=THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE=

Marion Zimmer Bradley

ACE BOOKSA Division of Charter Communications Inc. 1120 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, N. Y. 10036

THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE

Copyright (c), 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. 

All Rights Reserved

. .. _across half a Galaxy, the Terran Empire maintains its sovereigntywith the consent of the governed. It is a peaceful reign, held bycompact and not by conquest. Again and again, when rebellion threatensthe Terran Peace, the natives of the rebellious world have turnedagainst their own people and sided with the men of Terra; not from fear, but from a sense of dedication. _

_There has never been open war. The battle for these worlds is fought inthe minds of a few men who stand between worlds; bound to one world byinterest, loyalties and allegiance; bound to the other by love. _

_Such a world is Wolf. Such a man was Race Cargill of the Terran SecretService. _

 * * * * *

RENDEZVOUS ON A LOST WORLDCopyright (c), 1961, by Ace Books, Inc. 

Printed in U. S. A. 

 * * * * *

=Author's Note:--=

I've always wanted to write. But not until I discovered the old pulpscience-fantasy magazines, at the age of sixteen, did this generaldesire become a specific urge to write science-fantasy adventures. 

I took a lot of detours on the way. I discovered s-f in its golden age:the age of Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Ed Hamilton and JackVance. But while I was still collecting rejection slips for my earlyefforts, the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strangedimensions went out of fashion, and the new look inscience-fiction--emphasis on the _science_--came in. 

So my first stories were straight science-fiction, and I'm not trying toput down that kind of story. It has its place. By and large, the kind ofscience-fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as thismorning's coffee, has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations ofyoung people feel at ease with a rapidly changing world. 

But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter upthe sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science-fictionare willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow's headlines. Onceagain, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need and hunger for thewonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. Theworld we _won't_ live to see. That is why I wrote THE DOOR THROUGHSPACE. 

--MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

 * * * * *

CHAPTER ONE

Beyond the spaceport gates, the men of the Kharsa were hunting down athief. I heard the shrill cries, the pad-padding of feet in strides justa little too long and loping to be human, raising echoes all down thedark and dusty streets leading up to the main square. 

But the square itself lay empty in the crimson noon of Wolf. Overheadthe dim red ember of Phi Coronis, Wolf's old and dying sun, gave out apale and heatless light. The pair of Spaceforce guards at the gates, wearing the black leathers of the Terran Empire, shockers holstered attheir belts, were drowsing under the arched gateway where thestar-and-rocket emblem proclaimed the domain of Terra. One of them, asnub-nosed youngster only a few weeks out from Earth, cocked aninquisitive ear at the cries and scuffling feet, then jerked his head atme. 

"Hey, Cargill, you can talk their lingo. What's going on out there?"

I stepped out past the gateway to listen. There was still no one to beseen in the square. It lay white and windswept, a barricade ofemptiness; to one side the spaceport and the white skyscraper of theTerran Headquarters, and at the other side, the clutter of lowbuildings, the street-shrine, the little spaceport cafe smelling ofcoffee and _jaco_, and the dark opening mouths of streets that rambleddown into the Kharsa--the old town, the native quarter. But I was alonein the square with the shrill cries--closer now, raising echoes from theenclosing walls--and the loping of many feet down one of the dirtystreets. 

Then I saw him running, dodging, a hail of stones flying round his head;someone or something small and cloaked and agile. Behind him thestill-faceless mob howled and threw stones. I could not yet understandthe cries; but they were out for blood, and I knew it. 

I said briefly, "Trouble coming, " just before the mob spilled out intothe square. The fleeing dwarf stared about wildly for an instant, hishead jerking from side to side so rapidly that it was impossible to geteven a fleeting impression of his face--human or nonhuman, familiar orbizarre. Then, like a pellet loosed from its sling, he made straight forthe gateway and safety. 

And behind him the loping mob yelled and howled and came pouring overhalf the square. Just half. Then by that sudden intuition whichpermeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, theycame to a ragged halt, heads turning from side to side. 

I stepped up on the lower step of the Headquarters building, and lookedthem over. 

Most of them were _chaks_, the furred man-tall nonhumans of the Kharsa, and not the better class. Their fur was unkempt, their tails naked withfilth and disease. Their leather aprons hung in tatters. One or two inthe crowd were humans, the dregs of the Kharsa. But the star-and-rocketemblem blazoned across the spaceport gates sobered even the wildestblood-lust somewhat; they milled and shifted uneasily in their half ofthe square. 

For a moment I did not see where their quarry had gone. Then I saw himcrouched, not four feet from me, in a patch of shadow. Simultaneouslythe mob saw him, huddled just beyond the gateway, and a howl offrustration and rage went ringing round the square. Someone threw astone. It zipped over my head, narrowly missing me, and landed at thefeet of the black-leathered guard. He jerked his head up and gesturedwith the shocker which had suddenly come unholstered. 

The gesture should have been enough. On Wolf, Terran law has beenwritten in blood and fire and exploding atoms; and the line is drawnfirm and clear. The men of Spaceforce do not interfere in the old town, or in any of the native cities. But when violence steps over thethreshold, passing the blazon of the star and rocket, punishment isswift and terrible. The threat should have been enough. 

Instead a howl of abuse went up from the crowd. 

"_Terranan!_"

"Son of the Ape!"

The Spaceforce guards were shoulder to shoulder behind me now. Thesnub-nosed kid, looking slightly pale, called out. "Get inside thegates, Cargill! If I have to shoot--"

The older man motioned him to silence. "Wait. Cargill, " he called. 

I nodded to show that I heard. 

"You talk their lingo. Tell them to haul off! Damned if I want toshoot!"

I stepped down and walked into the open square, across the crumbledwhite stones, toward the ragged mob. Even with two armed Spaceforce menat my back, it made my skin crawl, but I flung up my empty hand in tokenof peace:

"Take your mob out of the square, " I shouted in the jargon of theKharsa. "This territory is held in compact of peace! Settle yourquarrels elsewhere!"

There was a little stirring in the crowd. The shock of being addressedin their own tongue, instead of the Terran Standard which the Empire hasforced on Wolf, held them silent for a minute. I had learned that longago: that speaking in any of the languages of Wolf would give me aminute's advantage. 

But only a minute. Then one of the mob yelled, "We'll go if you give'mto us! He's no right to Terran sanctuary!"

I walked over to the huddled dwarf, miserably trying to make himselfsmaller against the wall. I nudged him with my foot. 

"Get up. Who are you?"

The hood fell away from his face as he twitched to his feet. He wastrembling violently. In the shadow of the hood I saw a furred face, aquivering velvety muzzle, and great soft golden eyes which heldintelligence and terror. 

"What have you done? Can't you talk?"

He held out the tray which he had shielded under his cloak, an ordinarypeddler's tray. "Toys. Sell toys. Children. You got'm?"

I shook my head and pushed the creature away, with only a glance at thearray of delicately crafted manikins, tiny animals, prisms and crystalwhirligigs. "You'd better get out of here. Scram. Down that street. " Ipointed. 

A voice from the crowd shouted again, and it had a very ugly sound. "Heis a spy of Nebran!"

"_Nebran--_" The dwarfish nonhuman gabbled something then doubledbehind me. I saw him dodge, feint in the direction of the gates, then, as the crowd surged that way, run for the street-shrine across thesquare, slipping from recess to recess of the wall. A hail of stoneswent flying in that direction. The little toy-seller dodged into thestreet-shrine. 

Then there was a hoarse "Ah, aaah!" of terror, and the crowd edged away, surged backward. The next minute it had begun to melt away, its entitydissolving into separate creatures, slipping into the side alleys andthe dark streets that disgorged into the square. Within three minutesthe square lay empty again in the pale-crimson noon. 

The kid in black leather let his breath go and swore, slipping hisshocker into its holster. He stared and demanded profanely, "Where'd thelittle fellow go?"

"Who knows?" the other shrugged. "Probably sneaked into one of thealleys. Did you see where he went, Cargill?"

I came slowly back to the gateway. To me, it had seemed that he duckedinto the street-shrine and vanished into thin air, but I've lived onWolf long enough to know you can't trust your eyes here. I said so, andthe kid swore again, gulping, more upset than he wanted to admit. "Doesthis kind of thing happen often?"

"All the time, " his companion assured him soberly, with a sidewise winkat me. I didn't return the wink. 

The kid wouldn't let it drop. "Where did you learn their lingo, Mr. Cargill?"

"I've been on Wolf a long time, " I said, spun on my heel and walkedtoward Headquarters. I tried not to hear, but their voices followed meanyhow, discreetly lowered, but not lowered enough. 

"Kid, don't you know who he is? That's Cargill of the Secret Service!Six years ago he was the best man in Intelligence, before--" The voicelowered another decibel, and then there was the kid's voice asking, shaken, "But what the hell happened to his face?"

I should have been used to it by now. I'd been hearing it, more or lessbehind my back, for six years. Well, if my luck held, I'd never hear itagain. I strode up the white steps of the skyscraper, to finish thearrangements that would take me away from Wolf forever. To the other endof the Empire, to the other end of the galaxy--anywhere, so long as Ineed not wear my past like a medallion around my neck, or blazoned andbranded on what was left of my ruined face. 

CHAPTER TWO

The Terran Empire has set its blazon on four hundred planets circlingmore than three hundred suns. But no matter what the color of the sun, the number of moons overhead, or the geography of the planet, once youstep inside a Headquarters building, you are on Earth. And Earth wouldbe alien to many who called themselves Earthmen, judging by thestrangeness I always felt when I stepped into that marble-and-glassworld inside the skyscraper. I heard the sound of my steps ringing intothin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes, readjusting them painfully to the cold yellowness of the lights. 

The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chromeand polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic clericalmachines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor which gave aview of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with blue-white mercuryvapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a starship, littered overwith swarming ants. The process crew was getting the big ship ready forskylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a second and then a third look. I'dbe on it when it lifted. 

Turning away from the monitored spaceport, I watched myself strideforward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere; a tall man, alean man, bleached out by years under a red sun, and deeply scarred onboth cheeks and around the mouth. Even after six years behind a desk, myneat business clothes--suitable for an Earthman with a desk job--didn'tfit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on the balls of my feet, approximating the lean stooping walk of a Dry-towner from the Coronisplains. 

The clerk behind the sign marked TRANSPORTATION was a little rabbit of aman with a sunlamp tan, barricaded by a small-sized spaceport of desk, and looking as if he liked being shut up there. He looked up in civilinquiry. 

"Can I do something for you?"

"My name's Cargill. Have you a pass for me?"

He stared. A free pass aboard a starship is rare except for professionalspacemen, which I obviously wasn't. "Let me check my records, " hehedged, and punched scanning buttons on the glassy surface. Shadows cameand went, and I saw myself half-reflected, a tipsy shadow in a flurry ofracing colors. The pattern finally stabilized and the clerk read offnames. 

"Brill, Cameron . .. Ah, yes. Cargill, Race Andrew, Department 38, transfer transportation. Is that you?"

I admitted it and he started punching more buttons when the sound of thename made connection in whatever desk-clerks use for a brain. He stoppedwith his hand halfway to the button. 

"Are you Race Cargill of the Secret Service, sir? _The_ Race Cargill?"

"It's right there, " I said, gesturing wearily at the projected patternunder the glassy surface. 

"Why, I thought--I mean, everybody took it for granted--that is, Iheard--"

"You thought Cargill had been killed a long time ago because his namenever turned up in news dispatches any more?" I grinned sourly, seeingmy image dissolve in blurring shadows, and feeling the long-healed scaron my mouth draw up to make the grin hideous. "I'm Cargill, all right. I've been up on Floor 38 for six years, holding down a desk any clerkcould handle. You for instance. "

He gaped. He was a rabbit of a man who had never stepped out of the safefamiliar boundaries of the Terran Trade City. "You mean _you're_ the manwho went to Charin in disguise, and routed out The Lisse? The man whoscouted the Black Ridge and Shainsa? And you've been working at a deskupstairs all these years? It's--hard to believe, sir. "

My mouth twitched. It had been hard for me to believe while I was doingit. "The pass?"

"Right away, sir. " He punched buttons and a printed chip of plasticextruded from a slot on the desk top. "Your fingerprint, please?" Hepressed my finger into the still-soft surface of the plastic, indeliblyrecording the print; waited a moment for it to harden, then laid thechip in the slot of a pneumatic tube. I heard it whoosh away. 

"They'll check your fingerprint against that when you board the ship. Skylift isn't till dawn, but you can go aboard as soon as the processcrew finishes with her. " He glanced at the monitor screen, where theswarming crew were still doing inexplicable things to the immobilespacecraft. "It will be another hour or two. Where are you going, Mr. Cargill?"

"Some planet in the Hyades Cluster. Vainwal, I think, something likethat. "

"What's it like there?"

"How should I know?" I'd never been there either. I only knew thatVainwal had a red sun, and that the Terran Legate could use a trainedIntelligence officer. And _not_ pin him down to a desk. 

There was respect, and even envy in the little man's voice. "CouldI--buy you a drink before you go aboard, Mr. Cargill?"

"Thanks, but I have a few loose ends to tie up. " I didn't, but I wasdamned if I'd spend my last hour on Wolf under the eyes of a deskboundrabbit who preferred his adventure safely secondhand. 

But after I'd left the office and the building, I almost wished I'dtaken him up on it. It would be at least an hour before I could boardthe starship, with nothing to do but hash over old memories, betterforgotten. 

The sun was lower now. Phi Coronis is a dim star, a dying star, and oncepast the crimson zenith of noon, its light slants into a longpale-reddish twilight. Four of Wolf's five moons were clustered in apale bouquet overhead, mingling thin violet moonlight into the crimsondusk. 

The shadows were blue and purple in the empty square as I walked acrossthe stones and stood looking down one of the side streets. 

A few steps, and I was in an untidy slum which might have been onanother world from the neat bright Trade City which lay west of thespaceport. The Kharsa was alive and reeking with the sounds and smellsof human and half-human life. A naked child, diminutive andgolden-furred, darted between two of the chinked pebble-houses, anddisappeared, spilling fragile laughter like breaking glass. 

A little beast, half snake and half cat, crawled across a roof, spreadleathery wings, and flapped to the ground. The sour pungent reek ofincense from the open street-shrine made my nostrils twitch, and ahulked form inside, not human, cast me a surly green glare as I passed. 

I turned, retracing my steps. There was no danger, of course, so closeto the Trade City. Even on such planets as Wolf, Terra's laws arerespected within earshot of their gates. But there had been rioting hereand in Charin during the last month. After the display of mob violencethis afternoon, a lone Terran, unarmed, might turn up as a solitarycorpse flung on the steps of the HQ building. 

There had been a time when I had walked alone from Shainsa to the PolarColony. I had known how to melt into this kind of night, shabby andinconspicuous, a worn shirtcloak hunched round my shoulders, weaponlessexcept for the razor-sharp skean in the clasp of the cloak; walking onthe balls of my feet like a Dry-towner, not looking or sounding orsmelling like an Earthman. 

That rabbit in the Traffic office had stirred up things I'd be wiser toforget. It had been six years; six years of slow death behind a desk, since the day when Rakhal Sensar had left me a marked man; death-warrantwritten on my scarred face anywhere outside the narrow confines of theTerran law on Wolf. 

Rakhal Sensar--my fists clenched with the old impotent hate. _If I couldget my hands on him!_

It had been Rakhal who first led me through the byways of the Kharsa, teaching me the jargon of a dozen tribes, the chirping call of theYa-men, the way of the catmen of the rain-forests, the argot of thievesmarkets, the walk and step of the Dry-towners from Shainsa and Daillonand Ardcarran--the parched cities of dusty, salt stone which spread outin the bottoms of Wolf's vanished oceans. Rakhal was from Shainsa, human, tall as an Earthman, weathered by salt and sun, and he had workedfor Terran Intelligence since we were boys. We had traveled all over ourworld together, and found it good. 

And then, for some reason I had never known, it had come to an end. Even now I was not wholly sure why he had erupted, that day, intoviolence and a final explosion. Then he had disappeared, leaving me amarked man. And a lonely one: Juli had gone with him. 

I strode the streets of the slum unseeing, my thoughts running afamiliar channel. Juli, my kid sister, clinging around Rakhal's neck, her gray eyes hating me. I had never seen her again. 

That had been six years ago. One more adventure had shown me that myusefulness to the Secret Service was over. Rakhal had vanished, but hehad left me a legacy: my name, written on the sure scrolls of deathanywhere outside the safe boundaries of Terran law. A marked man, I hadgone back to slow stagnation behind a desk. I'd stood it as long as Icould. 

When it finally got too bad, Magnusson had been sympathetic. He was theChief of Terran Intelligence on Wolf, and I was next in line for hisjob, but he understood when I quit. He'd arranged the transfer and thepass, and I was leaving tonight. 

I was nearly back to the spaceport by now, across from the street-shrineat the edge of the square. It was here that the little toy-seller hadvanished. But it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand othersuch street-shrines on Wolf, a smudge of incense reeking and stinkingbefore the squatting image of Nebran, the Toad God whose face and symbolare everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a moment at the ugly idol, thenslowly moved away. 

The lighted curtains of the spaceport cafe attracted my attention and Iwent inside. A few spaceport personnel in storm gear were drinkingcoffee at the counter, a pair of furred _chaks_, lounging beneath themirrors at the far end, and a trio of Dry-towners, rangy, weathered menin crimson and blue shirt cloaks, were standing at a wall shelf, eatingTerran food with aloof dignity. 

In my business clothes I felt more conspicuous than the _chaks_. Whatplace had a civilian here, between the uniforms of the spacemen and thecolorful brilliance of the Dry-towners?

A snub-nosed girl with alabaster hair came to take my order. I asked for_jaco_ and bunlets, and carried the food to a wall shelf near theDry-towners. Their dialect fell soft and familiar on my ears. One ofthem, without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone ofhis voice, began to make elaborate comments on my entrance, myappearance, my ancestry and probably personal habits, all defined in thecolorfully obscene dialect of Shainsa. 

That had happened before. The Wolfan sense of humor is only half-human. The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger, preferably anEarthman, to his very face, in an unknown language, perfectly deadpan. In my civilian clothes I was obviously fair game. 

A look or gesture of resentment would have lost face and dignity--whatthe Dry-towners call their _kihar_--permanently. I leaned over andremarked in their own dialect that I would, at some future andunspecified time, appreciate the opportunity to return theircompliments. 

By rights they should have laughed, made some barbed remark about mycommand of language and crossed their hands in symbol of a jest decentlyreversed on themselves. Then we would have bought each other a drink, and that would be that. 

But it didn't happen that way. Not this time. The tallest of the threewhirled, upsetting his drink in the process. I heard its thin shatterthrough the squeal of the alabaster-haired girl, as a chair crashedover. They faced me three abreast, and one of them fumbled in the claspof his shirtcloak. 

I edged backward, my own hand racing up for a skean I hadn't carried insix years, and fronted them squarely, hoping I could face down theprospect of a roughhouse. They wouldn't kill me, this close to the HQ, but at least I was in for an unpleasant mauling. I couldn't handle threemen; and if nerves were this taut in the Kharsa, I might get knifed. Quite by accident, of course. 

The _chaks_ moaned and gibbered. The Dry-towners glared at me and Itensed for the moment when their steady stare would explode intoviolence. 

Then I became aware that they were gazing, not at me, but at somethingor someone behind me. The skeans snicked back into the clasps of theircloaks. 

Then they broke rank, turned and ran. They _ran_, blundering intostools, leaving havoc of upset benches and broken crockery in theirwake. One man barged into the counter, swore and ran on, limping. I letmy breath go. Something had put the fear of God into those brutes, andit wasn't my own ugly mug. I turned and saw the girl. 

She was slight, with waving hair like spun black glass, circled withfaint tracery of stars. A black glass belt bound her narrow waist likeclasped hands, and her robe, stark white, bore an ugly embroidery acrossthe breasts, the flat sprawl of a conventionalized Toad God, Nebran. Herfeatures were delicate, chiseled, pale; a Dry-town face, all human, allwoman, but set in an alien and unearthly repose. The great eyes gleamedred. They were fixed, almost unseeing, but the crimson lips were curvedwith inhuman malice. 

She stood motionless, looking at me as if wondering why I had not runwith the others. In half a second, the smile flickered off and wasreplaced by a startled look of--recognition?

Whoever and whatever she was, she had saved me a mauling. I started tophrase formal thanks, then broke off in astonishment. The cafe hademptied and we were entirely alone. Even the _chaks_ had leaped throughan open window--I saw the whisk of a disappearing tail. 

We stood frozen, looking at one another while the Toad God sprawledacross her breasts rose and fell for half a dozen breaths. 

Then I took one step forward, and she took one step backward, at thesame instant. In one swift movement she was outside in the dark street. It took me only an instant to get into the street after her, but as Istepped across the door there was a little stirring in the air, like therising of heat waves across the salt flats at noon. Then thestreet-shrine was empty, and nowhere was there any sign of the girl. Shehad vanished. She simply was not there. 

I gaped at the empty shrine. She had stepped inside and vanished, like awraith of smoke, like--

--Like the little toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa. 

There were eyes in the street again and, becoming aware of where I was, I moved away. The shrines of Nebran are on every corner of Wolf, butthis is one instance when familiarity does not breed contempt. Thestreet was dark and seemed empty, but it was packed with all the littlenoises of living. I was not unobserved. And meddling with astreet-shrine would be just as dangerous as the skeans of my threeloud-mouthed Dry-town roughnecks. 

I turned and crossed the square for the last time, turning toward theloom of the spaceship, filing the girl away as just another riddle ofWolf I'd never solve. 

How wrong I was!

CHAPTER THREE

From the spaceport gates, exchanging brief greetings with the guards, Itook a last look at the Kharsa. For a minute I toyed with the notion ofjust disappearing down one of those streets. It's not hard to disappearon Wolf, if you know how. And I knew, or had known once. Loyalty toTerra? What had Terra given me except a taste of color and adventure, out there in the Dry-towns, and then taken it away again?

If an Earthman is very lucky and very careful, he lasts about ten yearsin Intelligence. I had had two years more than my share. I still knewenough to leave my Terran identity behind like a worn-out jacket. Icould seek out Rakhal, settle our blood-feud, see Juli again. .. . 

How could I see Juli again? As her husband's murderer? No other way. Blood-feud on Wolf is a terrible and elaborate ritual of the codeduello. And once I stepped outside the borders of Terran law, sooner orlater Rakhal and I would meet. And one of us would die. 

I looked back, just once, at the dark rambling streets away from thesquare. Then I turned toward the blue-white lights that hurt my eyes, and the starship that loomed, huge and hateful, before me. 

A steward in white took my fingerprint and led me to a coffin-sizedchamber. He brought me coffee and sandwiches--I hadn't, after all, eatenin the spaceport cafe--then got me into the skyhook and strapped me, deftly and firmly, into the acceleration cushions, tugging at theGarensen belts until I ached all over. A long needle went into myarm--the narcotic that would keep me safely drowsy all through theterrible tug of interstellar acceleration. 

Doors clanged, buzzers vibrated lower down in the ship, men tramped thecorridors calling to one another in the language of the spaceports. Iunderstood one word in four. I shut my eyes, not caring. At the end ofthe trip there would be another star, another world, another language. Another life. 

I had spent all my adult life on Wolf. Juli had been a child under thered star. But it was a pair of wide crimson eyes and black hair combedinto ringlets like spun black glass that went down with me into thebottomless pit of sleep. .. . 

 * * * * *

Someone was shaking me. 

"Ah, come on, Cargill. Wake up, man. Shake your boots!"

My mouth, foul-tasting and stiff, fumbled at the shapes of words. "Wha'happened? Wha' y' want?" My eyes throbbed. When I got them open I sawtwo men in black leathers bending over me. We were still inside gravity. 

"Get out of the skyhook. You're coming with us. "

"Wha'--" Even through the layers of the sedative, that got to me. Only acriminal, under interstellar law, can be removed from a passage-paidstarship once he has formally checked in on board. I was legally, atthis moment, on my "planet of destination. "

"I haven't been charged--"

"Did I say you had?" snapped one man. 

"Shut up, he's doped, " the other said hurriedly. "Look, " he continued, pronouncing every word loudly and distinctly, "get up now, and come withus. The co-ordinator will hold up blastoff if we don't get off in threeminutes, and Operations will scream. Come on, please. "

Then I was stumbling along the lighted, empty corridor, swaying betweenthe two men, foggily realizing the crew must think me a fugitive caughttrying to leave the planet. 

The locks dilated. A uniformed spaceman watched us, fussily regarding achronometer. He fretted. "The dispatcher's office--"

"We're doing the best we can, " the Spaceforce man said. "Can you walk, Cargill?"

I could, though my feet were a little shaky on the ladders. The violetmoonlight had deepened to mauve, and gusty winds spun tendrils of gritacross my face. The Spaceforce men shepherded me, one on either side, tothe gateway. 

"What the hell is all this? Is something wrong with my pass?"

The guard shook his head. "How would I know? Magnusson put out theorder, take it up with him. "

"Believe me, " I muttered, "I will. "

They looked at each other. "Hell, " said one, "he's not under arrest, wedon't have to haul him around like a convict. Can you walk all rightnow, Cargill? You know where the Secret Service office is, don't you?Floor 38. The Chief wants you, and make it fast. "

I knew it made no sense to ask questions, they obviously knew no morethan I did. I asked anyhow. 

"Are they holding the ship for me? I'm supposed to be leaving on it. "

"Not that one, " the guard answered, jerking his head toward thespaceport. I looked back just in time to see the dust-dimmed ship leapupward, briefly whitened in the field searchlights, and vanish into thesurging clouds above. 

My head was clearing fast, and anger speeded up the process. The HQbuilding was empty in the chill silence of just before dawn. I had torout out a dozing elevator operator, and as the lift swooped upward myanger rose with it. I wasn't working for Magnusson any more. What righthad he, or anybody, to grab me off an outbound starship like a criminal?By the time I barged into his office, I was spoiling for a fight. 

The Secret Service office was full of grayish-pink morning and yellowlights left on from the night before. Magnusson, at his desk, looked asif he'd slept in his rumpled uniform. He was a big bull of a man, andhis littered desk looked, as always, like the track of a typhoon in thesalt flats. 

The clutter was weighted down, here and there, with solidopic cubes ofthe five Magnusson youngsters, and as usual, Magnusson was fiddling withone of the cubes. He said, not looking up, "Sorry to pull this at thelast minute, Race. There was just time to put out a pull order and getyou off the ship, but no time to explain. "

I glared at him. "Seems I can't even get off the planet without trouble!You raised hell all the time I was here, but when I try to leave--whatis this, anyhow? I'm sick of being shoved around!"

Magnusson made a conciliating gesture. "Wait until you hear--" he began, and broke off, looking at someone who was sitting in the chair in frontof his desk, somebody whose back was turned to me. Then the persontwisted and I stopped cold, blinking and wondering if this were ahallucination and I'd wake up in the starship's skyhook, far out inspace. 

Then the woman cried, "Race, _Race_! Don't you know me?"

I took one dazed step and another. Then she flew across the spacebetween us, her thin arms tangling around my neck, and I caught her up, still disbelieving. 

"_Juli!_"

"Oh, Race, I thought I'd die when Mack told me you were leaving tonight. It's been the only thing that's kept me alive, knowing--knowing I'd seeyou. " She sobbed and laughed, her face buried in my shoulder. 

I let her cry for a minute, then held my sister at arm's length. For amoment I had forgotten the six years that lay between us. Now I sawthem, all of them, printed plain on her face. Juli had been a prettygirl. Six years had fined her face into beauty, but there was tension inthe set of her shoulders, and her gray eyes had looked on horrors. 

She looked tiny and thin and unbearably frail under the scanty folds ofher fur robe, a Dry-town woman's robe. Her wrists were manacled, thejeweled tight bracelets fastened together by the links of a long finechain of silvered gilt that clashed a little, thinly, as her hands fellto her sides. 

"What's wrong, Juli? Where's Rakhal?"

She shivered and now I could see that she was in a state of shock. 

"Gone. He's gone, that's all I know. And--oh, Race, Race, he took Rindywith him!"

From the tone of her voice I had thought she was sobbing. Now I realizedthat her eyes were dry; she was long past tears. Gently I unclasped herclenched fingers and put her back in the chair. She sat like a doll, herhands falling to her sides with a thin clash of chains. When I pickedthem up and laid them in her lap she let them lie there motionless. Istood over her and demanded, "Who's Rindy?" She didn't move. 

"My daughter, Race. Our little girl. "

Magnusson broke in, his voice harsh. "Well, Cargill, should I have letyou leave?"

"Don't be a damn fool!"

"I was afraid you'd tell the poor kid she had to live with her ownmistakes, " growled Magnusson. "You're capable of it. "

For the first time Juli showed a sign of animation. "I was afraid tocome to you, Mack. You never wanted me to marry Rakhal, either. "

"Water under the bridge, " Magnusson grunted. "And I've got lads of myown, Miss Cargill--Mrs. --" he stopped in distress, vaguely rememberingthat in the Dry-towns an improper form of address can be a deadlyinsult. 

But she guessed his predicament. 

"You used to call me Juli, Mack. It will do now. "

"You've changed, " he said quietly. "Juli, then. Tell Race what you toldme. All of it. "

She turned to me. "I shouldn't have come for myself--"

I knew that. Juli was proud, and she had always had the courage to livewith her own mistakes. When I first saw her, I knew this wouldn't beanything so simple as the complaint of an abused wife or even anabandoned or deserted mother. I took a chair, watching her andlistening. 

She began. "You made a mistake when you turned Rakhal out of theService, Mack. In his way he was the most loyal man you had on Wolf. "

Magnusson had evidently not expected her to take this tack. He scowledand looked disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair, but whenJuli did not continue, obviously awaiting his answer, he said, "Juli, heleft me no choice. I never knew how his mind worked. That final deal heengineered--have you any idea how much that cost the Service? And haveyou taken a good look at your brother's face, Juli girl?"

Juli raised her eyes slowly, and I saw her flinch. I knew how she felt. For three years I had kept my mirror covered, growing an untidystraggle of beard because it hid the scars and saved me the ordeal offacing myself to shave. 

Juli whispered, "Rakhal's is just as bad. Worse. "

"That's some satisfaction, " I said, and Mack stared at us, baffled. "Even now I don't know what it was all about. "

"And you never will, " I said for the hundredth time. "We've been overthis before. Nobody could understand it unless he'd lived in theDry-towns. Let's not talk about it. You talk, Juli. What brought youhere like this? What about the kid?"

"There's no way I can tell you the end without telling you thebeginning, " she said reasonably. "At first Rakhal worked as a trader inShainsa. "

I wasn't surprised. The Dry-towns were the core of Terran trade on Wolf, and it was through their cooperation that Terra existed here peaceably, on a world only half human, or less. 

The men of the Dry-towns existed strangely poised between two worlds. They had made dealings with the first Terran ships, and thus gaveentrance to the wedge of the Terran Empire. And yet they stood proud andapart. They alone had never yielded to the Terranizing which overtakesall Empire planets sooner or later. 

There were no Trade Cities in the Dry-towns; an Earthman who went thereunprotected faced a thousand deaths, each one worse than the last. Therewere those who said that the men of Shainsa and Daillon and Ardcarranhad sold the rest of Wolf to the Terrans, to keep the Terrans from theirown door. 

Even Rakhal, who had worked with Terra since boyhood, had finally cometo a point of decision and gone his own way. And it was not Terra's way. 

That was what Juli was saying now. 

"He didn't like what Terra was doing on Wolf. I'm not so sure I like itmyself--"

Magnusson interrupted her again. "Do you know what Wolf was like when wecame here? Have you seen the Slave Colony, the Idiot's Village? Your ownbrother went to Shainsa and routed out The Lisse. "

"And Rakhal helped him!" Juli reminded him. "Even after he left you, hetried to keep out of things. He could have told them a good deal thatwould hurt you, after ten years in Intelligence, you know. "

I knew. It was, although I wasn't going to tell Juli this, one reasonwhy, at the end--during that terrible explosion of violence which nonormal Terran mind could comprehend--I had done my best to kill him. Wehad both known that after this, the planet would not hold the two of us. We could both go on living only by dividing it unevenly. I had beengiven the slow death of the Terran Zone. And he had all the rest. 

"But he never told them anything! I tell you, he was one of the mostloyal--"

Mack grunted, "Yeah, he's an angel. Go ahead. "

She didn't, not immediately. Instead she asked what sounded like anirrelevant question. "Is it true what he told me? That the Empire has astanding offer of a reward for a working model of a matter transmitter?"

"That offer's been standing for three hundred years, Terran reckoning. One million credits cash. Don't tell me he was figuring to invent one?"

"I don't think so. But I think he heard rumors about one. He said withthat kind of money he could bargain the Terrans right out of Shainsa. That was where it started. He began coming and going at odd times, buthe never said any more about it. He wouldn't talk to me at all. "

"When was all this?"

"About four months ago. "

"In other words, just about the time of the riots in Charin. "

She nodded. "Yes. He was away in Charin when the Ghost Wind blew, and hecame back with knife cuts in his thigh. I asked if he had been mixed-upin the anti-Terran rioting, but he wouldn't tell me. Race, I don't knowanything about politics. I don't really care. But just about that time, the Great House in Shainsa changed hands. I'm sure Rakhal had somethingto do with that. 

"And then--" Juli twisted her chained hands together in her lap--"hetried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her somesort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. Itwas a weird thing, scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlightand have her look into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsenseabout little men and birds and a toymaker. "

The chains about Juli's wrists clashed as she twisted her handstogether. I stared somberly at the fetters. The chain, which was long, did not really hamper her movements much. Such chains were symbolicornaments, and most Dry-town women went all their lives with fetteredhands. But even after the years I'd spent in the Dry-towns, the sightstill brought an uneasiness to my throat, a vague discomfort. 

"We had a terrible fight over that, " Juli went on. "I was afraid, afraidof what it was doing to Rindy. I threw it out, and Rindy woke up andscreamed--" Juli checked herself and caught at vanishing self-control. 

"But you don't want to hear about that. It was then I threatened toleave him and take Rindy. The next day--" Suddenly the hysteria Juli hadbeen forcing back broke free, and she rocked back and forth in herchair, shaken and strangled with sobs. "He took Rindy! Oh, Race, he'scrazy, crazy. I think he hates Rindy, he--he, Race, _he smashed hertoys_. He took every toy the child had and broke them one by one, smashed them into powder, every toy the child had--"

"Juli, please, please, " Magnusson pleaded, shaken. "If we're dealingwith a maniac--"

"I don't dare think he'd harm her! He warned me not to come here, or I'dnever see her again, but if it meant war against Terra I had to come. But Mack, please, don't do anything against him, please, please. He'sgot my baby, he's got my little girl. .. . " Her voice failed and sheburied her face in her hands. 

Mack picked up the solidopic cube of his five-year-old son, and turnedit between his pudgy fingers, saying unhappily, "Juli, we'll take everyprecaution. But can't you see, we've got to get him? If there's aquestion of a matter transmitter, or anything like that, in the hands ofTerra's enemies--"

I could see that, too, but Juli's agonized face came between me and thepicture of disaster. I clenched my fist around the chair arm, notsurprised to see the fragile plastic buckle, crack and split under mygrip. _If it had been Rakhal's neck. .. . _

"Mack, let me handle this. Juli, shall I find Rindy for you?"

A hope was born in her ravaged face, and died, while I looked. "Race, he'd kill you. Or have you killed. "

"He'd try, " I admitted. The moment Rakhal knew I was outside the Terranzone, I'd walk with death. I had accepted the code during my years inShainsa. But now I was an Earthman and felt only contempt. 

"Can't you see? Once he knows I'm at large, that very code of his willforce him to abandon any intrigue, whatever you call it, conspiracy, andcome after me first. That way we do two things: we get him out ofhiding, and we get him out of the conspiracy, if there is one. "

I looked at the shaking Juli and something snapped. I stooped and liftedher, not gently, my hands biting her shoulders. "And I won't kill him, do you hear? He may wish I had; by the time I get through with him--I'llbeat the living hell out of him; I'll cram my fists down his throat. ButI'll settle it with him like an Earthman. I won't kill him. _Hear me, Juli?_ Because that's the worst thing I could do to him--catch him andlet him live afterward!"

Magnusson stepped toward me and pried my crushing hands off her arms. Juli rubbed the bruises mechanically, not knowing she was doing it. Macksaid, "You can't do it, Cargill. You wouldn't get as far as Daillon. Youhaven't been out of the zone in six years. Besides--"

His eyes rested full on my face. "I hate to say this, Race, but damn it, man, go and take a good look at yourself in a mirror. Do you think I'dever have pulled you off the Secret Service otherwise? How in hell canyou disguise yourself now?"

"There are plenty of scarred men in the Dry-towns, " I said. "Rakhal willremember my scars, but I don't think anyone else would look twice. "

Magnusson walked to the window. His huge form bulked against the light, perceptibly darkening the office. He looked over the faraway panorama, the neat bright Trade City below and the vast wilderness lying outside. I could almost hear the wheels grinding in his head. Finally he swungaround. 

"Race, I've heard these rumors before. But you're the only man I couldhave sent to track them down, and I wouldn't send you out in cold bloodto be killed. I won't now. Spaceforce will pick him up. "

I heard the harsh inward gasp of Juli's breath and said, "Damn it, no. The first move you make--" I couldn't finish. Rindy was in his hands, and when I knew Rakhal, he hadn't been given to making idle threats. Weall three knew what Rakhal might do at the first hint of the long arm ofTerran law reaching out for him. 

I said, "For God's sake let's keep Spaceforce out of it. Let it looklike a personal matter between Rakhal and me, and let us settle it onthose terms. Remember he's got the kid. "

Magnusson sighed. Again he picked up one of the cubes and stared intothe clear plastic, where the three-dimensional image of a nine-year-oldgirl looked out at him, smiling and innocent. His face was transparentas the plastic cube. Mack acts tough, but he has five kids and he is assoft as a dish of pudding where a kid is concerned. 

"I know. Another thing, too. If we send out Spaceforce, after all theriots--how many Terrans are on this planet? A few thousand, no more. What chance would we have, if it turned into a full-scale rebellion?None at all, unless we wanted to order a massacre. Sure, we have bombsand dis-guns and all that. 

"But would we dare to use them? And where would we be after that? We'rehere to keep the pot from boiling over, to keep out of planetaryincidents, not push them along to a point where bluff won't work. That'swhy we've got to pick up Rakhal before this gets out of hand. "

I said, "Give me a month. Then you can move in, if you have to. Rakhalcan't do much against Terra in that time. And I might be able to keepRindy out of it. "

Magnusson stared at me, hard-eyed. "If you do this against my advice, Iwon't be able to step in and pull you out of a jam later on, you know. And God help you if you start up the machines and can't stop them. "

I knew that. A month wasn't much. Wolf is forty thousand miles ofdiameter, at least half unexplored; mountain and forest swarming withnonhuman and semi-human cities where Terrans had never been. 

Finding Rakhal, or any one man, would be like picking out one star inthe Andromeda nebula. Not impossible. Not _quite_ impossible. 

Mack's eyes wandered again to his child's face, deep in the transparentcube. He turned it in his hands. "Okay, Cargill, " he said slowly, "sowe're all crazy. I'll be crazy too. Try it your way. "

CHAPTER FOUR

By sunset I was ready to leave. I hadn't had any loose ends to tie up inthe Trade City, since I'd already disposed of most of my gear beforeboarding the starship. I'd never been in better circumstances to takeoff for parts unknown. 

Mack, still disapproving, had opened the files to me, and I'd spent mostof the day in the back rooms of Floor 38, searching Intelligence filesto refresh my memory, scanning the pages of my own old reports sentyears ago from Shainsa and Daillon. He had sent out one of the nonhumanswho worked for us, to buy or acquire somewhere in the Old Town aDry-towner's outfit and the other things I would wear and carry. 

I would have liked to go myself. I felt that I needed the practice. Iwas only now beginning to realize how much I might have forgotten in theyears behind a desk. But until I was ready to make my presence known, noone must know that Race Cargill had not left Wolf on the starship. 

Above all, I must not be seen in the Kharsa until I went there in theDry-town disguise which had become, years ago, a deep second nature, almost an alternate personality. 

About sunset I walked through the clean little streets of the TerranTrade City toward the Magnusson home where Juli was waiting for me. 

Most of the men who go into Civil Service of the Empire come from Earth, or from the close-in planets of Proxima and Alpha Centaurus. They go outunmarried, and they stay that way, or marry women native to the planetswhere they are sent. 

But Joanna Magnusson was one of the rare Earth women who had come outwith her husband, twenty years ago. There are two kinds of Earthwomenlike that. They make their quarterings a little bit of home, or a littlebit of hell. Joanna had made their house look like a transported cornerof Earth. 

I never knew quite what to think of the Magnusson household. It seemedto me almost madness to live under a red sun, yet come inside to yellowlight, to live on a world with the wild beauty of Wolf and yet live asthey might have lived on their home planet. Or maybe I was the one whowas out of step. I had done the reprehensible thing they called "goingnative. " Possibly I had done just that, and in absorbing myself into thenew world, had lost the ability to fit into the old. 

Joanna, a chubby comfortable woman in her forties, opened the door andgave me her hand. "Come in, Race. Juli's expecting you. "

"It's good of you. " I broke off, unable to express my gratitude. Juliand I had come from Earth--our father had been an officer on the oldstarship _Landfall_ when Juli was only a child. He had died in a wreckoff Procyon, and Mack Magnusson had found me a place in Intelligencebecause I spoke four of the Wolf languages and haunted the Kharsa withRakhal whenever I could get away. 

They had also taken Juli into their own home, like a younger sister. They hadn't said much--because they had liked Rakhal--when the breakupcame. But that terrible night when Rakhal and I nearly killed eachother, and Rakhal came with his face bleeding and took Juli away withhim, had hurt them hard. Yet it had made them all the kinder to me. 

Joanna said forthrightly, "Nonsense, Race! What else could we do?" Shedrew me along the hall. "You can talk in here. "

I delayed a minute before going through the door she indicated. "How isJuli?"

"Better, I think. I put her to bed in Meta's room, and she slept most ofthe day. She'll be all right. I'll leave you to talk. " Joanna opened thedoor, and went away. 

Juli was awake and dressed, and already some of the terrible frozenhorror was gone from her face. She was still tense and devil-ridden, butnot hysterical now. 

The room, one of the children's bedrooms, wasn't a big one. Even at thetop of the Secret Service, a cop doesn't live too well. Not on Terra'sCivil Service pay scale. Not, with five youngsters. It looked as if allfive of the kids had taken it to pieces, one at a time. 

I sat down on a too-low chair and said, "Juli, we haven't much time, I've got to be out of the city before dark. I want to know about Rakhal, what he does, what he's like now. Remember, I haven't seen him foryears. Tell me everything--his friends, his amusements, everything youknow. "

"I always thought you knew him better than I did. " Juli had a fidgetylittle way of coiling the links of the chain around her wrists and itmade me nervous. 

"It's routine, Juli. Police work. Mostly I play by ear, but I try tostart out by being methodical. "

She answered everything I asked her, but the sum total wasn't much andit wouldn't help much. As I said, it's easy to disappear on Wolf. Juliknew he had been friendly with the new holders of the Great House onShainsa, but she didn't even know their name. 

I heard one of the Magnusson children fly to the street door and return, shouting for her mother. Joanna knocked at the door of the room and camein. 

"There's a _chak_ outside who wants to see you, Race. "

I nodded. "Probably my fancy dress. Can I change in the back room, Joanna? Will you keep my clothes here till I get back?"

I went to the door and spoke to the furred nonhuman in the sibilantjargon of the Kharsa and he handed me what looked like a bundle of rags. There were hard lumps inside. The _chak_ said softly, "I hear a rumor inthe Kharsa, _Raiss_. Perhaps it will help you. Three men from Shainsaare in the city. They came here to seek a woman who has vanished, and atoymaker. They are returning at sunrise. Perhaps you can arrange totravel in their caravan. "

I thanked him and carried the bundle inside. In the empty back room Istripped to the skin and unrolled the bundle. There was a pair of baggystriped breeches, a worn and shabby shirtcloak with capacious pockets, alooped belt with half the gilt rubbed away and the base metal showingthrough, and a scuffed pair of ankle-boots tied with frayed thongs ofdifferent colors. There was a little cluster of amulets and seals. Ichose two or three of the commonest kind, and strung them around myneck. 

One of the lumps in the bundle was a small jar, holding nothing but theordinary spices sold in the market, with which the average Dry-townerflavors food. I rubbed some of the powder on my body, put a pinch in thepocket of my shirtcloak, and chewed a few of the buds, wrinkling my noseat the long-unfamiliar pungency. 

The second lump was a skean, and unlike the worn and shabby garments, this was brand-new and sharp and bright, and its edge held a razorglint. I tucked it into the clasp of my shirtcloak, a reassuring weight. It was the only weapon I could dare to carry. 

The last of the solid objects in the bundle was a flat wooden case, about nine by ten inches. I slid it open. It was divided carefully intosections cushioned with sponge-absorbent plastic, and in them lay tinyslips of glass, on Wolf as precious as jewels. They were lenses--cameralenses, microscope lenses, even eyeglass lenses. Packed close, therewere nearly a hundred of them nested by the shock-absorbent stuff. 

They were my excuse for travel to Shainsa. Over and above thenecessities of trade, a few items of Terran manufacture--vacuum tubes, transistors, lenses for cameras and binoculars, liquors and finelyforged small tools--are literally worth their weight in platinum. 

Even in cities where Terrans have never gone, these things bringexorbitant prices, and trading in them is a Dry-town privilege. Rakhalhad been a trader, so Juli told me, in fine wire and surgicalinstruments. Wolf is not a mechanized planet, and has never developedany indigenous industrial system; the psychology of the nonhuman seldomruns to technological advances. 

I went down the hallway again to the room where Juli was waiting. Catching a glimpse in a full-length mirror, I was startled. All tracesof the Terran civil servant, clumsy and uncomfortable in his ill-fittingclothes, had dropped away. A Dry-towner, rangy and scarred, looked outat me, and it seemed that the expression on his face was one ofamazement. 

Joanna whirled as I came into the room and visibly paled before, recovering her self-control, she gave a nervous little giggle. "Goodness, Race, I didn't know you!"

Juli whispered, "Yes, I--I remember you better like that. You're--youlook so much like--"

The door flew open and Mickey Magnusson scampered into the room, achubby little boy browned by a Terra-type sunlamp and glowing withhealth. In his hand he held some sparkling thing that gave off tinyflashes and glints of color. 

I gave the kid a grin before I realized that I was disguised anyhow andprobably a hideous sight. The little boy backed off, but Joanna put herplump hand on his shoulder, murmuring soothing things. 

Mickey toddled toward Juli, holding up the shining thing in his hands asif to display something very precious and beloved. Juli bent and heldout her arms, then her face contracted and she snatched at theplaything. 

"Mickey, what's that?"

He thrust it protectively behind his back. "Mine!"

"Mickey, don't be naughty, " Joanna chided. 

"Please let me see, " Juli coaxed, and he brought it out, slowly, stillsuspicious. It was an angled prism of crystal, star-shaped, set in aframe which could get the star spinning like a solidopic. But itdisplayed a new and comical face every time it was turned. 

Mickey turned it round and round, charmed at being the center ofattention. There seemed to be dozens of faces, shifting with each spinof the prism, human and nonhuman, all dim and slightly distorted. My ownface, Juli's, Joanna's came out of the crystal surface, not a reflectionbut a caricature. 

A choked sound from Juli made me turn in dismay. She had let herselfdrop to the floor and was sitting there, white as death, supportingherself with her two hands. 

"Race! Find out where he got that--that _thing_!"

I bent and shook her. "What's the matter with you?" I demanded. She hadlapsed into the dazed, sleepwalking horror of this morning. Shewhispered, "It's not a toy. Rindy had one. Joanna, _where did he getit_?" She pointed at the shining thing with an expression of horrorwhich would have been laughable had it been less real, less filled withterror. 

Joanna cocked her head to one side and wrinkled her forehead, reflectively. "Why, I don't know, now you come to ask me. I thoughtmaybe one of the _chaks_ had given it to Mickey. Bought it in thebazaar, maybe. He loves it. Do get up off the floor, Juli!"

Juli scrambled to her feet. She said, "Rindy had one. It--it terrifiedme. She would sit and look at it by the hour, and--I told you about it, Race. I threw it out once, and she woke up and screamed. She shriekedfor hours and hours and she ran out in the dark and dug for it in thetrash pile, where I'd buried it. She went out in the dark, broke all herfingernails, but she dug it out again. " She checked herself, staring atJoanna, her eyes wide in appeal. 

"Well, dear, " said Joanna with mild, rebuking kindness, "you needn't beso upset. I don't think Mickey's so attached to it as all that, andanyhow I'm not going to throw it away. " She patted Juli reassuringly onthe shoulder, then gave Mickey a little shove toward the door and turnedto follow him. "You'll want to talk alone before Race leaves. Good luck, wherever you're going, Race. " She held out her hand forthrightly. 

"And don't worry about Juli, " she added in an undertone. "We'll takegood care of her. "

When I came back to Juli she was standing by the window, looking throughthe oddly filtered glass that dimmed the red sun to orange. "Joannathinks I'm crazy, Race. "

"She thinks you're upset. "

"Rindy's an odd child, a real Dry-towner. But it's not my imagination, Race, it's not. There's something--" Suddenly she sobbed aloud again. 

"Homesick, Juli?"

"I was, a little, the first years. But I was happy, believe me. " Sheturned her face to me, shining with tears. "You've got to believe Inever regretted it for a minute. "

"I'm glad, " I said dully. _That made it just fine. _

"Only that toy--"

"Who knows? It might be a clue to something. " The toy had reminded me ofsomething, too, and I tried to remember what it was. I'd seen nonhumantoys in the Kharsa, even bought them for Mack's kids. When a single manis invited frequently to a home with five youngsters, it's about theonly way he can repay that hospitality, by bringing the children oddtrifles and knicknacks. But I had never seen anything quite like thisone, until--

--Until yesterday. The toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa, theone who had fled into the shrine of Nebran and vanished. He had had halfa dozen of those prism-and-star sparklers. 

I tried to call up a mental picture of the little toy-seller. I didn'thave much luck. I'd seen him only in that one swift glance from beneathhis hood. "Juli, have you ever seen a little man, like a _chak_ onlysmaller, twisted, hunchbacked? He sells toys--"

She looked blank. "I don't think so, although there are dwarf _chaks_ inthe Polar Cities. But I'm sure I've never seen one. "

"It was just an idea. " But it was something to think about. A toy-sellerhad vanished. Rakhal, before disappearing, had smashed all Rindy's toys. And the sight of a plaything of cunningly-cut crystal had sent Juli intohysterics. 

"I'd better go before it's too dark, " I said. I buckled the final claspof my shirtcloak, fitted my skean another notch into it, and counted themoney Mack had advanced me for expenses. "I want to get into the Kharsaand hunt up the caravan to Shainsa. "

"You're going there first?"

"Where else?"

Juli turned, leaning one hand against the wall. She looked frail andill, years older than she was. Suddenly she flung her thin arms aroundme, and a link of the chain on her fettered hands struck me hard, as shecried out, "Race, Race, he'll kill you! How can I live with that on myconscience too?"

"You can live with a hell of a lot on your conscience. " I disengaged herarms firmly from my neck. A link of the chain caught on the clasp of myshirtcloak, and again something snapped inside me. I grasped the chainin my two hands and gave a mighty heave, bracing my foot against thewall. The links snapped asunder. A flying end struck Juli under the eye. I ripped at the seals of the jeweled cuffs, tore them from her arms, find threw the whole assembly into a corner, where it fell with aclash. 

"Damn it, " I roared, "that's over! You're never going to wear _those_things again!" Maybe after six years in the Dry-towns, Juli wasbeginning to guess what those six years behind a desk had meant to me. 

"Juli, I'll find your Rindy for you, and I'll bring Rakhal in alive. Butdon't ask more than that. Just _alive_. And don't ask me how. "

He'd be alive when I got through with him. Sure, he'd be alive. 

Just. 

CHAPTER FIVE

It was getting dark when I slipped through a side gate, shabby andinconspicuous, into the spaceport square. Beyond the yellow lamps, Iknew that the old city was beginning to take on life with the fallingnight. Out of the chinked pebble-houses, men and woman, human andnonhuman, came forth into the moonlit streets. 

If anyone noticed me cross the square, which I doubted, they took me forjust another Dry-town vagabond, curious about the world of the strangersfrom beyond the stars, and who, curiosity satisfied, was drifting backwhere he belonged. I turned down one of the dark alleys that led away, and soon was walking in the dark. 

The Kharsa was not unfamiliar to me as a Terran, but for the last sixyears I had seen only its daytime face. I doubted if there were a dozenEarthmen in the Old Town tonight, though I saw one in the bazaar, dirtyand lurching drunk; one of those who run renegade and homeless betweenworlds, belonging to neither. This was what I had nearly become. 

I went further up the hill with the rising streets. Once I turned, andsaw below me the bright-lighted spaceport, the black many-windowed loomof the skyscraper like a patch of alien shadow in the red-violetmoonlight. I turned my back on them and walked on. 

At the fringe of the thieves market I paused outside a wineshop whereDry-towners were made welcome. A golden nonhuman child murmuredsomething as she pattered by me in the street, and I stopped, gripped bya spasm of stagefright. Had the dialect of Shainsa grown rusty on mytongue? Spies were given short shrift on Wolf, and a mile from thespaceport, I might as well have been on one of those moons. There wereno spaceport shockers at my back now. And someone might remember thetale of an Earthman with a scarred face who had gone to Shainsa indisguise. .. . 

I shrugged the shirtcloak around my shoulders, pushed the door and wentin. I had remembered that Rakhal was waiting for me. Not beyond thisdoor, but at the end of the trail, behind some other door, somewhere. And we have a byword in Shainsa: _A trail without beginning has no end_. 

Right there I stopped thinking about Juli, Rindy, the Terran Empire, orwhat Rakhal, who knew too many of Terra's secrets, might do if he hadturned renegade. My fingers went up and stroked, musingly, the ridge ofscar tissue along my mouth. At that moment I was thinking only ofRakhal, of an unsettled blood-feud, and of my revenge. 

Red lamps were burning inside the wineshop, where men reclined on frowsycouches. I stumbled over one of them, found an empty place and letmyself sink down on it, arranging myself automatically in the sprawl ofDry-towners indoors. In public they stood, rigid and formal, even to eatand drink. Among themselves, anything less than a loose-limbed sprawlbetrayed insulting watchfulness; only a man who fears secret murderkeeps himself on guard. 

A girl with a tangled rope of hair down her back came toward me. Herhands were unchained, meaning she was a woman of the lowest class, notworth safeguarding. Her fur smock was shabby and matted with filth. Isent her for wine. When it came it was surprisingly good, the sweet andtreacherous wine of Ardcarran. I sipped it slowly, looking round. 

If a caravan for Shainsa were leaving tomorrow, it would be known here. A word dropped that I was returning there would bring me, by ironboundcustom, an invitation to travel in their company. 

When I sent the woman for wine a second time, a man on a nearby couchgot up, and walked over to me. 

He was tall even for a Dry-towner, and there was something vaguelyfamiliar about him. He was no riffraff of the Kharsa, either, for hisshirtcloak was of rich silk interwoven with metallic threads, andcrusted with heavy embroideries. The hilt of his skean was carved from asingle green gem. He stood looking down at me for some time before hespoke. 

"I never forget a voice, although I cannot bring your face to mind. HaveI a duty toward you?"

I had spoken a jargon to the girl, but he addressed me in the lilting, sing-song speech of Shainsa. I made no answer, gesturing him to beseated. On Wolf, formal courtesy requires a series of polite _nonsequiturs_, and while a direct question merely borders on rudeness, adirect answer is the mark of a simpleton. 

"A drink?"

"I joined you unasked, " he retorted, and summoned the tangle-headedgirl. "Bring us better wine than this swill!"

With that word and gesture I recognized him and my teeth clamped hard onmy lip. This was the loudmouth who had shown fight in the spaceportcafe, and run away before the dark girl with the sign of Nebran sprawledon her breast. 

But in this poor light he had not recognized me. I moved deliberatelyinto the full red glow. If he did not know me for the Terran he hadchallenged last night in the spaceport cafe, it was unlikely that anyoneelse would. He stared at me for some minutes, but in the end he onlyshrugged and poured wine from the bottle he had ordered. 

Three drinks later I knew that his name was Kyral and that he was atrader in wire and fine steel tools through the nonhuman towns. And Ihad given him the name I had chosen, Rascar. 

He asked, "Are you thinking of returning to Shainsa?"

Wary of a trap, I hesitated, but the question seemed harmless, so I onlycountered, "Have you been long in the Kharsa?"

"Several weeks. "

"Trading?"

"No. " He applied himself to the wine again. "I was searching for amember of my family. "

"Did you find him?"

"Her, " said Kyral, and ceremoniously spat. "No, I didn't find her. Whatis your business in Shainsa?"

I chuckled briefly. "As a matter of fact, I am searching for a member ofmy family. "

He narrowed his eyelids as if he suspected me of mocking him, butpersonal privacy is the most rigid convention of the Dry-towns and suchmockery showed a sensible disregard for prying questions if I did notchoose to answer them. He questioned no further. 

"I can use an extra man to handle the loads. Are you good with packanimals? If so, you are welcome to travel under the protection of mycaravan. "

I agreed. Then, reflecting that Juli and Rakhal must, after all, beknown in Shainsa, I asked, "Do you know a trader who calls himselfSensar?"

He started slightly; I saw his eyes move along my scars. Then reserve, like a lowered curtain, shut itself over his face, concealing a briefsatisfied glimmer. "No, " he lied, and stood up. 

"We leave at first daylight. Have your gear ready. " He flipped somethingat me, and I caught it in midair. It was a stone incised with Kyral'sname in the ideographs of Shainsa. "You can sleep with the caravan ifyou care to. Show that token to Cuinn. "

 * * * * *

Kyral's caravan was encamped in a barred field past the furthest gatesof the Kharsa. About a dozen men were busy loading the packanimals--horses shipped in from Darkover, mostly. I asked the first manI met for Cuinn. He pointed out a burly fellow in a shiny redshirtcloak, who was busy at chewing out one of the young men for the wayhe'd put a packsaddle on his beast. 

Shainsa is a good language for cursing, but Cuinn had a special talentat it. I blinked in admiration while I waited for him to get his breathso I could hand him Kyral's token. 

In the light of the fire I saw what I'd half expected: he was the secondof the Dry-towners who'd tried to rough me up in the spaceport cafe. Cuinn barely glanced at the cut stone and tossed it back, pointing outone of the packhorses. "Load your personal gear on that one, then getbusy and show this mush-headed wearer of sandals"--an insult carryingparticularly filthy implications in Shainsa--"how to fasten apackstrap. "

He drew breath and began to swear at the luckless youngster again, and Irelaxed. He evidently hadn't recognized me, either. I took the strap inmy hand, guiding it through the saddle loop. "Like that, " I told thekid, and Cuinn stopped swearing long enough to give me a curt nod ofacknowledgment and point out a heap of boxed and crated objects. 

"Help him load up. We want to get clear of the city by daybreak, " heordered, and went off to swear at someone else. 

Kyral turned up at dawn, and a few minutes later the camp had vanishedinto a small scattering of litter and we were on our way. 

Kyral's caravan, in spite of Cuinn's cursing, was well-managed andwell-handled. The men were Dry-towners, eleven of them, silent andcapable and most of them very young. They were cheerful on the trail, handled the pack animals competently, during the day, and spent most ofthe nights grouped around the fire, gambling silently on the fall of thecut-crystal prisms they used for dice. 

Three days out of the Kharsa I began to worry about Cuinn. 

It was of course a spectacular piece of bad luck to find all three ofthe men from the spaceport cafe in Kyral's caravan. Kyral had obviouslynot known me, and even by daylight he paid no attention to me except togive an occasional order. The second of the three was a gangling kid whoprobably never gave me a second look, let alone a third. 

But Cuinn was another matter. He was a man my own age, and his fierceeyes had a shrewdness in them that I did not trust. More than once Icaught him watching me, and on the two or three occasions when he drewme into conversation, I found his questions more direct than Dry-towngood manners allowed. I weighed the possibility that I might have tokill him before we reached Shainsa. 

We crossed the foothills and began to climb upward toward the mountains. The first few days I found myself short of breath as we worked upwardinto thinner air, then my acclimatization returned and I began to fallinto the pattern of the days and nights on the trail. The Trade Citywas still a beacon in the night, but its glow on the horizon grew dimmerwith each day's march. 

Higher we climbed, along dangerous trails where men had to dismount andlet the pack animals pick their way, foot by foot. Here in thesealtitudes the sun at noonday blazed redder and brighter, and theDry-towners, who come from the parched lands in the sea-bottoms, wereburned and blistered by the fierce light. I had grown up under theblazing sun of Terra, and a red sun like Wolf, even at its hottest, caused me no discomfort. This alone would have made me suspect. Onceagain I found Cuinn's fierce eyes watching me. 

As we crossed the passes and began to descend the long trail through thethick forests, we got into nonhuman country. Racing against the GhostWind, we skirted the country around Charin, and the woods inhabited bythe terrible Ya-men, birdlike creatures who turn cannibal when the GhostWind blows. 

Later the trail wound through thicker forests of indigo trees andgrayish-purple brushwood, and at night we heard the howls of the catmenof these latitudes. At night we set guards about the caravan, and thedark spaces and shadows were filled with noises and queer smells andrustlings. 

Nevertheless, the day's marches and the night watches passed withoutevent until the night I shared guard with Cuinn. I had posted myself atthe edge of the camp, the fire behind me. The men were sleeping rolls ofsnores, huddled close around the fire. The animals, hobbled with doubleropes, front feet to hind feet, shifted uneasily and let out longuncanny whines. 

I heard Cuinn pacing behind me. I heard a rustle at the edge of theforest, a stir and whisper beyond the trees, and turned to speak to him, then saw him slipping away toward the outskirts of the clearing. 

For a moment I thought nothing of it, thinking that he was taking a fewsteps toward the gap in the trees where he had disappeared. I suppose Ihad the idea that he had slipped away to investigate some noise orshadow, and that I should be at hand. 

Then I saw the flicker of lights beyond the trees--light from thelantern Cuinn had been carrying in his hand! He was signaling!

I slipped the safety clasp from the hilt of my skean and went after him. In the dimming glow of the fire I fancied I saw luminous eyes watchingme, and the skin on my back crawled. I crept up behind him and leaped. We went down in a tangle of flailing legs and arms, and in less than asecond he had his skean out and I was gripping his wrist, tryingdesperately to force the blade away from my throat. 

I gasped, "Don't be a fool! One yell and the whole camp will be awake!Who were you signaling?"

In the light of the fallen lantern, lips drawn back in a snarl, helooked almost inhuman. He strained at the knife for a moment, thendropped it. "Let me up, " he said. 

I got up and kicked the fallen skean toward him. "Put that away. What inhell were you doing, trying to bring the catmen down on us?"

For a moment he looked taken aback, then his fierce face closed downagain and he said wrathfully, "Can't a man walk away from the campwithout being half strangled?"

I glared at him, but realized I really had nothing to go by. He mighthave been answering a call of nature, and the movement of the lanternaccidental. And if someone had jumped me from behind, I might havepulled a knife on him myself. So I only said, "Don't do it again. We'reall too jumpy. "

There were no other incidents that night, or the next. The night after, while I lay huddled in my shirtcloak and blanket by the fire, I sawCuinn slip out of his bedroll and steal away. A moment later there was agleam in the darkness, but before I could summon the resolve to get upand face it out with him, he returned, looked cautiously at the snoringmen, and crawled back into his blankets. 

While we were unpacking at the next camp, Kyral halted beside me. "Heardanything queer lately? I've got the notion we're being trailed. We'll beout of these forests tomorrow, and after that it's clear road all theway to Shainsa. If anything's going to happen, it will happen tonight. "

I debated speaking to him about Cuinn's signals. No, I had my ownbusiness waiting for me in Shainsa. Why mix myself up in some other, private intrigue?

He said, "I'm putting you and Cuinn on watch again. The old men dozeoff, and the young fellows get to daydreaming or fooling around. That'sall right most of the time, but I want someone who'll keep his eyes opentonight. Did you ever know Cuinn before this?"

"Never set eyes on him. "

"Funny, I had the notion--" He shrugged, turned away, then stopped. 

"Don't think twice about rousing the camp if there's any disturbance. Better a false alarm than an ambush that catches us all in our blankets. If it came to a fight, we might be in a bad way. We all carry skeans, but I don't think there's a shocker in the whole camp, let alone a gun. You don't have one by any chance?"

After the men had turned in, Cuinn patrolling the camp, halted a minutebeside me and cocked his head toward the rustling forest. 

"What's going on in there?"

"Who knows? Catmen on the prowl, probably, thinking the horses wouldmake a good meal, or maybe that we would. "

"Think it will come to a fight?"

"I wouldn't know. "

He surveyed me for a moment without speaking. "And if it did?"

"We'd fight. " Then I sucked in my breath, for Cuinn had spoken TerranStandard, and I, without thinking had answered in the same language. Hegrinned, showing white teeth filed to a point. 

"I thought so!"

I seized his shoulder and demanded roughly, "And what are you going todo about it?"

"That depends on you, " he answered, "and what you want in Shainsa. Tellme the truth. What were you doing in the Terran Zone?" He gave me nochance to answer. "You know who Kyral is, don't you?"

"A trader, " I said, "who pays my wages and minds his own affairs. " Imoved backward, hand on my skean, braced for a sudden rush. He made noaggressive motion, however. 

"Kyral told me you'd been asking questions about Rakhal Sensar, " hesaid. "Clever. Now I, for one, could have told you he'd never set eyeson Rakhal. I--"

He broke off, hearing a noise in the forest, a long eerie howl. Imuttered, "If you've brought them down on us--"

He shook his head urgently. "I had to take that chance, to get word tothe others. It won't work. Where's the girl?"

I hardly heard him. I was hearing twigs snap, and silent sneaking feet. I turned for a yell that would rouse the camp and Cuinn grabbed me hard, saying insistently, "Quick! Where's the girl! Go back and tell her itwon't work! If Kyral suspected--"

He never finished the sentence. Just behind us came another of the longeerie howls. I knocked Cuinn away, and suddenly the night was filledwith crouching forms that came down on us like a whirlwind. 

I shouted madly as the camp came alive with men struggling out ofblankets, fighting for life itself. I ran hard, still shouting, for theenclosure where we had tied the horses. A catman, slim and black-furred, was crouched and cutting the hobble-strings of the nearest animal. Ihurled myself on him. He exploded, clawing, raking my shoulder withtalons that ripped the rough cloth like paper. I whipped out my skeanand slashed upward. The talons contracted in my shoulder and I gaspedwith pain. Then the thing howled and fell away, clawing at the air. Ittwitched and lay still. 

Four shots in rapid succession cracked in the clearing. Kyral to thecontrary, someone must have had a pistol. I heard one of the cat-thingswail, a hoarse dying rattle. Something dark clawed my arm and I slashedwith the knife, going down as another set of talons fastened in my back, rolling and clutching. 

I managed to get the thing's forelimbs wedged under my elbow, my knee inits spine. I heaved, bent it backward, backward till it screamed, a highwail. 

Then I felt the spine snap and the dead thing mewled once, just airescaping from collapsing lungs, and slid limp from my thigh. Erect ithad not been over four feet tall and in the light of the dying fire itmight have been a dead lynx. 

"Rascar. .. . " I heard a gasp, a groan. I whirled and saw Kyral go down, struggling, drowning in half a dozen or more of the fierce half-humans. I leaped at the smother of bodies, ripped one away with a stranglehold, slashed at its throat. 

They were easy to kill. 

I heard a high, urgent scream in their mewing tongue. Then the furredblack things seemed to melt into the forest as silently as they hadcome. Kyral, dazed, his forehead running blood, his arm slashed to thebone, was sitting on the ground, still stunned. 

Somebody had to take charge. I bellowed, "Lights! Get lights. They won'tcome back if we have enough light, they can only see well in the dark. "

Someone stirred the fire. It blazed up as they piled on dead branches, and I roughly commanded one of the kids to fill every lantern he couldfind, and get them burning. Four of the dead things were lying in theclearing. The youngster I'd helped loading horses, the first day, gazeddown at one of the catmen, half-disemboweled by somebody's skean, andsuddenly bolted for the bushes, where I heard him retching. 

I set the others with stronger stomachs to dragging the bodies away fromthe clearing, and went back to see how badly Kyral was hurt. He had therip in his arm and his face was covered with blood from a shallow scalpwound, but he insisted on getting up to inspect the hurts of the others. 

There was no one without a claw-wound in leg or back or shoulder, butnone were serious, and we were all feeling fairly cheerful when someonedemanded, "Where's Cuinn?"

He didn't seem to be anywhere. Kyral, staggering slightly, insisted onsearching, but I felt we wouldn't find him. "He probably went off withhis friends, " I snorted, and told about the signaling. Kyral lookedgrave. 

"You should have told me, " he began, but shouts from the far end of theclearing sent us racing there. We nearly stumbled over a single, solitary, motionless form, outstretched and lifeless, blind eyes staringupward at the moons. 

It was Cuinn. And his throat had been torn completely out. 

CHAPTER SIX

Once we were free of the forest, the road to the Dry-towns lay straightbefore us, with no hidden dangers. Some of us limped for a day or two, or favored an arm or leg clawed by the catmen, but I knew that whatKyral said was true; it was a lucky caravan which had to fight off onlyone attack. 

Cuinn haunted me. A night or two of turning over his cryptic words in mymind had convinced me that whoever, or whatever he'd been signaling, itwasn't the catmen. And his urgent question "Where's the girl?" swamendlessly in my brain, making no more sense than when I had first heardit. Who had he mistaken me for? What did he think I was mixed up in? Andwho, above all, were the "others" who had to be signaled, at the risk ofan attack by catmen which had meant his own death?

With Cuinn dead, and Kyral thinking I'd saved his life, a large part ofthe responsibility for the caravan now fell on me. And strangely Ienjoyed it, making the most of this interval when I was separated fromthe thought of blood-feud or revenge, the need of spying or the threatof exposure. During those days and nights on the trail I grew backslowly into the Dry-towner I once had been. I knew I would be sorry whenthe walls of Shainsa rose on the horizon, bringing me back inescapablyto my own quest. 

We swung wide, leaving the straight trail to Shainsa, and Kyralannounced his intention of stopping for half a day at Canarsa, one ofthe walled nonhuman cities which lay well off the traveled road. To myinadvertent show of surprise, he returned that he had tradingconnections there. 

"We all need a day's rest, and the Silent Ones will buy from me, thoughthey have few dealings with men. Look here, I owe you something. Youhave lenses? You can get a better price in Canarsa than you'd get inArdcarran or Shainsa. Come along with me, and I'll vouch for you. "

Kyral had been most friendly since the night I had dug him out fromunder the catmen, and I knew no way to refuse without exposing myselffor the sham trader I was. But I was deathly apprehensive. Even withRakhal I had never entered any of the nonhuman towns. 

On Wolf, human and nonhuman have lived side by side for centuries. Andthe human is not always the superior being. I might pass, among theDry-towners and the relatively stupid humanoid _chaks_, for anotherDry-towner. But Rakhal had cautioned me I could not pass among nonhumansfor native Wolfan, and warned me against trying. 

Nevertheless, I accompanied Kyral, carrying the box which had cost abouta week's pay in the Terran Zone and was worth a small fortune in theDry-towns. 

Canarsa seemed, inside the gates, like any other town. The houses wereround, beehive fashion, and the streets totally empty. Just inside thegates a hooded figure greeted us, and gestured us by signs to followhim. He was covered from head to foot with some coarse and shiny fiberwoven into stuff that looked like sacking. 

But under the thick hooding was horror. It slithered and it had nothinglike a recognizable human shape or walk, and I felt the primeval ape inme cowering and gibbering in a corner of my brain. Kyral muttered, closeto my ear, "No outsider is ever allowed to look on the Silent Ones intheir real form. I think they're deaf and dumb, but be damn careful. "

"You bet, " I whispered, and was glad the streets were empty. I walkedalong, trying not to look at the gliding motion of that shrouded thingup ahead. 

The trading was done in an open hut of reeds which looked as if it hadbeen built in a hurry, and was not square, round, hexagonal or any otherrecognizable geometrical shape. It formed a pattern of its own, presumably, but my human eyes couldn't see it. Kyral said in a breath ofa whisper, "They'll tear it down and burn it after we leave. We'resupposed to have contaminated it too greatly for any of the Silent Onesever to enter again. My family has traded with them for centuries, andwe're almost the only ones who have ever entered the city. "

Then two of the Silent Ones of Canarsa, also covered with that coarseshiny stuff, slithered into the hut, and Kyral choked off his words asif he had swallowed them. 

It was the strangest trading I had ever done. Kyral laid out the smallforged-steel tools and the coils of thin fine wire, and I unpacked mylenses and laid them out in neat rows. The Silent Ones neither spoke normoved, but through a thin place in the gray veiling I saw a speck whichmight have been a phosphorescent eye, moving back and forth as ifscanning the things laid out for their inspection. 

Then I smothered a gasp, for suddenly blank spaces appeared in the rowsof merchandise. Certain small tools--wirecutters, calipers, surgicalscissors--had vanished, and all the coils of wire had disappeared. Blanks equally had appeared in the rows of lenses; all of my tiny, powerful microscope lenses had vanished. I cast a quick glance at Kyral, but he seemed unsurprised. I recalled vague rumors of the Silent Ones, and concluded that, eerie though it seemed, this was merely their way ofdoing business. 

Kyral pointed at one of the tools, at an exceptionally fine pair ofbinocular lenses, at the last of the coils of wire. The shrouded onesdid not move, but the lenses and the wire vanished. The small toolremained, and after a moment Kyral dropped his hand. 

I took my cue from Kyral and remained motionless, awaiting whateversurprise was coming. I had halfway expected what happened next. In theblank spaces, little points of light began to glimmer, and after amoment, blue and red and green gem-stones appeared there. To me thesubstitution appeared roughly equitable and fair, though I am no judgeof the fine points of gems. 

Kyral scowled slightly and pointed to one of the green gems, and after amoment it whisked away and a blue one took its place. In another spotwhere a fine set of surgical instruments had lain, Kyral pointed at theblue gem which now lay there, shook his head and held out three fingers. After a moment, a second blue stone lay winking beside the first. 

Kyral did not move, but inexorably held out the three fingers. There wasa little swirling in the air, and then both gems vanished, and the caseof surgical instruments lay in their place. 

Still Kyral did not move, but held the three fingers out for a fullminute. Finally he dropped them and bent to pick up the caseinstruments. Again the little swirl in the air, and the instrumentsvanished. In their place lay three of the blue gems. My mouth twitchedin the first amusement I had felt since we entered this uncanny place. Evidently bargaining with the Silent Ones was not a great deal differentthan bargaining with anyone anywhere. Nevertheless, under the eyes ofthose shrouded but horrible forms--if they had eyes, which I doubted--Ihad no impulse to protest their offered prices. 

I gathered up the rejected lenses, repacked them neatly, and helpedKyral recrate the tools and instruments the Silent Ones had not wanted. I noticed that in addition to the microscope lenses and surgicalinstruments, they had taken all the fine wire. I couldn't imagine, anddidn't particularly want to imagine, what they intended to do with it. 

On our way back through the streets, unshepherded this time, Kyral'stongue was loosened as if with a great release from tension. "They'repsychokinetics, " he told me. "Quite a few of the nonhuman races are. Iguess they have to be, having no eyes and no hands. But sometimes Iwonder if we of the Dry-towns ought to deal with them at all. "

"What do you mean?" I asked, not really listening. I was thinking mostlyabout the way the small objects had melted away and reappeared. Thesight had stirred some uncomfortable memory, a vague sense of danger. Itwas not tangible enough for me to know why I feared it, but just asubliminal uneasiness that kept prodding at me, like a tooth that isn'tquite aching yet. 

Kyral said, "We of Shainsa live between fire and flood. Terra on the onehand, and on the other maybe something worse, who knows? We know solittle about the Silent Ones, and those like them. Who knows, maybewe're giving them the weapons to destroy us--" He broke off, with agasp, and stood staring down one of the streets. 

It lay open and bare between two rows of round houses, and Kyral wasstaring fixedly at a doorway which had opened there. I followed hisparalyzed gaze, and saw the girl. 

Hair like spun black glass fell in hard waves around her shoulders, andthe red eyes smiled with alien malice, alien mischief, beneath the darkcrown of little stars. And the Toad God sprawled in hideousembroideries across the white folds of her breast. 

Kyral gulped hoarsely. His hand flew up as he clutched the charms strungabout his neck. I imitated the gesture mechanically, watching Kyral, wondering if he would turn and run again. But he stood frozen for aminute. Then the spell broke and he took one step toward the girl, armsoutstretched. 

"Miellyn!" he cried, and there was heartbreak in his voice. And again, the cry making ringing echoes in the strange street:

"Miellyn! _Miellyn!_"

This time it was the girl who whirled and fled. Her white robesfluttered and I saw the twinkle of her flying feet as she vanished intoa space between the houses and was gone. 

Kyral took one blind step down the street, then another. But before hecould burst into a run I had him by the arm, dragging him back tosanity. 

"Man, you've gone mad! Chase, in a nonhuman town?"

He struggled for a minute, then, with a harsh sigh, he said, "It's allright, I won't--" and shook loose from my arm. 

He did not speak again until we reached the gates of Canarsa and theyclosed, silently and untouched, behind us. I had forgotten the placealready. I had space only to think of the girl, whose face I had notforgotten since the moment when she saved me and disappeared. Now shehad appeared again to Kyral. What did it all mean?

I asked, as we walked toward the camp, "Do you know that girl?" But Iknew the question was futile. Kyral's face was closed, concedingnothing, and his friendliness had vanished completely. 

He said, "Now I know you. You saved me from the catmen, and again inCanarsa, so my hands are bound from harming you. But it is evil to havedealings with those who have been touched by the Toad God. " He spatnoisily on the ground, looked at me with loathing, and said, "We willreach Shainsa in three days. Stay away from me. "

CHAPTER SEVEN

Shainsa, first in the chain of Dry-towns that lie in the bed of along-dried ocean, is set at the center of a great alkali plain; a dusty, parched city bleached by a million years of sun. The houses are high, spreading buildings with many rooms and wide windows. The poorer sortwere made of sun-dried brick, the more imposing being cut from thebleached salt stone of the cliffs that rise behind the city. 

News travels fast in the Dry-towns. If Rakhal were in the city, he'dsoon know that I was here, and guess who I was or why I'd come. I mightdisguise myself so that my own sister, or the mother who bore me, wouldnot know me. But I had no illusions about my ability to disguise myselffrom Rakhal. He had created the disguise that was me. 

When the second sun set, red and burning, behind the salt cliffs, I knewhe was not in Shainsa, but I stayed on, waiting for something to happen. At night I slept in a cubbyhole behind a wineshop, paying an inordinateprice for that very dubious privilege. And every day in the sleepysilence of the blood-red noon I paced the public square of Shainsa. 

This went on for four days. No one took the slightest notice of anothernameless man in a shabby shirtcloak, without name or identity or knownbusiness. No one appeared to see me except the dusty children, with palefleecy hair, who played their patient games on the windswept curbing ofthe square. They surveyed my scarred face with neither curiosity orfear, and it occurred to me that Rindy might be such another as these. 

If I had still been thinking like an Earthman, I might have tried toquestion one of the children, or win their confidence. But I had adeeper game in hand. 

On the fifth day I was so much a fixture that my pacing went unnoticedeven by the children. On the gray moss of the square, a fewdried-looking old men, their faces as faded as their shirtcloaks andbearing the knife scars of a hundred forgotten fights, drowsed on thestone benches. And along the flagged walk at the edge of the square, assuddenly as an autumn storm in the salt flats, a woman came walking. 

She was tall, with a proud swinging walk, and a metallic clashing keptrhythm to her swift steps. Her arms were fettered, each wrist bound witha jeweled bracelet and the bracelets linked together by a long, silver-gilt chain passed through a silken loop at her waist. From theloop swung a tiny golden padlock, but in the lock stood an even tinierkey, signifying that she was a higher caste than her husband or consort, that her fettering was by choice and not command. 

She stopped directly before me and raised her arm in formal greetinglike a man. The chain made a tinkling sound in the hushed square as herother hand was pulled up tight against the silken loop at her waist. Shestood surveying me for some moments, and finally I raised my head andreturned her gaze. I don't know why I had expected her to have hair likespun black glass and eyes that burned with a red reflection of theburning star. 

This woman's eyes were darker than the poison-berries of the saltcliffs, and her mouth was a cut berry that looked just as dangerous. Shewas young, the slimness of her shoulders and the narrow steel-chainedwrists told me how very young she was, but her face had seen weather andstorms, and her dark eyes had weathered worse psychic storms than that. She did not flinch at the sight of my scars, and met my gaze withoutdropping her eyes. 

"You are a stranger. What is your business in Shainsa?"

I met the direct question with the insolence it demanded, hardly movingmy lips. "I have come to buy women for the brothels of Ardcarran. Perhaps when washed you might be suitable. Who could arrange for yoursale?"

She took the rebuke impassively, though the bitter crimson of her mouthtwitched a little in mischief or rage. But she made no sign. The battlewas joined between us, and I knew already that it would be fought to theend. 

From somewhere in her draperies, something fell to the ground with alittle tinkle. But I knew that trick too and I did not move. Finally shewent away without bending to retrieve it and when I looked around I sawthat all the fleece-haired children had stolen away, leaving theirplaythings lying on the curbing. But one or two of the gaffers on thestone benches, who were old enough to show curiosity without losingface, were watching me with impassive eyes. 

I could have asked the woman's name then, but I held back, knowing itcould only lessen the prestige I had gained from the encounter. Iglanced down, without seeming to do so, at the tiny mirror which hadfallen from the recesses of the fur robe. Her name might have beeninscribed on the reverse. 

But I left it lying there to be picked up by the children when theyreturned, and went back to the wineshop. I had accomplished my firstobjective; if you can't be inconspicuous, be so damned conspicuous thatnobody can miss you. And that in itself is a fair concealment. How manypeople can accurately describe a street riot?

I was finishing off a bad meal with a stone bottle of worse wine whenthe _chak_ came in, disregarding the proprietor, and made straight forme. He was furred immaculately white. His velvet muzzle was contractedas if the very smells might soil it, and he kept a dainty pawoutstretched to ward off accidental contact with greasy counters ortables or tapestries. His fur was scented, and his throat circled with acollar of embroidered silk. This pampered minion surveyed me with theinnocent malice of an uninvolved nonhuman for merely human intrigues. 

"You are wanted in the Great House of Shanitha, thcarred man. " He spokethe Shainsa dialect with an affected lisp. "Will it pleathe you, comewis' me?"

I came, with no more than polite protest, but was startled. I had notexpected the encounter to reach the Great House so soon. Shainsa's GreatHouse had changed hands four times since I had last been in Shainsa. Iwasn't overly anxious to appear there. 

The white _chak_, as out of place in the rough Dry-town as a jewel inthe streets or a raindrop in the desert, led me along a windingboulevard to an outlying district. He made no attempt to engage me inconversation, and indeed I got the distinct impression that thiscockscomb of a nonhuman considered me well beneath his notice. He seemedmuch more aware of the blowing dust in the street, which ruffled andsmudged his carefully combed fur. 

The Great House was carved from blocks of rough pink basalt, the entryguarded by two great caryatids enwrapped in chains of carved metal, setsomehow into the surface of the basalt. The gilt had long ago worn awayfrom the chains so that it alternately gleamed gold or smudged basemetal. The caryatids were patient and blind, their jewel-eyes longvanished under a hotter sun than today's. 

The entrance hall was enormous. A Terran starship could have stoodupright inside it, was my first impression, but I dismissed that thoughtquickly; any Terran thought was apt to betray me. But the main hall wasbuilt on a scale even more huge, and it was even colder than thelegendary hell of the _chaks_. It was far too big for the people in it. 

There was a little solar heater in the ceiling, but it didn't help much. A dim glow came from a metal brazier but that didn't help much either. The _chak_ melted into the shadows, and I went down the steps into thehall by myself, feeling carefully for each step with my feet and tryingnot to seem to be doing so. My comparative night-blindness is the onlysignificant way in which I really differ from a native Wolfan. 

There were three men, two women and a child in the room. They were allDry-towners and had an obscure family likeness, and they all wore richgarments of fur dyed in many colors. One of the men, old and stooped andwithered, was doing something to the brazier. A slim boy of fourteen wassitting cross-legged on a pile of cushions in the corner. There wassomething wrong with his legs. 

A girl of ten in a too-short smock that showed long spider-thin legsabove her low leather boots was playing with some sort of shimmerycrystals, spilling them out into patterns and scooping them up againfrom the uneven stones of the floor. One of the women was a fat, creasedslattern, whose jewels and dyed furs did not disguise her greasyslovenliness. 

Her hands were unchained, and she was biting into a fruit which drippedred juice down the rich blue fur of her robe. The old man gave her alook like murder as I came in, and she straightened slightly but did notdiscard the fruit. The whole room had a curious look of austere, dignified poverty, to which the fat woman was the only discordant note. 

But it was the remaining man and woman who drew my attention, so that Inoticed the others only peripherally, in their outermost orbit. One wasKyral, standing at the foot of the dais and glowering at me. 

The other was the dark-eyed woman I had rebuked today in the publicsquare. 

Kyral said, "So it's you. " And his voice held nothing. Not rebuke, notfriendliness or a lack of it, not even hatred. 

Nothing. 

There was only one way to meet it. I faced the girl--she was sitting ona thronelike chair next to the fat woman, and looked like a doe next toa pig--and said boldly, "I assume this summons to mean that you informedyour kinsmen of my offer. "

She flushed, and that was triumph enough. I held back the triumph, however, wary of overconfidence. The gaffer laughed the high cackle ofage, and Kyral broke in with a sharp, angry monosyllable by which I knewthat my remark had indeed been repeated, and had lost nothing in thetelling. But only the line of his jaw betrayed the anger as he saidcalmly, "Be quiet, Dallisa. Where did you pick this up?"

I said boldly, "The Great House has changed rulers since last I smelledthe salt cliffs. Newcomers do not know my name and theirs is unknown tome. "

The old gaffer said thinly to Kyral, "Our name has lost _kihar_. Onedaughter is lured away by the Toymaker and another babbles withstrangers in the square, and a homeless no-good of the streets does notknow our name. "

My eyes, growing accustomed to the dark blaze of the brazier, saw thatKyral was biting his lip and scowling. Then he gestured to a table wherean array of glassware was set, and at the gesture, the white _chak_ cameon noiseless feet and poured wine. 

"If you have no blood-feud with my family, will you drink with me?"

"I will, " I said, relaxing. Even if he had associated the trader withthe scarred Earthman of the spaceport, he seemed to have decided to dropthe matter. He seemed startled, but he waited until I had lifted theglass and taken a sip. Then, with a movement like lightning, he leapedfrom the dais and struck the glass from my lips. 

I staggered back, wiping my cut mouth, in a split-second jugglingpossibilities. The insult was terrible and deadly. I could do nothingnow but fight. Men had been murdered in Shainsa for far less. I had cometo settle one feud, not involve myself in another, but even while theselightning thoughts flickered in my mind, I had whipped out my skean andI was surprised at the shrillness of my own voice. 

"You contrive offense beneath your own roof--"

"Spy and renegade!" Kyral thundered. He did not touch his skean. Fromthe table he caught a long four-thonged whip, making it whistle throughthe air. The long-legged child scuttled backward. I stepped back onepace, trying to conceal my desperate puzzlement. I could not guess whathad prompted Kyral's attack, but whatever it was, I must have made somebad mistake and could count myself lucky to get out of there alive. 

Kyral's voice perceptibly trembled with rage. "You dare to come into myown home after I have tracked you to the Kharsa and back, blind foolthat I was! But now you shall pay. "

The whip sang through the air, hissing past my shoulders. I dodged toone side, retreating step by step as Kyral swung the powerful thongs. Itcracked again, and a pain like the burning of red-hot irons seared myupper arm. My skean rattled down from numb fingers. 

The whip whacked the floor. 

"Pick up your skean, " said Kyral. "Pick it up if you dare. " He poisedthe lash again. 

The fat woman screamed. 

I stood rigid, gauging my chances of disarming him with a sudden leap. Suddenly the girl Dallisa leaped from her seat with a harsh musicalchiming of chains. 

"Kyral, no! No, Kyral!"

He moved slightly, but did not take his eyes from me. "Get back, Dallisa. "

"No! Wait!" She ran to him and caught his whip-arm, dragging it down, and spoke to him hurriedly and urgently. Kyral's face changed as shespoke; he drew a long breath and threw the whip down beside my skean onthe floor. 

"Answer straight, on your life. What are you doing in Shainsa?"

I could hardly take it in that for the moment I was reprieved fromsudden death, from being beaten into bloody death there at Kyral's feet. The girl went back to her thronelike chair. Now I must either tell thetruth or a convincing lie, and I was lost in a game where I didn't knowthe rules. The explanation I thought might get me out alive might be thevery one which would bring down instant and painful death. Suddenly, with a poignancy that was almost pain, I wished Rakhal were standinghere at my side. 

But I had to bluff it out alone. 

If they had recognized me for Race Cargill, the Terran spy who had oftenbeen in Shainsa, they might release me--it was possible, I supposed, that they were Terran sympathizers. On the other hand, Kyral's shouts of"Spy, renegade!" seemed to suggest the opposite. 

I stood trying to ignore the searing pain in my lashed arm, but I knewthat blood was running hot down my shoulder. Finally I said, "I came tosettle blood-feud. "

Kyral's lips thinned in what might have been meant for a smile. "Youshall, assuredly. But with whom, remains to be seen. "

Knowing I had nothing more to lose, I said, "With a renegade calledRakhal Sensar. "

Only the old man echoed my words dully, "Rakhal Sensar?"

I felt heartened, seeing I wasn't dead yet. 

"I have sworn to kill him. "

Kyral suddenly clapped his hands and shouted to the white _chak_ toclean up the broken glass on the floor. He said huskily, "You are notyourself Rakhal Sensar?"

"I _told_ you he wasn't, " said Dallisa, high and hysterically. "I _told_you he wasn't. "

"A scarred man, tall--what was I to think?" Kyral sounded and lookedbadly shaken. He filled a glass himself and handed it to me, sayinghoarsely, "I did not believe even the renegade Rakhal would break thecode so far as to drink with me. "

"He would not. " I could be positive about this. The codes of Terra hadmade some superficial impress on Rakhal, but down deep his own worldheld sway. If these men were at blood-feud with Rakhal and he stood herewhere I stood, he would have let himself be beaten into bloody ragsbefore tasting their wine. 

I took the glass, raised it and drained it. Then, holding it out beforeme, I said, "Rakhal's life is mine. But I swear by the red star and bythe unmoving mountains, by the black snow and by the Ghost Wind, I haveno quarrel with any beneath this roof. " I cast the glass to the floor, where it shattered on the stones. 

Kyral hesitated, but under the blazing eyes of the girl he quicklypoured himself a glass of the wine and drank a few sips, then flung downthe glass. He stepped forward and laid his hands on my shoulders. Iwinced as he touched the welt of the lash and could not raise my own armto complete the ceremonial toast. 

Kyral stepped away and shrugged. "Shall I have one of the women see toyour hurt?" He looked at Dallisa, but she twisted her mouth. "Do ityourself!"

"It is nothing, " I said, not truthfully. "But I demand in requital thatsince we are bound by spilled blood under your roof, that you give mewhat news you have of Rakhal, the spy and renegade. "

Kyral said fiercely, "If I knew, would I be under my own roof?"

The old gaffer on the dais broke into shrill whining laughter. "You havedrunk wi' him, Kyral, now he's bound you not to do him harm! I know thestory of Rakhal! He was spy for Terra twelve years. Twelve years, andthen he fought and flung their filthy money in their faces and left 'em. But his partner was some Dry-town halfbreed or Terran spy and theyfought wi' clawed gloves, and near killed one another except theTerrans, who have no honor, stopped 'em. See the marks of the _kifirgh_on his face!"

"By Sharra the golden-chained, " said Kyral, gazing at me with somethinglike a grin. "You are, if nothing else, a very clever man. What are you, spy, or half-caste of some Ardcarran slut?"

"What I am doesn't matter to you, " I said. "You have blood-feud withRakhal, but mine is older than yours and his life is mine. As you arebound in honor to kill"--the formal phrases came easily now to mytongue; the Earthman had slipped away--"so you are bound in honor tohelp me kill. If anyone beneath your roof knows anything of Rakhal--"

Kyral's smile bared his teeth. 

"Rakhal works against the Son of the Ape, " he said, using the insultingWolf term for the Terrans. "If we help you to kill him, we remove a goadfrom their flanks. I prefer to let the filthy _Terranan_ spend theirstrength trying to remove it themselves. Moreover, I believe you areyourself an Earthman. 

"You have no right to the courtesy I extend to we, the People of theSky. Yet you have drunk wine with me and I have no quarrel with you. " Heraised his hand in dismissal, outfencing me. "Leave my roof in safetyand my city with honor. "

I could not protest or plead. A man's _kihar_, his personal dignity, isa precious thing in Shainsa, and he had placed me so I could notcompromise mine further in words. Yet I lost _kihar_ equally if I leftat his bidding, like an inferior dismissed. 

One desperate gamble remained. 

"A word, " I said, raising my hand, and while he half turned, startled, believing I was indeed about to compromise my dignity by a further plea, I flung it at him:

"I will bet _shegri_ with you. "

His iron composure looked shaken. I had delivered a blow to his beliefthat I was an Earthman, for it is doubtful if there are six Earthmen onWolf who know about _shegri_, the dangerous game of the Dry-towns. 

It is no ordinary gamble, for what the better stakes is his life, possibly his reason. Rarely indeed will a man beg _shegri_ unless he hasnothing further to lose. 

It is a cruel, possibly decadent game, which has no parallel anywhere inthe known universe. 

But I had no choice. I had struck a cold trail in Shainsa. Rakhal mightbe anywhere on the planet and half of Magnusson's month was already up. Unless I could force Kyral to tell what he knew, I might as well quit. 

So I repeated: "I will bet _shegri_ with you. "

And Kyral stood unmoving. 

For what the _shegrin_ wagers is his courage and endurance in the faceof torture and an unknown fate. On his side, the stakes are clearlydetermined beforehand. But if he loses, his punishment or penalty is atthe whim of the one who has accepted him, and he may be put to whateverdoom the winner determines. 

And this is the contest:

The _shegrin_ permits himself to be tortured from sunrise to sunset. Ifhe endures he wins. It is as simple as that. He can stop the torture atany moment by a word, but to do so is a concession of defeat. 

This is not as dangerous as it might, at first, seem. The other party tothe bet is bound by the ironclad codes of Wolf to inflict no permanentphysical damage (no injury that will not heal with three suncourses). But from sunrise to sunset, any torment or painful ingenuity which thehalf-human mentality of Wolf can devise must be endured. 

The man who can outthink the torture of the moment, the man who can holdin his mind the single thought of his goal--that man can claim thestakes he has set, as well as other concessions made traditional. 

The silence grew in the hall. Dallisa had straightened and was watchingme intently, her lips parted and the tip of a little red tongue visiblebetween her teeth. The only sound was the tiny crunching as the fatwoman nibbled at nuts and cast their shells into the brazier. Even thechild on the steps had abandoned her game with the crystal dice, and satlooking up at me with her mouth open. Finally Kyral demanded, "Yourstakes?"

"Tell me all you know of Rakhal Sensar and keep silence about me inShainsa. "

"By the red shadow, " Kyral burst out, "you have courage, Rascar!"

"Say only yes or no!" I retorted. 

Rebuked, he fell silent. Dallisa leaned forward and again, for someunknown reason, I thought of a girl with hair like spun black glass. 

Kyral raised his hand. "I say no. I have blood-feud with Rakhal and Iwill not sell his death to another. Further, I believe you are Terranand I will not deal with you. And finally, you have twice saved my lifeand I would find small pleasure in torturing you. I say no. Drink againwith me and we part without a quarrel. "

Beaten, I turned to go. 

"Wait, " said Dallisa. 

She stood up and came down from the dais, slowly this time, walking withdignity to the rhythm of her musically clashing chains. "I have aquarrel with this man. "

I started to say that I did not quarrel with women, and stopped myself. The Terran concept of chivalry has no equivalent on Wolf. 

She looked at me with her dark poison-berry eyes, icy and level andamused, and said, "I will bet _shegri_ with you, unless you fear me, Rascar. "

And I knew suddenly that if I lost, I might better have trusted myselfto Kyral and his whip, or to the wild beast-things of the mountains. 

CHAPTER EIGHT

I slept little that night. 

There is a tale told in Daillon of a _shegri_ where the challenger wasleft in a room alone, where he was blindfolded and told to await thebeginning of the torment. 

Somewhere in those dark hours of waiting, between the unknown and theunexpected, the hours of telling over to himself the horrors of past_shegri_, the torture of anticipation alone became the unbearable. Alittle past noon he collapsed in screams of horror and died raving, unmarred, untouched. 

Daybreak came slowly, and with the first streamers of light came Dallisaand the white _chak_, maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way throughthe shabby poverty of the great hall. They took me to a lower dungeonwhere the slant of the sunlight was less visible. Dallisa said, "The sunhas risen. "

I said nothing. Any word may be interpreted as a confession of defeat. Iresolved to give them no excuse. But my skin crawled and I had thatpeculiar prickling sensation where the hair on my forearms wasbristling erect with tension and fear. 

Dallisa said to the _chak_, "His gear was not searched. See that he hasswallowed no anesthetic drugs. "

Briefly I gave her credit for thoroughness, even while I wondered in asplit second why I had not thought of this. Drugs could blurconsciousness, at least, or suspend reality. The white nonhuman sprangforward and pinioned my arms with one strong, spring-steel forearm. Withhis other hand he forced my jaws open. I felt the furred fingers at theback of my throat, gagged, struggled briefly and doubled up inuncontrollable retching. 

Dallisa's poison-berry-eyes regarded me levelly as I struggled upright, fighting off the dizzy sickness of disgust. Something about herimpassive face stopped me cold. I had been, momentarily, raging withfury and humiliation. Now I realized that this had been a calculated, careful gesture to make me lose my temper and thus sap my resistance. 

If she could set me to fighting, if she could make me spend my strengthin rage, my own imagination would fight on her side to make me losecontrol before the end. Swimming in the glare of her eyes, I realizedshe had never thought for a moment that I had taken any drug. Acting onKyral's hint that I was a Terran, she was taking advantage of thewell-known Terran revulsion for the nonhuman. 

"Blindfold him, " Dallisa commanded, then instantly countermanded that:"No, strip him first. "

The _chak_ ripped off shirtcloak, shirt, shoes, breeches, and I had myfirst triumph when the wealed clawmarks on my shoulders--worse, ifpossible, than those which disfigured my face--were laid bare. The_chak_ screwed up his muzzle in fastidious horror, and Dallisa lookedshaken. I could almost read her thoughts:

_If he endured this, what hope have I to make him cry mercy?_

Briefly I remembered the months I lay feverish and half dead, waitingfor the wounds Rakhal had inflicted to heal, those months when I hadbelieved that nothing would ever hurt me again, that I had known theworst of all suffering. But I had been younger then. 

Dallisa had picked up two small sharp knives. She weighed them, briefly, gesturing to the _chak_. Without resisting, I let myself bemanhandled backward, spreadeagled against the wall. 

Dallisa commanded, "Drive the knives through his palms to the wall!"

My hands twitched convulsively, anticipating the slash of steel, and mythroat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact, boundas they were not to inflict physical damage. I opened my lips to protestthis breaking of the bond of honor and met her dark blazing stare, andsuddenly the sweat broke out on my forehead. I had placed myself whollyin their hands, and as Kyral had said, they were in no way bound byhonor to respect a pledge to a Terran!

Then, as my hands clenched into fists, I forced myself to relax. Thiswas a bluff, a mental trick to needle me into breaking the pact andpleading for mercy. I set my lips, spread my palms wide against the walland waited impassively. 

She said in her lilting voice, "Take care not to sever the tendons, orhis hands would be paralyzed and he may claim we have broken ourcompact. "

The points of the steel, razor-sharp, touched my palms, and I felt bloodrun down my hand before the pain. With an effort that turned my facewhite, I did not pull away from the point. The knives drove deeper. 

Dallisa gestured to the _chak_. The knives dropped. Two pinpricks, aquarter of an inch deep, stung in my palm. I had outbluffed her. Had I?

If I had expected her to betray disappointment--and I had--I wasdisappointed. Abruptly, as if the game had wearied her already, shegestured, and I could not hold back a gasp as my arms were hauled upover my head, twisted violently around one another and trussed with thincords that bit deep into the flesh. Then the rough upward pull almostjerked my shoulders from their sockets and I heard the giant _chak_grunt with effort as I was hauled upward until my feet barely, ontiptoe, touched the floor. 

"Blindfold him, " said Dallisa languidly, "so that he cannot watch theascent of the sun or its descent or know what is to come. "

A dark softness muffled my eyes. After a little I heard her stepsretreating. My arms, wrenched overhead and numbed with the bite of thecords, were beginning to hurt badly now. But it wasn't too bad. Surelyshe did not mean that this should be all. .. . 

Sternly I controlled my imagination, taking a tight rein on my thoughts. There was only one way to meet this--hanging blind and racked in space, my toes barely scrabbling at the floor--and that was to take each thingas it came and not look ahead for an instant. First of all I tried toget my feet under me, and discovered that by arching upwards to myfullest height I could bear my weight on tiptoe and ease, a little, thedislocating ache in my armpits by slackening the overhead rope. 

But after a little, a cramping pain began to flare through the arches ofmy feet, and it became impossible to support my weight on tiptoe. Ijarred down with violent strain on my wrists and wrenched shouldersagain, and for a moment the shooting agony was so intense that I nearlyscreamed. I thought I heard a soft breath near me. 

After a little it subsided to a sharp ache, then to a dull ache, andthen to the violent cramping pain again, and once more I struggled toget my toes under me. I realized that by allowing my toes barely totouch the floor they had doubled and tripled the pain by the tantalizinghope of, if not momentary relief, at least the alteration of one painfor another. 

I haven't the faintest idea, even now, how long I repeated thatagonizing cycle: struggle for a toehold on rough stone, scraping my barefeet raw; arch upward with all my strength to release for a few momentsthe strain on my wrenched shoulders; the momentary illusion of relief asI found my balance and the pressure lightened on my wrists. 

Then the slow creeping, first of an ache, then of a pain, then of aviolent agony in the arches of feet and calves. And, delayed to the lastendurable moment, that final terrible anguish when the drop of my fullweight pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with thatbone-shattering jerk. 

I started once to estimate how much time had passed, how many hours hadcrawled by, then checked myself, for that was imminent madness. But oncethe process had begun my brain would not abandon and I found myself, with compulsive precision, counting off the seconds and the minutes ineach cycle: stretch upward, release the pressure on the arms; thebeginning of pain in calves and arches and toes; the creeping of pain upribs and loins and shoulders; the sudden jarring drop on the arms again. 

My throat was intolerably dry. Under other circumstances I might haveestimated the time by the growth of hunger and thirst, but the roughtreatment I had received made this impossible. There were other, unmentionable, humiliating pains. 

After a time, to bolster my flagging courage, I found myself thinking ofall the ways it might have been worse. I had heard of a _shegrin_exposed to the bite of poisonous--not fatal, but painfullypoisonous--insects, and to the worrying of the small gnawing rodentswhich can be trained to bite and tear. Or I might have been branded. .. . 

I banished the memory with the powerful exorcism; the man in Daillonwhose anticipation, alone, of a torture which never came, had broken hismind. There was only one way to conquer this, and that was to act as ifthe present moment was the only one, and never for a moment to forgetthat the strongest of compacts bound them not to harm me, that the endof this was fixed by sunset. 

Gradually, however, all such rational thoughts blurred in a semideliriumof thirst and pain, narrowing to a red blaze of agony across my shoulderblades. I eased up on my toes again. 

White-hot pain blazed through my feet. The rough stone on which my toessank had been covered with metal and I smelled scorching flesh, jerkingup my feet with a wordless snarl of rage and fury, hanging in agony bymy shoulders alone. 

And then I lost consciousness, at least for several moments, for when Ibecame aware again, through the nightmare of pain, my toes were restinglightly and securely on cold stone. The smell of burned flesh remained, and the painful stinging in my toes. Mingled with that smell was a driftof perfume close by. 

Dallisa murmured, "I do not wish to break our bargain by damaging yourfeet. It's only a little touch of fire to keep you from too muchsecurity in resting them. "

I felt the taste of blood mingle in my mouth with the sour taste ofvomit. I felt delirious, lightheaded. After another eternity I wonderedif I had really heard Dallisa's lilting croon or whether it was anightmare born of feverish pain:

_Plead with me. A word, only a word and I will release you, strong man, scarred man. Perhaps I shall demand only a little space in your arms. Would not such doom be light upon you? Perhaps I shall set you free toseek Rakhal if only to plague Kyral. A word, only a word from you. Aword, only a word from you. .. . _

It died into an endlessly echoing whisper. Swaying, blinded, I wonderedwhy I endured. I drew a dry tongue over lips, salty and bloody, andnightmarishly considered yielding, winning my way somehow aroundDallisa. Or knocking her suddenly senseless and escaping--I, who neednot be bound by Wolf's codes either. I fumbled with a stiff shape ofwords. 

And a breath saved me, a soft, released breath of anticipation. It wasanother trick. I swayed, limp and racked. I was not Race Cargill now. Iwas a dead man hanging in chains, swinging, filthy vultures pecking atmy dangling feet. I was. .. . 

The sound of boots rang on the stone and Kyral's voice, low and bitter, demanded somewhere behind me, "What have you done with him?"

She did not answer, but I heard her chains clash lightly and imaginedher gesture. Kyral muttered, "Women have no genius at any tortureexcept. .. . " His voice faded out into great distances. Their words cameto me over a sort of windy ringing, like the howling of lost men, dyingin the snowfast passes of the mountains. 

"Speak up, you fool, he can't hear you now. "

"If you have let him faint, you are clumsy!"

"_You_ talk of clumsiness!" Dallisa's voice, even thinned by thenightmare ringing in my head, held concentrated scorn. "Perhaps I shallrelease him, to find Rakhal when you failed! The Terrans have a price onRakhal's head, too. And at least this man will not confuse himself withhis prey!"

"If you think I would let you bargain with a _Terranan_--"

Dallisa cried passionately, "You trade with the Terrans! How would youstop me, then?"

"I trade with them because I must. But for a matter involving the honorof the Great House--"

"The Great House whose steps you would never have climbed, except forRakhal!" Dallisa sounded as if she were chewing her words in littlepieces and spitting them at Kyral. "Oh, you were clever to take us bothas your consorts! You did not know it was Rakhal's doing, did you? Hatethe Terrans, then!" She spat an obscenity at him. "Enjoy your hate, wallow in hating, and in the end all Shainsa will fall prey to theToymaker, like Miellyn. "

"If you speak that name again, " said Kyral very low, "I will kill you. "

"Like Miellyn, Miellyn, Miellyn, " Dallisa repeated deliberately. "Youfool, Rakhal knew nothing of Miellyn!"

"He was seen--"

"With _me_, you fool! With _me_! You cannot yet tell twin from twin?Rakhal came to _me_ to ask news of her!"

Kyral cried out hoarsely, like a man in anguish, "Why didn't you tellme?"

"You don't really have to ask, do you, Kyral?"

"You bitch!" said Kyral. "You filthy bitch!" I heard the sound of ablow. The next moment Kyral ripped the blindfold from my eyes and Iblinked in the blaze of light. My arms were wholly numb now, twistedabove my head, but the jar of his touch sent fresh pain racing throughme. Kyral's face swam out of the blaze of hell. "If that is true, thenthis is a damnable farce, Dallisa. You have lost our chance of learningwhat he knows of Miellyn. "

"What _he_ knows?" Dallisa lowered her hand from her face, where abruise was already darkening. 

"Miellyn has twice appeared when I was with him. Loose him, Dallisa, andbargain with him. What we know of Rakhal for what he knows of Miellyn. "

"If you think I would let you bargain with _Terranan_, " she mocked. "Weakling, this quarrel is _mine_! You fool, the others in the caravanwill give me news, if you will not! _Where is Cuinn?_"

From a million miles away Kyral laughed. "You've slipped the wrong hawk, Dallisa. The catmen killed him. " His skean flicked loose. He climbed toa perch near the rope at my wrists. "Bargain with me, Rascar!"

I coughed, unable to speak, and Kyral insisted, "Will you bargain? Endthis damned woman's farce which makes a mock of _shegri_?"

The slant of sun told me there was light left. I found a shred of voice, not knowing what I was going to say until I had said it, irrevocably. "This is between Dallisa and me. "

Kyral glared at me in mounting rage. With four strides he was out of theroom, flinging back a harsh, furious "I hope you kill each other!" andthe door slammed. 

Dallisa's face swam red, and again as before, I knew the battle whichwas joined between us would be fought to a dreadful end. She touched mychest lightly, but the touch jolted excruciating pain through myshoulders. 

"Did you kill Cuinn?"

I wondered, wearily, what this presaged. 

"Did you?" In a passion, she cried, "Answer! Did you kill him?" Shestruck me hard, and where the touch had been pain, the blow was a blazeof white agony. I fainted. 

"Answer!" She struck me again and the white blaze jolted me back toconsciousness. "Answer me! Answer!" Each cry bought a blow until Igasped finally, "He signaled . .. Set catmen on us. .. . "

"No!" She stood staring at me and her white face was a death mask inwhich the eyes lived. She screamed wildly and the huge _chak_ camerunning. 

"Cut him down! Cut him down! Cut him down!"

A knife slashed the rope and I slumped, falling in a bone-breakinghuddle to the floor. My arms were still twisted over my head. The _chak_cut the ropes apart, pulled my arms roughly back into place, and Igagged with the pain as the blood began flowing painfully through thechafed and swollen hands. 

And then I lost consciousness. More or less permanently, this time. 

CHAPTER NINE

When I came to again I was lying with my head in Dallisa's lap, and thereddish color of sunset was in the room. Her thighs were soft under myhead, and for an instant I wondered if, in delirium, I had conceded toher. I muttered, "Sun . .. Not down. .. . "

She bent her face to mine, whispering, "Hush. Hush. "

It was heaven, and I drifted off again. After a moment I felt a cupagainst my lips. 

"Can you swallow this?"

I could and did. I couldn't taste it yet, but it was cold and wet andfelt heavenly trickling down my throat. She bent and looked into myeyes, and I felt as if I were falling into those reddish and stormydepths. She touched my scarred mouth with a light finger. Suddenly myhead cleared and I sat upright. 

"Is this a trick to force me into calling my bet?"

She recoiled as if I had struck her, then the trace of a smile flittedaround her red mouth. Yes, between us it was battle. "You are right tobe suspicious, I suppose. But if I tell you what I know of Rakhal, willyou trust me then?"

I looked straight at her and said, "No. "

Surprisingly, she threw back her head and laughed. I flexed my freedwrists cautiously. The skin was torn away and chafed, and my arms achedto the bone. When I moved harsh lances of pain drove through my chest. 

"Well, until sunset I have no right to ask you to trust me, " saidDallisa when she had done laughing. "And since you are bound by mycommand until the last ray has fallen, I command that you lay your headupon my knees. "

I blazed, "You are making a game of me!"

"Is that my privilege? Do you refuse?"

"Refuse?" It was not yet sunset. This might be a torture more complexthan any which had yet greeted me. From the scarlet glint in her eyes Ifelt she was playing with me, as the cat-things of the forest play withtheir helpless victims. My mouth twitched in a grimace of humiliation asI lowered myself obediently until my head rested on her fur-clad knees. 

She murmured, smiling, "Is this so unbearable, then?"

I said nothing. Never, never for an instant could I forget that--allhuman, all woman as she seemed--Dallisa's race was worn and old when theTerran Empire had not left their home star. The mind of Wolf, which hasmingled with the nonhuman since before the beginnings of recorded time, is unfathomable to an outsider. I was better equipped than most Earthmento keep pace with its surface acts, but I could never pretend tounderstand its deeper motivations. 

It works on complex and irrational logic. Mischief is an integral partof it. Even the deadly blood-feud with Rakhal had begun with anoverelaborate practical joke--which had lost the Service, incidentally, several thousand credits worth of spaceship. 

And so I could not trust Dallisa for an instant. Yet it was wonderful tolie here with my head resting against the perfumed softness of her body. 

Then suddenly her arms were gripping me, frantic and hungry; the subduedthing in her voice, her eyes, flamed out hot and wild. She was pressingthe whole length of her body to mine, breasts and thighs and long legs, and her voice was hoarse. 

"Is this torture too?"

Beneath the fur robe she was soft and white, and the subtle scent of herhair seemed a deeper entrapment than any. Frail as she seemed, her armshad the strength of steel, and pain blazed down my wrenched shoulders, seared through the twisted wrists. Then I forgot the pain. 

Over her shoulder the last dropping redness of the sun vanished andplunged the room into orchid twilight. 

I caught her wrists in my hands, prizing them backward, twisting themupward over her head. I said thickly, "The sun's down. " And then Istopped her wild mouth with mine. 

And I knew that the battle between us had reached climax and victorysimultaneously, and any question about who had won it was purelyacademic. 

 * * * * *

During the night sometime, while her dark head lay motionless on myshoulder, I found myself staring into the darkness, wakeful. Thethrobbing of my bruises had little to do with my sleeplessness; I wasremembering other chained girls from the old days in the Dry-towns, andthe honey and poison of them distilled into Dallisa's kisses. Her headwas very light on my shoulders, and she felt curiously insubstantial, like a woman of feathers. 

One of the tiny moons was visible through the slitted windows. I thoughtof my rooms in the Terran Trade City, clean and bright and warm, and allthe nights when I had paced the floor, hating, filled to the teeth withbitterness, longing for the windswept stars of the Dry-towns, the saltsmell of the winds and the musical clashing of the walk of the chainedwomen. 

With a sting of guilt, I realized that I had half forgotten Juli and mypledge to her and her misfortune which had freed me again, for this. 

Yet I had won, and what they knew had narrowed my planet-wide search toa pinpoint. Rakhal was in Charin. 

I wasn't altogether surprised. Charin is the only city on Wolf, exceptthe Kharsa, where the Terran Empire has put down deep roots into theplanet, built a Trade City, a smaller spaceport. Like the Kharsa, itlies within the circle of Terran law--and a million miles outside it. 

A nonhuman town, inhabited largely by _chaks_, it is the core and centerof the resistance movement, a noisy town in a perpetual ferment. It wasthe logical place for a renegade. I settled myself so that the ache inmy racked shoulders was less violent, and muttered, "Why Charin?"

Slight as the movement was, it roused Dallisa. She rolled over andpropped herself on her elbows, quoting drowsily, "The prey walks safestat the hunter's door. "

I stared at the square of violet moonlight, trying to fit together allthe pieces of the puzzle, and asked half aloud, "What prey and whathunters?"

Dallisa didn't answer. I hadn't expected her to answer. I asked the realquestion in my mind: "Why does Kyral hate Rakhal Sensar, when he doesn'teven know him by sight?"

"There are reasons, " she said somberly. "One of them is Miellyn, my twinsister. Kyral climbed the steps of the Great House by claiming us bothas his consorts. He is our father's son by another wife. "

That explained much. Brother-and-sister marriages, not uncommon in theDry-towns, are based on expediency and suspicion, and are frequently, though not always loveless. It explained Dallisa's taunts, and it partlyexplained, only partly, why I found her in my arms. It did not explainRakhal's part in this mysterious intrigue, nor why Kyral had taken mefor Rakhal, (but only after he remembered seeing me in Terran clothing). 

I wondered why it had never occurred to me before that I might bemistaken for Rakhal. There was no close resemblance between us, but acasual description would apply equally well to me or to Rakhal. Myheight is unusual for a Terran--within an inch of Rakhal's own--and wehad roughly the same build, the same coloring. I had copied his walk, imitated his mannerisms, since we were boys together. 

And, blurring minor facial characteristics, there were the scars of the_kifirgh_ on my mouth, cheeks, and shoulders. Anyone who did not know usby sight, anyone who had known us by reputation from the days when wehad worked together in the Dry-towns, might easily take one of us forthe other. Even Juli had blurted, "You're so much like--" beforethinking better of it. 

Other odd bits of the puzzle floated in my mind, stubbornly refusing totake on recognizable patterns, the disappearance of a toy-seller; Juli'shysterical babbling; the way the girl--Miellyn?--had vanished into ashrine of Nebran; and the taunts of Dallisa and the old man about amysterious "Toymaker. " And something, some random joggling of a memory, in that eerie trading in the city of the Silent Ones. I knew all thesethings fitted together somehow, but I had no real hope that Dallisacould complete their pattern for me. 

She said, with a vehemence that startled me, "Miellyn is only theexcuse! Kyral hates Rakhal because Rakhal will compromise and becausehe'll fight!"

She rolled over and pressed herself against me in the darkness. Hervoice trembled. "Race, our world is dying. We can't stand against Terra. And there are other things, worse things. "

I sat up, surprised to find myself defending Terra to this girl. Afterall these years I was back in my own world. And yet I heard myself sayquietly, "The Terrans aren't exploiting Wolf. We haven't abolished therule of Shainsa. We've changed nothing. "

It was true. Terra held Wolf by compact, not conquest. They paid, andpaid generously, for the lease of the lands where their Trade Citieswould rise, and stepped beyond them only when invited to do so. 

"We let any city or state that wants to keep its independence governitself until it collapses, Dallisa. And they do collapse after ageneration or so. Very few primitive planets can hold out against us. The people themselves get tired of living under feudal or theocraticsystems, and they beg to be taken into the Empire. That's all. "

"But that's just it, " Dallisa argued. "You give the people all thosethings we used to give them, and you do it better. Just by being here, you are killing the Dry-towns. They're turning to you and leaving us, and you let them do it. "

I shook my head. "We've kept the Terran Peace for centuries. What do youexpect? Should we give you arms, planes, bombs, weapons to hold yourslaves down?"

"Yes!" she flared at me. "The Dry-towns have ruled Wolfsince--since--you, you can't even imagine how long! And we made compactwith you to trade here--"

"And we have rewarded you by leaving you untouched, " I said quietly. "But we have not forbidden the Dry-towns to come into the Empire andwork with Terra. "

She said bitterly, "Men like Kyral will die first, " and pressed her facehelplessly against me. "And I will die with them. Miellyn broke away, but I cannot! Courage is what I lack. Our world is rotten, Race, rottenall through, and I'm as rotten as the core of it. I could have killedyou today, and I'm here in your arms. Our world is rotten, but I've noconfidence that the new world will be better!"

I put my hand under her chin, and looked down gravely into her face, only a pale oval in the darkness. There was nothing I could say; she hadsaid it all, and truthfully. I had hated and yearned and starved forthis, and when I found it, it turned salty and bloody on my lips, likeDallisa's despairing kisses. She ran her fingers over the scars on myface, then gripped her small thin hands around my wrists so fiercelythat I grunted protest. 

"You will not forget me, " she said in her strangely lilting voice. "Youwill not forget me, although you were victorious. " She twisted and laylooking up at me, her eyes glowing faintly luminous in darkness. I knewthat she could see me as clearly as if it were day. "I think it was myvictory, not yours, Race Cargill. "

Gently, on an impulse I could not explain, I picked up one delicatewrist, then the other, unclasping the heavy jeweled bracelets. She letout a stifled cry of dismay. And then I tossed the chains into a cornerbefore I drew her savagely into my arms again and forced her head backunder my mouth. 

 * * * * *

I said good-bye to her alone, in the reddish, windswept space before theGreat House. She pressed her head against my shoulder and whispered, "Race, take me with you!"

For answer I only picked up her narrow wrists and turned them over on mypalm. The jeweled bracelets were clasped again around the thinly bonedjoints, and on some self-punishing impulse she had shortened the chainsso that she could not even put her arms around me. I lifted the punishedwrists to my mouth and kissed them gently. 

"You don't want to leave, Dallisa. "

I was desperately sorry for her. She would go down with her dying world, proud and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and Itasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me, shakenwith tearing, convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into theshadow of the great dark house. 

I never saw her again. 

CHAPTER TEN

A few days later I found myself nearing the end of the trail. 

It was twilight in Charin, hot and reeking with the gypsy glare of fireswhich burned, smoking, at the far end of the Street of the SixShepherds. I crouched in the shadow of a wall, waiting. 

My skin itched from the dirty shirtcloak I hadn't changed in days. Shabbiness is wise in nonhuman parts, and Dry-towners think too much ofwater to waste much of it in superfluous washing anyhow. I scratchedunobtrusively and glanced cautiously down the street. 

It seemed empty, except for a few sodden derelicts sprawled indoorways--the Street of the Six Shepherds is a filthy slum--but I madesure my skean was loose. Charin is not a particularly safe town, evenfor Dry-towners, and especially not for Earthmen, at any time. 

Even with what Dallisa had told me, the search had been difficult. Charin is not Shainsa. In Charin, where human and nonhuman live closertogether than anywhere else on the planet, information about such men asRakhal can be bought, but the policy is to let the buyer beware. That'sfair enough, because the life of the seller has a way of not being worthmuch afterward, either. 

A dirty, dust-laden wind was blowing up along the street, heavy withstrange smells. The pungent reek of incense from a street-shrine was inthe smells. The heavy, acrid odor that made my skin crawl. In the hillsbehind Charin, the Ghost Wind was rising. 

Borne on this wind, the Ya-men would sweep down from the mountains, andeverything human or nearly human would scatter in their path. They wouldrange through the quarter all night, and in the morning they would meltaway, until the Ghost Wind blew again. At any other time, I wouldalready have taken cover. I fancied that I could hear, borne on thewind, the faraway yelping, and envision the plumed, taloned figureswhich would come leaping down the street. 

In that moment, the quiet of the street split asunder. 

From somewhere a girl's voice screamed in shrill pain or panic. Then Isaw her, dodging between two of the chinked pebble-houses. She was achild, thin and barefoot, a long tangle of black hair flying loose asshe darted and twisted to elude the lumbering fellow at her heels. Hisoutstretched paw jerked cruelly at her slim wrist. 

The little girl screamed and wrenched herself free and threw herselfstraight on me, wrapping herself around my neck with the violence of astorm wind. Her hair got in my mouth and her small hands gripped at myback like a cat's flexed claws. 

"Oh, help me, " she gasped between sobs. "Don't let him get me, don't. "And even in that broken plea I took it in that the little ragamuffin didnot speak the jargon of that slum, but the pure speech of Shainsa. 

What I did then was as automatic as if it had been Juli. I pulled thekid loose, shoved her behind me, and scowled at the brute who lurchedtoward us. 

"Make yourself scarce, " I advised. "We don't chase little girls where Icome from. Haul off, now. "

The man reeled. I smelled the rankness of his rags as he thrust onegrimy paw at the girl. I never was the hero type, but I'd startedsomething which I had to carry through. I thrust myself between them andput my hand on the skean again. 

"You--you Dry-towner. " The man set up a tipsy howl, and I sucked in mybreath. Now I was in for it. Unless I got out of there damned fast, I'dlose what I'd come all the way to Charin to find. 

I felt like handing the girl over. For all I knew, the bully could beher father and she was properly in line for a spanking. This wasn't anyof my business. My business lay at the end of the street, where Rakhalwas waiting at the fires. He wouldn't be there long. Already the smellof the Ghost Wind was heavy and harsh, and little flurries of sand wentracing along the street, lifting the flaps of the doorways. 

But I did nothing so sensible. The big lunk made a grab at the girl, andI whipped out my skean and pantomimed. 

"Get going!"

"Dry-towner!" He spat out the word like filth, his pig-eyes narrowing toslits. "Son of the Ape! _Earthman!_"

"_Terranan!_" Someone took up the howl. There was a stir, a rustle, allalong the street that had seemed empty, and from nowhere, it seemed, thespace in front of me was crowded with shadowy forms, human andotherwise. 

"Earthman!"

I felt the muscles across my belly knotting into a band of ice. I didn'tbelieve I'd given myself away as an Earthman. The bully was using thetime-dishonored tactic of stirring up a riot in a hurry, but just thesame I looked quickly round, hunting a path of escape. 

"Put your skean in his guts, Spilkar! Grab him!"

"Hai-ai! Earthman! _Hai-ai!_"

It was the last cry that made me panic. Through the sultry glare at theend of the street, I could see the plumed, taloned figures of theYa-men, gliding through the banners of smoke. The crowd melted open. 

I didn't stop to reflect on the fact--suddenly very obvious--that Rakhalcouldn't have been at the fires at all, and that my informant had led meinto an open trap, a nest of Ya-men already inside Charin. The crowdedged back and muttered, and suddenly I made my choice. I whirled, snatched up the girl in my arms and ran straight toward the advancingfigures of the Ya-men. 

Nobody followed me. I even heard a choked shout that sounded like awarning. I heard the yelping shrieks of the Ya-men grow to a wild howl, and at the last minute, when their stiff rustling plumes loomed only afew yards away, I dived sidewise into an alley, stumbled on some rubbishand spilled the girl down. 

"Run, kid!"

She shook herself like a puppy climbing out of water. Her small fingersclosed like a steel trap on my wrist. "This way, " she urged in a hastywhisper, and I found myself plunging out the far end of the alley andinto the shelter of a street-shrine. The sour stink of incense smartedin my nostrils, and I could hear the yelping of the Ya-men as theyleaped and rustled down the alley, their cold and poisonous eyessearching out the recess where I crouched with the girl. 

"Here, " she panted, "stand close to me on the stone--" I drew back, startled. 

"Oh, don't stop to argue, " she whimpered. "Come _here_!"

"_Hai-ai!_ Earthman! There he is!"

The girl's arms flung round me again. I felt her slight, hard bodypressing on mine and she literally hauled me toward the pattern ofstones at the center of the shrine. I wouldn't have been human if Ihadn't caught her closer yet. 

The world reeled. The street disappeared in a cone of spinning lights, stars danced crazily, and I plunged down through a widening gulf ofempty space, locked in the girl's arms. I fell, spun, plunged head overheels through tilting lights and shadows that flung us througheternities of freefall. The yelping of the Ya-men whirled away inunimaginable distances, and for a second I felt the unmerciful blackoutof a power dive, with blood breaking from my nostrils and filling mymouth. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lights flared in my eyes. 

I was standing solidly on my feet in the street-shrine, but the streetwas gone. Coils of incense still smudged the air. The God squattedtoadlike in his recess. The girl was hanging limp, locked in my clenchedarms. As the floor straightened under my feet I staggered, thrown offbalance by the sudden return of the girl's weight, and grabbed blindlyfor support. 

"Give her to me, " said a voice, and the girl's sagging body was liftedfrom my arms. A strong hand grasped my elbow. I found a chair beneath myknees and sank gratefully into it. 

"The transmission isn't smooth yet between such distant terminals, " thevoice remarked. "I see Miellyn has fainted again. A weakling, the girl, but useful. "

I spat blood, trying to get the room in focus. For I was inside a room, a room of some translucent substance, windowless, a skylight high aboveme, through which pink daylight streamed. Daylight--and it had beenmidnight in Charin! I'd come halfway around the planet in a few seconds!

From somewhere I heard the sound of hammering, tiny, bell-likehammering, the chiming of a fairy anvil. I looked up and saw a man--aman?--watching me. 

On Wolf you see all kinds of human, half-human and nonhuman life, and Iconsider myself something of an expert on all three. But I had neverseen anyone, or anything, who so closely resembled the human and soobviously wasn't. He, or it, was tall and lean, man-shaped but oddlymuscled, a vague suggestion of something less than human in the leanhunch of his posture. 

Manlike, he wore green tight-fitting trunks and a shirt of green furthat revealed bulging biceps where they shouldn't be, and angular planeswhere there should have been swelling muscles. The shoulders were high, the neck unpleasantly sinuous, and the face, a little narrower thanhuman, was handsomely arrogant, with a kind of wary alert mischief thatwas the least human thing about him. 

He bent, tilted the girl's inert body on to a divan of some sort, andturned his back on her, lifting his hand in an impatient, andunpleasantly reminiscent, gesture. 

The tinkling of the little hammers stopped as if a switch had beendisconnected. 

"Now, " said the nonhuman, "we can talk. "

Like the waif, he spoke Shainsan, and spoke it with a better accent thanany nonhuman I had ever known--so well that I looked again to becertain. I wasn't too dazed to answer in the same tongue, but I couldn'tkeep back a spate of questions:

"What happened? Who are you? What is this place?"

The nonhuman waited, crossing his hands--quite passable hands, if youdidn't look too closely at what should have been nails--and bent forwardin a sketchy gesture. 

"Do not blame Miellyn. She acted under orders. It was imperative you bebrought here tonight, and we had reason to believe you might ignore anordinary summons. You were clever at evading our surveillance, for atime. But there would not be two Dry-towners in Charin tonight who woulddare the Ghost Wind. Your reputation does you justice, Rakhal Sensar. "

_Rakhal Sensar!_ Once again Rakhal!

Shaken, I pulled a rag from my pocket and wiped blood from my mouth. I'dfigured out, in Shainsa, why the mistake was logical. And here in CharinI'd been hanging around in Rakhal's old haunts, covering his old trails. Once again, mistaken identity was natural. 

Natural or not, I wasn't going to deny it. If these were Rakhal'senemies, my real identity should be kept as an ace in reserve whichmight--just might--get me out alive again. If they were his friends . .. Well, I could only hope that no one who knew him well by sight wouldwalk in on me. 

"We knew, " the nonhuman continued, "that if you remained where youwere, the _Terranan_ Cargill would have made his arrest. We know aboutyour quarrel with Cargill, among other things, but we did not considerit necessary that you should fall into his hands at present. "

I was puzzled. "I still don't understand. Exactly where am I?"

"This is the mastershrine of Nebran. "

_Nebran!_

The stray pieces of the puzzle suddenly jolted into place. Kyral hadwarned me, not knowing he was doing it. I hastily imitated the gestureKyral had made, gabbling a few words of an archaic charm. 

Like every Earthman who's lived on Wolf more than a tourist season, I'dseen faces go blank and impassive at mention of the Toad God. Rumor madehis spies omnipresent, his priests omniscient, his anger all-powerful. Ihad believed about a tenth of what I had heard, or less. 

The Terran Empire has little to say to planetary religions, and Nebran'scult is a remarkably obscure one, despite the street-shrines on everycorner. Now I was in his mastershrine, and the device which had broughtme here was beyond doubt a working model of a matter transmitter. 

A matter transmitter, a working model--the words triggered memory. Rakhal was after it. 

"And who, " I asked slowly, "are you, Lord?"

The green-clad creature hunched thin shoulders again in a ceremoniousgesture. "I am called Evarin. Humble servant of Nebran and yourself, " headded, but there was no humility in his manner. "I am called theToymaker. "

_Evarin. _ That was another name given weight by rumor. A breath ofgossip in a thieves market. A scrawled word on smudged paper. A blankfolder in Terran Intelligence. Another puzzle-piece snapped intoplace--_Toymaker_!

The girl on the divan sat up suddenly passing slim hands over herdisheveled hair. "Did I faint, Evarin? I had to fight to get him intothe stone, and the patterns were not set straight in that terminal. Youmust send one of the Little Ones to set them to rights. Toymaker, youare not listening to me. "

"Stop chattering, Miellyn, " said Evarin indifferently. "You brought himhere, and that is all that matters. You aren't hurt?"

Miellyn pouted and looked ruefully at her bare bruised feet, patted thewrinkles in her ragged frock with fastidious fingers. "My poor feet, "she mourned, "they are black and blue with the cobbles and my hair isfilled with sand and tangles! Toymaker, what way was this to send me toentice a man? Any man would have come quickly, quickly, if he had seenme looking lovely, but you--you send me in rags!"

She stamped a small bare foot. She was not merely as young as she hadlooked in the street. Though immature and underdeveloped by Terranstandards, she had a fair figure for a Dry-town woman. Her rags fell nowin graceful folds. Her hair was spun black glass, and I--I saw what therags and the confusion in the filthy street had kept me from seeingbefore. 

It was the girl of the spaceport cafe, the girl who had appeared andvanished in the eerie streets of Canarsa. 

Evarin was regarding her with what, in a human, might have been ruefulimpatience. He said, "You know you enjoyed yourself, as always, Miellyn. Run along and make yourself beautiful again, little nuisance. "

The girl danced out of the room, and I was just as glad to see her go. The Toymaker motioned to me. 

"This way, " he directed, and led me through a different door. Theoffstage hammering I had heard, tiny bell tones like a fairy xylophone, began again as the door opened, and we passed into a workroom which mademe remember nursery tales from a half-forgotten childhood on Terra. Forthe workers were tiny, gnarled _trolls_!

They were _chaks_. _Chaks_ from the polar mountains, dwarfed and furredand half-human, with witchlike faces and great golden eyes, and I hadthe curious feeling that if I looked hard enough I would see the littletoy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa. I didn't look. I figured Iwas in enough trouble already. 

Tiny hammers pattered on miniature anvils in a tinkling, jingling chorusof musical clinks and taps. Golden eyes focused like lenses over winkingjewels and gimcracks. Busy elves. Makers of toys!

Evarin jerked his shoulders with an imperative gesture. I followed himthrough a fairy workroom, but could not refrain from casting a lingeringlook at the worktables. A withered leprechaun set eyes into the head ofa minikin hound. Furred fingers worked precious metals into invisiblefiligree for the collarpiece of a dancing doll. Metallic feathers werethrust with clockwork precision into the wings of a skeleton bird nolonger than my fingernail. The nose of the hound wabbled and sniffed, the bird's wings quivered, the eyes of the little dancer followed myfootsteps. 

Toys?

"This way, " Evarin rapped, and a door slid shut behind us. The clinksand taps grew faint, fainter, but never ceased. 

My face must have betrayed more than conventional impassivity, forEvarin smiled. "Now you know, Rakhal, why I am called Toymaker. Is itnot strange--the masterpriest of Nebran, a maker of Toys, and the shrineof the Toad God a workshop for children's playthings?"

Evarin paused suggestively. They were obviously not children'splaythings and this was my cue to say so, but I avoided the trap. Evarinopened a sliding panel and took out a doll. 

She was perhaps the length of my longest finger, molded to the preciseproportions of a woman, and costumed after the bizarre fashion of theArdcarran dancing girls. Evarin touched no button or key that I couldsee, but when he set the figure on its feet, it executed a whirling, armtossing dance in a fast, tricky tempo. 

"I am, in a sense, benevolent, " Evarin murmured. He snapped his fingersand the doll sank to her knees and poised there, silent. "Moreover, Ihave the means and, let us say, the ability to indulge my smallfantasies. 

"The little daughter of the President of the Federation of Trade Citieson Samarra was sent such a doll recently. What a pity that PaoloArimengo was so suddenly impeached and banished!" The Toymaker cluckedhis teeth commiseratingly. "Perhaps this small companion will compensatethe little Carmela for her adjustment to her new . .. Position. "

He replaced the dancer and pulled down something like a whirligig. "Thismight interest you, " he mused, and set it spinning. I stared at thepattern of lights that flowed and disappeared, melting in and out ofvisible shadows. Suddenly I realized what the thing was doing. Iwrested my eyes away with an effort. Had there been a lapse of secondsor minutes? Had Evarin spoken?

Evarin arrested the compelling motion with one finger. "Several of thesepretty playthings are available to the children of important men, " hesaid absently. "An import of value for our exploited and impoverishedworld. Unfortunately they are, perhaps, a little . .. Ah, obvious. Theincidence of nervous breakdowns is, ah, interfering with their sale. Thechildren, of course, are unaffected, and love them. " Evarin set thehypnotic wheel moving again, glanced sidewise at me, then set itcarefully back. 

"Now"--Evarin's voice, hard with the silkiness of a cat's snarl, clawedthe silence--"we'll talk business. "

I turned, composing my face. Evarin had something concealed in one hand, but I didn't think it was a weapon. And if I'd known, I'd have had toignore it anyway. 

"Perhaps you wonder how we recognized and found you?" A panel cleared inthe wall and became translucent. Confused flickers moved, dropped intofocus and I realized that the panel was an ordinary television screenand I was looking into the well-known interior of the Cafe of ThreeRainbows in the Trade City of Charin. 

By this time I was running low on curiosity and didn't wonder till much, much later how televised pictures were transmitted around the curve of aplanet. Evarin sharpened the focus down on the long Earth-type bar wherea tall man in Terran clothes was talking to a pale-haired girl. Evarinsaid, "By now, Race Cargill has decided, no doubt, that you fell intohis trap and into the hands of the Ya-men. He is off-guard now. "

And suddenly the whole thing seemed so unbearably, illogically funnythat my shoulders shook with the effort to keep back dangerous laughter. Since I'd landed in Charin, I'd taken great pains to avoid the TradeCity, or anyone who might have associated me with it. And Rakhal, somehow aware of this, had conveniently filled up the gap. By posing asme. 

It wasn't nearly as difficult as it sounded. I had found that out inShainsa. Charin is a long, long way from the major Trade City near theKharsa. I hadn't a single intimate friend there, or within hundreds ofmiles, to see through the imposture. At most, there were half a dozen ofthe staff that I'd once met, or had a drink with, eight or ten yearsago. 

Rakhal could speak perfect Standard when he chose; if he lapsed intoDry-town idiom, that too was in my known character. I had no doubt hewas making a great success of it all, probably doing much better with myidentity than I could ever have done with his. 

Evarin rasped, "Cargill meant to leave the planet. What stopped him? Youcould be of use to us, Rakhal. But not with this blood-feud unsettled. "

That needed no elucidation. No Wolfan in his right mind will bargainwith a Dry-towner carrying an unresolved blood-feud. By law and custom, declared blood-feud takes precedence over any other business, public orprivate, and is sufficient excuse for broken promises, neglected duties, theft, even murder. 

"We want it settled once and for all. " Evarin's voice was low andunhurried. "And we aren't above weighting the scales. This Cargill can, and has, posed as a Dry-towner, undetected. We don't like Earthmen whocan do that. In settling your feud, you will be aiding us, and removinga danger. We would be . .. Grateful. "

He opened his closed hand, displaying something small, curled, inert. 

"Every living thing emits a characteristic pattern of electrical nerveimpulses. We have ways of recording those impulses, and we have had youand Cargill under observation for a long time. We've had plenty ofopportunity to key this Toy to Cargill's pattern. "

On his palm the curled thing stirred, spread wings. A fledgling bird laythere, small soft body throbbing slightly. Half-hidden in a ruff ofmetallic feathers I glimpsed a grimly elongated beak. The pinions werefeathered with delicate down less than a quarter of an inch long. Theybeat with delicate insistence against the Toymaker's prisoning fingers. 

"This is not dangerous to you. Press here"--he showed me--"and if RaceCargill is within a certain distance--and it is up to you to be _within_that distance--it will find him, and kill him. Unerringly, inescapably, untraceably. We will not tell you the critical distance. And we willgive you three days. "

He checked my startled exclamation with a gesture. "Of course this is atest. Within the hour Cargill will receive a warning. We want noincompetents who must be helped too much! Nor do we want cowards! If youfail, or release the bird at a distance too great, or evade thetest"--the green inhuman malice in his eyes made me sweat--"we have madeanother bird. "

By now my brain was swimming, but I thought I understood the complexinhuman logic involved. "The other bird is keyed to me?"

With slow contempt Evarin shook his head. "You? You are used to dangerand fond of a gamble. Nothing so simple! We have given you three days. If, within that time, the bird you carry has not killed, the other birdwill fly. And it will kill. Rakhal, you have a wife. "

Yes, Rakhal had a wife. They could threaten Rakhal's wife. And his wifewas my sister Juli. 

Everything after that was anticlimax. Of course I had to drink withEvarin, the elaborate formal ritual without which no bargain on Wolf isconcluded. He entertained me with gory and technical descriptions of theway in which the birds, and other of his hellish Toys, did theirkilling, and worse tasks. 

Miellyn danced into the room and upset the exquisite solemnity of thewine-ritual by perching on my knee, stealing a sip from my cup, andpouting prettily when I paid her less attention than she thought shemerited. I didn't dare pay much attention, even when she whispered, withthe deliberate and thorough wantonness of a Dry-town woman of high-castewho has flung aside her fetters, something about a rendezvous at theThree Rainbows. 

But eventually it was over and I stepped through a door that twistedwith a giddy blankness, and found myself outside a bare windowless wallin Charin again, the night sky starred and cold. The acrid smell of theGhost Wind was thinning in the streets, but I had to crouch in a crannyof the wall when a final rustling horde of Ya-men, the last of theirreceding tide, rustled down the street. I found my way to my lodging ina filthy _chak_ hostel, and threw myself down on the verminous bed. 

Believe it or not, I slept. 

CHAPTER TWELVE

An hour before dawn there was a noise in my room. I roused, my hand onmy skean. Someone or something was fumbling under the mattress where Ihad thrust Evarin's bird. I struck out, encountered something warm andbreathing, and grappled with it in the darkness. A foul-smellingsomething gripped over my mouth. I tore it away and struck hard with theskean. There was a high shrilling. The gripping filth loosened and fellaway and something died on the floor. 

I struck a light, retching in revulsion. It hadn't been human. Therewouldn't have been that much blood from a human. Not that color, either. 

The _chak_ who ran the place came and gibbered at me. _Chaks_ have ahorror of blood and this one gave me to understand that my lease was upthen and there, no arguments, no refunds. He wouldn't even let me gointo his stone outbuilding to wash the foul stuff from my shirtcloak. Igave up and fished under the mattress for Evarin's Toy. 

The _chak_ got a glimpse of the embroideries on the silk in which it waswrapped, and stood back, his loose furry lips hanging open, while Igathered my few belongings together and strode out of the room. He wouldnot touch the coins I offered; I laid them on a chest and he let themlie there, and as I went into the reddening morning they came flyingafter me into the street. 

I pulled the silk from the Toy and tried to make some sense from mypredicament. The little thing lay innocent and silent in my palm. Itwouldn't tell me whether it had been keyed to me, the real Cargill, sometime in the past, or to Rakhal, using my name and reputation in theTerran Colony here at Charin. 

If I pressed the stud it might play out this comedy of errors by huntingdown Rakhal, and all my troubles would be over. For a while, at least, until Evarin found out what had happened. I didn't deceive myself that Icould carry the impersonation through another meeting. 

On the other hand, if I pressed the stud, the bird might turn on me. Andthen all my troubles would be over for good. 

If I delayed past Evarin's deadline, and did nothing, the other bird inhis keeping would hunt down Juli and give her a swift and not toopainless death. 

I spent most of the day in a _chak_ dive, juggling plans. Toys, innocentand sinister. Spies, messengers. Toys which killed horribly. Toys whichcould be controlled, perhaps, by the pliant mind of a child, and everychild hates its parents now and again!

Even in the Terran colony, who was safe? In Mack's very home, one of theMagnusson youngsters had a shiny thing which might, or might not, be oneof Evarin's hellish Toys. Or was I beginning to think like asuperstitious Dry-towner?

Damn it, Evarin couldn't be infallible; he hadn't even recognized me asRace Cargill! Or--suddenly the sweat broke out, again, on myforehead--_or had he_? Had the whole thing been one of those sinister, deadly and incomprehensible nonhuman jokes?

I kept coming to the same conclusion. Juli was in danger, but she washalf a world away. Rakhal was here in Charin. There was a childinvolved--Juli's child. The first step was to get inside the Terrancolony and see how the land lay. 

Charin is a city shaped like a crescent moon, encircling the small TradeCity: a miniature spaceport, a miniature skyscraper HQ, the clustereddwellings of the Terrans who worked there, and those who lived with themand supplied them with necessities, services and luxuries. 

Entry from one to the other is through a guarded gateway, since this ishostile territory, and Charin lies far beyond the impress of ordinaryTerran law. But the gate stood wide-open, and the guards looked lax andbored. They had shockers, but they didn't look as if they'd used themlately. 

One raised an eyebrow at his companion as I shambled up. I could prettywell guess the impression I made, dirty, unkempt and stained withnonhuman blood. I asked permission to go into the Terran Zone. 

They asked my name and business, and I toyed with the notion of givingthe name of the man I was inadvertently impersonating. Then I decidedthat if Rakhal had passed himself off as Race Cargill, he'd expectexactly that. And he was also capable of the masterstroke ofimpudence--putting out a pickup order, through Spaceforce, for his ownname!

So I gave the name we'd used from Shainsa to Charin, and tacked one ofthe Secret Service passwords on the end of it. They looked at each otheragain and one said, "Rascar, eh? This is the guy, all right. " He took meinto the little booth by the gate while the other used an intercomdevice. Presently they took me along into the HQ building, and into anoffice that said "Legate. "

I tried not to panic, but it wasn't easy! Evidently I'd walked squareinto another trap. One guard asked me, "All right, now, what exactly isyour business in the Trade City?"

I'd hoped to locate Rakhal first. Now I knew I'd have no chance and atall costs I must straighten out this matter of identity before it wentany further. 

"Put me straight through to Magnusson's office, Level 38 at Central HQ, by visi, " I demanded. I was trying to remember if Mack had ever evenheard the name we used in Shainsa. I decided I couldn't risk it. "Nameof Race Cargill. "

The guard grinned without moving. He said to his partner, "That's theone, all right. " He put a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around. 

"Haul off, man. Shake your boots. "

There were two of them, and Spaceforce guards aren't picked for theirgood looks. Just the same, I gave a pretty good account of myself untilthe inner door opened and a man came storming out. 

"What the devil is all this racket?"

One guard got a hammerlock on me. "This Dry-towner bum tried to talk usinto making a priority call to Magnusson, the Chief at Central. He knewa couple of the S. S. Passwords. That's what got him through the gate. Remember, Cargill passed the word that somebody would turn up trying toimpersonate him. "

"I remember. " The strange man's eyes were wary and cold. 

"You damned fools, " I snarled. "Magnusson will identify me! Can't yourealize you're dealing with an impostor?"

One of the guards said to the legate in an undertone, "Maybe we ought tohold him as a suspicious character. " But the legate shook his head. "Notworth the trouble. Cargill said it was a private affair. You mightsearch him, make sure he's not concealing contraband weapons, " he added, and talked softly to the wide-eyed clerk in the background while theguards went through my shirtcloak and pockets. 

When they started to unwrap the silk-shrouded Toy I yelled--if the thinggot set off accidentally, there'd be trouble. The legate turned andrebuked, "Can't you see it's embroidered with the Toad God? It's areligious amulet of some sort, let it alone. "

They grumbled, but gave it back to me, and the legate commanded, "Don'tmess him up any more. Give him back his knife and take him to the gates. But make sure he doesn't come back. "

I found myself seized and frog-marched to the gate. One guard pushed myskean back into its clasp. The other shoved me hard, and I stumbled, fell sprawling in the dust of the cobbled street, to the accompanimentof a profane statement about what I could expect if I came back. Achorus of jeers from a cluster of _chak_ children and veiled women brokeacross me. 

I picked myself up, glowered so fiercely at the giggling spectators thatthe laughter drained away into silence, and clenched my fists, halfinclined to turn back and bull my way through. Then I subsided. Firstround to Rakhal. He had sprung the trap on me, very neatly. 

The street was narrow and crooked, winding between doubled rows ofpebble-houses, and full of dark shadows even in the crimson noon. Iwalked aimlessly, favoring the arm the guard had crushed. I was nocloser to settling things with Rakhal, and I had slammed at least onegate behind me. 

Why hadn't I had sense enough to walk up and demand to _see_ RaceCargill? Why hadn't I insisted on a fingerprint check? I could prove myidentity, and Rakhal, using my name in my absence, to those who didn'tknow me by sight, couldn't. I could at least have made him try. But hehad maneuvered it very cleverly, so I never had a chance to insist onproofs. 

I turned into a wineshop and ordered a dram of greenish mountainberryliquor, sipping it slowly and fingering the few bills and coins in mypockets. I'd better forget about warning Juli. I couldn't 'vise her fromCharin, except in the Terran zone. I had neither the money nor the timeto make the trip in person, even if I could get passage on aTerran-dominated airline after today. 

Miellyn. She had flirted with me, and like Dallisa, she might provevulnerable. It might be another trap, but I'd take the chance. At leastI could get hints about Evarin. And I needed information. I wasn't usedto this kind of intrigue any more. The smell of danger was foreign to menow, and I found it unpleasant. 

The small lump of the bird in my pocket tantalized me. I took it outagain. It was a temptation to press the stud and let it settle things, or at least start them going, then and there. 

After a while I noticed the proprietors of the shop staring at the silkof the wrappings. They backed off, apprehensive. I held out a coin andthey shook their heads. "You are welcome to the drink, " one of themsaid. "All we have is at your service. Only please go. Go quickly. "

They would not touch the coins I offered. I thrust the bird in mypocket, swore and went. It was my second experience with being somehowtabu, and I didn't like it. 

It was dusk when I realized I was being followed. 

At first it was a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, a head seen toofrequently for coincidence. It developed into a too-persistent footstepin uneven rhythm. 

Tap-_tap_-tap. Tap-_tap_-tap. 

I had my skean handy, but I had a hunch this wasn't anything I couldsettle with a skean. I ducked into a side street and waited. 

Nothing. 

I went on, laughing at my imagined fears. 

Then, after a time, the soft, persistent footfall thudded behind meagain. 

I cut across a thieves market, dodging from stall to stall, cursed byold women selling hot fried goldfish, women in striped veils railing atme in their chiming talk when I brushed their rolled rugs with hastyfeet. Far behind I heard the familiar uneven hurry: tap-_tap_-tap, tap-_tap_-tap. 

I fled down a street where women sat on flower-decked balconies, theiropen lanterns flowing with fountains and rivulets of gold and orangefire. I raced through quiet streets where furred children crept to doorsand watched me pass with great golden eyes that shone in the dark. 

I dodged into an alley and lay there, breathing hard. Someone not twoinches away said, "Are you one of us, brother?"

I muttered something surly, in his dialect, and a hand, reassuringlyhuman, closed on my elbow. "This way. "

Out of breath with long running, I let him lead me, meaning to breakaway after a few steps, apologize for mistaken identity and vanish, whena sound at the end of the street made me jerk stiff and listen. 

Tap-_tap_-tap. Tap-_tap_-tap. 

I let my arm relax in the hand that guided me, flung a fold of myshirtcloak over my face, and went along with my unknown guide. 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I stumbled over steps, took a jolting stride downward, and found myselfin a dim room jammed with dark figures, human and nonhuman. 

The figures swayed in the darkness, chanting in a dialect not altogetherfamiliar to me, a monotonous wailing chant, with a single recurrentphrase: "Kamaina! Kama-aina!" It began on a high note, descending inweird chromatics to the lowest tone the human ear could resolve. 

The sound made me draw back. Even the Dry-towners shunned the orgiasticrituals of Kamaina. Earthmen have a reputation for getting rid of themore objectionable customs--by human standards--on any planet where theylive. But they don't touch religions, and Kamaina, on the surfaceanyhow, was a religion. 

I started to turn round and leave, as if I had inadvertently walkedthrough the wrong door, but my conductor hauled on my arm, and I waswedged in too tight by now to risk a roughhouse. Trying to force my wayout would only have called attention to me, and the first of the SecretService maxims is; when in doubt, go along, keep quiet, and watch theother guy. 

As my eyes adapted to the dim light, I saw that most of the crowd wereCharin plainsmen or _chaks_. One or two wore Dry-town shirtcloaks, and Ieven thought I saw an Earthman in the crowd, though I was never sure andI fervently hope not. They were squatting around small crescent-shapedtables, and all intently gazing at a flickery spot of light at the frontof the cellar. I saw an empty place at one table and dropped there, finding the floor soft, as if cushioned. 

On each table, small smudging pastilles were burning, and from thesecones of ash-tipped fire came the steamy, swimmy smoke that filled thedarkness with strange colors. Beside me an immature _chak_ girl waskneeling, her fettered hands strained tightly back at her sides, hernaked breasts pierced for jeweled rings. 

Beneath the pallid fur around her pointed ears, the exquisite animalface was quite mad. She whispered to me, but her dialect was so thickthat I could follow only a few words, and would just as soon not haveheard those few. An older _chak_ grunted for silence and she subsided, swaying and crooning. 

There were cups and decanters on all the tables, and a woman tiltedpale, phosphorescent fluid into a cup and offered it to me. I took onesip, then another. It was cold and pleasantly tart, and not until thesecond swallow turned sweet on my tongue did I know what I tasted. Ipretended to swallow while the woman's eyes were fixed on me, thensomehow contrived to spill the filthy stuff down my shirt. 

I was wary even of the fumes, but there was nothing else I could do. Thestuff was _shallavan_, outlawed on every planet in the Terran Empire andevery halfway decent planet outside it. 

More and more figures, men and creatures, kept crowding into the cellar, which was not very large. The place looked like the worst nightmare of adrug-dreamer, ablaze with the colors of the smoking incense, the swayingcrowd, and their monotonous cries. Quite suddenly there was a blaze ofpurple light and someone screamed in raving ecstasy: "_Na ki na Nebrann'hai Kamaina!_"

"Kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!" shrilled the tranced mob. 

An old man jumped up and started haranguing the crowd. I could justfollow his dialect. He was talking about Terra. He was talking aboutriots. He was jabbering mystical gibberish which I couldn't understandand didn't want to understand, and rabble-rousing anti-Terran propagandawhich I understood much too well. 

Another blaze of lights and another long scream in chorus:"Kamayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeena!"

Evarin stood in the blaze of the many-colored light. 

The Toymaker, as I had seen him last, cat-smooth, gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy crimsons. Behind him was a blackness. Iwaited till the painful blaze of lights abated, then, straining my eyesto see past him, I got my worst shock. 

A woman stood there, naked to the waist, her hands ritually fetteredwith little chains that stirred and clashed musically as she movedstiff-legged in a frozen dream. Hair like black grass banded her browand naked shoulders, and her eyes were crimson. 

And the eyes lived in the dead dreaming face. They lived, and they weremad with terror although the lips curved in a gently tranced smile. 

Miellyn. 

Evarin was speaking in that dialect I barely understood. His arms wereflung high and his cloak went spilling away from them, rippling likesomething alive. The jammed humans and nonhumans swayed and chanted andhe swayed above them like an iridescent bug, weaving arms rippling backand forth, back and forth. I strained to catch his words. 

"Our world . .. An old world. "

"Kamayeeeeena, " whimpered the shrill chorus. 

". .. Humans, humans, all humans would make slaves of us all, all savethe Children of the Ape. .. . "

I lost the thread for a moment. True. The Terran Empire has one smallblind spot in otherwise sane policy, ignoring that nonhuman and humanhave lived placidly here for millennia: they placidly assumed thathumans were everywhere the dominant race, as on Earth itself. 

The Toymaker's weaving arms went on spinning, spinning. I rubbed my eyesto clear them of _shallavan_ and incense. I hoped that what I saw was anillusion of the drug--something, something huge and dark, was hoveringover the girl. She stood placidly, hands clasped on her chains, but hereyes writhed in the frozen calm of her face. 

Then something--I can only call it a sixth sense--bore it on me thatthere was _someone_ outside the door. I was perhaps the only creaturethere, except for Evarin, not drugged with _shallavan_, and perhapsthat's all it was. But during the days in the Secret Service I'd had todevelop some extra senses. Five just weren't enough for survival. 

I _knew_ somebody was fixing to break down that door, and I had a goodidea why. I'd been followed, by the legate's orders, and, tracking mehere, they'd gone away and brought back reinforcements. 

Someone struck a blow on the door and a stentorian voice bawled, "Openup there, in the name of the Empire!"

The chanting broke in ragged quavers. Evarin stopped. Somewhere a womanscreamed. The lights abruptly went out and a stampede started in theroom. Women struck me with chains, men kicked, there were shrieks andhowls. I thrust my way forward, butting with elbows and knees andshoulders. 

A dusky emptiness yawned and I got a glimpse of sunlight and open skyand knew that Evarin had stepped through into _somewhere_ and was gone. The banging on the door sounded like a whole regiment of Spaceforce outthere. I dived toward the shimmer of little stars which marked Miellyn'stiara in the darkness, braving the black horror hovering over her, andtouched rigid girl-flesh, cold as death. 

I grabbed her and ducked sideways. This time it wasn't intuition--ninetimes out of ten, anyway, intuition is just a mental shortcut which addsup all the things which your subconscious has noticed while you werebusy thinking about something else. Every native building on Wolf hadconcealed entrances and exits and I know where to look for them. Thisone was exactly where I expected. I pushed at it and found myself in along, dim corridor. 

The head of a woman peered from an opening door. She saw Miellyn's limpbody hanging on my arm and her mouth widened in a silent scream. Thenthe head popped back out of sight and a door slammed. I heard the boltslide. I ran for the end of the hall, the girl in my arms, thinking thatthis was where I came in, as far as Miellyn was concerned, and wonderingwhy I bothered. 

The door opened on a dark, peaceful street. One lonely moon was settingbeyond the rooftops. I set Miellyn on her feet, but she moaned andcrumpled against me. I put my shirtcloak around her bare shoulders. Judging by the noises and yells, we'd gotten out just in time. No onecame out the exit behind us. Either the Spaceforce had plugged it or, more likely, everyone else in the cellar had been too muddled by drugsto know what was going on. 

But it was only a few minutes, I knew, before Spaceforce would check thewhole building for concealed escape holes. Suddenly, and irrelevantly, Ifound myself thinking of a day not too long ago, when I'd stood up infront of a unit-in-training of Spaceforce, introduced to them as anIntelligence expert on native towns, and solemnly warned them aboutconcealed exits and entrances. I wondered, for half a minute, if itmight not be simpler just to wait here and let them pick me up. 

Then I hoisted Miellyn across my shoulders. She was heavier than shelooked, and after a minute, half conscious, she began to struggle andmoan. There was a _chak_-run cookshop down the street, a place I'd onceknown well, with an evil reputation and worse food, but it was quiet andstayed open all night. I turned in at the door, bending at the lowlintel. 

The place was smoke-filled and foul-smelling. I dumped Miellyn on acouch and sent the frowsy waiter for two bowls of noodles and coffee, handed him a few extra coins, and told him to leave us alone. Heprobably drew the worst possible inference--I saw his muzzle twitch atthe smell of _shallavan_--but it was that kind of place anyhow. He drewdown the shutters and went. 

I stared at the unconscious girl, then shrugged and started on thenoodles. My own head was still swimmy with the fumes, incense and drug, and I wanted it clear. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do, butI had Evarin's right-hand girl, and I was going to use her. 

The noodles were greasy and had a curious taste, but they were hot, andI ate all of one bowl before Miellyn stirred and whimpered and put upone hand, with a little clinking of chains, to her hair. The gesture wasindefinably reminiscent of Dallisa, and for the first time I saw thelikeness between them. It made me wary and yet curiously softened. 

Finding she could not move freely, she rolled over, sat up and staredaround in growing bewilderment and dismay. 

"There was a sort of riot, " I said. "I got you out. Evarin ditched you. And you can quit thinking what you're thinking, I put my shirtcloak onyou because you were bare to the waist and it didn't look so good. " Istopped to think that over, and amended: "I mean I couldn't haul youaround the streets that way. It looked good enough. "

To my surprise, she gave a shaky little giggle, and held out herfettered hands. "Will you?"

I broke her links and freed her. She rubbed her wrists as if they hurther, then drew up her draperies, pinned them so that she was decentlycovered, and tossed back my shirtcloak. Her eyes were wide and soft inthe light of the flickering stub of candle. 

"O, Rakhal, " she sighed. "When I saw you there--" She sat up, claspingher hands hard together, and when she continued her voice was curiouslycold and controlled for anyone so childish. It was almost as cold asDallisa's. 

"If you've come from Kyral, I'm not going back. I'll never go back, andyou may as well know it. "

"I don't come from Kyral, and I don't care where you go. I don't carewhat you do. " I suddenly realized that the last statement was whollyuntrue, and to cover my confusion I shoved the remaining bowl of noodlesat her. 

"Eat. "

She wrinkled her nose in fastidious disgust. "I'm not hungry. "

"Eat it anyway. You're still half doped, and the food will clear yourhead. " I picked up one mug of the coffee and drained it at a singleswallow. "What were you doing in that disgusting den?"

Without warning she flung herself across the table at me, throwing herarms round my neck. Startled, I let her cling a moment, then reached upand firmly unfastened her hands. 

"None of that now. I fell for it once, and it landed me in the middle ofthe mudpie. "

But her fingers bit my shoulder. 

"Rakhal, Rakhal, I tried to get away and find you. Have you still gotthe bird? You haven't set it off yet? Oh, don't, don't, don't, Rakhal, you don't know what Evarin is, you don't know what he's doing. " Thewords spilled out of her like floodwaters. "He's won so many of you, don't let him have you too, Rakhal. They call you an honest man, youworked once for Terra, the Terrans would believe you if you went to themand told them what he--Rakhal, take me to the Terran Zone, take methere, take me there where they'll protect me from Evarin. "

At first I tried to stop her, question her, then waited and let thetorrent of entreaty run on and on. At last, exhausted and breathless, she lay quietly against my shoulder, her head fallen forward. The mustyreek of _shallavan_ mingled with the flower scent of her hair. 

"Kid, " I said heavily at last, "you and your Toymaker have both got mewrong. I'm not Rakhal Sensar. "

"You're not?" She drew back, regarding me in dismay. Her eyes searchedevery inch of me, from the gray streak across my forehead to the scarrunning down into my collar. "Then who--"

"Race Cargill. Terran Intelligence. "

She stared, her mouth wide like a child's. 

Then she laughed. She _laughed_! At first I thought she was hysterical. I stared at her in consternation. Then, as her wide eyes met mine, withall the mischief of the nonhuman which has mingled into the human here, all the circular complexities of Wolf illogic behind the woman in them, I started to laugh too. 

I threw back my head and roared, until we were clinging together andgasping with mirth like a pair of raving fools. The _chak_ waiter cameto the door and stared at us, and I roared "Get the hell out, " betweenspasms of crazy laughter. 

Then she was wiping her face, tears of mirth still dripping down hercheeks, and I was frowning bleakly into the empty bowls. 

"Cargill, " she said hesitantly, "you can take me to the Terrans whereRakhal--"

"Hell's bells, " I exploded. "I can't take you anywhere, girl. I've gotto find Rakhal--" I stopped in midsentence and looked at her clearly forthe first time. 

"Child, I'll see that you're protected, if I can. But I'm afraid you'vewalked from the trap to the cookpot. There isn't a house in Charin thatwill hold me. I've been thrown out twice today. "

She nodded. "I don't know how the word spreads, but it happens, innonhuman parts. I think they can see trouble written in a human face, orsmell it on the wind. " She fell silent, her face propped sleepilybetween her hands, her hair falling in tangles. I took one of her handsin mine and turned it over. 

It was a fine hand, with birdlike bones and soft rose-tinted nails; butthe lines and hardened places around the knuckles reminded me that she, too, came from the cold austerity of the salt Dry-towns. After a momentshe flushed and drew her hand from mine. 

"What are you thinking, Cargill?" she asked, and for the first time Iheard her voice sobered, without the coquetry, which must after all havebeen a very thin veneer. 

I answered her simply and literally. "I am thinking of Dallisa. Ithought you were very different, and yet, I see that you are very likeher. "

I thought she would question what I knew of her sister, but she let itpass in silence. After a time she said, "Yes, we were twins. " Then, after a long silence, she added, "But she was always much the older. "

And that was all I ever knew of whatever obscure pressures had shapedDallisa into an austere and tragic Clytemnestra, and Miellyn into apixie runaway. 

Outside the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening. Miellyn shivered, drawing her thin draperies around her bare throat. I glanced at thelittle rim of jewels that starred her hair and said, "You'd better takethose off and hide them. They alone would be enough to have you hauledinto an alley and strangled, in this part of Charin. " I hauled the birdToy from my pocket and slapped it on the greasy table, still wrapped inits silk. "I don't suppose you know which of us this thing is set tokill?"

"I know nothing about the Toys. "

"You seem to know plenty about the Toymaker. "

"I thought so. Until last night. " I looked at the rigid, clamped mouthand thought that if she were really as soft and delicate as she looked, she would have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop andburst out, "It's not a religion. It isn't even an honest movement forfreedom! Its a--a front for smuggling, and drugs, and--and every otherfilthy thing!

"Believe it or not, when I left Shainsa, I thought Nebran was the answerto the way the Terrans were strangling us! Now I know there are worsethings on Wolf than the Terran Empire! I've heard of Rakhal Sensar, andwhatever you may think of Rakhal, he's too decent to be mixed up inanything like this!"

"Suppose you tell me what's really going on, " I suggested. She couldn'tadd much to what I knew already, but the last fragments of the patternwere beginning to settle into place. Rakhal, seeking the mattertransmitter and some key to the nonhuman sciences of Wolf--I knew nowwhat the city of Silent Ones had reminded me of!--had somehow crossedthe path of the Toymaker. 

Evarin's words now made sense: "_You were clever at evading oursurveillance--for a while. _" Possibly, though I'd never know, Cuinn hadbeen keeping one foot in each camp, working for Kyral and for Evarin. The Toymaker, knowing of Rakhal's anti-Terran activities, had believedhe would make a valuable ally and had taken steps to secure his help. 

Juli herself had given me the clue: "_He smashed Rindy's Toys. _" Out ofthe context it sounded like the work of a madman. Now, havingencountered Evarin's workshop, it made plain good sense. 

And I think I had known all along that Rakhal could not have beenplaying Evarin's game. He might have turned against Terra--though now Iwas beginning even to doubt that--and certainly he'd have killed me ifhe found me. But he would have done it himself, and without malice. _Killed without malice_--that doesn't make sense in any of thelanguages of Terra. But it made sense to me. 

Miellyn had finished her brief recitation and was drowsing, her headpillowed on the table. The reddish light was growing, and I realizedthat I was waiting for dawn as, days ago, I had waited for sunset inShainsa, with every nerve stretched to the breaking point. It was dawnof the third morning, and this bird lying on the table before me mustfly or, far away in the Kharsa, another would fly at Juli. 

I said, "There's some distance limitation on this one, I understand, since I have to be fairly near its object. If I lock it in a steel boxand drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. Idon't suppose you'd have a shot at stealing the other one for me?"

She raised her head, eyes flashing. "Why should you worry about Rakhal'swife?" she flared, and for no good reason it occurred to me that she wasjealous. "I might have known Evarin wouldn't shoot in the dark! Rakhal'swife, that Earthwoman, what do you care for her?"

It seemed important to set her straight. I explained that Juli was mysister, and saw a little of the tension fade from her face, but not all. Remembering the custom of the Dry-towns, I was not wholly surprised whenshe added, jealously, "When I heard of your feud, I guessed it was overthat woman!"

"But not in the way you think, " I said. Juli had been part of it, certainly. Even then I had not wanted her to turn her back on her world, but if Rakhal had remained with Terra, I would have accepted hismarriage to Juli. Accepted it. I'd have rejoiced. God knows we had beencloser than brothers, those years in the Dry-towns. And then, beforeMiellyn's flashing eyes, I suddenly faced my secret hate, my secretfear. No, the quarrel had not been all Rakhal's doing. 

He had not turned his back, unexplained on Terra. In some unrecognizedfashion, I had done my best to drive him away. And when he had gone, Ihad banished a part of myself as well, and thought I could end thestruggle by saying it didn't exist. And now, facing what I had done toall of us, I knew that my revenge--so long sought, so dearlycherished--must be abandoned. 

"We still have to deal with the bird, " I said. "It's a gamble, with allthe cards wild. " I could dismantle it, and trust to luck that Wolfillogic didn't include a tamper mechanism. But that didn't seem worththe risk. 

"First I've got to _find_ Rakhal. If I set the bird free and it killedhim, it wouldn't settle anything. " For I could not kill Rakhal. Not, now, because I knew life would be a worse punishment than death. Butbecause--I knew it, now--if Rakhal died, Juli would die, too. And if Ikilled him I'd be killing the best part of myself. Somehow Rakhal and Imust strike a balance between our two worlds, and try to build a new onefrom them. 

"And I can't sit here and talk any longer. I haven't time to take you--"I stopped, remembering the spaceport cafe at the edge of the Kharsa. There was a street-shrine, or matter transmitter, right there, acrossthe street from the Terran HQ. _All these years. .. . _

"You know your way in the transmitters. You can go there in a second ortwo. " She could warn Juli, tell Magnusson. But when I suggested this, giving her a password that would take her straight to the top, sheturned white. "All jumps have to be made through the Mastershrine. "

I stopped and thought about that. 

"Where is Evarin likely to be, right now?"

She gave a nervous shudder. "He's everywhere!"

"Rubbish! He's not omniscient! Why, you little fool, he didn't evenrecognize me. He thought I was Rakhal!" I wasn't too sure, myself, butMiellyn needed reassurance. "Or take _me_ to the Mastershrine. I canfind Rakhal in that scanning device of Evarin's. " I saw refusal in herface and pushed on, "If Evarin's there, I'll prove he's fallible enoughwith a skean in his throat! And here"--I thrust the Toy into herhand--"hang on to this, will you?"

She put it matter-of-factly into her draperies. "I don't mind that. Butto the shrine--" Her voice quivered, and I stood up and pushed at thetable. 

"Let's get going. Where's the nearest street-shrine?"

"No, no! Oh, I don't dare!"

"You've got to. " I saw the _chak_ who owned the place edging round thedoor again and said, "There's no use arguing, Miellyn. " When she hadreadjusted her robes a little while ago, she had pinned them so thatthe flat sprawl of the Nebran embroideries was over her breasts. I put afinger against them, not in a sensuous gesture, and said, "The minutethey see these, they'll throw us out of here, too. "

"If you knew what I know of Nebran, you wouldn't _want_ me to go nearthe Mastershrine again!" There was that faint coquettishness in hersidewise smile. 

And suddenly I realized that I didn't want her to. But she was notDallisa and she could not sit in cold dignity while her world fell intoruin. Miellyn must fight for the one she wanted. 

And then some of that primitive male hostility which lives in every mancame to the surface, and I gripped her arm until she whimpered. Then Isaid, in the Shainsan which still comes to my tongue when moved orangry, "Damn it, you're _going_. Have you forgotten that if it weren'tfor me you'd have been torn to pieces by that raving mob, or somethingworse?"

That did it. She pulled away and I saw again, beneath the veneer ofpetulant coquetry, that fierce and untamable insolence of theDry-towner. The more fierce and arrogant, in this girl, because she hadburst her fettered hands free and shaken off the ruin of the past. 

I was seized with a wildly inappropriate desire to seize her, crush herin my arms, taste the red honey of that teasing mouth. The effort ofmastering the impulse made me rough. 

I shoved at her and said, "Come on. Let's get there before Evarin does. "

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Outside in the streets it was full day, and the color and life of Charinhad subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness andsilence. Only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sunhad sapped their energy. And always the pale fleecy-haired children, human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbsand gutters and staring at us with neither curiosity nor malice. 

Miellyn was shaking when she set her feet into the patterned stones ofthe street-shrine. 

"Scared, Miellyn?"

"I know Evarin. You don't. But"--her mouth twitched in a pitiful attemptat the old mischief--"when I am with a great and valorous Earthman. .. . "

"Cut it out, " I growled, and she giggled. "You'll have to stand closerto me. The transmitters are meant only for one person. "

I stooped and put my arms round her. "Like this?"

"Like this, " she whispered, pressing herself against me. A staggeringwhirl of dizzy darkness swung round my head. The street vanished. Afteran instant the floor steadied and we stepped into the terminal room inthe Mastershrine, under a skylight dim with the last red slant ofsunset. Distant hammering noises rang in my ears. 

Miellyn whispered, "Evarin's not here, but he might jump through at anysecond. " I wasn't listening. 

"Where is this place, Miellyn? Where on the planet?"

"No one knows but Evarin, I think. There are no doors. Anyone who goesin or out, jumps through the transmitter. " She pointed. "The scanningdevice is in there, we'll have to go through the workroom. "

She was patting her crushed robes into place, smoothing her hair withfastidious fingers. "I don't suppose you have a comb? I've no time to goto my own--"

I'd known she was a vain and pampered brat, but this passed all reason, and I said so, exploding at her. She looked at me as if I wasn't quiteintelligent. "The Little Ones, my friend, notice things. You are quiteenough of a roughneck, but if I, Nebran's priestess, walk through theirworkroom all blown about and looking like the tag end of an orgy inArdcarran. .. . "

Abashed, I fished in a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocketcomb. She looked at it distastefully but used it to good purpose, smoothing her hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinned robe so thatthe worst of the tears and stains were covered, and giving me, meanwhile, an artless and rather tempting view of some deliciouscurvature. She replaced the starred tiara on her ringlets and finallyopened the door of the workroom and we walked through. 

Not for years had I known that particular sensation--thousands of eyes, boring holes in the center of my back somewhere. There _were_ eyes; theround inhuman orbs of the dwarf _chaks_, the faceted stare of the prismeyes of the Toys. The workroom wasn't a hundred feet long, but it feltlonger than a good many miles I've walked. Here and there the dwarfsmurmured an obsequious greeting to Miellyn, and she made somelighthearted answer. 

She had warned me to walk as if I had every right to be there, and Istrode after her as if we were simply going to an agreed-on meeting inthe next room. But I was drenched with cold sweat before the fartherdoor finally closed, safe and blessedly opaque, behind us. Miellyn, too, was shaking with fright, and I put a hand on her arm. 

"Steady, kid. Where's the scanner?"

She touched the panel I'd seen. "I'm not sure I can focus it accurately. Evarin never let me touch it. "

This was a fine time to tell me that. "How does it work?"

"It's an adaptation of the transmitter principle. It lets you seeanywhere, but without jumping. It uses a tracer mechanism like the onein the Toys. If Rakhal's electrical-impulse pattern were on file--just aminute. " She fished out the bird Toy and unwrapped it. "Here's how wefind out which of you this is keyed to. "

I looked at the fledgling bird, lying innocently in her palm, as shepushed aside the feathers, exposing a tiny crystal. "If it's keyed toyou, you'll see yourself in this, as if the screen were a mirror. Ifit's keyed to Rakhal. .. . "

She touched the crystal to the surface of the screen. Little flickers ofsnow wavered and danced. Then, abruptly, we were looking down from aheight at the lean back of a man in a leather jacket. Slowly he turned. I saw the familiar set of his shoulders, saw the back of his head comeinto an aquiline profile, and the profile turn slowly into a scarred, seared mask more hideously claw-marked and disfigured than my own. 

"Rakhal, " I muttered. "Shift the focus if you can, Miellyn, get a lookout the window or something. Charin's a big city. If we could get a lookat a landmark--"

Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to someoneout of sight range of the scanning device. Abruptly Miellyn said, "There. " She had caught a window in the sight field of the pane. I couldsee a high pylon and two of three uprights that looked like a bridge, just outside. I said, "It's the Bridge of Summer Snows. I know where heis now. Turn it off, Miellyn, we can find him--" I was turning away whenMiellyn screamed. 

"Look!"

Rakhal had turned his back on the scanner and for the first time I couldsee who he was talking to. A hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; asinuous neck, a high-held head that was not quite human. 

"Evarin!" I swore. "That does it. He knows now that I'm not Rakhal, ifhe didn't know it all along! Come on, girl, we're getting out of here!"

This time there was no pretense of normality as we dashed through theworkroom. Fingers dropped from half-completed Toys as they stared afterus. _Toys!_ I wanted to stop and smash them all. But if we hurried, wemight find Rakhal. And, with luck, we would find Evarin with him. 

And then I was going to bang their heads together. I'd reached asaturation point on adventure. I'd had all I wanted. I realized that I'dbeen up all night, that I was exhausted. I wanted to murder and smash, and wanted to fall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. Webanged the workroom door shut and I took time to shove a heavy divanagainst it, blockading it. 

Miellyn stared. "The Little Ones would not harm me, " she began. "I amsacrosanct. "

I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had changed plenty, beginningwhen I saw her chained and drugged, and standing under the hoveringhorror. But I didn't say so. 

"Maybe. But there's nothing sacred about _me_!"

She was already inside the recess where the Toad God squatted. "There isa street-shrine just beyond the Bridge of Summer Snows. We can jumpdirectly there. " Abruptly she froze in my arms, with a convulsiveshudder. 

"Evarin! Hold me, tight--he's jumping in! Quick!"

Space reeled round us, and then. .. . 

Can you split instantaneousness into fragments? It didn't make sense, but so help me, that's what happened. And everything that happened, occurred within less than a second. We landed in the street-shrine. Icould see the pylon and the bridge and the rising sun of Charin. Thenthere was the giddy internal wrenching, a blast of icy air whistledround us, and we were gazing out at the Polar mountains, ringed in theireternal snow. 

Miellyn clutched at me. "Pray! Pray to the Gods of Terra, if there areany!"

She clung so violently that it felt as if her small body was trying topush through me and come out the other side. I hung on tight. Miellynknew what she was doing in the transmitter; I was just along for theride and I didn't relish the thought of being dropped off somewhere inthat black limbo we traversed. 

We jumped again, the sickness of disorientation forcing a moan from thegirl, and darkness shivered round us. I looked on an unfamiliar streetof black night and dust-bleared stars. She whimpered, "Evarin knows whatI'm doing. He's jumping us all over the planet. He can work the controlswith his mind. Psychokinetics--I can do it a little, but I neverdared--oh, hang on _tight_!"

Then began one of the most amazing duels ever fought. Miellyn would makesome tiny movement, and we would be falling, blind and dizzy, throughblackness. Halfway through the giddiness, a new direction would wrenchus and we would be thrust elsewhere, and look out into a new street. 

One instant I smelled hot coffee from the spaceport cafe near theKharsa. An instant later it was blinding noon, with crimson frondswaving above us and a dazzle of water. We flicked in and out of thesalty air of Shainsa, glimpsed flowers on a Daillon street, moonlight, noon, red twilight flickered and went, shot through with the terriblegiddiness of hyperspace. 

Then suddenly I caught a second glimpse of the bridge and the pylon; amoment's oversight had landed us for an instant in Charin. The blacknessstarted to reel down, but my reflexes are fast and I made one swift, scrabbling step forward. We lurched, sprawled, locked together, on thestones of the Bridge of Summer Snows. Battered, and bruised, andbloody, we were still alive, and where we wanted to be. 

I lifted Miellyn to her feet. Her eyes were dazed with pain. The groundswayed and rocked under our feet as we fled along the bridge. At the farend, I looked up at the pylon. Judging from its angle, we couldn't bemore than a hundred feet from the window through which I'd seen thatlandmark in the scanner. In this street there was a wineshop, a silkmarket, and a small private house. I walked up and banged on the door. 

Silence. I knocked again and had time to wonder if we'd find ourselvesexplaining things to some uninvolved stranger. Then I heard a child'shigh voice, and a deep familiar voice hushing it. The door opened, justa crack, to reveal part of a scarred face. 

It drew into a hideous grin, then relaxed. 

"I thought it might be you, Cargill. You've taken at least three dayslonger than I figured, getting here. Come on in, " said Rakhal Sensar. 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

He hadn't changed much in six years. His face _was_ worse than mine; hehadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their bestfor him. His mouth, I thought fleetingly, must hurt like hell when hedrew it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows, thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw Miellyn; but hebacked away to let us enter, and shut the door behind us. 

The room was bare and didn't look as if it had been lived in much. Thefloor was stone, rough-laid, a single fur rug laid before a brazier. Alittle girl was sitting on the rug, drinking from a big double-handledmug, but she scrambled to her feet as we came in, and backed against thewall, looking at us with wide eyes. 

She had pale-red hair like Juli's, cut straight in a fringe across herforehead, and she was dressed in a smock of dyed red fur that almostmatched her hair. A little smear of milk like a white moustache clung toher upper lip where she had forgotten to wipe her mouth. She was aboutfive years old, with deep-set dark eyes like Juli's, that watched megravely without surprise or fear; she evidently knew who I was. 

"Rindy, " Rakhal said quietly, not taking his eyes from me. "Go into theother room. "

Rindy didn't move, still staring at me. Then she moved toward Miellyn, looking up intently not at the woman, but at the pattern of embroideriesacross her dress. It was very quiet, until Rakhal added, in a gentle andcuriously moderate voice, "Do you still carry a skean, Race?"

I shook my head. "There's an ancient proverb on Terra, about blood beingthicker than water, Rakhal. That's Juli's daughter. I'm not going tokill her father right before her eyes. " My rage spilled over then, and Ibellowed, "To hell with your damned Dry-town feuds and your filthy ToadGod and all the rest of it!"

Rakhal said harshly, "Rindy. I told you to get out. "

"She needn't go. " I took a step toward the little girl, a wary eye onRakhal. "I don't know quite what you're up to, but it's nothing for achild to be mixed up in. Do what you damn please. I can settle with youany time. 

"The first thing is to get Rindy out of here. She belongs with Juli and, damn it, that's where she's going. " I held out my arms to the littlegirl and said, "It's over, Rindy, whatever he's done to you. Your mothersent me to find you. Don't you want to go to your mother?"

Rakhal made a menacing gesture and warned, "I wouldn't--"

Miellyn darted swiftly between us and caught up the child in her arms. Rindy began to struggle noiselessly, kicking and whimpering, but Miellyntook two quick steps, and flung an inner door open. Rakhal took a stridetoward her. She whirled on him, fighting to control the furious littlegirl, and gasped, "Settle it between you, without the baby watching!"

Through the open door I briefly saw a bed, a child's small dresseshanging on a hook, before Miellyn kicked the door shut and I heard alatch being fastened. Behind the closed door Rindy broke into angryscreams, but I put my back against the door. 

"She's right. We'll settle it between the two of us. What have you doneto that child?"

"If you thought--" Rakhal stopped himself in midsentence and stoodwatching me without moving for a minute. Then he laughed. 

"You're as stupid as ever, Race. Why, you fool, I knew Juli would runstraight to you, if she was scared enough. I knew it would bring you outof hiding. Why, you damned fool!" He stood mocking me, but there was astrained fury, almost a frenzy of contempt behind the laughter. 

"You filthy coward, Race! Six years hiding in the Terran zone. Sixyears, and I gave you six months! If you'd had the guts to walk outafter me, after I rigged that final deal to give you the chance, wecould have gone after the biggest thing on Wolf. And we could havebrought it off together, instead of spending years spying and dodgingand hunting! And now, when I finally get you out of hiding, all you wantto do is run back where you'll be safe! I thought you had more guts!"

"Not for Evarin's dirty work!"

Rakhal swore hideously. "Evarin! Do you really believe--I might haveknown he'd get to you too! That girl--and you've managed to wreck all Idid there, too!" Suddenly, so swiftly my eyes could hardly follow, hewhipped out his skean and came at me. "Get away from that door!"

I stood my ground. "You'll have to kill me first. And I won't fight you, Rakhal. We'll settle this, but we'll do it my way for once, likeEarthmen. "

"_Son of the Ape!_ Get your skean out, you stinking coward!"

"I won't do it, Rakhal. " I stood and defied him. I had outmaneuveredDry-towners in a _shegri_ bet. I knew Rakhal, and I knew he would notknife an unarmed man. "We fought once with the _kifirgh_ and it didn'tsettle anything. This time we'll do it my way. I threw my skean awaybefore I came here. I won't fight. "

He thrust at me. Even I could see that the blow was a feint, and I had aflashing, instantaneous memory of Dallisa's threat to drive the knifethrough my palms. But even while I commanded myself to stand steady, sheer reflex threw me forward, grabbing at his wrist and the knife. 

Between my grappling hand he twisted and I felt the skean drive home, rip through my jacket with a tearing sound; felt the thin fine line oftouch, not pain yet, as it sliced flesh. Then pain burned through myribs and I felt hot blood, and I wanted to kill Rakhal, wanted to get myhands around his throat and kill him with them. And at the same time Iwas raging because I didn't want to fight the crazy fool, I wasn't evenmad at him. 

Miellyn flung the door open, shrieking, and suddenly the Toy, released, was darting a small whirring droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes. I yelled. But there was no time even to warn him. I bent and butted himin the stomach. He grunted, doubled up in agony and fell out of the pathof the diving Toy. It whirred in frustration, hovered. 

He writhed in agony, drawing up his knees, clawing at his shirt, while Iturned on Miellyn in immense fury--and stopped. Hers had been a move ofdesperation, an instinctive act to restore the balance between aweaponless man and one who had a knife. Rakhal gasped, in a hoarse voicewith all the breath gone from it:

"Didn't want to use. Rather fight clean--" Then he opened his closedfist and suddenly there were _two_ of the little whirring droninghorrors in the room and this one was diving at me, and as I threw myselfheadlong to the floor the last puzzle-piece fell into place: Evarin hadmade the same bargain with Rakhal as with me!

I rolled over, dodging. Behind me in the room there was a child's shrillscream: "Daddy! Daddy!" And abruptly the birds collapsed in midair andwent limp. They fell to the floor like dropping stones and lay therequivering. Rindy dashed across the room, her small skirts flying, andgrabbed up one of the terrible vicious things in either hand. 

"Rindy!" I bellowed. "No!"

She stood shaking, tears pouring down her round cheeks, a Toy squeezedtight in either hand. Dark veins stood out almost black on her fairtemples. "Break them, Daddy, " she implored in a little thread of avoice. "Break them, _quick_. I can't hang on. .. . "

Rakhal staggered to his feet like a drunken man and snatched one of theToys, grinding it under his heel. He made a grab at the second, reeledand drew an anguished breath. He crumpled up, clutching at his bellywhere I'd butted him. The bird screamed like a living thing. 

Breaking my paralysis of horror I leaped up, ran across the room, heedless of the searing pain along my side. I snatched the bird fromRindy and it screamed and shrilled and died as my foot crunched the tinyfeathers. I stamped the still-moving thing into an amorphous mess andkept on stamping and smashing until it was only a heap of powder. 

Rakhal finally managed to haul himself upright again. His face was sopale that the scars stood out like fresh burns. 

"That was a foul blow, Race, but I--I know why you did it. " He stoppedand breathed for a minute. Then he muttered, "You . .. Saved my life, youknow. Did you know you were doing it, when you did it?"

Still breathing hard, I nodded. Done knowingly, it meant an end ofblood-feud. However we had wronged each other, whatever the pledges. Ispoke the words that confirmed it and ended it, finally and forever:

"There is a life between us. Let it stand for a death. "

Miellyn was standing in the doorway, her hands pressed to her mouth, hereyes wide. She said shakily, "You're walking around with a knife in yourribs, you fool!"

Rakhal whirled and with a quick jerk he pulled the skean loose. It hadsimply been caught in my shirtcloak, in a fold of the rough cloth. Hepulled it away, glanced at the red tip, then relaxed. "Not more than aninch deep, " he said. Then, angrily, defending himself: "You did ityourself, you ape. I was trying to get rid of the knife when you jumpedme. "

But I knew that and he knew I knew it. He turned and scooped up Rindy, who was sobbing noisily. She dug her head into his shoulder and I madeout her strangled words. "The other Toys hurt you when I was mad atyou. .. . " she sobbed, rubbing her fists against smeared cheeks. "I--Iwasn't that mad at you. I wasn't that mad at anybody, not even . .. Him. "

Rakhal pressed his hand against his daughter's fleecy hair and said, looking at me over her head, "The Toys activate a child's subconsciousresentments against his parents--I found out that much. That also meansa child can control them for a few seconds. No adult can. " A strangerwould have seen no change in his expression, but I knew him, and saw. 

"Juli said you threatened Rindy. "

He chuckled and set the child on her feet. "What else could I say thatwould have scared Juli enough to send her running to you? Juli's proud, almost as proud as you are, you stiff-necked Son of the Ape. " The insultdid not sting me now. 

"Come on, sit down and let's decide what to do, now we've finished upthe old business. " He looked remotely at Miellyn and said, "You must beDallisa's sister? I don't suppose your talents include knowing how tomake coffee?"

They didn't, but with Rindy's help Miellyn managed, and while they wereout of the room Rakhal explained briefly. "Rindy has rudimentary ESP. I've never had it myself, but I could teach her something--notmuch--about how to use it. I've been on Evarin's track ever since thatbusiness of The Lisse. 

"I'd have got it sooner, if you were still working with me, but Icouldn't do anything as a Terran agent, and I had to be kicked out sothoroughly that the others wouldn't be afraid I was still workingsecretly for Terra. For a long time I was just chasing rumors, but whenRindy got big enough to look in the crystals of Nebran, I started makingsome progress. 

"I was afraid to tell Juli; her best safety was the fact that she didn'tknow anything. She's always been a stranger in the Dry-towns. " Hepaused, then said with honest self-evaluation, "Since I left the SecretService I've been a stranger there myself. "

I asked, "What about Dallisa?"

"Twins have some ESP to each other. I knew Miellyn had gone to theToymaker. I tried to get Dallisa to find out where Miellyn had gone, learn more about it. Dallisa wouldn't risk it, but Kyral saw me withDallisa and thought it was Miellyn. That put him on my tail, too, and Ihad to leave Shainsa. I was afraid of Kyral, " he added soberly. "Afraidof what he'd do. I couldn't do anything without Rindy and I knew if Itold Juli what I was doing, she'd take Rindy away into the Terran Zone, and I'd be as good as dead. "

As he talked, I began to realize how vast a web Evarin and theunderground organization of Nebran had spread for us. "Evarin was heretoday. What for?"

Rakhal laughed mirthlessly. "He's been trying to get us to kill eachother off. That would get rid of us both. He wants to turn over Wolf tothe nonhumans entirely, I think he's sincere enough, but"--he spread hishands helplessly--"I can't sit by and see it. "

I asked point-blank, "Are you working for Terra? Or for the Dry-towns?Or any of the anti-Terran movements?"

"I'm working for _me_", he said with a shrug. "I don't think much of theTerran Empire, but one planet can't fight a galaxy. Race, I want justone thing. I want the Dry-towns and the rest of Wolf, to have a voice intheir own government. Any planet which makes a substantial contributionto galactic science, by the laws of the Terran Empire, is automaticallygiven the status of an independent commonwealth. 

"If a man from the Dry-towns discovers something like a mattertransmitter, Wolf gets dominion status. But Evarin and his gang want tokeep it secret, keep it away from Terra, keep it locked up in placeslike Canarsa! Somebody has to get it away from them. And if I do it, Iget a nice fat bonus, and an official position. "

I believed that, where I would have suspected too much protestation ofaltruism. Rakhal tossed it aside. 

"You've got Miellyn to take you through the transmitters. Go back to theMastershrine, and tell Evarin that Race Cargill is dead. In the TradeCity they think I'm Cargill, and I can get in and out as I choose--sorryif it caused you trouble, but it was the safest thing I could thinkof--and I'll 'vise Magnusson and have him send soldiers to guard thestreet-shrines. Evarin might try to escape through one of them. "

I shook my head. "Terra hasn't enough men on all Wolf to cover thestreet-shrines in Charin alone. And I can't go back with Miellyn. " Iexplained. Rakhal pursed his lips and whistled when I described thefight in the transmitter. 

"You have all the luck, Cargill! I've never been near enough even to besure how they work--and I'll bet you didn't begin to understand! We'llhave to do it the hard way, then. It won't be the first time we'vebulled our way through a tight place! We'll face Evarin in his ownhideout! If Rindy's with us, we needn't worry. "

I was willing to let him assume command, but I protested, "You'd take achild into that--that--"

"What else can we do? Rindy can control the Toys, and neither you nor Ican do that, if Evarin should decide to throw his whole arsenal at us. "He called Rindy and spoke softly to her. She looked from her father tome, and back again to her father, then smiled and stretched out her handto me. 

Before we ventured into the street, Rakhal scowled at the sprawledembroideries of Miellyn's robe. He said, "In those things you show uplike a snowfall in Shainsa. If you go out in them, you could be mobbed. Hadn't you better get rid of them now?"

"I can't, " she protested. "They're the keys to the transmitter!"

Rakhal looked at the conventionalized idols with curiosity, but saidonly, "Cover them up in the street, then. Rindy, find her something toput over her dress. "

When we reached the street-shrine, Miellyn admonished: "Stand closetogether on the stones. I'm not sure we can all make the jump at once, but we'll have to try. "

Rakhal picked up Rindy and hoisted her to his shoulder. Miellyn droppedthe cloak she had draped over the pattern of the Nebran embroideries, and we crowded close together. The street swayed and vanished and I feltthe now-familiar dip and swirl of blackness before the worldstraightened out again. Rindy was whimpering, dabbing smeary fists ather face. "Daddy, my nose is bleeding. .. . "

Miellyn hastily bent and wiped the blood from the snubby nose. Rakhalgestured impatiently. 

"The workroom. Wreck everything you see. Rindy, if anything starts tocome at us, you stop it. Stop it quick. And"--he bent and took thelittle face between his hands--"_chiya_, remember they're not toys, nomatter how pretty they are. "

Her grave gray eyes blinked, and she nodded. 

Rakhal flung open the door of the elves' workshop with a shout. Theringing of the anvils shattered into a thousand dissonances as I kickedover a workbench and half-finished Toys crashed in confusion to thefloor. 

The dwarfs scattered like rabbits before our assault of destruction. Ismashed tools, filigree, jewels, stamping everything with my heavyboots. I shattered glass, caught up a hammer and smashed crystals. Therewas a wild exhilaration to it. 

A tiny doll, proportioned like a woman, dashed toward me, shrilling in asupersonic shriek. I put my foot on her and ground the life out of her, and she screamed like a living woman as she came apart. Her blue eyesrolled from her head and lay on the floor watching me. I crushed theblue jewels under my heel. 

Rakhal swung a tiny hound by the tail. Its head shattered into debris ofalmost-invisible gears and wheels. I caught up a chair and wrecked aglass cabinet of parts with it, swinging furiously. A berserk madness ofsmashing and breaking had laid hold on me. 

I was drunk with crushing and shattering and ruining, when I heardMiellyn scream a warning and turned to see Evarin standing in thedoorway. His green cat-eyes blazed with rage. Then he raised both handsin a sudden, sardonic gesture, and with a loping, inhuman glide, racedfor the transmitter. 

"Rindy, " Rakhal panted, "can you block the transmitter?"

Instead Rindy shrieked. "We've got to get out! The roof is falling down!The house is going to fall down on us! The roof, look at the roof!"

I looked up, transfixed by horror. I saw a wide rift open, saw theskylight shatter and break, and daylight pouring through the crackingwalls, Rakhal snatched Rindy up, protecting her from the falling debriswith his head and shoulders. I grabbed Miellyn round the waist and weran for the rift in the buckling wall. 

We shoved through just before the roof caved in and the walls collapsed, and we found ourselves standing on a bare grassy hillside, looking downin shock and horror as below us, section after section of what had beenapparently bare hill and rock caved in and collapsed into dusty rubble. 

Miellyn screamed hoarsely. "Run. Run, hurry!"

I didn't understand, but I ran. I ran, my sides aching, blood streamingfrom the forgotten flesh-wound in my side. Miellyn raced beside me andRakhal stumbled along, carrying Rindy. 

Then the shock of a great explosion rocked the ground, hurling me downfull length, Miellyn falling on top of me. Rakhal went down on hisknees. Rindy was crying loudly. When I could see straight again, Ilooked down at the hillside. 

There was nothing left of Evarin's hideaway or the Mastershrine ofNebran except a great, gaping hole, still oozing smoke and thick blackdust. Miellyn said aloud, dazed, "So _that's_ what he was going to do!"

It fitted the peculiar nonhuman logic of the Toymaker. He'd covered thetraces. 

"Destroyed!" Rakhal raged. "All destroyed! The workrooms, the science ofthe Toys, the matter transmitter--the minute we find it, it'sdestroyed!" He beat his fists furiously. "Our one chance to learn--"

"We were lucky to get out alive, " said Miellyn quietly. "Where on theplanet are we, I wonder?"

I looked down the hillside, and stared in amazement. Spread out on thehillside below us lay the Kharsa, topped by the white skyscraper of theHQ. 

"I'll be damned, " I said, "right here. We're home. Rakhal, you can godown and make your peace with the Terrans, and Juli. And you, Miellyn--"Before the others, I could not say what I was thinking, but I put myhand on her shoulder and kept it there. She smiled, shakily, with a hintof her old mischief. "I can't go into the Terran Zone looking like this, can I? Give me that comb again. Rakhal, give me your shirtcloak, myrobes are torn. "

"You vain, stupid female, worrying about a thing like that at a timelike this!" Rakhal's look was like murder. I put my comb in her hand, then suddenly saw something in the symbols across her breasts. Beforethis I had seen only the conventionalized and intricate glyph of theToad God. But now--

I reached out and ripped the cloth away. 

"Cargill!" she protested angrily, crimsoning, covering her bare breastswith both hands. "Is this the place? And before a child, too!"

I hardly heard. "Look!" I exclaimed. "Rakhal, look at the symbolsembroidered into the glyph of the God! You can read the old nonhumanglyphs. You did it in the city of The Lisse. Miellyn said they were thekey to the transmitters! I'll bet the formula is written out there foranyone to read!

"Anyone, that is, who _can_ read it! I can't, but I'll bet the formulaequations for the transmitters are carved on every Toad God glyph onWolf. Rakhal, it makes sense. There are two ways of hiding something. Either keep it locked away, or hide it right out in plain sight. Whoeverbothers even to _look_ at a conventionalized Toad God? There are so many_billions_ of them. .. . "

He bent his head over the embroideries, and when he looked up his facewas flushed. "I believe--by the chains of Sharra, I believe you have it, Race! It may take years to work out the glyphs, but I'll do it, or dietrying!" His scarred and hideous face looked almost handsome inexultation, and I grinned at him. 

"If Juli leaves enough of you, once she finds out how you maneuveredher. Look, Rindy's fallen asleep on the grass there. Poor kid, we'dbetter get her down to her mother. "

"Right. " Rakhal thrust the precious embroidery into his shirtcloak, thencradled his sleeping daughter in his arms. I watched him with a curiousemotion I could not identify. It seemed to pinpoint some great change, either in Rakhal or myself. It's not difficult to visualize one's sisterwith children, but there was something, some strange incongruity in thesight of Rakhal carrying the little girl, carefully tucking her up in afold of his cloak to keep the sharp breeze off her face. 

Miellyn was limping in her thin sandals, and she shivered. I asked, "Cold?"

"No, but--I don't believe Evarin is dead, I'm afraid he got away. "

For a minute the thought dimmed the luster of the morning. Then Ishrugged. "He's probably buried in that big hole up there. " But I knew Iwould never be sure. 

We walked abreast, my arm around the weary, stumbling woman, and Rakhalsaid softly at last, "Like old times. "

It wasn't old times, I knew. He would know it too, once his exultationsobered. I had outgrown my love for intrigue, and I had the feeling thiswas Rakhal's last adventure. It was going to take him, as he said, yearsto work out the equations for the transmitter. And I had a feeling myown solid, ordinary desk was going to look good to me in the morning. 

But I knew now that I'd never run away from Wolf again. It was my ownbeloved sun that was rising. My sister was waiting for me down below, and I was bringing back her child. My best friend was walking at myside. What more could a man want?

If the memory of dark, poison-berry eyes was to haunt me in nightmares, they did not come into the waking world. I looked at Miellyn, took herslender unmanacled hand in mine, and smiled as we walked through thegates of the city. Now, after all my years on Wolf, I understood thedesire to keep their women under lock and key that was its ancientcustom. I vowed to myself as we went that I should waste no time findinga fetter shop and having forged therein the perfect steel chains thatshould bind my love's wrists to my key forever. 

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FANGS OF THE WOLF WORLD

At one time Race Cargill had been the best Terran Intelligence agent onthe complex and mysterious planet of Wolf. He had repeatedly imperiledhis life amongst the half-human and non-human creatures of the sullenworld. And he had repeatedly accomplished the fantastic missions untilhis name was emblazoned with glory. 

But that had all seemingly ended. For six long years he'd sat behind aboring desk inside the fenced-in Terran Headquarters, cut off there eversince he and a rival had scarred and ripped each other in blood-feud. 

But when THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE swung suddenly open, the feud was onagain--and with it a plot designed to check and destroy the TerranEmpire. 

 * * * * *

Turn this book over forsecond complete novel

 * * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

LIST OF FIXED ISSUES

p. 024--typo fixed: changed 'scared' into 'scarred'p. 029--typo fixed: changed 'shiftcloak' into 'shirtcloak'p. 030--typo fixed: changed 'dozen' into 'dozens'p. 035--typo fixed: changed 'Kryal' into 'Kyral'p. 045--typo fixed: changed 'miscroscope' into 'microscope'p. 052--typo fixed: changed 'known' into 'know'p. 076--typo fixed: changed 'even' into 'ever'p. 078--removed an extra 'what'p. 088--spelling normalized: changed 'shirt cloak' into 'shirtcloak'p. 092--typo fixed: changed 'telling' into 'told'p. 100--typo fixed: changed 'her' into 'my'p. 101--typo fixed: changed 'thousand' into 'thousands'p. 105--typo fixed: changed 'harsly' into 'harshly'p. 108--typo fixed: changed 'has' into 'had'p. 108--typo fixed: changed 'her' into 'his'p. 109--removed an extra quote in front of 'I was afraid'p. 111--typo fixed: changed 'stetched' into 'stretched'