventy miles maybe. Those mountains we can just see must be all of that away."

"That's the way we will be traveling, isn't it, when we move?"

"That's right. Fifteen degrees, approximately. This planet is roughly twenty thousand miles around, not quite as big as Earth. That makes it just a little under sixty miles to a degree, so when we shift we will move something less than nine hundred miles before we sit down again."

"It's difficult to grasp," she confessed. "The sheer size of a whole planet."

"It is, when you think about it." He found a reasonably flat place and invited her to sit with him, gazing out over the peaceful scene. "When you think about Earth, for instance, and remember there are dose on four billion people living there now. And this planet is nearly twice as big as that, in terms of land surface, because Earth is four-fifths sea anyway. And we humans have been running around on it for something like half a million years, and we don't know all of that, yet And here we are, jumping off into space in all directions, looking for new places to spoil."

He grew quietly bitter. "We really do know how to spoil places now. On Earth we have to go easy, because pollution death is staring us in the face, but with a place like this ... you must have been to Marsdome?"

"A time or two, yes," she admitted. "It was the 'in' place for quite a while. The modem Babylon, or the cesspool of the Solar System, depending on who you read."

"I've passed through it a score of times. It's the jump-off stage for the big dark. You would only see the dome itself. I've seen the surrounding landscape lots of times. Raw and angry scars where the machines have been and struck, gutting the surface for metal ores and chemicals. Miles and miles of total devastation and blight"

"But Mars was a dead world anyway, Johnl"

"Oh no. That's what they tell you, sure, but it's not true.

There's life, of a sort, there. Humble little mosses and lichens, rare things, maybe not pretty and not much of them, but life. Not worth a damn when it comes to man's greed for rich metals, of course. This place is a bit more spectacular, but it wouldn't make any difference."

"But this is a whole world, and men can't live here anyway!"

"A man can't live down a coalmine, princess. But millions of man-hours have been lived down them. Whole lifetimes, when you add them up. It could happen here. Domes, once the capital has been raised. Domes, with degravitor fields and atmospheric plant, once the rewards start coming out of the ground. This place is unique, you see? I could list you a hundred planets where metal has been found in sizable lodes, where ruination has been done . . . but you could live thirty or forty miles away from it and pretend it wasn't there. Lyra, Cygni ... or take Tau Ceti Three. There's the perfect example. They've called it Shangri-La because it's so pleasant. They ban all heavy industry. They are going to keep it clean. Good for them. But what they don't tell you about are the other two planets of the system which provide the grit, the dirt, the despoliation that makes the money that keeps Shangri-La clean!"

"I can't add you up, John." She turned an affectionate smile on him. "I'm not knocking, believe me, but it seems that whichever way I turn, when you are pointing, I see man as a nasty brutish thing, almost a disease!"

"A biological mistake," he corrected.

"But that can't be right. You said yourself that we've been around for half a million years!"

"That's no time at all, biologically speaking. And a cancer cell is a tremendous success, in its own terms. It flourishes like mad, for a while. But it destroys the thing it lives on, and itself, in the end."

"That's too far away for me. I'm happy with the here and now, with us, and that." She gestured to the rolling plain. "We should have brought us some lenses!"

"That is an idea for my next want-list. I'll put it aboard the shuttle this evening."

They got back to the ship with an hour to spare before the shuttle was due down. The clouds of ominous portent had been pushed away for a while by their excursion, but they rolled back again now, for him at least, and all through his last-minute chores he kept raking his mind for the flaw in his assumptions. They just couldn't let her go back up there, and then on to Earth, not the way he had figured it. And yet, and yet, the signal came as always, and in time down came the little craft, bellowing against the stress and strain of gravity and jet-fire. When he flipped to clear and sat back, she patted his shoulder sympathetically.

"Don't worry about it," she advised. "You were wrong once. It happens to all of us. Come on, let's do the necessary."

The routine unloading and loading up with samples was easy enough. He went inside the cargo hold, and there, sure enough, was the harness all ready and secured to support a passenger. He scowled at it, feeling foolish but driven by a conviction that wouldn't lie down.

"Should I leave a note?" she wondered. 'To explain that I changed my mind? Or will you do that when they report?"

"Eh?" For once he hadn't heard what she said. Then, in sudden rage, he went back into the hold and down on his knees to the hatch that gave access to the drive complex. Down in this space there was even less room than on his own ship, and the machinery was considerably less involved. But there was room to move, there had to be, for servicing.

"What are you doing now?" she called, from the sand outside. Then she saw his face as he came out and dropped down beside her, saw and touched the black grease stains on his arms. "What?"

"Go and look!" he advised. "You'll see where. Look for shiny new metal, bright copper wire all fresh. Go on!" He watched her, and hate ran hot in his mind, sharpened by reluctant admiration. Why waste a good idea? A method is worth using more than once, if it's any good at all. And so neat and final, too. She came out, dropping down lightly to the sand, her face a golden mask, her eyes starkly questioning.

"Detonite again? Around the drive tubes?"

"Simple and easy to do, princess. And effective, you have to grant that."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing. Not a thing. We're all finished here. Oh, 111 just slap that hatch back, not that it matters, but I hate to leave anything undone. And then we go through the standard drill."

His hands were rock-steady as he took the craft away from the surface and juggled it into orbit, threw it away up there beyoud the ionosphere, the clouds, out of his ken. Neat and so simplel The appreciation scoured his mind like acid. As far as he was concerned, the shuttle was gone out of touch. He had only their report to tell him if and when it arrived safely at their end. He canceled his board, established the signal that told them it was all theirs, and then swung to the radio circuit She was there by his side, her hand on his shoulder, her face dead calm. There was nothing to say. The digits danced on the clock face, marking the passing time. His signal light blinked out, impersonally telling him the shuttle had arrived. Her fingers curled clawlike on his shoulder. Waitl In a matter of minutes only the radio circuit crackled into life and he moved.

"Ground to monitor. I read."

"Monitor.For your information. Shuttle and passenger received and all well. Repeat . . . all well. Check and out!"

"You lying bastard!" he said softly, and felt her fingers digging into his flesh. He looked up at her and saw death in her face. Words wouldn't come to him, not any words that would fit. All at once she drew a huge and trembling breath, let go his shoulder.

"Don't say anything." Her voice was a dry whisper. "Just leave me all alone for a bit."

"Sure," he said gently. "Whatever you say."

"Can I take the sled? By myself?"

"Why not?" The simple words cost him a curled-up fear, a terror of letting her go off by herself in that frame of mind, but he said them. 'Take it. Come back when you're ready to. I'll be here."

He sat quite still, letting her go, hearing her soft step for just a brief while. When he had estimated she must be clear, in the sled and moving, he struck circuits she knew nothing of, spun scanners, and got a picture of the sled skimming away toward the gap in the cliffs. He sat watching until it swept up the scree slope and out of sight. To some degree he knew what she was feeling, but for the rest he could only guess. As had been his habit for so long, he talked it out with himself.

"For all her fighting and struggling," he mused, "she has never stood on her own feet before. She has always had somebody else, either to lean on or bounce off. Even here, with me, it was because of me that she came, to beat me, break me, master me, make a dent in me somehow. I doubt if she has ever done anything all on her own for the sheer sake of doing it, just for herself. So maybe it's natural that she feels she has to do this alone, for a while. She has just been killed. Deliberately. Sheer, coldblooded murder. By her so-called father. That's a hell of a shock for anybody!"

He shook his head at it, feeling his own hate settling down into a hard lump in his chest In a while he set up another circuit that she didn't know about, the scout's friend, a watch-eye scan that would trigger an alarm just as soon as the established picture changed in any significant degree. He locked the camera on that pass through the cliffs and left it there. He was reassured somewhat by the knowledge that she had her wrist radio with her, although it might not reach from beyoud the gorge rim with any degree of clarity. Inside, he was worried sick, but he wouldn't admit it, even to himself. The ship seemed empty somehow, and life aimless. He recalled that odd cassette he had asked for, and had never yet had the opportunity, or need, to play back. He found it and took it up to the control room, where he had one screen adapted to take the thing.

There she was. Star Queen. Linda Lewis, blond, beautiful, fully feminine, quite naked, her lovely shape glowing with light her manner pure and artless as she talked to Captain Storm. And there again, in a different pose, a different setting, but still the same. The old magic still worked, reaching down inside him as she moved and smiled and spoke, the camera deliberately lingering on her innocent loveliness, blond hair brushing her shoulders, her breasts swelling with her agitation as she learned of the terrible nature of each new imminent disaster, her silky-pearl skin sending an invitation to be touched, stroked, caressed.

But now Lamp art could see a difference, a subtlety that he had not realized before. Although Star Queen was just as lovely, just as desirable as ever, he knew that she was not asking for anything. She was just there, just as a flower or a magnificent scene is there, to be looked at, to be admired, but self-contained, not in need of reassurance. No matter how unstudied, revealing, even exhibitionist her posing was, no matter how the camera moved to emphasize her every intimacy unsparingly, there was not the slightest suggestion of need on her part. She was not telegraphing "want," at all. In fact, he now saw, that was why the camera could be so utterly candid, because there was no innuendo at all in her. Lampart marveled, in his mind comparing this with that, the blond self-assurance with the completely different "hunger" that came off Dorothea like heat from a stove, and he thought he was coming close to achieving some understanding of love itself.

They said, the gossips, that Linda Lewis lived with Arundel, who played Storm, and, from their viewpoint, she lived a most exemplary and nonexciting life at that Maybe, Lampart mused, that was what love did to people. It made them satisfied with each other, walled them within a shell of security so that nothing else mattered, so that she just didn't give a damn how many men switched on just to stare at her body and drool over it, she had all she needed already and was satisfied with that.

He couldn't imagine Dorothea ever being satisfied with anything, not for long. She had needs that seemed to be inexhaustible. He shut off the images on the screen, took the cassette down again to his workshop, and got busy with a small ploy of bis own, a delicate and careful business of drawing fine gold wire into a coil, worrying about her all the while, wondering what she was doing, wanting to help and knowing that he couldn't The alarm sent him racing up to the control to cancel, to peer a moment, long enough to see the sled come skimming out of the cut and across the sand. He went to sit on the gangway head as if just thinking, taking his ease. Let her not. think that he had been anxious, and now vastly relieved. She came on foot around the ship, bow across her back, sword swinging at her hip from the slim belt at her waist long-legged and lovely, and weary. He started up in quick dismay at the sight of stains across her arms and breast, but sighing in relief at the color of them. Her blood was as red as his own. This stuff was dark-dried purple.

"You all right now, princess?" he asked, reaching a hand to settle her on the step beside him.

"Yes. Now." She rubbed her shoulder against his cheerfully, put out her arm to show him, then brushed off the dark flakes. "I met up with a cat," she said. "He wanted to argue, and I was in that mood too, so we did. And I killed it. Brought it back. Might make a nice pelt."

"We haven't tried a cat skin yet. Should be interesting. Might do for another skirt for you."

"You always say the right things." She took his hand strongly. "If I ever wear a skirt again, or anything like that, it will be just to tease you, to have the fun of you undressing me . . . and it might be fun, at that, I must try it . . . but that's all. I'm changed. You realize, don't you, that I am now dead, officially? That I don't exist?"

"I know. It must have been a hell of a shock for you."

"At first, yes. But then it came to me . . . I'm nobody ... I've been deleted. Removed. So now I can be anybody I want. Start all over again. And then I had to figure whether it was worth it or not What good am I? I was being utterly bloody selfish, I know. But then that damned cat jumped me, and I realized I wanted to live. And I do. And here I am." Her fingers tightened on his hand. "I'm changed, John. I've been needing you like a crazy woman needing to prove she is female. That's not true anymore. Not need. Not greed. Not like there was no tomorrow. That's done, isn't it? I can't go back, you were right about that So I am here permanently now. For the rest of my life!"

"Like it or not," he said, with understanding. "That's enough to put anybody off. It's all right princess, you don't have to worry about me. You do whatever you like. We can still work together, whichever way you want it As you've said, so often, love . . . who needs it? We have something better. I think," he made a smile and turned to her, "I think I respect you more as a person now than I did before, if that's possible. You're a great girl . . . and a really great person. Come on, let's take a look at that cat of yours, see if we can skin it without ruining itl"

It was well into the night before they finished the messy business, but it had to be done, or leave it for the scavengers to worry and spoil. She had hit the creature twice with her arrows, once in the upper chest, the second time clean through the roof of its mouth. "While it was charging me," she explained. "It seemed the obvious thing to do. It's quite a good skin, don't you think?"

With common agreement they left the flesh. It looked stringy and tough anyway, and they had enough of the other kind. He spread out the skin on a stretcher they had devised for lizard hide and stood it in a corner. "It'll take a day to dry out," he said, "and then well see. That dark blue should go well with your golden satin. Skin, I mean."

"Satin?" she looked down at herself and then him. "You're an incurable romantic, John. Leather would be nearer. Come on, let's shower together, there's room."

Then, as they stood close together in the warm-dry air blast, she looked up at him and shook her head again. "You're too good to be true, sometimes. I know I said I don't need you anymore, not like before. That's true. But I do want you. I don't think I'll ever stop wanting you. But now it's pure selfishness, just for me, just because you're such a tremendous man, and that is what I want . . . for myself, not because I'm trying to prove anything . . . but because there you are, you big ape . . . and I'm crazy for you ..."

"You didn't have to say it, princess. I can see it, the way you look and move . . ." and he gathered her to him gladly.

THIRTEEN

To surprise both of them, the monitor alarm sounded just as they were breakfasting the next morning. "Now what?" he wondered, trotting up to the radio circuit with her close after him, closing the switch, making the routine signal, "Ground to Monitor. I read. What?"

"Monitor. Check. Instructions for program change. Ready?"

"Ground.Program change. Go ahead." "Monitor. Day fifty-six. Check."

"So it is day fifty-six, so what?" he growled, then leaned on the switch "Day fifty-six. Check."

"Monitor. You will remain on site a further thirty days. Repeat, thirty days. Expiry is now day eighty-six. Check."

"Ground.Copy. Remain thirty days more. Instructions? Check?"

"No further instructions. Revise test sites where proximate analyses are seventy percent or more. Repeat, where analyses are seventy percent or more. Shuttle service as before. Understood? Check?"

"Understood.Nothing to report."

He watched the needles sag to zero and frowned at them. "What do you make of that?" he asked her, and she shrugged devastatingly, mischievously.

"I neither know nor care, John. All I know is that we have another thirty whole days here. I was hating the idea of leaving this place. It has come to mean such a lot to me. And now we don't have to, not for a long time I" She was so obviously delighted that he had to forget his suspicions for that moment and humor her. But, in the heat of the afternoon, as they lay together on a spread skin rug they had arranged under the ship, in shadow

but with brightness all around and only the sand under them, he had to come back to it, to talk it out with her. At moments like this, when there was no separation between them at all, it was easier to say what was in his mind.

"It has to be one way or the other," he reasoned, caressing her hair as she rested her head in his Jap. "Either Colson isn't satisfied with the results I've been sending back, for some reason, and wants them done again, or he is, and wants them confirmed. I know that sounds like I'm having it both ways at once, but it isn't quite like that." She wriggled to show she was listening. "You see, this whole thing is a gamble, always has been, right from the start. All I know is the metallurgy part of it. I can take samples, run assays, proximate analyses, all that. But for the financial angles I can only guess, and go by what I've seen other places. No matter how hard I try, I can't get anything less than sixty-five percent ore, not anywhere. And that is rich, by any other standards. I don't know, for sure, whether that is too skinny to make it worth Colson's while, or whether it really is rich enough anyway for him to go ahead with his scheme. You are listening?"

In a moment she said aggrievedly, "You're doing it on purpose. You know I don't want to talk just now. Of course I'm listening. I just don't see what difference it makes, that's all. If you have to recheck, that's it. If we can stay here another thirty days, that's wonderful. Why worry?"

So he let the subject go and lay still to let her have her way. But it wasn't possible for him to banish thought so easily, and the problem remained in the back of his mind through the days that followed. They were wonderful, glorious days. The workaday business of rechecking was only a minor fraction of the time spent. For the rest they played, made plans and fulfilled them, improved their weaponry and became expert with it, and they grew even closer together than they had been before, getting to know each other in a way almost impossible for ordinary people with other distractions. When he had enough of the fine gold wire he bent and wove and twisted it into an elaborately dainty coronet for her, and though she protested, she was obviously and visibly delighted to wear it at appropriate times.

They had moderate success with that first cat skin, better fortune with subsequent ones, and nothing would please him but that he should make a skirt for her of the glossy blue pelt, just a brief wrap-around with a laboriously fashioned buckle. "You're sure you know how to undo it?" she demanded.

"I'm sure," he told her. "That's why I'm not making a ring for your finger, princess. That would mean something entirely different, that I had some kind of ownership right on you, and I don't, nor ever will."

They explored, and found more fruits, some of them virulently inedible, none as good as the yellow egg shapes. They found roots that would grind up to make passable soup. He never tired of finding tiny jewel-like flowers for her hair. In his sight she grew lovelier every day, her shape becoming more lithe and supple and perfect, her skin like liquid gold, her hair a glory of fire-red that he delighted in trimming and cutting so that it brushed her shoulders. She kept his hair trimmed too, and his beard, which grew only slowly anyway and was pale, only just darker than his skin. And that she admired and adored his body as much as he did hers she made repeatedly obvious. They grew skilled at playing with each other, and on each other, like two master musicians striking perfect harmony from two superb instruments. A time or two he even managed to persuade her to look at the cassette pictures of Star Queen, and try to explain what he saw there.

She understood, in a way, but she could add a reading that he had not seen. "She's a beautiful woman all right, John. I can see why you would want to idealize her. That's all right, I don't mind. But it's not love that she has, believe me. Security would be a better word. She has that big funk she acts with, and he is certainly a gorgeous hunk of man, but she's got him. And she is satisfied with that."

"There's a difference?" he wondered.

"All the difference in the world.The difference between comfort and excitement. I once lived in an old-fashioned house with an open fireplace. It was warm, and bright, and you had to keep putting logs on, and raking out the ashes

. . . you had to keep on at it, working at it But central heating's not like that. It's just there, warm and cosy, but not particularly noticeable, certainly not exciting. Lots and lots of women are only too glad to settle for central heating. Me, I like the fire."

It was understatement She was fire. There was passion in everything she did, every movement, every minute. She was a witch, and she scared him often, but never so much as one evening when the end of their sojourn was near enough to be a threat

"You're still troubled, John, aren't you?" she asked.

"Not nightmares again?" he groaned, and she reassured him quickly.

"Nothing like that But I do know that look in your eyes. And you are always so adamant about us not going back to visit that village, those people. It's not like you to be dogmatic without a good reason."

"I've got reasons," he admitted, "but I'm not so sure they are good ones. Look, princess, if we went back there, the chances are that we'd make friends. I mean, they wouldn't forget us in a hurry. And, sure, we could teach them a thing or two. The bow, the sword, a better spear . . . with which they could hunt, or kill each other."

"Come on now, that's not fair. If they want to kill each other that wouldn't be our fault Why wouldn't it be right to make friends with them?"

"Who killed you, princess?"

"Carlton Colson," she said instantly, and he nodded.

"Right And not by proxy. You think about it He is much too smart a swine to put himself over that barrel, to deliver himself into somebody else's hands for that kind of blackmail. It took me a while to see that, but it's obvious. Isn't it? He was right there, in person. And then we had the meaningless extension of survey, right after. He is up to something. And what I am afraid of is that whatever he is up to will involve other men on the ground. Down here. Men who will, sooner or later, meet those people. Find them. Destroy them. They will, you know. And ... I don't want that on my conscience. That I showed them friendly humans, stole away their natural suspicions, laid them wide open to the others. I don't like the idea that I brought men here in the first place. It's all my doing, princess."

She was silent a long while, breathing with him, her heart beating in time with his. Then, with a sigh, she said, "I can't do anything about that, John. It's your conscience, and I can't keep it for you, or salve it either. I can only say what I think, that you could never really be blamed for something you didn't know about. I know that doesn't make it any the less tragic, but it is not your fault That's silly." And then, after another long silence. "When we move away ... we may not meet more people . . . but had it ever occurred to you that we could produce people of our own?"

It took a moment for her meaning to ignite in his mind. "You mean . . . you could become pregnant and have babies? Can you?"

"As far as I know ... as far as Uncle Leo could tell . . . there's no reason why not, why we wouldn't breed true."

"You mean . . . you asked him? A thing like that?" He was so astounded that she giggled and had to clutch him tight against a sudden excitement

"Of course I did, silly man. I'm female. Maybe I didn't know what his fancy process was all about but I did think of that. Women do. It's the way they are made."

Lamp art was scared now, more scared than ever in his life before. "I don't think it would be such a smart idea," he mumbled, "to have a family. Not just now. I wouldn't know what to do?"

"Who said anything about right now?" she demanded comfortably. "And you wouldn't have anything to do. I'm the one would be having them."

But he was still uneasy. "Shouldn't we be . . . taking some kind of precautions or something?" She laughed again, clutching him tight

"Hah!" she mocked. "This is something you dont know about, and I do. I told you, I was raised by experts. You just leave me to worry about that end of it Just as long as the idea doesn't terrify you altogether?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "I'd never thought about it" But it was something he had to think about from that moment on.

All too soon, it seemed to him, the halcyou days dwindled away. The familiar shuttle made its final run, bringing him extra fuel, fuel he didn't need, but the people above were not to know that. There came busy hours of gathering, securing, dismantling the sled enough to load it inboard, stowing their precious possessions, and then the painstaking ritual of test and trial and run-up of the main engines, so long quiet. In these final stages there was nothing she could do but sit by him in control and watch while he did all that had to be done. The transpex dome, dimmed by polarizing filters to the point where Alcyoue was just a bright sunny shine, gave her a chance to look out over the mesa again, one last time.

"It's silly," she confessed, "but I feel sad at leaving the old place. Such a lot of lovely things have happened here."

"Better sit," he advised. "Three minutes to lift-off. And no talking, remember? You're dead!" He watched the digits dance away the seconds, hit the switches at the precise time, and the ship stirred, shivered, and went up, slowly at first, then faster. The mesa fell away, became a bowl below, and then a flat almost circular patch of near-silver against the blues and reds of rocks. "Straight up for twenty miles," he said, "and then we veer due west There's the monitor lock-on. They will follow us all the way." The ship thrummed now, strong and quiet responding to his touch. The altimeter spun steadily. There came a sudden crackle from the radio, a shatter of interference that made him wince, then a flat, impersonal voice.

"Monitor to ship. Do you read?" Lampart reached, slapped a switch, swung the microphone close to his mouth,

"Ship. I read. What?"

"Ceiling will be thirty miles, for better lock-on."

"Thirty miles, copy," he grunted, and in an aside added, "What are they scared of, they think they're going to lose me?" He held the climb steady until the altimeter indicated twenty-nine and rising, started to ease off, spoke into the microphone again. "Ceiling thirty miles, just coming to it now. Will veer west, due west at one hundred miles per hour relative to ground, on your signal. Check."

The voice that came next was different Even through the distortion of the converter apparatus it was so instantly familiar as to raise the hair on his neck and to bring her head around in a flash.

"John Lampart. This is Carlton Colson speaking. I have been disappointed in you, Lampart. I thought you were more intelligent than to try to deceive me. Your father tried that, and he died. You have tried it ... I don't know why. How do I know? I trust no man, Lampart. I have seen the samples you have so carefully provided for me. But what you did not know, or suspect, was that the shuttle that kept liaison between you and the monitor was equipped with automatic collection and sampling scoops. The sand it brought back, Lampart, was practically pure metal, fabulous stuff, as you must surely know. You chose not to reveal that information. I do not know why, nor do I care. You have tried to deceive me. The stupid woman who insisted on joining you down there must have been a party to that deception, for some reason known only to herself. I destroyed her, Lampart, as I now destroy you. Good-byel" The harshly dry voice cut off, and in the next second a small relay on the bulkhead snapped, making her jump, even though she knew it was there and had watched him rig it.

Stunned as he was, Lampart reacted purely by instinct and reflex. In one sweeping movement he canceled every radio circuit, shut off everything except the drive itself, and in the next he had struck the controls that sent the ship heeling violently east His eyes burned on his indicators. Desperate guesswork crowded his mind as he juggled distance and speed and memory in a wild effort. He pulled the drive off, feeling sweat burst out on his brow, visualizing the country down there. When he could risk it no longer, he snapped on his screens again and winced as the mountainside seemed to be only a hand's breadth away. Caressing the controls, holding his breath in utter concentration, he drifted the bellowing ship down that well-known gorge line, saw the great arena where he had slain a dragon to save a precious life, and now, delicately for all the ravening uproar, he let the ship down. Steering deliberately as far away from the caves as he could, he touched it down on rocky soil close to the trees, felt it jar and bump, and cut everything, all in one quick sweep. There was only the ghostly wail of machinery running down to stop.

"I hope," he said, hardly recognizing his own voice, "that we fooled him. I don't think they can detect an air explosion that far up. All they have to go by is the radio lock-on, and I broke that. And swung away fast. If they lost us, they'll think we are ... blown to hell!"

"Oh John!" she came to touch him, to grip his arm. "That devil! He was playing with us! He knew, all the time!"

"For what good it did him. Princess, I think we've beaten him. I think we're free. Away! Clear! I only hope we haven't scared those people out of their wits, out there. Do you think we ought to go out?"

"Not yet. I'm not sure I can walk straight. I'm all shook up. We had better wait a bit. You were so quick! I would never have thought of any of that, not as you did. That voice!"

"I only hope I was quick enough. I think I was." He could look up. at her now. "You realize, don't you, that we are really on our own now?"

"I know. I'm not a bit worried about it. In fact I'm relieved to know that it's all done and over. That dark shadow is gone, the fear. I think I was always afraid that we would never escape, that somehow he would get us, in the end. But he hasn't. We're free!"

It was a good thought. He knew what she meant by the lifting of the shadow. He saw the glorious glow in her eyes, the radiance of her smile, and he felt that it was all worthwhile. If he could have believed it. But there was something sticking at the back of his mind, an itch that he could not reach to scratch or examine. "You keep an eye on the village out there," he said, "while I go and get us some coffee. If you see any movement, yell out I'll bring the binoculars, too."

There were two sets, both excellent glasses, compact but by virtue of their folded-prism effect very useful indeed. He searched for them while the coffee made itself, remembering the time they had used them to study that long rolling plain and to see some wallowing rhinolike creatures, but too far away even for the lenses to provide detail. Idle thoughts, deliberately set up to screen his mind and let the unconscious worry break through. But it hadn't, not by the time he got back to the control room, to find her kneeling up on the view ledge, peering through the transpex at the scene out there.

"Anything?" he asked, moving close and patting her beautiful bottom with the freedom and pleasure of complete understanding. She wriggled.

"Can't see any movement. I'm keeping my head down because I don't know how keen their eyes are . . . but I hear something!" Her words came just ahead of his own awareness. In a moment he was across to the console and flipping outside sensors. There was a noise, distant but growing, and again familiar enough to raise the hackles on his neck.

"That's it!" he shouted. "I'm a fool! That's them, on the way down! Ships, damn it! They're coming down, on the mesa. Come on!"

She raced after him, helping him unquestioningly as he cursed and fought the mass of the sled motor down the gangway and then struggled to bolt the frame back together again. The thunder back there was enormous now, rumbling down the crags of the gorge. Fortunately he had not stripped the frame all the way down, only in sections, and it took him very little time to have it tight and in shape again. "What are you going to do?" she demanded, and he shook his head as if at a buzzing fly.

"I don't know. I want to see what they are doing. I have to see!" He grabbed the binoculars from where he had dropped them, stared at her as she came running with their bows and an armful of arrows. It was on his tongue to scoff at her, to demand what the hell good she thought they would be, but he let it go. There was no time for that The thunder up there over the mountain was different now, closer. They scrambled aboard and he set the sled skimming as never before, hurling it into the angular track between the rocks, swooping it perilously around bends, driving it on and up, his mind racing almost as fast as they were traveling.

"I will tell you what we are going to see," he said grimly, biting off every word. "What he wanted his thirty days' wait for, what he had to get all ready. We will see a damned great freighter, a parent ship. That's why all the row. A big ship with a bellyful of men and machinery, all set to grab the fortune that Colson has been dreaming of."

"But I thought" the breeze of their speed plucked at her words, "you said men couldn't work down here? That's why you were created, isn't it?"

'This is different A man couldn't stand it long, not if he had to look around for ore, make an effort. But you don't have to look for this stuff. It's right there, that sand, square miles of it, just for the grabbing. That mesa, just by itself, is worth millions . . . better than gold dust . . . and he's been getting ready for that. You'll see!" Lampart drove the sled at full speed, handling the steering by automatic reflexes, his whole being dominated by just one thought, an icy-cold determination to stop them, to stop Colson somehow. But his blinding determination stopped short of suicide. As the break in the mountains drew near he slowed, veered the sled off to one side, into a gully, and secured it hastily.

"Come on!" he called, but she needed no urging. Slinging a bow across her back, she leaped down. Staring at her for a moment, he did the same, took a sheaf of arrows. They went scrambling and leaping up the craggy slope. The thunder from the other side had ceased only moments before. Its echoes seemed to linger in the afternoon air. "Easy!" he cautioned, as they neared the rim, and went down, to crawl close and peer over, feeling her shoulder close beside him.

It was indeed a huge ship, exactly as he had foretold, twice the height of his and enormous in girth. And it had set down almost exactly where his had been. He could recognize the patterns of movement, their goings and comings in the silvery sand. That seemed to lend a final touch of outrage. "They just followed the monitor lock-on signal, straight down," he muttered, squinting down at the thing. No movement as yet. It just squatted there.

"What will they do?" she asked, and he scowled at it, down there.

"That looks like a cargo ramp hatchway," he muttered. "That rectangular plate. They should let that down first . . . there it goes!" The squeal and screech of metal came to them as the huge plate fell out and down to the sand to reveal a dark hole. Then noises, the rumbling of motors, and a squat and lumbering tracked machine rolled down that slope and onto the sand. "That's a digger," he identified. "A shovel-and-truck combine, see? And here comes another." His eyes burned as he reached for the binoculars and focused on the men who were driving those machines, a third and a fourth following while he watched. Suited and helmeted, those men. Heavy-duty atmosphere suits, with power-assist mechanisms, probably with pressure-support corsets inside. Not comfortable, but bearable if a man was riding a machine, with nothing to do but move levers and switches. The four machines fanned out in a pre-set pattern. Following them came another machine, bigger still, this one with a bubble dome and a man inside that. Lampart needed only one look.

"That's a smelter. The shovels load up, transfer their load to the smelter, which cooks it into ingots right away. In a while there'll be a flat truck to haul the ingots inboard. All figured out. Princess"—he looked aside at her —"do you reckon you could hit a target like that?" He knew she could. He could. But, in a way, he wasn't surprised by her reaction.

"Not in cold blood, John. We have to warn them somehow. Those men haven't done us any harm."

"Right!" He gave her a grin without mirth. "Warn them. Play fair. But how?" And then he remembered the radio on his wrist, and touched it, to wince at the instant barrage of interference. But there were voices now, over the crackling. By the tone, one was in authority, others responding.

". .. as close to the cliff-wall as you can. Make a clean sweep. Work by sections according to your charts. Smelter, move your rig a bit further over, away from the hatch . . ."

"Stay down," Lampart ordered, and dared to stand erect on a rim so that he could be seen from down there. He put the radio to his mouth and all his rage went away, left a light-headed assurance in its place. "This is the King of Argent," he said, clearly and distinctly. "You, on that

ship, are trespassing on my world. I warn you----------- " He

got no further. His first words had brought an instant stillness in those doll-sized shapes down there, and silence in the intercom chatter. Then, almost as one, the shovel drivers turned to stare, ducked down and came up with weapons that were right there by their hands. Lampart fell instantly, rolling down to where she crouched, as four violet needles of light burned the air where he had been.

"Laser rifles," he muttered. "Haven't done us any harm, hey? You need any more convincing?"

"Just tell me what to do," she said, showing her teeth.

"We split." He formulated plans instantly, savagely. "You that way, me this. When you get set somewhere, pick off the shovel driver closest to you, then move! Hear me now. Move. Don't stay in any one spot. Laser rifles hit what they aim at. Take no chances. Gol" She went away like a gold cat, dodging and scrambling just below the edge. He moved oppositely, until he felt it safe to lift his head and peer over. Two of the shovel men had come down off aim, the others were still intently staring, waiting. He fitted an arrow, braced, and rehearsed his movements, stood, aimed, and loosed all in one fast and vicious movement, then ducked and ran, halted and peered again. He was in time to see a glittering sliver strike a suit, and pierce it, driving it suddenly aside and down like a doll.

As he watched a second sparkling needle glittered in the air, drove and pinned the shovel driver in the farthest machine. He could see the bolt go clean through suit and man, and he exulted in the sight. Those were just ordinary, weak humans down there. He nocked another arrow, leaped up to take aim, loosed off at a third shovel driver, then, still standing, he drew one more, bending the bow savagely, loosing his shaft at the bubble dome of the smelter and falling prone to watch it fly. The glass-clear transpex became an instantly milky shambles that collapsed inward. Another glittering bolt arched down from his partner's bow, struck clear and true, and now the stillness down there was absolute, the stillness of death. Still prone* Lampart brought the radio to his mouth again.

"I am King of Argent," he said savagely. "I tried to warn you, but you wouldn't have it. Now do you believe, you in the ship?"

"Shall I deploy the heavy squad, sir?"

"Not radio, you fool!"

The constant crackle lost its voices and Lampart peered intently, saw two men come down the ramp, heavily, almost at a trot. Men in armor and with weapons couched in their arms. Two more, lumbering and spreading. Two more, and two more again. He leaped to his feet, drew and nocked and loosed, and again, and then ran and fell flat to peer. He saw two suits of armor go down and lie still, pinned to the sand. A third threw arms wide and spun as a bolt struck and pierced. Five lay still, flat down and helpless, handicapped by suits, gravity, and earthly muscles. He used his radio again.

"You have no chance. Why waste lives? Withdraw. Take your dead, and your machines, and go away." The scene held still. The radio spat in his ear but without message. Then, high up on the ship's superstructure, he saw an antenna move and turn, and then a black port appeared in the hull like an eye of doom. He stared at it, saw a muzzle start to emerge, and a voice came in the radio, a familiar, despised voice.

"Lampart! It is you, of course. Who else could it be? I underestimated you, I see. And, as you are attacking from two areas, there must be another. My daughter Dorothea. Am I right?"

"You're still underestimating me, Colson. You can't win this one. I can and will kill any man who moves against me." Lampart watched that antenna and the growing muzzle that now protruded like a primitive cannon, trying to outguess the sinister mind behind that dry voice.

"Dorothea, can you hear me?"

"I hear!" Her voice came strongly, filled with loathing. "I'm dead, remember? You killed me . . . Father!" The antenna spun, halted, and Lampart knew, now, as that muzzle suddenly started to traverse, what Colson was up to. He shouted into his radio,

"Move, princess, move! He's fixing on you! That's an industrial laser. He's going to bum you out!" And then he sprang to his feet recklessly, drew and loosed an arrow with all his strength, right into the dark shadows around that looming muzzle. Then another, hearing it shriek through the air and scream as it ricocheted among the steelwork. An arm-thick column of purple destruction spat from that muzzle to traverse the rocks away to his right, exploding them into fire and fumes. He fell aside frantically as the men on the ground took their cue and slimmer beams roasted the air where he had been standing. Rolling, smarting from a near-bum, he came up in a crouch and peered, nocked an arrow, leaped up and loosed it at another man down there. And again. And rolled away writhing as a beam scorched all the side of his body with pain.

Rolling fumes stung his nostrils. He peered desperately, counted his bolts, only eight left, then leaped up and loosed one at that antenna, cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner. Down on his face again, he heard the grind and wail of jamming motors and dared to peep, saw the antenna twisted and buckled and still. But that frightful violet beam was traversing back now, slicing relentlessly through the ragged rim of rocks, bursting them into flames and instant slag. But, to his heartfelt relief, he saw glittering bolts arching from over there, striking into the shadows around the muzzle. As he watched he saw the traverse suddenly halt. A second later the beam of death winked out. Three men ran, down there, men with laser rifles and fear. He pinned one ruthlessly to the sand and the other two fell flat and lay still.

"Lampartl" Colson's voice came on again, grating with rage. "A truce with you. Truce, while we recover our dead and wounded."

"And your machines, and everything else. And go away. Otherwise it's no deal. No deal. I mean that."

The crackle persisted unbroken for a long while, then that voice came again, still grim. "Very well, Lampart. You have the edge this time. But I'll be back. You can count on it."

Lampart lay still, watching, listening as orders were given, as those two remaining men down there very conspicuously put aside their weapons and went to rescue the bodies of their fellows. Other suited figures toiled out and down the ramp to take care of the machines. The fumes coiled and thinned away. He heard a scramble and grunt at his side and snatched a glance, to see Dorothea come leaping across a little gully to join him. She was soot-stained and grubby, her magnificent sunburst hair scorched and shriveled away on one side, her breast and shoulders scratched and torn.

"You all right?" He put his eyes back on the scene below, but his arm out to hug her as she came to stretch out by his side.

"Battered a bit. That thing ... the rocks just melted and spat ... I had to run like blazes. You don't really think he will go away, do you, John? He's not like that."

"I don't trust him any more than you do, princess, but I don't see what else he can do, not right now. It's a standoff, at the very least. Inside the ship we can't touch him, but they daren't come out. And there's nothing to be won by just sitting there. He has got to go away and tiunk."

"And come back with some new tricks. He willl"

"I know." Lampart felt bitter but resigned. There was nothing to be done at all. "We shook 'em," he muttered, "but we were on a loser right from the start. Two naked savages against the whole background resources of human technology. Some chance! All we can do now is to hide. Just as soon as they are up and away out of it, we hide."

"And for the rest of our lives," she echoed his bitterness. "He'll never give up, not now."

The last shovel machine groaned and rattled its way up the ramp. In a moment the ramp itself, heaved up and clanged shut. For some ten seconds or so there was silence, and then shuddering thunder as the main drive blasted into life and a great gush of flames licked around the squat landing feet. Subsonic Shockwaves shook them, shivered the rocks they lay on, savaged their ears with gargantuan noise as the massive ship stood up and away, slowly. Squinting against the wall of sound, Lampart watched it, had sudden misgiving. It was lifting far too slowly. It was hanging, drifting away, barely climbing at all. Dreadful intuition electrified his brain, made him seize her arm and scream in her ear as the ship, still barely lifting, swung out over the sand.

"Run! We have to run for it! That damned thing is coming back in a minute! He's going to blast right over us ... fry us to death! Run!" He shrieked it at her, knowing it was true, but knowing as he yelled that it was useless, that they hadn't a chance. The holocaust of that downwash of flame would crisp them to dust long before they could ever hope to get clear. But it was human nature, instinct, to scramble up, to give one last terrified glance at the bellowing nemesis, to see it dance now, like some airborne hippopotamus, and start its juggernaut run, and then to turn and run. He had barely moved, shoving her clear, when the whole world erupted in a crash-roar-impact that instantly deafened him, picked him up and threw him helplessly forward and down, jarring and crashing, screaming in terror, clutching his arms over his head in blind instinct, bouncing, buffeted, jarring in agony against insensate rocks, rolling helplessly. Finally to lie still, stunned, in a silence that echoed inside his head like bells jangling. A little rain of dust pattered on his skin. A rock struck, close, and bounced away. In a while he dared to move, to lift his arms away, to peer.

Then to sit up, sobbing with the ache of his hammered body, and stare dazedly at the great pall of dark smoke and fumes back there, beyoud the ragged edge of the crest. He was astonished that he could move at all. His head throbbed, seemed to have loose fittings rolling around inside it. His mouth was full of dust, and he choked on more as he drew careful breath. There was the tickle and itch of blood on his face, the dark stain of more on his arms and chest, on his legs as he gathered them under him and stood, swaying unsteadily. A word crawled out of the debris in his mind, became a beacon. Detonite! That damned great load of detonite that he had buried in the sand I The freighter ship must have swung right over it, shocked it into release with the fury of its down-thrust He choked, coughed, laughed hysterically, and his voice sounded like cloth and ragged tin inside his head.

"Hoist with your own petard, you bastard 1" he gloated, half-crazy and still laughing. It seemed a cosmic joke. But then he remembered something else, and shouted frantically, "Princess! Where are you?"

The shout was a pain against his offended eardrums. He shook his head angrily, almost fell down, then started back up the slope, searching, staring, fearing, pleading with fate when he wasn't cursing it. He saw an arm, a slim golden arm protruding from a pile of rubble, and fell on his knees to scrape and dig and uncover. She was very quiet, her eyes closed, as he threw away the scatter of rocks that lay on her, blew the dust from her face and pressed his ear to her breast to listen. He couldn't hear a thing but the warble in his ears. Angry but gentle he slid his arm under her, sat her up, peered at her face. Tears blurred his eyes as he saw her head move, saw her strain and cough, and then open her eyes to stare at him. Those eyes were glazed and dull at first, but they moved, could focus on him. He lowered his head, put his lips to her breast and then to her mouth, just in heartfelt thankfulness, felt her lips stir under his. He drew back.

"I'm still alive!" He read her lips rather than her words and nodded foolishly. "What happened?" she asked.

"Never mind." He gathered her up like a child and staggered with her until he could remember which way was down, and roughly where the sled was. And it was still there, though canted on its side by the force of that

awful blast. He laid her on dusty grass, righted the sled, picked her up again, laid her gently on the stretched hide floor, and levered the machine into floating, so that she would be comfortable. His hearing was coming back now, with sudden cracks and pops. He knelt by her, grinning like a fool, and she took his hand, smiling in turn, reaching her other hand to dust at his many wounds, ignoring her own state.

"What happened?" she asked again, and this time he heard her voice.

"The detonite," he said. "Remember? What he had intended to destroy me with . . . and destroyed himself instead."

"And it's all over now?"

"Absolutely. You want to go back and see?"

She nodded painfully, and he set the sled gliding, back into the gorge and up into the gap, and to the top of the slope of fine sand. Even though he had expected it, the vast gash of the crater in the sand awed him. The acrid stink of fumes still lingered. Around the enormous bowl-hollow were scattered odd chunks and fragments of pathetic debris, nothing else. She stood beside him and looked at the scene in silence for a long while, then turned to clutch him tight and stare into his eyes.

"It's all over, John. Isn't it?"

"Right.All over . . . and just beginning, for us." He kissed her gently, then looked again at the crater. "Two or three rains, and you'd never know anything had happened, princess. But we will know. We will still be here. It's really our planet now. Our homel For the rest of our lives."

ttRKP

Presenting JACK VANCE in DAW editions:

The "Demon Princes'* Novels

□      STAR KING                                            #UE1402—$1.75

□      THE KILLING MACHINE       #UE1409—$1.75

□      THE PALACE OF LOVE        #UE1442—$1.75

□      THE FACE                                               #UJ1498—$1.95

□      THE BOOK OF DREAMS      #UE1587—$2.25

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□      SERVANTS OF THE WANKH #UE1467—$1.75

□      THE DIRDIR                                          #UE1478—$1.75

□      THE PNUME                                          #UE1484—$1.75

The "Alastor" Trilogy

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□      MARUNEs ALASTOR 933       #UE1591—$2.25

□      WYST: ALASTOR 1716        #UE1593—$2.25

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□      EMPHYRIO                                          #UE1504—$2.25

□      THE FIVE GOLD BANDS                  #UJ1518—$1.95

□      THE MANY WORLDS OF

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□      THE LANGUAGES OF PAO             #UE1541—$1.75

□      NOPALGARTH                                    #UE1563—$2.25

□      DUST OF FAR SUNS                            #UE1588—$1.75

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KING OF ARGENT

They told John Lamport that he would have to have his entire bodily metabolism altered to survive on Argent. Because that unknown planet was his most valuable find, he agreed.

He landed on Argent, golden-skinned and different. He

had expected to find himself on a barren world, destined for two years of hard work. But Argent had life of its own of a different kind, weird, wild and endlessly challenging.

Not the least challenge to him was the discovery that his

Earthly bosses regarded him as expendable—his

work would end in his death while they got rich

Our tenth yenr le.uliM] tin: si held

-A DAW BOOKS ORIGINAL—