The sky rang with the reverberation of fierce white sunlight like the interior of a blue drum. Wind hot as the breath of a furnace teased the silver ocean into ripples, and the ripples shattered the sun's image into ablazing pathway of diamond fragments. Itching with sweat, aching with tension, Justin Kolb had to narrow his eyes even behind his wholeface visor because the response- limit of the glass was exceeded if he turned his head towards that glistening track over the water and the opacity curve took a sudden dive towards complete blankness. Maddeningly, it was to sunward that he had caught the first wing-glints. He had expected that the sight of the Jackson's buz- zards would crystallise his formless tension into the old familiar excitement, re-unite mind and body into the effi- cient combination, as much weapon as person, which was Juson Kolb at peak operational efficiency. He had been trying for so long to get away on his own like this, on the hunter's trail which now had to make do for his old, preferred pastimes, that the strain of habituation to wait- ing had soured his keen anticipation of the chase. Only till I see the buzzards, he had promised himself. And then But he'd seen the buzzards at last, when he had half decided he was too far north even at this season, two days past midsummer, and the instant of thrill had beenan instant. Now he was back in the slough of dreary awareness which had plagued him the whole of yesterday and the whole of the day before. He was con- scious of suffocating heat, of blinding brightness, of prickling perspiration, of cramp from keeping the skim- mer level and aligned despite the tag of the waves. His hands were slippery on the controls, and the hard butt of his harpoon-gan seemed to take up twice as much room on the skimmer's deck as it usually did. Briefly, he shut his eyes, wishing with all his force that somehow time could turn back and he could be free to return to space. Cyclops, though, was a relatively poor world. It could not support luxury spaceflight. Out there, a man had to be productivemining asteroids, servicing solar power relays, doing some clock-around job with the absolute concentration of machinery. What the hell am I now? A gigolo. The thought passed. True or not, he was at least able to indulge this much of his thirst for excitement and challenge; if he had taken any other of the courses open to him, he would have been drudging away this glorious summer in a city or on a farm or in some squalid fish- ing-port, pestered continually by the demands of other people, by the need to stack up work-credits, by holes in his shoes or leaks in his roof. Even her high-and-mightiness is preferable to that. .. He biinked. The wing-glints had come again, and this time remained in view instead of vanishing into the blur of heat-haze and shimmery reflection along the skyline. His pulse beat faster as he began to count: five, six eight, ten, at least a dozen and possibly more. Name of the cosmos, but it must be a giantf For one moment, uncharacteristic alarm filled him. He had come deliberately to this northern extreme of the wolfsharks* range, because those that beat a path of slaughter more than a hundred miles from the equatorial shallows which were their customary habitat were cer- tain to be the largest and greediest specimens, and after his long impatient chafing in Frecity he had felt nothing less than a monster would compensate him. But seeing a dozen or more buzzards hovering was ft shock. It was perhaps the most characteristic sight on Cy- clops: Jackson's buzzards, swift, cniel-taloned, steely- winged, on the track of a wolfshark, which killed for savage delight and not for hunger, so that even the mon- strous appetites of the birds were easily glutted by its gore-leaking victims. At this time of year, nearer the equator, one could look out over the sea and espy as many as five or six groups of the carrion-eaters follow- ing the blood-smeared killers, for the ocean teemed with 'life. Yet it was rare to see more than six buzzards to every wolfshark. By twos and threes, they would sate them- selves and flap heavily away, while others took their place, the total number in the sky remaining roughly constant. And there were reasons why those that roamed furthest north were followed usually only by two or three buzzards: first, the sea offered fewer victims and hence less carrion; second, the birds were still feeding their young at this time of year, and could not wander too far from their breeding-mats, the vast raft-like as- semblies of Cyclops kelp which occurred only in a nar- row belt around the planet's centre. Nonetheless, here it was: a wolfshark so big, so fast, and so murderous that a hundred miles away from home it was killing in quantities great enough to tip the bal- ance in the buzzards' dim minds on the side of greed rather than loyalty to their offspring. He pursed his lips and eased his harpoon-gun closer to the firing-notch out in the forward gunwale of the skim- mer. Would one shot do the )ob? Would it be better to load first with an unlined harpoon, to weaken the killer, before risking a shot with line attached and the conse- quent danger of being dragged to the bottom? Had this enormous beast been attacked and escaped beforeif it had, how many times? The more often, the warier it would be of an approaching skimmer, and the more likely" it would be to attack even if there was easy prey closer to hand. He weighed possibilities with half his mind, while with the other half he reviewed the area where he found him- self. This was the water-hemisphere of Cyclops, insofar as the differentiation was meaningful. It was a shallow-sea planetits moon being rather small, and incapable of raising large tides either in the cnistal material or in the oceans, although its sun exerted considerable tidal influ- ence. The shallowness of the sea, combined with a total vol- ume of water close to the average for Class A planets (those on which human beings could survive, eating some of the vegetation and at least a few of .the native animals) meant that the dry-land area was chopped up into small sections. The other half of the planet boasted some quite sizeable islands, and even a quasi-conrinent consisting of a score of large islands linked by isthmuses. This side was sparsely inhabited, and the largest island within hundreds of miles was officially not even part of Cyclops, but a repair and recreation base for the Corps Galactica. A certain amount of fishing; a certain amount of scrap-reclamation; some terrafarms on islands isolated enough to be worth maintaining as pure-human ecologi- cal units against the risk of drifting seeds and wandering fauna from the Cyclops-normal islands around them that was the sum of human engagement with this hemi- sphere, apart from solar and tidal power installations operating with a minimum of manned supervision. Kolb hesitated. Then he gave a harsh laugh. Was he going to let the risk of dying alone and far from rescue prevent him from going after this record-breaking wolf- shark? He would never be able to face his image in the mirror again.' In any case, out in space he had faced death not hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of miles from the nearest other humans. His mind darkened briefly. He never cared to recall the circumstances that had brought him back from space to a planet-bound existence, and forbidden him to com- bine his lust for danger with valuable work. There was nothing of value to anyone but himself in this single- handed hunting; men had shared Cyclops with wolf- sharks for long enough to determine the limits within which they could be a nuisance, and if the necessity arose, the species was culled efficiently and with preci- sion by teams working from the air. In fact, thought Kolb greyly, there's damned little value to anybody in anything I've done with my life lately. Least of all to me... Slowly, as the wing-glints came closer, following a line that would pass him within some four or five miles and if extended would eventually approach the island where the Corps Galactica maintained its repair base, a kind of muted exultation filled him. He could see now that the buzzards were too full already to make more than token swoops on what the wolfshark killed, yetas though ad- miring the energy of the beastthey none of them made to flap back to the south and their breeding-mats. It'll break all the records. I never even heard of such a giant! He put aside the unlined harpoon which his hand had automatically sought for the first shot. With fingers as exact as a surgeon's, he loaded a harpoon with line at- tached, and laid the gun in its firing-notch. Then he closed his left hand on the control levers, and without a tremor fed power to the reactor. The skimmer leapt up on its planes with a shriek loud enough to startle a wolfshark at twice this range, and in- stantly the wheeling buzzards disgorged the last food they had eaten and climbed a safe hundred feet into the sky. Just audible over the thrum of power from his craft, Kolb heard their whickering cries, like the neigh- ing of frightened horses. And one of his questions was answered, anyway. This wolfshark had been attacked before, often enough to recognise a skimmer for the danger it represented. It for- got its business of stitching a line of destruction across the peaceful ocean, and spun around in the water to con- front the fragile boat. It lowered its tail and spread its fans, and its head rose to the surface. Kolb's self-possession wavered, so that he had to cling desperately to his unverbalised decision: it 'doesn't matter if I die or not! Thinking of it as huge, and seeing how huge it was, were two different things. How big, then? Fifty feet from fan-tip to fan-tip, os- cillating in the water like a manta ray, but having a ta- pered body which was all keel for the muscles driving those fans, perfectly streamlined; a mere twitch, a single shrug of those muscles would hurl it torpedo-swift on anything else which swam the waters of Cyclops, and jaws which could open to engulf a man would clamp serrated rows of fangs into, and through, the victim. The bite killed, and the Idller forgot. In summer, it was never hungry. It swallowed what its )aws held, and that suf- ficed until the next kill, minutes later. Kolb silenced the yammering alarms in his mind and lined up the sights of his gun rock-steady on the centre of the maw. And then, with the distance closing to two hundred yards, a hundred and fifty, there came the boom. It rocked the skimmer. It starded the wolfshark. It was the noise of a Corps Galactica spacecraft braking at the edge of atmosphere to put down at the repair base. By a reflex not even the danger of death could over- rule, ex-spaceman Justin Kolb glanced up, and the sun shone full on his wholeface visor, triggering and over- loading the glare response, so that he was blind. He cried out, his hand closing on the trigger of his gun. The har- poon whistled wide of a target, and the wolfshark charged. During the flight Maddalena Santos had mostly- sat staring at nothing, turning over and over in her mind the decision which now confronted her: to stay on, or not, in the Patrol Service. Three other passengers were aboardpersonnel from an airless Corps base further out towards the limits of the explored galaxy, on rotating local leave and very ex- cited about it. Two of them were men. The fact that these men looked at her once only told her something about the effect of the last twenty years on her appear- ance. It was one thing to know that she was assured of an- other two centuries of life. It was another to realise on this first visit to civilisation in so long a time how deep the impact of two decades on a barbarian world had gone. She was assured of her longevity by the Patrol's pay- scale; in a galaxy where the older worlds were so rich it literally made no difference whether a given individual worked or not, it required either accidental dedication or a tempting bait to enlist volunteers for the necessary drudgery of governmental service. Not that you can really call it government, Maddalena reminded herself listlessly. It's more like herding cattle. And lazy cattle, at that. The other branches of government service paid at lower rates; only the Patrol paid ten-for-one in the unique currency of life. She had served twenty years as an on-planet agent, among stinking barbarians lost in a mud-wallow, and she was entitledif she chose to take it here and nowto a guaranteed two centuries of comfortable, healthy life, anywhere she chose. She could even go clear back to Earth, for she had been born there. Wistfully, she looked at the black star-spangled back- drop of space, wondering what had happened on the mother world in the period she had been away. She had been so optimistic . . . Right at the beginning of her career, when she was making out so badly in the Corps that she risked not even being promoted lieutenant from her initial probationer statusand hence losing for- ever her chance at longevity-paymentshe had saved ev- erything and indeed acquired some small reputation by a successful coup on a barbarian planet: one of the isolated Zarathustra Refugee Planets where fugitives had survived after fleeing the hell of the Zarathustra nova more than seven centuries previous. But when she was offered a post as an on-planet agent, supervising and watching the progress of these stranded outcasts of humanity, since she was not permitted to re- turn to the world where she had stirred up such a to-do, she had had to pick almost at random from the existing four or five vacancies. And she had realised quite shortly after being assigned her post, in which the minimum stay was twenty years, that she had chosen wrong. It had seemed that something was going to happen on the planet she selecteda transition from the typical mud-grubbing peasant level where many of the refugees had got stuck, .to an expanding phase of incipient civilisa- tion, with some industrialisation and a great deal of cross-cultural influence: fascinating material to study at first-hand. But that occurrence depended on the survival of an organisational genius who had inherited the headship of a strategically sited city-state. And within a month of her arrival, one of his jealous rivals assassinated him and seized power, condemning the planet to at least one more generation of stagnancy. She was absolutely forbidden to interfere. And, having to sit helplessly- by and watch nothing happen, she had grown so bored she hardly dared think about it. Now was time for leave, and reassignment. Her "death" had been arranged; her successor had been briefed and was even now aboard the Patrol ship which would land him with utter secrecy to take over his care- fully prepared r61e in the local society. . . and she was on her way to Cyclops, a planet she had never conceived she might want to visit. Yet she had welcomed the reasonless order to come here before proceeding on leave. The delay gave her time to arrive at the decision she had postponed so long: stay on, ask for transfer to some lower-paying )ob, or resign? She thought enviously of Gus Langenschmidt, the Pa- trol Major who had maintained the beat including her assigned world when she first went there; he was aging, greying, even running to fat when she last saw him, yet because he could think of no better purpose to which to devote his accrued longevity, he was continuing far be- yond the maximum service-time which qualified for ten- to-one pay. Five centuries was the limit of credit Fifty years in the Patrol. More than the total of years Fve yet lived, Maddalena reflected. How is Gus? Where is he? It would have been easier to endure my job if I'd .known he was still going to call two or three times a yearbut they 'pulled him off his beat to do something else when he topped the limit, and I could never like his successor so well. The communicators announced the imminence of planetfall. The whisper of air began on the hull, like the drumming of scores of marching feet. Maddalena leaned back and closed her eyes, struggling once more with the irresoluble problem. She scarcely noticed the actual land- ing period, although her fellow passengers were chatter- ing and joking and exchanging snippets of information about Cyclops. A rough world, they thought it was. Rough world.' Maddalena echoed silently. These soft- handed chair-warmers should go where I've just come from.' And yet... Her mind drifted back two decades on the instant. "A predatory kind of world"that was the description she had been given when it was first learned Cyclopeans were behind the interference with a ZRP which she had cancelled out by an inspired improvisation. What did they want her here for, anyway? Why in the galaxy had that message come through at the Corps base where she had been trying to decide whether to go all the way home to Earth for her leave-year, instructing that she be sent to Cyclops on the next available flight? The answer turned up the moment the locks were opened on the landing-groundor rather, pontoon. Cy- clops, having so much water, had correspondingly little dry ground available for parking spaceships. More than si dozen vessels were in view from the seat in which she still sat listlessly although the others had risen excitedly to await permission to step outside. The gawky shapes of cranes, the abstract formations of hulls in process of cut- ting up for scrap, the clean bright rails of overhead gan- tries, wove webs of metal across the blinding blue background of a summer sky. She had not expected to find such bright light; the pri- mary of the world she had left was cooler than Earth's, but that of Cyclops was whiter and hotter. A man in summer undress uniform, hair clipped close and indicating that he was called on to fly space where long hair was forbidden because it was dangerous inside a helmet, hauled himself dexterously through the lock even before the mobile gangvroy trundled into position. He peered down the shadowy aisle of the passenger cabin. "Senior Lieutenant Santos?" he inquired. Maddalena stirred and got up. "The base commandant is waiting for you," the man said. "Would you come with me?" The other passengers exchanged resentful glances, es- pecially the woman. She had never been out of range of civilised cosmetic treatment, and her age was impossible to assess, whereas Maddalena had had to age the full twenty years she'd spent where cosmetics were mere primitive pastes and powders. She obeyed the instruction apathetically. But the mo- ment she came to the lock and saw who was waiting be- low in the open cockpit of the ground-skimmer, she forgot everything in a wave of pure joy. "Gus."' she shouted, and flew down the gangway three steps at a time to hurl her arms around his neck. "Easy, girl, easy!" he said, disengaging her grip. "I have to maintain some show of authority around this dump, even though I hate it. Let's have a look at you. It's been a long time." Maddalena pulled back to arm's reach and studied her old friend. "You look better on. it than I do," she said with a twinge of envy. And indeed he did; his grey hair had been treated, his face smoothed to wipe away worry-lines, his waistline trimmed to a lean youthfulness. In his immaculate commandant-rank uniform, he looked like a come-on advertisement for Patrol recruitment. "Have to maintain appearances, the same way you've had to," he grunted. "Here, get in and I'll run you back to my HQ for a bit of refreshment. Your gear will be taken care of. It's not often I get the chance to use my position for my own amusement, but this time I've done it, and you're getting the finest treatment the planet can afford." "Amusement?" Maddalena said, relaxing with a sigh into the soft padding of the passenger seat. "Did you fetch me here simply for amusement?" Langenschmidt, easing the ground-skimmer around the tail of the newly-landed shipthe metal shell of the pon- toon resonated under themshot a starded glance at her. "Weren't you told why you were being sent here? I'd have expected you to raise hell at having your leave postponed when you've waited twenty years for it!" "No, I just did as I was told." Maddalena narrowed her eyes against the brilliant sunshine and let her gaze rove over the ddily-parked spaceships. "Hm! You must have changed in the years since we last met," Langenschmidt said. "Yon used to be a con- siderable spitfire. Well, IWell!" He ran his hand around the collar of his full-dress jacket. "I'd better start by explaining, hadn't I? It's to do with the ZRP's, of course. The row about non-interference has blown up yet once moreit's been in the wind since shortly before I was recalled from my beat and put in charge here, and I was put in charge here for precisely the reason that the centre of the whole brewing row was right on Cyclops." Maddalena, hardly paying attention, made some sort of sound interpretable as an interested comment. Langenschmidt went on: "In fact, some of it was to do with our little affair at Carrig. Although they were never able to come out and complain openly, the pride of the Cyclops government was badly hurt by the fact that a hundred or so Cyclopeans had been dropped into volcanoes by dirty smelly barbarians, and that we hadn't acted to stop this because of the principle of non-inter- ference with ZRP development. It takes years to stir up trouble when there are two hundred and whatevertwo hundred sixty, isn't it?worlds with a say in running the Corps, but a determined party can get the wheels turn- ing eventually. And on Cyclops we have just such a de- termined party. Her name is Alura Quist, and if there weren't officially a representative government here I'd say she was a dictator. She's just ahunstoppable. "The Cyclopeans don't like having our base here, but they can't balance their planetary budget without the revenue it brings in. So short of kicking the Corps off- planet, there's only one way they can get back at us for the Carrig business. That's to attack our prized principle of non-interference. And with a view to this, Quist is right now staging a big conference on the subject, with delegates from all kinds of worlds including Earth, and frankly I'm horrified at the influential names she's man- aged to rope in. "The problem is in my lap, Maddalena, and I've wor- ried myself stupid about it. They put me here to try and stave off what Quist is doing, and I'm losing out. When I heard you were at the end of your tour, I thought, 'By Cosmos! She's from Earth, and out this way Earthborn Corpsmen are few and far betweenshe's served as an on-planet agent, so she has first-hand testimony avail- able.' For all these and several other reasons, I thought maybe you'd jolt my mind out of its old grooves and somehow inspire me to get the better of Quist." Maddalena stirred and turned her finely-shaped head. Her former look of fragility, Langenschmidt noted, had faded, and she seemed toughened and far less feminine. "After twenty years watching a gang of Zarathustra refugees getting nowhere, Gus, I'm pretty well con- vinced myself that it's a crime to leave them to make fools of themselves. I'm sorry to disappoint you within minutes of our first meeting in years, but that's the way I feel right now, and if you want to convince the dele- gates to this conference that non-interference is the right course, you can start by trying it on me!" m For the third time Bracy Dyge began on the miscel- laneous collection of transistors littering the bottom of his spares box, hoping against hope that the fault in his fish-finder would put itself right. He was four days from port, even if he started home right away, in this sluggish ancient trawler which represented his whole family's means of supportwith himself as sole able-bodied seaman. He had been three days on the fishing-grounds, and only last night had he cottoned on to the fact that the reason for his inability to locate any schools of oilfish lay in an equipment fault, not in a total absence of fish. For some reason far beyond his rudimentary technical knowledge to fathom, the fish-finder refused to signal anything closer than the bottom of the sea. With mad- dening precision it delineated on its circular screen the profile of the rocks three hundred feet below his keel, but it wouldn't even show the big plastic bucket he was trailing as a sea-anchor. Transistors were expensive, and it was impossible to tell by merely looking at them whether they were in functional condition or not. Accordingly, he couldn't say whether those he had salvaged at various times and popped in the spares box were better, or worse, than the ones installed in the fish-finder already. He could merely try every possible combination until he had exhausted the last permutation, and since there were altogether six- teen transistors in the fish-finder and seven in the spares box, it was proving an impossibly long job. At least, however, it was ridding him of some useless junk. Two of the spares had put the fish-finder com- pletely out of action, and these he had tossed overboard with annoyance. The son was baldng hot, and the sea was completely featureless. His trawler, shabby and paint-peeling, was the only sign of life as far as he could see. On the after- deck, in the exiguous shadow of a torn plastic awning, he sat with legs crossed, using the front plate off the fish-finder housing as a tray for the loose parts. He was very lean, and the summer had tanned his naturally-dark skin to the colour of old rich leather. His hair hung around his shoulders in thick braids, and a shiny but sea-tarnished chrome ring was threaded through the pierced lobe of his left ear. Anyone with a knowledge of the culture of Cyclops would have placed him instantly, even without stopping to consider his off-white loincloth and elastic sandals: a fisherboy from one of the sea-hemi- sphere ports, most likely Grarignol, and doing rather badly this year. Correct. Morosely, Bracy discovered that another transistor was worthless, and that made three over the side. At least, he promised himself, he was not going to turn for home before he had exhausted all possibilities for self-help. Even then.. . His stomach churned and his mind quailed at the pros- pect of going home with an empty hold. Better, surely, to cruise at random until his nets chanced on something for the family to eat, even if he found no oilfish. Oilfish were the only salable species in this part of the ocean; eating fish could be got by anyone, simply by casting a few lines with bait. Oilfish travelled in vast schools of eight to ten thousand, but because the schools were so big they were likewise concentrated, and without a fish- finder one might hunt for weeks and not cross the path of a single school. . If only he belonged to a different family . . . ! If he were one of the Agmess boys, for instance, six brothers of whom two had sufficient technical skill not merely to do their own electronics repairs but actually to build equipment for other families' boats . .. But by the same token, they guarded their knowledge well. He would have to go home and pay for their assistance, or pay someone elsewhat with, after a fruitless voyage? Agmess boats had radio, too, and in the event of a break- down they could signal for help, whereas he was on his own, in charge of the boat which supported his four sis- ters, his grandmother and his eight-year-old younger brother. He was himself seventeen years old. He had been the breadwinner of the family since the great storm of the winter before last during which his parents had been drowned in the capsizing of a lifeboat put out to rescue a damned fool. Add me to the list, Bracy told himself sourly. My parents would be dreadfully ashamed, to see me in this stupid mess! He paused in his thankless task and cast a casual glance over the bumished shield of the sea, not expecting to see anything but the water and the sky. His heart gave a lurch and seemed to go out of rhythm for several beats, and he almost spilled the spare parts from the makeshift tray balanced on his legs. Jackson's buzzards! This far north, they could mean Only one thinga wolfshark! With frantic haste he gathered the bits of the fish- finder and thrust them in a bag where at least he could find them again, and scrambled to his feet. There was one other way of tracking oilfish besides using electronic aids, and that was to follow a wolfshark as the buzzards did, until its eagerness for prey led it to a school. It could sense the same nutrient-rich currents as all the other fish, and those currents always defined the oilfish's path. Of course, not all such currents held oilfishthere were too many of them. But it was an idea. He hesitated, eyes screwed np against the glare, raising the sole of one foot to rub it on the calf of the opposite leg as he always did when concentrating on a problem. There were several factors to weigh before a decision was reached. First off, this wolfshark must be a whopper to have so many blizzards trailing him. Second, he was already four days from home, and a wolfshark finding plenty of prey might kill the clock around for a week before tiring and turning towards the equator again. Third, although he had heard about using a wolfshark as a pilot on the traces of an oilfish school, he had never known anyone really do itit was needlessly chancy now that everyone sailing from Grarignol could afford a fish-finder. Finally, if a wolfshark that size decided to attack his trawler, it could probably sink it with a single fierce charge. Bracy drew a very deep breath. Now was the time for desperate measures, he concluded, and went to see whether he was equipped for the job. Stores were no problem, apart from water, and unless the weather broke he could keep the solar still going. - Power, likewiseduring the day he drew enough to move the boat at a sluggish walking pace from silicon- dynide sails spread to catch the sun, and at night he could spare a little of his stored reserves. He could tisk a couple of days on the wolfshark's trail. Defending himself if the beast turned nasty was an- other matter altogether. His only weapons were two fish-gaffs, rather corroded from long use and one in par- ticular looking likely to snap soon, and an unreliable self-seeking seine, not much use for anything except bringing up jellyfish to be melted in the sun. One moment! An inspiration struck him. In the emergency locker he had at least half a dozen signal rockets, which on a sparsely populated world like this needed to reach stratospheric altitude if they were to be any use. They weighed sixty-five pounds apiece, and were triggered automatically by contact with sea-water at one-hour intervals after the life-raft was cast over- board. He spent fifteen sweaty, swearing minutes manhan- dling two of them into position on the forward rail, and fishing up a bucket of sea-water to fire them with. If luck and judgement combined, he could give even a mon- ster wolfshark a meal worth remembering with these things. Then, feeling remarkably cold despite the heat of the day, he fed power to the weakly-responding reaction jets and the trawler began to creep in the wolfshark's general direction. He was about a mile distant when the skimmer came in sight. It seemed to appear from nowhere. It was so low in the water, even the shallow troughs of this oily swell had concealed it until it got up on its planes and spewed a frothy plume astem. There seemed to be nothing of it, toojust a platform with a slightly raised rim forward, and a man lying on it, his face masked with a visor against the sun. Bracy gulped. Going after the wolfshark? Yes! For he was lying on the butt of a harpoon-gun, and a gleam of sun caught the barbs of the missile. He saw the wolfshark then, and wished he hadn't come near after all, for it was gigantic beyond his worst nightmaresits span as great as the entire length of his trawler. The scene of the man on the skimmer confronting the horrible aquatic killer lasted just long enough to burn into his memory, before a sonic boom thundered across the sky and the tableau, one second old, dissolved into a chaos of spray and shrieking cries from the buzzards, which had withdrawn to a safe height after vomiting their half-digested stomach contents. The skimmer vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, in a whirlpool generated by the passage of the wolf- shark, and a dozen fragments sailed into the air to land at distances up to a hundred feet away. Of the man who had been on it, Bracy saw nothing more for the moment. Chiefly, this was because he was no longer wasting time on looking. He had stopped his engines on solar power and feverishly switched to stored reservesnot that that would enable him to outrun the monster, but at least it would give him a chance to dodge if he timed the ma- noeuvre correctly. He waited, wholly tense. Would the beast ignore him, or? No, his luck was out. For, having turned in a lazy circle, it was rising to the surface again and surveying the upper side of the sea. This was an old rogue, clearly, as well as a monster. No sooner had it sighted the trawler than it buried itself forward. Bracy was yelling at the top of his voicehe had no idea what words he was uttering, but they might have been curses. By crazy guesswork he aligned the trawler on the wolfshark's course, slopped water over the firing mechanism of both rockets, and buried himself into the well of the deck, hoping the blast would be deflected from him. Onetwothree heartbeats, as widely spaced as measured footfalls, intolerably slow. And the universe exploded. Dazed, he picked up his bruised body, feeling as if it belonged to someone else, and put his head over the well's edge to look at the deck. Two of his solar sails were ripped, and the plastic awning which had given him shade had blown clear out of sight; there were char-marks on the planking and the window of the stemhouse was smashed. Bat there had been a very satisfactory- calamity twenty yards from his bows. He could tell, even before looldng over the side, because the buzzardsnot choosy about what carrion they atehad descended already to replace the food wasted in panicky vomiting. The writhing corpse of the wolfshark, torn almost in two, was pumping its life's blood in great oozing gouts into the ocean. Limp, Bracy had to cling to the railand instantly snatched his hand away. It was still hot from the blaze of the rockets' exhaust. A miracle I didn't set the ship afire, he thought wanly. He looked apatherically at the water. Now he'd lost two solar sails, and his pilot to an oilfish school, for nothing. He stiffened abruptly. What was that in the water yonder? Something writhingas though beating at the sky? The man from the skimmer! Still alive, floating on some buoyant section of his crafteven having the strength to utter faint cries, now that Bracy's ears were attuned to the sound half-masked by the whinnying of the buzzards. With infinite effort he put the trawler about and drew alongside the floating man. He was by then too weak to help himself; Bracy had to gaff him through a pair of cross-belts on his back. And small wonder he was weak. When he was dragged from the water, he proved to have lost one leg from the knee down to the fangs of the wolfshark. "Don'tworry," the man whispered, seeing Bracy stare aghast at the injury. "Suitwill stopthe bleeding." What suit? Bracy peered closer. The man's skin was covered with a transparent film of some kind, that must be it, and it was contracting now of its own accord, forming an automatic tourniquet around the amputated leg so that the flesh turned death-white and the bleeding reduced to a capillary leakage. Well, that fettles it, Bracy thought glumly, and went to fetch another signal rocket, this time to cry for help from wherever it might be available. IV Even on a poor world like Cyclops, the Corps en)oyed the best of everything. It was a necessity to compensate personnel for the often heartbreaking tasks that faced them; likewise, however, it was a drawback in the same way as the pay system based on longevity treatment, creating envy and troubling Corps selection boards with mobs of totally unsuitable candidates. Symptomatic of Corps luxury here was Langen- schmidt's home and headquarters, a villa crowning the highest point on the island which the Cyclops govern- ment leased to them. There was no need for the com- mandant to be in close physical touch with his responsibilities in the repair-yard and portelectronic links served the purpose and permitted the privacy pre- ferred by a man whose longest service had been on a lonely Patrol beat one tour of which might take a de- cade. His dismay at Maddalena's unexpected response to his first remarks after their meeting kept him silent until they were together in the long, low, cool main room of the villa, with the panorama of the island and its offshore pontoons spread like a map in front of the wall-high windows. Then, cradling a drink in both hands, he leaned back in a contoured chair and stared at this woman whom subconsciously he had still regarded an hour ago as the hot-headed stand-in agent of the Carrig affair, twenty years previous. He had grown accustomed to the changes wrought in himself by a return to comfort and civilisationthe rever- sal of the aging effect, for instance. The sight of Madda- lena at a "natural" forty-five years of age was a shock to him. Her bones were still fine, her head still as exquisitely shaped as an abstract sculpture, her eyes srill bright as gems on either side of her regal nose, sharp as though to symbolise her innate curiosity. But her skin was coarse, her hands were rough, and there was an aura of exhaus- tion in her attitude and her voice. Tp try and dispel the disturbance she had caused in his mind, he said with insincere heartiness, "Well, Mad- dalena! How have things been going for you since we last met?" "Badly." She made no move to sip the drink provided for her, although she had taken a dry savoury cracker- ball from a bowl and was rolling it absently between her fingers. "I doubt if it was more than a logbook entry for you, but you may remember that Headman Cashus was assassinated soon after my assignment, and with him went any hope of progress. So" She crumbled the crackerball into dust and dropped the fragments back in the dish. "So I've spent one hell of a long time watching absolutely nothing happen. And you?" "AhI've been learning a new trade and finding I'm not very good at it. Contemporary diplomacy, I guess you'd say. I haven't seen nothing happen, but on the galactic scale things take place so slowly as to make a fair approximation." Langenschmidt hesitated. "Mad- dalena, were you serious m what you said earlier, about non-interference, or was that just due to tiredness after your trip?" "The tiredness has been building up for a long, long time." Now, finally, she tasted her drink, making no comment on it. "Andyes. I'm serious." "Are you going clear back to the point of view I had such trouble kicking you out ofalong with Pavel Brzeskawhen we were going to Carrig?" "No. That was the preconceived notion of a silly girl. It's been a long time, Gus, even for a Corpsman, and I'vechanged, I guess." "Now look here!" Langenschmidt leaned forward. "You've been on Thirteen, which barely counts as Class A, where the refugees have had extremes of climate to contend with, and in any case started off on the worst possible basis by having no adequately trained leaders. I can understand the sight of a primitive peasant commu- nity getting anybody down. But before you change sides on the question of non-interference, think of Fourteen and Carrigyou should see the recent reports from there, incidentally. Think of Seven, where they're de- veloping some new biological and generic skills, or Eighteen, where there are some language changes going on which will eventually influence the whole pattern of human communication." "Think of Five," Maddalena countered. "Unless they've licked the cerebral palsy problem, the survivors there are back to grunting like apes." There was silence for a feW minutes. Unhappily, Lan- genschmidt chewed his lower lip and stared at Mad- dalena, wondering what next to say. The problem was a recurrent one, and had been de- bated for a century and a half. Its roots, though, lay much further backto be precise, some seven hundred and seventy years before, when the primary of a planet called Zarathustra went nova. For six hundred and thirty years thereafter, it was believed that only a small handful of refugees had escapedto Baucis Alpha, on the Solward side. Then, without warning, radio signals be- gan to be received from the opposite direction; fruit of generation upon generation of dedicated workers start- ing from no better level than the salvaged scrap in a single starship, climaxing in the conversion of an as- teroid into a huge generating station fed by solar power and oriented to form a bowl-like transmission antenna for messages limping at light-speed back to civilisation. They came from Lex's Planet, otherwise known as ZRP One: the first Zarathustra Refugee Planet to be lo- cated and recontacted. Now, it was part of the galactic union, and regarded as a civilised world. From there, it had been learned that no fewer than three thousand ships got away from the night side of Zarathustia, and the far quadrant of its orbit, carrying some two and a quarter million people. The Patrol, con- stituted a couple of centuries before, was given the task of tracking down the remaining survivors, if any. Twenty-one worlds had now been found where fugi- tives had landed. On some, they had not only survived, but built up during their period of isolation quite inter- esting and respectable cultures. Few of them boasted technology to more than rudimeritary level, but some had other achievementssuch as those Langenschmidt had cited to Maddalenawhich promised new avenues for human cultural or scientific development. After much argument and heart-searching, the non-in- terference rule was formulated and applied. Unless the ZRP's succeeded in re-contacting civilisation themselves, they were to be left to evolve along the paths they had themselves created. There were many reasons for this. On some planets there had been evolutionary changes due to environment: on all, there had been cultural dis- ruption, and centuries of "natural" breeding, four to five generations per century, had magnified the discontinuity. Perhaps most significant of all, galactic civilisation was slowing down its former progress, as though the distance between the stars imposed a psychological as well as physical barrier on cross-fertilisation of cultures. Seem- ingly, one felt there was little point in research or inven- tiveness when for all one could determine on some other of the 260 human planets the same work had already been carried out. Left to themselves, it was suggested, the ZRP's might rediscover the basic human drives of curiosity and ulti- mately re-infect the rest of the race. Elsewhere, there had been a cultural smoothing process. Worlds like Earth were looked np to, but only the superficialities of fashion spread, not the real changes which underlay them, and consequently things were much the same everywhere as they had been when the Patrol was set up. Backward worlds struggled to catch ~up to the average standard, and some did so, but the worlds above average were placid and lacked any initia- tive. - Maddalena stirred in her chair and raised her eyes to her old friend's rejuvenated face. "Who's spearheading the campaign this time? ZRP One as usual, presumably." Langenschmidt pounced. "No, and that's the most in- teresting part of it. It used to be fashionable for One to shout about the shocking way their kinfolk were being left to rot instead of rescued and brought home. But this conservative tradition has died out lately, and I think this is because it's taken until now for One to mesh com- pletely with galactic civilisation and discover just how great a change was wrought in their own culture by their isolation period. Now, One's spokesmen are mostly keeping quiet, and we're hoping they will eventually plump for non-interference themselves. "In their place, we have Cyclops beating the drum, as a result of the Carrig affair in my personal opinion, and a whole lot of charitably-minded but short-sighted people from the older worlds, including and especially Earth. What they fail to understand1 sayis that Earth-type luxury isn't the perfect human way of life. They want to impose it as a standard everywhere, whether or not the recipients enjoy the cultures they have at present, whether or not these cultures are productive, creative ones." "Thirteen's certainly isn't," Maddalena muttered. Langenschmidt didn't answer. His eyes had turned towards the window, and widened on seeing a line of brilliant sparks like stitches sewn upward across the blue of the sky. "Hullo!" he exclaimed. "That's an emergency rocket. Some fisherman in difficulties, presumably. We're always having to nursemaid local folkeither fisherman who go too far to sea with inadequate equipment, or upper-crust playboys out wolfshark-hunring whose nerve fails them at the crucial moment. Still, it interrupts the monotony." He addressed himself to a communicator panel discreetly blended with the room's no-nonsense decor. "Anyone taking action on that emergency rocket just now?" Pause. Then a disembodied voice, sounding irritated, answered him. "Sorry, commandant, what was that?" And, as if re-hearing the question in memory: "Oh! The rocket! Yes, I'll send someone dut to gaff the guy and drag hmi ashore." "Fine." Langenschmidt's attention reverted to Mad- dalena. "You know,' I think before we finish this argu- ment, I'd better give you a chance to see galactic civilisation, Cyclops-style, so that you can learn all over again what a shallow thing it really is. Take the situation here at present as a shining example. We have this woman Alura Quist, who runs things, as I told you. She's certainly very capable and ruthless. But to have to con- fine her efforts to Cyclops, which is so poor it still runs on fission rather than fusion, galls her. She doesn't see why Corps personnel should enjoy longevity payments, to start with, when she is aging and having to send clear back to Earth for even her cosmetic treatments. I think in fact some of her hostility to us is due to nothing more abstract than simple jealousy. A woman afraid of losing her youthful looks is a sad case. She has an official lover, one of the handsomest men I've ever seen, who's also a kind of planetary hero, a former spaceman who suffered some kind of crippling injury in creditable circum- stances. I don't know the full details. She treats him like aa tame animal, as it were. Shows him off: here he is, the famous Justin Kolb, and he's my lover. Follow me?" Maddalena gave a listless nod. She had heard all this, apart from the story of Kolb, at the time of the Carrig affair, when a group of Cyclopean entrepreneurs learned from a failed Corps probationer the location of ZRP Fourteen and its deposits of high-yield radioactives. They had operated a mine with local slave-labour for a considerable time before the Patrol managed to displace them, and Cyclops had smarted ever since under the knowledge that a bunch of ZRP barbarians had dropped civilised menso-calleddown a volcano, the standard punishment for the crimes they had committed by the local ethical yardstick. "I honestly don't think Quist has any interest in the ZRP's as such," Langenschmidt pursued. "She wants to get back at the Corps for personal reasons of jealousy, and the existence of a fund of hostility due to the ep- isode on Fourteen provides her with a handle. If we were to abandon non-interference for sound, rational reasons. I'd swallow the decision gagging, maybe, but I'd stomach it. But to do it for such a" The disembodied voice spoke again from the commu- nicator. "Commandant? " "Yes?" Langenschmidt half-turned in his chair. "That signal rocket. I thought you'd be interested to know about it." "Not especially, but tell me anyway." "We've found one of the Grarignol fishermena boy, rather, not more than seventeen, they say. He's tangled with a wolfshark being hunted by auhrather notori- ous person. He fished said notorious person out of the water short of most of one leg. Luckily for him, he was wearing a medisuit, and though he's unconscious he isn't dead. But it's who he is which may interest you." "Well, then, spit it out," Langenschmidt grunted. "It's Jusrin Kolb," said the disembodied voice. Alura Quist was pleased with the way things were go- ing. Not even the reflection which came back to her from the polyview mirror at which she was preparing for the official banquet due at sunset could wholly dispel the mood of grim satisfaction the offworld delegation had generated in her. Of course, those from the wealthier worlds such as Earth had felt patronising about the best Cyclops could offer, but it was out of keeping with their professed charitable intentions towards the underprivileged of the ZRP's to make open complaint, so they had been on their best behaviour. And the ferocity of the representa- tive from ZRP OneOmar Haust, an old man now but still vehementoutweighed a dozen of his fainter-hearted colleagues. He still clung to views that most people on his planet had reluctantly abandoned. The banquet would be magnificent; the food and liquor would be so expensive as to have to figure as a special entry in the planetary budget for the yearbut never mind, it could appropriately be written off against a one per cent surcharge on the rental of the Corps Galactica base. Afterwards there would have to be speeches, of coursecurious how tradition lingered in these formal areas of human activity, even after countless generationsbut she could endure that In sight of a success schemed for over so many years, she could put up with acouple of hours' repetitious mouthing. "We of Cyclops," she said to the mirror, and watched how the muscles of her throat moved with the words, "are not among the most prosperous peoples of the galaxy. Yet what we have we do not regard selfishly. We would eagerly share it with those who are still worse off than we. In pre-galactic days, the historians tell us, there was a fable recounted about a dog which made its bed on the fodder of a draft-animal and so caused the animal to starve." She paused, at first because she was still uncertain about including this arcane literary reference even now the speech-compositor had shorn it of obsolete words like "manger" and "ox", and then to carry out yet one more inspection of her appearance. She was still slender; she had the nervous, energetic constitution which assured her of boniness rather than excess fat in her declining years. Her hair, fair and warmly coloured, was impeccably dressed and framed a strong face in which her eyes were blue and brilliant as sapphires. Her gown was of Earthside manufacture- dated, no doubt, in the eyes of the visitors from the mother world, but suiting her so well she could disre- gard that minority opinion. How long would it all last? Her mouth twisted into a harsh grimace, instantly destroying her usual pretriness, as the thought of such a man as Gus Langenschmidt crossed her mind. After fifty years patrolling a beat among the ZRP barbarians, he was promised survival in good health and artificial youth when she was long rele- gated to footnotes in local history records. That fact could scarcely be changed. But the purpose to which he had dedicated his life could be emptied of meaning. Oh, the draft of her speech would do well enough. She let that matter drop, and spoke to the attendant manicuring her toenails on another subject which was currently worrying her. "Would you tell Justin Kolb that I wish to speak with him before the banquet?" "Is he going to be there, mistress?" the girl countered. Quist started. Was there mockery in that level voice? There was no obvious sign of it in the dark eyes which met hers; she relaxed fractionally. "What do you mean? Of course he will be there. Why not?" "I understood from his valet, mistress, that he had not returned half an hour ago." "Returned?" Bewildered, Quist stared down at the girl. In the past two days, since the arrival of the offworld delegates, she had spared scarcely a moment to think of her lover. She had been vaguely aware that he had gone off somewhere, but had assumed without ques- tion that he would be back for tonight's major official function. She slapped the old-fashioned communicator built into her dressing-table and spoke to the air. "Has Justin Kolb come home yet?" "I am his valet, mistress," a suave voice replied. "No, he has not yet returned." "Where is he, then? Has there been a message?" "No message, mistress. If you wish, I will attempt to contact him." "Do you know where he is?" Belatedly, it struck Quist as bad for her image not to know already, but she could hardly recall the words once spoken. "Approximately, mistress. He went wolfshark-hunting at the extreme northern limit of the species' range." Time seemed to stand still. Finally, her voice ragged, she whispered, "Contact him and find outfind out when he will be back." And when he does come home, she finished silently, Pa teach him a lesson he'll never forget for bis im- pudence in disregarding my orders to be here tonight. In fact, it might well be time to dispense with Justin Kolbsend him back to the menial job. where but for her he would now be slaving out his miserable existence, one leg reduced to a stump by the freezing cold of space. Cyclops had no slack in its economy to allow for the luxury of unproductive cripples. She was making alterations to the seating arrangements for the banquet when the communicator sounded again. Was it Justin calling? She closed her eyes for a second, wondering how she could bring herself to get rid of this man whose half-tamed spirit represented the second most constant challenge of her life. "Mistress, it is I once more," the valet said. "I have bad news, I regret to say." She could not speak, but waited passively. The girl completed her toe-manicure and gathered her equipment to move away. "Justin Kolb is in hospital at the Corps Galactica base. He was attacked by the wolfshark he was hunting and a fisherman rescued him. He will live, they say, but" The valet hesitated. "Go on," she said in a dead voice. The next of her at- tendants, charged with fitting her shoes, came and knelt at her feet. "He has lost his right foot, and the lower part of his leg, to the wolfshark's bite." Does the madman want to be a cripple? The question sped across her mind, and then was replaced by an uncontrollable wave of pity and sympathy. But for tonight's banquet, she would have jumped up that mo- ment and gone to his hospital bed, to hold his hand and croon comfort. Oh, Justin, Justin! What's the love of danger that you draw your fire from? One day it will kill you, and I shall instantly be made old . .. Aloud, she spoke with determination. "Put me in touch with him. At once!" "I will try, mistress," was the doubtful answer, and the communicator went silent. All thought of the recriminations she was going to level at her lover had evaporated on this news. She could visualise the way he would have brought her his trophy, defiant because he knew it offended her when he courted danger, yet in some ways shy, toolike a boy uncer- tainly seeking the praise of his first girl. He would have intended to return for the banquet, had the accident not overtaken him, bringing his tribute, and she would have been both angry and delighted, for knowledge that such a man was her lover comforted her. The communicator spoke once more. "Alura Quist?" it said, and she recognised the voice. "Commandant Langenschmidt," she said coldly. "I did not ask to speak to you." "No, but I thought you'd rather speak to me than no- body at all. Justin Kolb won't regain consciousness for some whileat least a couple of hours. He was severely shocked by his experience. But you can have him back tomorrow or the day after, the doctors say." She tensed. "With his leg restored?" There was a blank pause. Then Langenschmidt gave a forced chuckle. "Hardly, I'm afraid. Some people seem to have exaggerated ideas of what our medicine can ac- complish. Limb-regeneration overnight isn't among our capabilities." She had expected no other answer, but she had been unable to prevent the words from emergingthey were driven by the savage jealousy she felt towards the Corpsman for his payment in youth and health. No matter, anyhow. Justin had lost that leg before, and more than simply the foot and lower partthe whole of it, almost all the way to the hip, from space- gangrene. "Thank you for your courtesy in telling me," she said without warmth. "I'd have appreciated earlier notifica- tion, of course." "It was my belief that you had other things to occupy your mind," Langenschmidt countered mildly. With a snarl which made her glad communicator links on Cyclops were restricted to sound without vision, Quist forced herself to maintain calm. She said, "I will have transport sent in the morning, to bring him home. Will that be convenient?" "I imagine so, but send a doctor as well, of course." Langenschmidt sounded a trifle surprised, as though he had expected an attempt to persuade him that Kolb's leg should be restored at the Corps hospital. "Of course," Quist echoed, and silenced the communi- cator. She waited a second. Then she spoke to it again. "Find me Dr Aleazar Rimerley, and be quick about it!" Dr Rimerley was enjoying the sunset when the call came. He was among the wealthiest men on Cyclops, and his home consisted of the surface and the heart of an entire island, some mile or so in circumference. His liv- ing quarters were built out into the ocean, so that when he choseas nowhe could sit on a higher level and watch the sky, or else he could move down to the seabed and enjoy the vivid panorama of the ocean's summer life. His chief personal servant brought news of the call. He rubbed his chin in wonder; he had not been intend- ing to get in contact with Quist again just yet, but a further deal was certain once simple cosmetic treatment ceased to stave off time's ravages. Now, therefore, was as good a time as any to talk to her, since she had initiated the conversation. He smiled automatically even though she could not see him, and said with extreme heartiness, "My dear Alura Quist! What an honour to speak with you after all this time!" She brushed aside the social formalities and went straight to the point. "Doctor, I have another job for you. As far as I know, you're the only person on Cyclops capable of tackling it." "Pll do my best," Rimeriey agreed, and repressed a smile that was more sincere than the original one. "Justin Kolb has lost his leg again. Wolfshark-hunt- fag." Rimerley blinked. He had expected something alto- gether different, almost certainly for Quist herself. This request took him aback. "I'm having him brought to you tomorrow morning. I count on you to do as thorough a job of regeneration as you did the last time." "Ahjust a moment," Rimerley said uncomfortably. "It's not the sort of job that can be tackled on a few hours' notice, you understand." In the back of his mind he was running calculations; so long to locate material, so long to make the tissue immunologically neutral, so long to get it here. "I doubt whether it would be pos- sible to handle the case in less than two weeks, I'm afraid." "Two weeks!" "That's my rough estimate. Of course, I may be-" "Then I might just as well leave him where he is. He'll be better looked after than in one of our second-rate hospitals." A warning tremor ran down Rimerley's spine. He said in a voice suddenly fainter than normal, "Ahwhere is he, then?" "In the Corps Galactica hospital. He was taken there after some fisherman rescued him from the water." Silence. "Dr Rimerley?" Quist demanded at last, sounding alarmed. She was not half as alarmed as Rimerley himself. He could barely choke out his answer. "On uh-on second thoughts, perhaps it would be better to have him brought here. At once, the sooner the better." He gulped the rest of the drink he had been sip- ping while he relaxed for the evening. "Yes, certainly not later than tomorrow morning, on any account!" He was sweating like a river when he cut the con- nection. VI Soraya was woridng as vsaal at the waterworks, and having the inevitable argument with Firdausi about mar- rying him, which he had been urging on her ever since she achieved puberty, when she heard her name being frantically shouted. She motioned Firdausi to be silent, and peered through the wraiths of steam from the main cauldron, trying to make out who it was. The voice was a child's, but so hoarse with agitation she could not recognise its owner. The waterworks consisted of three parts. First, there was the dipper which brought water from the natural pool; this was a chain of buckets on two big wooden pulleys, driven by a yorb which seemed quite content to walk around all day in a circle and get an evening re- ward of food for its trouble. The dipper emptied its water into the main cauldron, under which a hot fire burned all the time, raising sluggishly bursting bubbles in the contents. Although the water seemed perfectly clear and pure when it was raised from the pool, a scum al- ways formed during boiling, and it was in removing this scum with wooden ladles that Soraya and Firdausi were engaged. Then the water was run off, a little at a time, into the cooling tank, a tapered cylindrical container of heavy- stones mortared with natural cement, whence the towns- folk could fetch it in bucketfuls for use at home. "Can you see who it is?" Soraya demanded. Firdausi clambered down from the ladder on which they were working, to get below the clouds of steam, and reported. "It looks like the youngest from next door to youBaby Hakim." "Oh no\" Soraya gulped, and dropped to the ground with a lithe flexing of her long legs. Firdausi's eyes fol- lowed her hungrily. She was by far the most beautiful unmarried girl in the whole town: sloe-eyed, olive- skinned, with long dark hair and supple, graceful limbs. He wished achingly that his parents were not so con- cerned with mundanities like a dowry and would give him permission to marry her anyway. He was sure she would make an excellent wife . . . "Hakim baby!" she cried, dropping on her knees and sweeping her arms around the tearful youngster who came charging up to her. "What's wrong?" Between sobs of exhaustion and terror, the child forced out the news: Soraya's mother had been taken ill yet again. "You go straight home," Firdausi instructed. "I'll bring Marouz to you there." She shot him a smile of gratitude and went racing back to the town. It consisted of two rows of wattle-and-daub houses facing one another, widely spaced, with large vegetable gardens and runs for livestock surrounding them. Teth- ered yorbs regarded her incuriously as she sped past, feet splashing in puddles left by the overnight rain which the sky threatened to let flood down again at any moment. In the fifth house from the left was her home; she slammed back the crude wooden gate in the fence en- closing its garden, and ran indoors. Hakim's elder sister, Yana, was bending over the bed on which lay the wheezing form of apparently an old woman. In truth, Soraya's mother was no more than thirty-seven, but in this harsh environment age descend- ed with the swiftness of tropical night. And yet it was not mere ageendurable, because vis- ited on everyonewhich afflicted her. It was something random, and more deadly. There was a name for it; the quakes. But simply to have a name was no help. What was needed was a cure. Sick with despair, Soraya glanced at Yana. "Has she been like this long?" "I found her on the floor by the hearth," the other girl answered in low tones. "See, her dress is scorchedit was lucky I chanced to look in, or she might have been burned to death." Soraya shuddered. "When? Just now?" "So long ago as it took Hakim to reach you." Yana shrugged. "I sent him at once." Soraya clutched her mother's hand, feeling the uncon- trollable trembling that racked her weak body, and railed mentally against the capriciousness of fate. "Shall I go for Marouz?" Yana suggested. "Thank you, but Firdausi was with me at the water- works, and he has gone already. Not that he'll be any help," Soraya added bitterly. "You shouldn't talk so. He's the wisest man among us as well as the oldest!" Yana sounded horrified. "What use is wisdom without practical applications? He can tell us to be duriful children and loving parents, and we do our bestand my mother who is the kindest of women has the quakes." Soraya put up her hand to wipe away a tear. "Sssh! He's coming now," Yana murmured, and turned to bow as Marouz dipped his white-bearded head under the low lintel. "Honour and profit upon this house," the mage said in a single rapid burst, and limped to a chair which Yana brought up beside the bed. "Hmmm! Has your mother drunk unboiled water, Soraya?" "You think I would let her?" Soraya jumped to her feet, appalled. "I, who work where I do? What do you take me for?" "Soraya, that's unwise," Firdausi said softly; he had come in just behind Marouz, holding Baby Hakim's chubby hand. "I don't care!" Tears were gathering in Soraya's eyes also now. "I don't care! My mother lies sick to death, and all he can think of is that she might have drunk un- boiled water! What has water to do with it, anyway? My father tended the waterworks before me, and he'd never have let her do such a thing, and I wouldn'tand still she has the quakes! What can water possibly have to do with it?" Marouz's face went hard as stone. "We are taught by the wisdom of the ancients" he began. "And a fat lot of good it does us!" Soraya blazed. But on the last word she collapsed to her knees before him, her shoulders heaving in helpless sobs. "There, there," Marouz said, giving her an awkward pat on top of the head. "These things are sent to try us, daughter. We do what we can, but we are still far from understanding all life's mysteries. When you grow as old as Iwhich may you do!you'll have learned patience with the inescapable." "I'm sorry," Soraya choked out. "But I love my mother, and she's done so much for me . . . Is there no help you can give?" "Spiritual comfort I would offer, but I know your mother as a fine, noble-hearted woman in small need of my advice." Marouz waggled his flowing beard regret- fully. "The only counsel I can give is to you. And yon know what that is, for I've suggested it before." "I've urged it on her also," Firdausi put in. "And she won't listen." "Take my mother away from her own home, and send her who knows where?" Soraya exclaimed. "It seems to me soso heartless!" "Now, now, my daughter," Marouz soothed. "We all hate necessity, but that's no use. The Receivers of the Sick are good men, full of ancient wisdom and kindly in- tentions. Is it not better to see your mother in safe keep- ing than lying here quivering her life away on this narrow hard bed?" There was silence after that blunt question, until at last Marouz stirred. "Well, I can do no more than I've done," he said, and reached for Yana's arm to get to his feet. "Make your mind up quickly, Soraya the Re- ceivers are coming to this area in a few days' time, I hear, and they won't be back for months, at least." He hobbled out, and automatically they threw good wishes after him in the form traditional for very old per- sons"May good health attend you to your grave." Firdausi caught Yana's eye and she took the hint. Crossing the dirt floor to retrieve her young brother, she said in a strained voice, "Well, I have things to see to next door. I guess you'd like to be alone, anyway." The moment she was out of sight, Firdausi put his arm around Soraya. "Dearest, why do you torture yourself and your motherthis way?" She shook off his grip and took the chair Marouz had vacated, to sit gazing down at her mother, fingers driv- ing their nails deep into her palms as though to share her mother's suffering by self-inflicted pain. "Shall I sell her like a yorb?" she snapped. "You know as I do that but for the payment we'd never have let a single person go from this town to the Receivers! It may be well enough for towns where they don't teach love for one's parents, but it disgusts me." "Can you do more for her than the Receivers?" Firdausi countered. "What do they do?" Soraya demanded. "No one will tell me that! What becomes of those committed to their mercies?" "You should ask Marouz." "I did, the first rime he made this suggestion. And he could only say that he didn't doubt'didn't doubt'!that their fate was better than we ignorant folk could offer." "Wouldn't almost anything be better than this?" Firdausi argued. "Lying helpless among others equally helpless?" He dropped to his knees, face pleading. "I admire you for your wish to keep your mother with you, believe me! But looking at her, knowing there's nothing we can dohow can you condemn her to it any longer? Look, why don't you ask her views when she's able to talk again?" Soraya's face was very pale as she murmured, "I did." "What did she say?" Firdausi pressed. "That the paymentif the Receivers accept her would be dowry for me and I could marry you and in- herit the house." She formed the words as though each tasted bad in her mouth. "But in that case!" Firdausi rocked back on his heels. "If it's her own wish, what holds you back?" "They might not accept her," Soraya whispered. "They don't take everyone, do they?" "But it's a chance, don't you see? What chance has she here of any other fate but a lingering, unpleasant death?" Soraya delayed her answer for long moments. Finally she said, "Firdausi, all you care about is freeing me to marry you. Suppose I say that ifif1 take my mother to the Receivers, this does not mean I intend to marry you." It was Firdausi's turn to hesitate. "I think," he said slowly, "that the way you're keeping your mother here, suffering needlessly, is likely to make me less eager to have you for my wife." She flinched as though from a physical blow, and fresh tears gathered in her eyes. Seeing his advantage, Firdausi pressed it. "There's something almost selfish about it. You've just told me what her own desires are, yet you insist on go- ing against them. If that's not pandering to your own self-esteem, I don't know what is." She bit down on her lower lip to stop it quivering, and was only able to speak after a further pause. The words came like leaden footfalls. "Very well. Go to Marouz and find out when the Re- ceivers are due, and where. And I'll try and borrow a wagon and a yorb to take her." Firdausi's jubilation showed in his face, although his voice was sober enough as he said, "I do really think it's the wisest course." He turned and went out. So I'll do it, Soraya thought bitterly. But I won't marry you or anyone eke in this horrible town. If they take her, I'll burn the house and we the pay to go some- where I can hide from my shame. Abruptly she turned to the water-bucket and began to rinse her hands, over and over, as though to remove some clinging invisible foulness. vn Maddalena and Langenschmidt ate their evening meal together in the main base restaurant. Under the influence of the nearest approach to civilised luxury she had en- joyed for many yearsthe Corps base where she had been most recently was as spartan as any of the other outlying stations Maddalena's mood of exhaustion and apathy faded. The music, food and wine made her ex- pand like a flower to the sun, so that even before she took the course of cosmetic treatment she was due for traces of the impetuous girl Langenschmidt had formerly known began to peek through. Unfortunately, it was his turn to become distracted and stare for long silent periods into nowhere. It was some while before Maddalena noticed the factshe had been gossiping about her experiences on ZRP Thirteen and when she did, she spoke teasingly to him. "Why, Gus! Is this any way to treat a guest? I thought you'd spent your time here learning all the cor- rect social behaviour!" "Hm?" He snapped back to the present with a start. "Oh, I'm sorry. There's something bothering me, and I think I just figured out what it has to be. Please excuse me for a few minutes. I have to check on it." Maddalena stared at him. Suddenly she leaned forward and put her hand on his. "I'm sorry, Gus. I didn't intend to act this way on seeing you for the first time in so many years. You do have problems to handle, and I shouldn't be disregarding them the way I have been." "No, this is nothing directly to do with you. At least I don't believe it is. Will you excuse me?" "Is it something I'm not allowed to know about, or may I come with you?" "Sure, come if yon like. I'm not going far. To a com- municator first, then to the hospital if my suspicions prove correct." "Something about this man Justin Kolb?" "Very much so." She pushed back her chair and rose. The network of communicator links knitted the base together as intimately as the nerves in a living body, so that none of the key personnel need ever be oat of reach in the rare event of an emergency. Here, Maddalena thought as she studied Langenschmidt's strong profile against the wall of the restaurant communicator booth, emergencies would be even less common than on most Corps bases. He must make a first-class commandant:; thorough, patient, farsighted. But he had been a first-class Patrol Major, too, and would have been equally efficient as an on-planet agent like herselfhad stood in as one during the Carrig crisis, and proved that. She sighed imperceptibly, envying his adaptability and dedication. By comparison she felt herself pliable, weak and self-centred. The signal indicating access to the base computer memory shone out of the screen in the booththe Corps was the only regular user of vision circuits on Cyclops apart from the government. "Justin Kolb, Cyclopean," Langenschmidt said briskly. "Circumstances attending his retirement from the Cy- clops space service, please." The last word tickled Maddalena's fancy. Imagine say- ing "please" to a machine! But after a second it didn't seem fannyonly characteristic of the man who uttered it. "Select auditory or visual presentation," the machine requested, and he selected sound, thinking it was more convenient for Maddalena, -